Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, David Livingstone [novels for teenagers .TXT] 📗

gardens. They are said to have adopted this wide-spread mode of habitation in order to give alarm should any enemy appear.

In former times they lived in large towns. In the distance (southeast) we see ranges of dark mountains along the banks of the Zambesi, and are told of the existence there of the rapid named Kansala, which is said to impede the navigation. The river is reported to be placid above that as far as the territory of Sinamane, a Batoka chief, who is said to command it after it emerges smooth again below the falls.

Kansala is the only rapid reported in the river until we come to Kebrabasa, twenty or thirty miles above Tete. On the north we have mountains appearing above the horizon, which are said to be on the banks of the Kafue.

The chief Monze came to us on Sunday morning, wrapped in a large cloth, and rolled himself about in the dust, screaming "Kina bomba," as they all do.

The sight of great naked men wallowing on the ground, though intended to do me honor, was always very painful; it made me feel thankful that my lot had been cast in such different circumstances from that of so many of my fellow-men. One of his wives accompanied him; she would have been comely if her teeth had been spared; she had a little battle-axe in her hand, and helped her husband to scream.

She was much excited, for she had never seen a white man before.

We rather liked Monze, for he soon felt at home among us, and kept up conversation during much of the day. One head man of a village after another arrived, and each of them supplied us liberally with maize, ground-nuts, and corn. Monze gave us a goat and a fowl, and appeared highly satisfied with a present of some handkerchiefs I had got in my supplies left at the island. Being of printed cotton, they excited great admiration; and when I put a gaudy-colored one as a shawl about his child, he said that he would send for all his people to make a dance about it. In telling them that my object was to open up a path whereby they might, by getting merchandise for ivory, avoid the guilt of selling their children, I asked Monze, with about 150 of his men, if they would like a white man to live among them and teach them. All expressed high satisfaction at the prospect of the white man and his path: they would protect both him and his property. I asked the question, because it would be of great importance to have stations in this healthy region, whither agents oppressed by sickness might retire, and which would serve, moreover, as part of a chain of communication between the interior and the coast.

The answer does not mean much more than what I know, by other means, to be the case -- that a white man OF GOOD SENSE would be welcome and safe in all these parts. By uprightness, and laying himself out for the good of the people, he would be known all over the country as a BENEFACTOR of the race. None desire Christian instruction, for of it they have no idea. But the people are now humbled by the scourgings they have received, and seem to be in a favorable state for the reception of the Gospel. The gradual restoration of their former prosperity in cattle, simultaneously with instruction, would operate beneficially upon their minds. The language is a dialect of the other negro languages in the great valley; and as many of the Batoka living under the Makololo understand both it and the Sichuana, missionaries could soon acquire it through that medium.

Monze had never been visited by any white man, but had seen black native traders, who, he said, came for ivory, not for slaves.

He had heard of white men passing far to the east of him to Cazembe, referring, no doubt, to Pereira, Lacerda, and others, who have visited that chief.

The streams in this part are not perennial; I did not observe one suitable for the purpose of irrigation. There is but little wood; here and there you see large single trees, or small clumps of evergreens, but the abundance of maize and ground-nuts we met with shows that more rain falls than in the Bechuana country, for there they never attempt to raise maize except in damp hollows on the banks of rivers. The pasturage is very fine for both cattle and sheep.

My own men, who know the land thoroughly, declare that it is all garden-ground together, and that the more tender grains, which require richer soil than the native corn, need no care here.

It is seldom stony.

The men of a village came to our encampment, and, as they followed the Bashukulompo mode of dressing their hair, we had an opportunity of examining it for the first time. A circle of hair at the top of the head, eight inches or more in diameter, is woven into a cone eight or ten inches high, with an obtuse apex, bent, in some cases, a little forward, giving it somewhat the appearance of a helmet.

Some have only a cone, four or five inches in diameter at the base.

It is said that the hair of animals is added; but the sides of the cone are woven something like basket-work. The head man of this village, instead of having his brought to a point, had it prolonged into a wand, which extended a full yard from the crown of his head.

The hair on the forehead, above the ears, and behind, is all shaven off, so they appear somewhat as if a cap of liberty were cocked upon the top of the head. After the weaving is performed it is said to be painful, as the scalp is drawn tightly up; but they become used to it.

Monze informed me that all his people were formerly ornamented in this way, but he discouraged it. I wished him to discourage the practice of knocking out the teeth too, but he smiled, as if in that case the fashion would be too strong for him, as it was for Sebituane.

Monze came on Monday morning, and, on parting, presented us with a piece of a buffalo which had been killed the day before by lions.

We crossed the rivulet Makoe, which runs westward into the Kafue, and went northward in order to visit Semalembue, an influential chief there.

We slept at the village of Monze's sister, who also passes by the same name.

Both he and his sister are feminine in their appearance, but disfigured by the foolish custom of knocking out the upper front teeth.

It is not often that jail-birds turn out well, but the first person who appeared to welcome us at the village of Monze's sister was the prisoner we had released in the way. He came with a handsome present of corn and meal, and, after praising our kindness to the villagers who had assembled around us, asked them, "What do you stand gazing at? Don't you know that they have mouths like other people?" He then set off and brought large bundles of grass and wood for our comfort, and a pot to cook our food in.

DECEMBER 12TH. The morning presented the appearance of a continuous rain from the north, the first time we had seen it set in from that quarter in such a southern latitude. In the Bechuana country, continuous rains are always from the northeast or east, while in Londa and Angola they are from the north. At Pungo Andongo, for instance, the whitewash is all removed from the north side of the houses.

It cleared up, however, about midday, and Monze's sister conducted us a mile or two upon the road. On parting, she said that she had forwarded orders to a distant village to send food to the point where we should sleep. In expressing her joy at the prospect of living in peace, she said it would be so pleasant "to sleep without dreaming of any one pursuing them with a spear."

In our front we had ranges of hills called Chamai, covered with trees.

We crossed the rivulet Nakachinta, flowing westward into the Kafue, and then passed over ridges of rocks of the same mica schist which we found so abundant in Golungo Alto; here they were surmounted by reddish porphyry and finely laminated felspathic grit with trap.

The dip, however, of these rocks is not toward the centre of the continent, as in Angola, for ever since we passed the masses of granite on the Kalomo, the rocks, chiefly of mica schist, dip away from them, taking an easterly direction. A decided change of dip occurs again when we come near the Zambesi, as will be noticed farther on. The hills which flank that river now appeared on our right as a high dark range, while those near the Kafue have the aspect of a low blue range, with openings between. We crossed two never-failing rivulets also flowing into the Kafue. The country is very fertile, but vegetation is nowhere rank. The boiling-point of water being 204 Deg., showed that we were not yet as low down as Linyanti; but we had left the masuka-trees behind us, and many others with which we had become familiar.

A feature common to the forests of Angola and Benguela, namely, the presence of orchilla-weed and lichens on the trees, with mosses on the ground, began to appear; but we never, on any part of the eastern slope, saw the abundant crops of ferns which are met with every where in Angola. The orchilla-weed and mosses, too, were in but small quantities.

As we passed along, the people continued to supply us with food in great abundance. They had by some means or other got a knowledge that I carried medicine, and, somewhat to the disgust of my men, who wished to keep it all to themselves, brought their sick children for cure.

Some of them I found had hooping-cough, which is one of the few epidemics that range through this country.

In passing through the woods I for the first time heard the bird called Mokwa reza, or "Son-in-law of God" (Micropogon sulphuratus?), utter its cry, which is supposed by the natives to be "pula, pula" (rain, rain).

It is said to do this only before heavy falls of rain. It may be a cuckoo, for it is said to throw out the eggs of the white-backed Senegal crow, and lay its own instead. This, combined with the cry for rain, causes the bird to be regarded with favor. The crow, on the other hand, has a bad repute, and, when rain is withheld, its nest is sought for and destroyed, in order to dissolve the charm by which it is supposed to seal up the windows of heaven. All the other birds now join in full chorus in the mornings, and two of them, at least, have fine loud notes.

Chapter 28.

Beautiful Valley -- Buffalo -- My young Men kill two Elephants --

The Hunt -- Mode of measuring Height of live Elephants --

Wild Animals smaller here than in the South, though their Food is more abundant -- The Elephant a dainty Feeder -- Semalembue --

His Presents -- Joy in prospect of living in Peace -- Trade --

His People's way of wearing their Hair -- Their Mode of Salutation --

Old Encampment -- Sebituane's former Residence -- Ford of Kafue --

Hippopotami -- Hills and Villages -- Geological