The World and Its People Part 15

Crocodiles abound in these waters, as well as the hippopotami, or river horses. Fish and water fowl are also plenty.

Dr. Barth, the explorer, states that the lake has no apparent outlet, yet its waters are perfectly fresh. From the north the Waube, a river some four hundred miles in length, enters it. From the south the Shari, a stream about eighteen hundred feet broad in its lower course, discharges its waters into the lake.

Lake Tchad seems to be divided into two distinct sections, the open water and the strip of swampy land which surrounds it. The open water, or true Tchad, is dotted with numerous islands. These consist mainly of elevated, sandy dunes. Only the most elevated of these islands afford shelter, but such as are inhabited have a dense population.

The people on these lake islands build numerous boats. Some are twenty feet in length. One writer describes a boat which was fifty feet long, and but six and one-half feet wide.

The explorers, Barth and Overweg, describe Lake Tchad as a remarkably fine sheet of water. They visited the lake during the dry season, and found the lowlands in the vicinity gra.s.sy meadows. During the wet season these lands are usually under water.

Doubtless the ground surrounding the lake was a portion of the former bed of a much larger sheet of water. Along its sh.o.r.es the papyrus is found. This is like the plant from which the ancients about the Nile manufactured their paper. Various other reeds, some of them from ten to fourteen feet high, grow in abundance, there being two distinct varieties of these gigantic reeds.

Interwoven in this thicket of reeds grows a variety of climbing plant with bright yellow blossoms. Another peculiar plant, which floats or rests upon the water, the natives call by a name which signifies "homeless fauna."

As these two explorers, Barth and Overweg, approached open water, after leaving the swampy ground in the nearer vicinity of the lake, they came upon an expanse of quite deep water. Shortly after, they disturbed a herd of _kelara_, a variety of antelope that is very fond of the water.

Proceeding on their way, they came to water so deep that, by stooping in the saddle,--for they were on horseback,--they could easily have drunk from it. This draught, however, would not have been very refreshing, for the water was warm and full of vegetable life.

Lake Tanganyika is situated in East Central Africa, at an elevation of over twenty-seven hundred feet above the level of the sea. It has a length of upwards of four hundred miles, while its breadth is from ten to fifty miles. In shape it is like a leech, with the small end tapering to the north. This small or northern end lies about two hundred miles southwest of Victoria Nyanza Lake.

Burton and Speke, two African explorers, have given a vivid description of the approach to the lake, as well as of the lake itself.

Burton regarded the Malagarazi River as the western boundary of "The Land of the Moon." It is in this section of country that Lake Tanganyika is situated.

CHAPTER XX.

"THE LAND OF THE MOON."

"'The Land of the Moon,' which is the garden of Central Inter-tropical Africa, presents an aspect of peaceful rural beauty, which soothes the eye like a medicine, after the red glare of the barren Ugogo and the dark, monotonous verdure of the western provinces.

"The inhabitants are comparatively numerous in the villages, which rise at short intervals above their impervious walls of the l.u.s.trous green milk-bush, with its coral-shaped arms, variegating the well-hoed plains.

"In the pasture lands frequent herds of many-colored cattle, plump, well-rounded, and high-humped, like the Indian breeds, and mingled flocks of goats and sheep dispersed over the landscape, suggest ideas of barbarous comfort and plenty.

"There are few scenes more soft and soothing than a view of 'The Land of the Moon' in the balmy evenings of spring. As the large yellow sun nears the horizon, a deep stillness falls upon earth; even the zephyr seems to lose the power of rustling the lightest leaf. The charm of the hour seems to affect even the unimaginative Africans, as they sit in the central s.p.a.ces of their villages, or, stretched under the forest trees, gaze upon the glories around.

"The rainy monsoon is here ushered in, accompanied and terminated by storms of thunder and lightning, and occasional hail falls. The blinding flashes of white, yellow, or rose color play over the firmament uninterruptedly for hours, during which no darkness is visible.

"In the lighter storms, thirty and thirty-five flashes may be counted in a minute. So vivid is the glare that it discloses the finest shades of color, and appears followed by a thick and palpable gloom, such as would hang before a blind man's eyes, while a deafening roar, simultaneously following the flash, seems to travel, as it were, to and fro overhead.

Several claps sometimes sound almost at the same moment, and as if coming from different directions. The same storm will, after the most violent of its discharges, pa.s.s over, and be immediately followed by a second, showing the superabundance of electricity in the atmosphere."

Burton describes two tribes of this region as worthy of notice, the Wakimbu and the Wanyamwezi. The former are emigrants into The Land of the Moon. They claim a n.o.ble origin, having come from tribes living south of this land that has adopted them.

Burton's description of these people is interesting. "In these regions there are few obstacles to immigrants. They visit the sultan, make a small present, obtain permission to settle, and name the village after their own chief; but the original proprietors still maintain their rights to the soil.

"The Wakimbu build firmly stockaded villages, tend cattle, and cultivate sorghum and maize, millet and pulse, cuc.u.mbers and watermelons.

Apparently they are poor, being generally clad in skins. They barter slaves and ivory in small quant.i.ties to the merchants, and some travel to the coast.

"They are considered treacherous by their neighbors. They are known by a number of small lines formed by raising the skin with a needle, and opening it by points laterally between the hair of the temples and the eyebrows. In appearance they are dark and uncomely; their arms are bows and arrows, spears, and knives stuck in the leathern waist belt; some wear necklaces of a curiously plaited straw, others a strip of white cowskin bound around the brow,--a truly savage and African decoration.

"The Wanyamwezi tribe, the proprietors of the soil, is the typical tribe in this portion of Central Africa. Its comparative industry and commercial activity have secured to it a superiority over the other kindred tribes.

"The natives of this tribe are usually of a dark sepia brown, rarely colored like diluted India ink, as are the slave races to the south. The hair curls crisply, but it grows to the length of four or five inches before it splits. It is usually twisted into many little ringlets, or hanks. It hangs down like a fringe in the neck, and is combed off the forehead after the manner of the ancient Egyptians and the modern Hottentots.

"The habitations of the Eastern Wanyamwezi are the _tembe_, which in the west give place to the circular African hut. Among the poorer sub-tribes, the dwelling is a mere stack of straw.

"The best tembe have large projecting eaves, supported by uprights; cleanliness, however, can never be expected in them. Having no limestone, the people ornament the inner and outer walls with long lines of ovals, formed by pressure of the finger-tips, after dipping them in ashes and water for whitewash, and into red clay or black mud for variety of color.

"With this primitive material they sometimes attempt rude imitations of nature,--human beings and serpents. In some parts the cross appears, but the people apparently ignore it as a symbol. Rude carving is also attempted upon the ma.s.sive posts at the entrance of villages, but the figures, though to appearance idolatrous, are never worshiped."

CHAPTER XXI.

VIEWS OF LAKE TANGANYIKA.

Burton considered the march from the Malagarazi River to Lake Tanganyika the worst part of his journey. It led through a perfect wilderness, with all the diversities of jungle, swamp, rugged hills, and rocky ravines swept by mountain torrents.

After much labor, Burton and his followers reached the lake. His first feeling was one of disappointment.

Having traveled through screens of lofty gra.s.s, which gradually thinned out into a scanty forest, he climbed a steep, stony hill, thinly covered with th.o.r.n.y trees. From the top of this hill he could see a faint streak of light below. This he judged was the lake. Seen through the veil of trees and the broad rays of sunshine, the lake seemed to be shrunken in its proportions.

As he advanced a few steps, the whole scene burst upon his view. He was filled with admiration, wonder, and delight at its beauty. To quote his words:--

"Nothing could be more beautiful, more picturesque, than the first view of Lake Tanganyika, as it lay in the lap of the mountains, basking in the gorgeous tropical sunshine. Below and beyond a short foreground of rugged and precipitous hill-fold, down which the footpath zigzags painfully, a narrow strip of emerald green, never sere, and marvelously fertile, shelves towards a ribbon of glistening sand, here bordered by sedgy rushes, there cleanly and clearly cut by the breaking wavelets.

"Farther in front stretched the waters, an expanse of the lightest and softest blue, in a breadth varying from thirty to thirty-five miles, and sprinkled by the crisp east wind into tiny crescents of sunny foam.

"The background is a high and broken wall of steel-colored mountain, here flecked and capped with pearly mist, there standing sharply penciled against the azure sky. Its yawning chasms, marked by a deep plum-color, fall towards dwarf hills of mold-like proportions, which apparently dip their feet in the wave.

"To the south, and opposite the long, low point behind which the Malagarazi River discharges the red loam suspended in its violent stream, lie the bluff headlands and capes of Uguha; and, as the eye dilates, it falls upon a cl.u.s.ter of outlying islets speckling a sea horizon.

"Villages, cultivated lands, the frequent canoes of the fishermen on the waters, and, on a nearer approach, the murmur of the waves breaking upon the sh.o.r.e, give something of variety, of movement, of life to the landscape, which, like all the fairest prospects in these regions, wants but a little of the neatness and finish of art,--mosques and kiosks, palaces and villas, gardens and orchards,--contrasting with the profuse lavishness and magnificence of nature, and diversifying the expanse of excessive vegetation, to rival, if not to excel, the most admired scenery of the cla.s.sic regions.

"The riant sh.o.r.es of this vast creva.s.se appeared doubly beautiful to me after the silent and spectral mangrove creeks on the East African seaboard, and the melancholy, monotonous experience of desert and jungle scenery, tawny rock and sun-parched plain, or rank herbage and flats of black mire. Truly it was a revel for soul and sight."

In further accounts this same author describes the African canoe, which is simply a scooped-out log. In such a climate as that of Africa a canoe cracks, and for want of calking it often becomes so leaky as to require constant baling. The crew take turns in thus keeping the craft from sinking.

A canoe of this sort has neither masts nor sails. In place of a rudder there is an iron ring in the stern. The steering, however, is really done by the paddle. There are no oars, and the paddle, which takes the place of oars, is exceedingly clumsy.

The crew seat themselves on narrow benches, two sitting in a s.p.a.ce scarcely large enough for one person. In the center of the canoe is a clear s.p.a.ce about six feet long. This is used to store the cargo, pa.s.sengers, cattle, slaves, and provisions.

In describing the natives Burton says: "The lakists are an almost amphibious race, excellent divers, strong swimmers and fishermen. At times, when excited by the morning coolness and by the prospect of a good haul, they indulge in a manner of merriment which resembles the gambols of sportive water fowls.