Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/442

 868 SOUTH AND EAST AFRICA. Each family lives quite apart, occupying a group of cabins amid a thicket of bananas enclosed by tall hedges or stockades. Hence not much importance can be attached to the hypothesis of M. Duveyrier, who suggests that the Wachagas of the Kilima-Njaro heights may possibly be a remnant of the conquering Jaga warriors who overran the Congo empire in the sixteenth century. The two people seem to have nothing in common beyond a fanciful resemblance between their resjH^ctive national designations. Like the Wasambara monarch, the Wachaga chiefs enjoy absolute power over their subjects. All the men are their slaves ; all children born within their domain are destined to serve them, and as soon as they have acquired sufficient strength they are employed for the " works of the king," such as constructing defensive lines and irrigating canals, tilling the land, building cabins, and manufacturing arms. All matrimonial alTairs are settled by his majesty, who puts the wedding ring on the bride's finger, selects her future lord, and fixes the nuptial day. Unions are far less premature than amongst most African peoples, and to this circumstance may probably to a great extent be attributed the fact that the Chaga race is one of the finest in all Africa. The salubrious climate, their regular agricultural habits and frugal fare, combined with the excellent quality of the fruits and vegetables, also tend to give to the Wachagas a decided superiority in health and physical strength over all their neighbours. They live chiefly on a milk diet, and place pitchers of milk on the graves of the dead, whereas the people of the plains make offerings of rice and palm wine to the departed. The Wachagas, who are skilled agriculturists, raise abundant crops of wheat, excellent pulse, various vegetables, and bananas of unique quality, rivalled in flavour only by those of the Seychelle Islands. On the other hand, they have developed scarcely any industries, being ignorant even of the weaver's art. But as blacksmiths they are unsurpassed, if even equalled, by any people in East Africa, manufacturing lances, darts, axes, variously ornamented shields of great artistic merit. They also carry on a brisk trade with the seaboard populations, from whom they procure clothes and sundry European wares. One of the pro- minent items of the import trade is the so-called emballa, a kind of alkaline earth from the southern plains, which they dissolve in water, using the solution as a substitute for salt in their diet. Thanks to the absence of the tsetse fly throughout the whole of the Pangani valley, except on the banks of the Taveta, caravans are able to employ asses as pack-animals in the transport service between the coast and Chagaland. This is a point of such vital importance that it would necessarily secure the preference for the Pangani route above all the southern highways, but for the fact that it is still exposed to the frequent attacks of the Masai freebooters. According to the still surviving local traditions, the Portuguese formerly visited the interior by following the Pangani fluvial valley. Towards the beginning of the eighteenth century some Mohammedan pioneers also settled in the country, where they even founded a royal dynasty ; but all traces of their social and religious influences have since been completely effaced. •