Zanzibar; city, island, and coast. Vol. 2 (of 2)Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
History
Zanzibar; city, island, and coast. Vol. 2 (of 2)
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
Africa, East -- Description and travel; Ethnology -- Tanzania -- Zanzibar; Zanzibar -- Description and travel
Having crossed the river, we traversed plantations of cocoas and
plantains, and ascending a steep hill, we found, after five miles of
walking, the market ‘warm,’ as Easterns say, upon the seaward slope. All
Tanga was there. The wild people, Wasumbara and Washenzi,[29] Wadigo and
Wasegeju, were clothed in greasy hides and cotton wrappers of inveterate
grime. Every man carried his bow and arrow, his knobstick (Rungo), his
club, his sword, and his shield, but few owned muskets. Some had come
from afar, as was shown by their low wooden stools and small churning
staves. The women were more numerous, and harder worked; the girls were
bare-breasted, and every matron had her babe tied in a bundle to the
back, its round black head nodding with every movement of the maternal
person. Yet it never cries—that model baby! They carried, besides masses
of beads strung round the neck, zinc and brass armlets all down the
arms, and huge collars and anklets of metal, heavy loads of valuable
stuff; and others sat opposite their belongings, chaffering and
gesticulating upon knotty questions of fragmentary farthings. These
ill-used and hard-favoured beings, with patterns burnt into their skins,
paid toll for ingress at a place where cords were stretched across the
path, a primitive style of raising octroi. The Bedawin exchanged their
lean sheep and goats, cocoas and bananas, grain and ghee, for white and
blue cottons, beads, and rude iron ware—knives, bills, and hatchets,
made on the coast of metal brought from Zanzibar. The luxuries were
dried fish, salt, Tembo or cocoa-toddy, spices, needles and thread,
fish-hooks, and bluestone used in their rude medicine. Formerly a large
quantity of ivory found its way to the ‘Golio’; now it is purchased in
the interior by trading parties. The groups, gathered under the several
trees, were noisy, but civil to us. Often, however, a lively scene,
worthy of Donnybrook in its palmiest days, takes place, knobstick and
dagger being used by the black factions as freely as fists and
shillelaghs in more civilized lands. At noon we returned over the sands
which were strewed with sea-slugs, and in places chœtodons lay dead in
the sun. The heat of the ground made my bare-footed companions run from
time to time for the shade, like the dogs in Tibet.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account