What Led to the Discovery of the Source of the NileSpeke, John Hanning
History
What Led to the Discovery of the Source of the Nile
Speke, John Hanning
Horn of Africa -- Description and travel; Nile River; Tanganyika, Lake
Up to this point the villages, as is the case in all central
Unyamuézi, are built on the most luxurious principles. They form a
large hollow square, the walls of which are the huts, ranged on all
sides of it in a sort of street consisting of two walls, the breadth
of an ordinary room, which is partitioned off to a convenient size by
interior walls of the same earth-construction as the exterior ones, or
as our sepoys' lines are made in India. The roof is flat, and serves
as a store-place for keeping sticks to burn, drying grain, pumpkins,
mushrooms, or any vegetables they may have. Most of these compartments
contain the families of the villagers, together with their poultry,
brewing utensils, cooking apparatus, stores of grain, and anything
they possess. The remainder contain their flocks and herds,
principally goats and cows, for sheep do not breed well in the
country, and their flesh is not much approved of by the people. What
few sheep there are appear to be an offshoot from the Persian stock.
They have a very scraggy appearance, and show but the slightest signs
of the fat-rumped proportions of their ancestors. The cows, unlike the
noble Tanganyika ones, are small and short-horned, and are of a
variety of colours. They carry a hump like the Brahminy bull, but give
very little milk. In front of nearly every house you see large slabs
of granite, the stones on which the jowari is ground by women, who,
kneeling before them, rub the grain down to flour with a smaller
stone, which they hold with both hands at once. Thus rubbing and
grinding away, swaying monotonously to and fro, they cheer the time by
singing and droning in cadence to the motion of their bodies.
The country to the east and north-east of this village is said to be
thinly peopled, but, as usual, the clans are much intermixed, the two
principal being Wakimbu and Wasagari. I here engaged a second guide or
leader for five shukkas (small loin-cloths) merikani, as a second war,
different from the one we had heard of at Kazé, had broken out exactly
on the road I was pursuing, and rendered my first leader's experience
of no avail. The evening was spent by the porters in dancing, and
singing a song which had been evidently composed for the occasion, as
it embraced everybody's name connected with the caravan, but more
especially Mzungu (the wise or white man), and ended with the
prevailing word amongst these curly-headed bipeds, "Grub, Grub, Grub!"
It is wonderful to see how long they will, after a long fatiguing
march, keep up these festivities, singing the same song over and over
again, and dancing and stamping, with their legs and arms flying about
like the wings of a semaphore, as they move slowly round and round in
the same circle and on the same ground; their heads and bodies lolling
to and fro in harmony with the rest of the dance, which is always kept
at more even measure when, as on this occasion, there were some
village drums beating the measure they were wont to move by.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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