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

carefully. These Mambari are very enterprising merchants: when they mean to trade with a town, they deliberately begin the affair by building huts, as if they knew that little business could be transacted without a liberal allowance of time for palaver. They bring Manchester goods into the heart of Africa; these cotton prints look so wonderful that the Makololo could not believe them to be the work of mortal hands.

On questioning the Mambari they were answered that English manufactures came out of the sea, and beads were gathered on its shore.

To Africans our cotton mills are fairy dreams. "How can the irons spin, weave, and print so beautifully?" Our country is like what Taprobane was to our ancestors -- a strange realm of light, whence came the diamond, muslin, and peacocks; an attempt at explanation of our manufactures usually elicits the expression, "Truly ye are gods!"

When about to leave the Makondo, one of my men had dreamed that Mosantu was shut up a prisoner in a stockade: this dream depressed the spirits of the whole party, and when I came out of my little tent in the morning, they were sitting the pictures of abject sorrow. I asked if we were to be guided by dreams, or by the authority I derived from Sekeletu, and ordered them to load the boats at once; they seemed ashamed to confess their fears; the Makololo picked up courage and upbraided the others for having such superstitious views, and said this was always their way; if even a certain bird called to them, they would turn back from an enterprise, saying it was unlucky. They entered the canoes at last, and were the better of a little scolding for being inclined to put dreams before authority. It rained all the morning, but about eleven we reached the village of Sheakondo, on a small stream named Lonkonye.

We sent a message to the head man, who soon appeared with two wives, bearing handsome presents of manioc: Sheakondo could speak the language of the Barotse well, and seemed awestruck when told some of the "words of God". He manifested no fear, always spoke frankly, and when he made an asseveration, did so by simply pointing up to the sky above him. The Balonda cultivate the manioc or cassava extensively; also dura, ground-nuts, beans, maize, sweet potatoes, and yams, here called "lekoto", but as yet we see only the outlying villages.

The people who came with Sheakondo to our bivouac had their teeth filed to a point by way of beautifying them, though those which were left untouched were always the whitest; they are generally tattooed in various parts, but chiefly on the abdomen: the skin is raised in small elevated cicatrices, each nearly half an inch long and a quarter of an inch in diameter, so that a number of them may constitute a star, or other device.

The dark color of the skin prevents any coloring matter being deposited in these figures, but they love much to have the whole surface of their bodies anointed with a comfortable varnish of oil. In their unassisted state they depend on supplies of oil from the Palma Christi, or castor-oil plant, or from various other oliferous seeds, but they are all excessively fond of clarified butter or ox fat. Sheakondo's old wife presented some manioc roots, and then politely requested to be anointed with butter: as I had been bountifully supplied by the Makololo, I gave her as much as would suffice, and as they have little clothing, I can readily believe that she felt her comfort greatly enhanced thereby.

The favorite wife, who was also present, was equally anxious for butter.

She had a profusion of iron rings on her ankles, to which were attached little pieces of sheet iron, to enable her to make a tinkling as she walked in her mincing African style; the same thing is thought pretty by our own dragoons in walking jauntingly.

We had so much rain and cloud that I could not get a single observation for either longitude or latitude for a fortnight. Yet the Leeba does not show any great rise, nor is the water in the least discolored.

It is slightly black, from the number of mossy rills which fall into it.

It has remarkably few birds and fish, while the Leeambye swarms with both.

It is noticeable that alligators here possess more of the fear of man than in the Leeambye. The Balonda have taught them, by their poisoned arrows, to keep out of sight. We did not see one basking in the sun.

The Balonda set so many little traps for birds that few appear.

I observed, however, many (to me) new small birds of song on its banks.

More rain has been falling in the east than here, for the Leeambye was rising fast and working against the sandy banks so vigorously that a slight yellow tinge was perceptible in it.

One of our men was bitten by a non-venomous serpent, and of course felt no harm. The Barotse concluded that this was owing to many of them being present and seeing it, as if the sight of human eyes could dissolve the poison and act as a charm.

On the 6th of January we reached the village of another female chief, named Nyamoana, who is said to be the mother of Manenko, and sister of Shinte or Kabompo, the greatest Balonda chief in this part of the country. Her people had but recently come to the present locality, and had erected only twenty huts.

Her husband, Samoana, was clothed in a kilt of green and red baize, and was armed with a spear and a broadsword of antique form, about eighteen inches long and three broad. The chief and her husband were sitting on skins placed in the middle of a circle thirty paces in diameter, a little raised above the ordinary level of the ground, and having a trench round it. Outside the trench sat about a hundred persons of all ages and both sexes. The men were well armed with bows, arrows, spears, and broadswords. Beside the husband sat a rather aged woman, having a bad outward squint in the left eye. We put down our arms about forty yards off, and I walked up to the centre of the circular bench, and saluted him in the usual way by clapping the hands together in their fashion. He pointed to his wife, as much as to say, the honor belongs to her. I saluted her in the same way, and a mat having been brought, I squatted down in front of them.

The talker was then called, and I was asked who was my spokesman.

Having pointed to Kolimbota, who knew their dialect best, the palaver began in due form. I explained the real objects I had in view, without any attempt to mystify or appear in any other character than my own, for I have always been satisfied that, even though there were no other considerations, the truthful way of dealing with the uncivilized is unquestionably the best. Kolimbota repeated to Nyamoana's talker what I had said to him. He delivered it all verbatim to her husband, who repeated it again to her. It was thus all rehearsed four times over, in a tone loud enough to be heard by the whole party of auditors.

The response came back by the same roundabout route, beginning at the lady to her husband, etc.

After explanations and re-explanations, I perceived that our new friends were mixing up my message of peace and friendship with Makololo affairs, and stated that it was not delivered on the authority of any one less than that of their Creator, and that if the Makololo did again break His laws and attack the Balonda, the guilt would rest with the Makololo and not with me. The palaver then came to a close.

By way of gaining their confidence, I showed them my hair, which is considered a curiosity in all this region. They said, "Is that hair? It is the mane of a lion, and not hair at all."

Some thought that I had made a wig of lion's mane, as they sometimes do with fibres of the "ife", and dye it black, and twist it so as to resemble a mass of their own wool. I could not return the joke by telling them that theirs was not hair, but the wool of sheep, for they have none of these in the country; and even though they had, as Herodotus remarked, "the African sheep are clothed with hair, and men's heads with wool."

So I had to be content with asserting that mine was the real original hair, such as theirs would have been had it not been scorched and frizzled by the sun. In proof of what the sun could do, I compared my own bronzed face and hands, then about the same in complexion as the lighter-colored Makololo, with the white skin of my chest.

They readily believed that, as they go nearly naked and fully exposed to that influence, we might be of common origin after all.

Here, as every where, when heat and moisture are combined, the people are very dark, but not quite black. There is always a shade of brown in the most deeply colored. I showed my watch and pocket compass, which are considered great curiosities; but, though the lady was called on by her husband to look, she would not be persuaded to approach near enough.

These people are more superstitious than any we had yet encountered; though still only building their village, they had found time to erect two little sheds at the chief dwelling in it, in which were placed two pots having charms in them. When asked what medicine they contained, they replied, "Medicine for the Barimo;" but when I rose and looked into them, they said they were medicine for the game. Here we saw the first evidence of the existence of idolatry in the remains of an old idol at a deserted village. It was simply a human head carved on a block of wood.

Certain charms mixed with red ochre and white pipe-clay are dotted over them when they are in use; and a crooked stick is used in the same way for an idol when they have no professional carver.

As the Leeba seemed still to come from the direction in which we wished to go, I was desirous of proceeding farther up with the canoes; but Nyamoana was anxious that we should allow her people to conduct us to her brother Shinte; and when I explained the advantage of water-carriage, she represented that her brother did not live near the river, and, moreover, there was a cataract in front, over which it would be difficult to convey the canoes. She was afraid, too, that the Balobale, whose country lies to the west of the river, not knowing the objects for which we had come, would kill us.

To my reply that I had been so often threatened with death if I visited a new tribe that I was now more afraid of killing any one than of being killed, she rejoined that the Balobale would not kill me, but the Makololo would all be sacrificed as their enemies.

This produced considerable effect on my companions, and inclined them to the plan of Nyamoana, of going to the town of her brother rather than ascending the Leeba. The arrival of Manenko herself on the scene threw so much weight into the scale on their side that I was forced to yield the point.

Manenko was