The Sun.
London, England, 1860-06-21 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Ike Lake Regions of Central Africa. By Richard
F. Burton, Captain H.M.I. Army. 2 vols.
Longman.
Central Africa is no longer the unknown region
which not many years since it was to the ordinary
reader. The researches of Barth, of Livingstone,
and of Captain Burton himself, have brought before
us the features and characteristics of those wild
tropical countries, where European feet had rarely,
if ever, penetrated. The volumes before us treat
of some of the wildest and most uncivilised
districts, whose dangers to health, life and pro-
perty are such that an attempt to penetrate
them was esteemed little short of madness.
The first European who conceived the pro-
ject of exploring the lakes of the interior,
paid with his life the penalty of his rashness
in trusting to the treacherous hospitality of the
wretched natives. The prejudice they enter-
tain against foreigners is universal. They look on
them with a degree of suspicion which makes tra-
velling very unsafe, and are particularly averse to
any attempt to collect information or examine into
the state of their trade and commerce. Only a
year before Captain Burton's arrival the burghers
of Kilwa, one of the ports of the Zanzibar
mainland, had murdered an Arab merchant,
who ventured to explore the interior. Con-
trary to many primitive races the virtues of
hospitality appear to be entirely unknown.
According to our traveller's account force or fraud
are the only means of obtaining the necessaries of
life. Captain Burton left England in 1856. The
object he proposed to himself, and which he sub-
mitted to the Council of the Royal Geographical
Society, of which he is a fellow, was " to form an
expedition primarily for the purpose of ascertain-
ing the limits of the Sea of Ujiji, or Unyamwezi
Lake,' and, secondarily, to determine the exportable
produce of the interior, and the ethnography of its
tribes." These objects he successfully attained,
although his journey does not appear to have been
productive of much satisfaction to him. He tells
us that he had intended these volumes to have
appeared immediately after his return to England,
last spring, but that " the impaired health, de-
pression of spirits, and, worse still, the annoyance
of official correspondence," which have been to him
the sole results of exploration, were the reasons for
the delay. There appears to be a very awkward feel-
ing between Captain Burton and Captain Spoke, his
sole European companion, who seems to have
anticipated the result of his labours in some way.
It is a question on which it is difficult to form an
opinion, but we cannot help regretting the extreme
bitterness with which Captain Burton writes on
this subject ; it is scarcely worthy of one whose
name is not unknown in the scientific world, even
should the circumstances have been somewhat irri-
tating. Another subject of vexation to him was his
treatment by the authorities of the India Office, who
refused to compensate him for his losses, and censured
him for not having rewarded his unfaithful
and extortionate attendants. According to Captain
Burton's account of them they were totally un-
worthy of any recompense; deserting at every
opportunity, and trembling at every alarm, they
seem to have been nearly as much hindrance as
help. These various annoyances, added to the ill-
health induced by the climate and the exposure
and vicissitudes of the journey, seem to have
soured the traveller's mind and infused into his
work a querulous tone which is more natural than
agreeable. Wo prefer, however, to leave the con-
sideration of these vexed questions, in which per-
fect, impartiality is difficult, and to consider the
work. in its more attractive character as a picture
of life and nature in its wildest and rudest form.
Lake Tanganyika, or the Sea of Ujiji, which the
party went to seek, lies in about the same degree
of longitude as Zanzibar. It is in Unyamwezi, the
Land of the Moon, as that portion of Eastern
Central Africa is designated. Starting from Zan-
zibar, the travellers had to penetrate into the
interior through regions which it was considered
almost certain death for a European to enter. The
narrative commences at Zanzibar, which, as the
reader is probably aware, is an island on the
eastern coast of Africa, a little to the north of the
Mozambique Channel. Its name Captain Burton
considers to be clearly derived from the Arabic
words, " Zanj," a negro, and " bar," a region. It
signifies Blackland, and traces of the word may be
found in very early geographers. The inhabitants
of this part of the coast are called by the Arabs
Ahl Maraim, and by themselves Wamrima, in op-
position to the heathen of the interior, whom they
designate collectively the Washenzi—signifying
conquered or servile. These classes consist of.
half-caste Arabs and coast clans. The latter the
Arabs of Oman refuse to recognise as kinsmen.
The former dislike Europeans, and especially fear
the Beni Nar, or Sons of Fire—the English. They
have a proverb, " hot as the Ingrez," and in their
tales and traditions they predict the eventual con-
quest of the country that has once felt the white
man's foot. It is possibly this superstition that
renders them so averse to travellers, although they
endeavour to thwart the Arab as well as the European
from exploring the interior. In this case, however,
commercial jealousy explains their conduct. , The
native clans belong to an extremely low branch of
the human race. " Study or any tension of the
mind," says Captain Burton, " seems to make these
weak-brained races semi-idiotic." . In another place
he tells us that though possessing very little affec-
tion for any one, the sudden loss of a relative some-
times leads among the east Africans from grief to
insanity, from the inability of their minds to bear
any unusual strain. Yet they are certainly not a
soft-hearted race. "It is most painful to witness
the complete inhumanity with which a porter seized
with smallpox is allowed by his friends, comrades,
and brethren to fall behind in the jungle, with
several days' life in him. No inducement, even
beads can persuade a soul to attend him.
Every village will drive him from its
doors ; no one will risk taking at any
price, death into his bosom." These unfortu-
nate sufferers frequently fall victims to the wild
animals. This disease makes the most frightful
ravages among the natives of which the exploring
party saw many instances.
The difficulties against which Captain Burton
had to contend were most formidable. The
low rate of intelligence prevented him from
obtaining any sound information from the na-
tives as they gave the most confused and con-
tradictory accounts of places in their immediate
neighbourhood. Added to their incapacity, their
habitual falsity and cunning are serious obstacles.
" The most solemn oaths are with them empty
words; they breathe an atmosphere of falsehood,
manoeuvre, and contrivance—wasting about the
mere nothings of life—upon a pound of grain
or a yard of cloth--ingenuity of iniquity
enough to win and keep a crown. And
they are treacherous as false; with them
the salt has no signification, and gratitude
is unknown even by name." As might be
supposed from such characteristics, the natives are
incurably indolent. Some of the races of the inte-
rior, though superior in strength and intelligence,
are seldom brought to the slave market, since they
would " rather die under the stick than level them-.
selves with women by using a hoe." They are also
cowardly. There was not a tingle member'of Capt.
Burton's caravan that did not attempt to desert
during the journey. As with all savage races their
passion for beads is extraordinary. There are 400
varieties, each with a different name. Some are
called "food finishers," because a man will part
with his dinner to obtain them ; others " town
breakers," because the women will ruin
their households for them. A large store
of beads is the first necessity of the tra-
veller as the demand is unceasing. Many curi-
ous details of their mode of life, manners, and
customs, &c., are furnished by the author. In some
places it is customary to bury a chief sitting upright,
and a male and female slave alive with him. They
are described as very savage and uncivilised, and
completely lacking the creative faculty. Thus
although they have some idea of tune and are re-
markably gifted with a sense of time, a thousand
feet tapping the ground with perfect unani-
mity in some of their dances, yet their music
is of the simplest and rudest kind. Such as
it is they delight in it. " The fisher-
man will accompany his paddle, the portal- his
trudge, the housewife her task of rubbing grain with
song; and for long hours at night the peasants
will sit. a ring repeating with a zest that never
flags, the same few notes, and the same unmeaning
line." The condition of the East African in the
villages, the author considers to be by no means
devoid of comfort. He asserts that in many
respects he is better off than the ltyot of Bri-
tish India. Among the peculiarities of some of
the tribes, is the total absenCe of family affec-
tion. Thus among the Wangamwesi, the hus-
band returning from the coast with cloth re-
fuses to give a shukkah to his wife, and the wife
succeeding to an inheritance will leave her husband
to starve. Each grows tobacco, having no hope of
borrowing from the, other. The author remarks
that he offers no apology for the length of his
ethnographical descriptions, justly considering
them the most valuable feature
tourheisofrihe iswork. The
country, he observes, la
interest, " It
has few traditions, no annals, and no ruins. It
contains not a single useful or ornamental work—
a canal or a dam is, and ever has been, beyond the
narrow bounds of its civilisation. It
wants
the scenes of barbaric pomp and savage
Africa i grandeurea i evens
with which the student of occidental fa-
miliar. But its ethnography has noveites_.it
exposes strange manners and customs; its Fetichism
is in itself a wonder; its commerce deserves atten-
tion; and its social state is full of mournful inte.
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