Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/406

824 SOUTH AND EAST AFRICA. interior, except those of EngUsh traveUers, favoured by the British mission stationed in this place. The Caravan Trade. The whole of the commercial movement between the coast, Lake Tanganyika, and Unyamezi, is carried on by means of the so-called pngazi, or porters, each of whom balances on his heud a load averaging about sixty pounds weight. Most of the men engaged in the seaboard towns come from Unyamezi or Usukura, and although nominally free, these men are in reality the slaves of the Arab and Hindu traders, who get them into their power by payments of wages in advance, charging such heavy interest on the money that their victims are never able to clear off the debt. The a/^hari, or soldiers who act as escorts to the convoy, and also usually carry half a load, are equally in the hands of the Dar-es-Salaam and Bagamoyo traders, who in fact ultimately receive nearly all the profits on every expedition equipped for the purchase of ivory. The caravans, composed generally of several hundred, at times even several thousand persons, march like armed forces through the land. They are under the command of a kirongozi, or captain, and are again divided into a number of brigades, each under a separate tiyampara, or major. The order of march is planned beforehand each day ; the main body is preceded by a van-guard and followed by a rear-guard, while the flanks are protected by scouts and others engaged to clear the way and collect fodder. A special place is also assigned to the women and children in the convoy and in the camping-ground. In the Mgunda Mkhali solitudes the scrub is traversed by three parallel tracts about 65 feet apart. In the middle track walk the women, the children, and the porters bending under their heavy burdens, while the two side paths are taken by the lightly loaded pagazi and the armed men. The caravans have now, however, seldom to defend themselves from direct attack, but have rather to fear lest a solitude be made in front of them, and that they may in this way be cut off from all supplies. A source of trouble are also the exactions of the kinglets or tribal chiefs, who under one pretext or another levy a sort of blackmail, the so-called hougo, or road-tax, the amount of which may at times be arbitrarily increased. Provision has' also to be made against fever, epidemics, inundations, droughts, and the thousand other accidents by " flood or field" incidental to such long expeditions. Thanks to the experience already acquired by explorers since the first journeys of Burton, Livingstone, Stanley, and other pioneers, the time occupied by the trip between Bagamoyo and the shores of Tanganyika has been diminished by three- fourths. This space of about 600 miles may now be got ovor in six weeks or so, bit all attempts have hitherto failed to replace the porters along this route either by pack animals or wheeled traffic. Horses cannot be employed, because within a ten days' march of the coast begin the regions infested by the tsetse fly. The ass resists better, but this animal at last yields to the poisoned sting of this insect. Essays have also been made with pack oxen, while Roger Price* has tried