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

Slave-traders -- The Makololo scorn them --

The Balonda real Negroes -- Grand Reception from Shinte --

His Kotla -- Ceremony of Introduction -- The Orators -- Women --

Musicians and Musical Instruments -- A disagreeable Request --

Private Interviews with Shinte -- Give him an Ox -- Fertility of Soil --

Manenko's new Hut -- Conversation with Shinte -- Kolimbota's Proposal --

Balonda's Punctiliousness -- Selling Children -- Kidnapping --

Shinte's Offer of a Slave -- Magic Lantern -- Alarm of Women --

Delay -- Sambanza returns intoxicated -- The last and greatest Proof of Shinte's Friendship.

11TH OF JANUARY, 1854. On starting this morning, Samoana (or rather Nyamoana, for the ladies are the chiefs here) presented a string of beads, and a shell highly valued among them, as an atonement for having assisted Manenko, as they thought, to vex me the day before. They seemed anxious to avert any evil which might arise from my displeasure; but having replied that I never kept my anger up all night, they were much pleased to see me satisfied. We had to cross, in a canoe, a stream which flows past the village of Nyamoana. Manenko's doctor waved some charms over her, and she took some in her hand and on her body before she ventured upon the water. One of my men spoke rather loudly when near the doctor's basket of medicines. The doctor reproved him, and always spoke in a whisper himself, glancing back to the basket as if afraid of being heard by something therein. So much superstition is quite unknown in the south, and is mentioned here to show the difference in the feelings of this new people, and the comparative want of reverence on these points among Caffres and Bechuanas.

Manenko was accompanied by her husband and her drummer; the latter continued to thump most vigorously until a heavy, drizzling mist set in and compelled him to desist. Her husband used various incantations and vociferations to drive away the rain, but down it poured incessantly, and on our Amazon went, in the very lightest marching order, and at a pace that few of the men could keep up with. Being on ox-back, I kept pretty close to our leader, and asked her why she did not clothe herself during the rain, and learned that it is not considered proper for a chief to appear effeminate.

He or she must always wear the appearance of robust youth, and bear vicissitudes without wincing. My men, in admiration of her pedestrian powers, every now and then remarked, "Manenko is a soldier;"

and thoroughly wet and cold, we were all glad when she proposed a halt to prepare our night's lodging on the banks of a stream.

The country through which we were passing was the same succession of forest and open lawns as formerly mentioned: the trees were nearly all evergreens, and of good, though not very gigantic size.

The lawns were covered with grass, which, in thickness of crop, looked like ordinary English hay. We passed two small hamlets surrounded by gardens of maize and manioc, and near each of these I observed, for the first time, an ugly idol common in Londa -- the figure of an animal, resembling an alligator, made of clay. It is formed of grass, plastered over with soft clay; two cowrie-shells are inserted as eyes, and numbers of the bristles from the tail of an elephant are stuck in about the neck. It is called a lion, though, if one were not told so, he would conclude it to be an alligator. It stood in a shed, and the Balonda pray and beat drums before it all night in cases of sickness.

Some of the men of Manenko's train had shields made of reeds, neatly woven into a square shape, about five feet long and three broad.

With these, and short broadswords and sheaves of iron-headed arrows, they appeared rather ferocious. But the constant habit of wearing arms is probably only a substitute for the courage they do not possess.

We always deposited our fire-arms and spears outside a village before entering it, while the Balonda, on visiting us at our encampment, always came fully armed, until we ordered them either to lay down their weapons or be off. Next day we passed through a piece of forest so dense that no one could have penetrated it without an axe. It was flooded, not by the river, but by the heavy rains which poured down every day, and kept those who had clothing constantly wet. I observed, in this piece of forest, a very strong smell of sulphureted hydrogen.

This I had observed repeatedly in other parts before.

I had attacks of fever of the intermittent type again and again, in consequence of repeated drenchings in these unhealthy spots.

On the 11th and 12th we were detained by incessant rains, and so heavy I never saw the like in the south. I had a little tapioca and a small quantity of Libonta meal, which I still reserved for worse times.

The patience of my men under hunger was admirable; the actual want of the present is never so painful as the thought of getting nothing in the future. We thought the people of some large hamlets very niggardly and very independent of their chiefs, for they gave us and Manenko nothing, though they had large fields of maize in an eatable state around them.

When she went and kindly begged some for me, they gave her five ears only.

They were subjects of her uncle; and, had they been Makololo, would have been lavish in their gifts to the niece of their chief.

I suspected that they were dependents of some of Shinte's principal men, and had no power to part with the maize of their masters.

Each house of these hamlets has a palisade of thick stakes around it, and the door is made to resemble the rest of the stockade; the door is never seen open; when the owner wishes to enter, he removes a stake or two, squeezes his body in, then plants them again in their places, so that an enemy coming in the night would find it difficult to discover the entrance. These palisades seem to indicate a sense of insecurity in regard to their fellow-men, for there are no wild beasts to disturb them; the bows and arrows have been nearly as efficacious in clearing the country here as guns have in the country farther south. This was a disappointment to us, for we expected a continuance of the abundance of game in the north which we found when we first came up to the confluence of the Leeba and Leeambye.

A species of the silver-tree of the Cape (`Leucodendron argenteum') is found in abundance in the parts through which we have traveled since leaving Samoana's. As it grows at a height of between two and three thousand feet above the level of the sea, on the Cape Table Mountain, and again on the northern slope of the Cashan Mountains, and here at considerably greater heights (four thousand feet), the difference of climate prevents the botanical range being considered as affording a good approximation to the altitude.

The rapid flow of the Leeambye, which once seemed to me evidence of much elevation of the country from which it comes, I now found, by the boiling point of water, was fallacious.*

--

On examining this subject when I returned to Linyanti, I found that, according to Dr. Arnott, a declivity of three inches per mile gives a velocity in a smooth, straight channel of three miles an hour.

The general velocity of the Zambesi is three miles and three quarters per hour, though in the rocky parts it is sometimes as much as four and a half. If, however, we make allowances for roughness of bottom, bendings of channel, and sudden descents at cataracts, and say the declivity is even seven inches per mile, those 800 miles between the east coast and the great falls would require less than 500 feet to give the observed velocity, and the additional distance to this point would require but 150 feet of altitude more. If my observation of this altitude may be depended on, we have a steeper declivity for the Zambesi than for some other great rivers. The Ganges, for instance, is said to be at 1800 miles from its mouth only 800 feet above the level of the sea, and water requires a month to come that distance.

But there are so many modifying circumstances, it is difficult to draw any reliable conclusion from the currents. The Chobe is sometimes heard of as flooded, about 40 miles above Linyanti, a fortnight before the inundation reaches that point, but it is very tortuous.

The great river Magdalena falls only 500 feet in a thousand miles; other rivers much more.

--

The forests became more dense as we went north. We traveled much more in the deep gloom of the forest than in open sunlight. No passage existed on either side of the narrow path made by the axe. Large climbing plants entwined themselves around the trunks and branches of gigantic trees like boa constrictors, and they often do constrict the trees by which they rise, and, killing them, stand erect themselves.

The bark of a fine tree found in abundance here, and called "motuia", is used by the Barotse for making fish-lines and nets, and the "molompi", so well adapted for paddles by its lightness and flexibility, was abundant. There were other trees quite new to my companions; many of them ran up to a height of fifty feet of one thickness, and without branches.

In these forests we first encountered the artificial beehives so commonly met with all the way from this to Angola. They consist of about five feet of the bark of a tree fifteen or eighteen inches in diameter.

Two incisions are made right round the tree at points five feet apart, then one longitudinal slit from one of these to the other; the workman next lifts up the bark on each side of this slit, and detaches it from the trunk, taking care not to break it, until the whole comes from the tree. The elasticity of the bark makes it assume the form it had before; the slit is sewed or pegged up with wooden pins, and ends made of coiled grass-rope are inserted, one of which has a hole for the ingress of the bees in the centre, and the hive is complete. These hives are placed in a horizontal position on high trees in different parts of the forest, and in this way all the wax exported from Benguela and Loanda is collected.

It is all the produce of free labor. A "piece of medicine" is tied round the trunk of the tree, and proves sufficient protection against thieves.

The natives seldom rob each other, for all believe that certain medicines can inflict disease and death; and though they consider that these are only known to a few, they act on the principle that it is best to let them all alone. The gloom of these forests strengthens the superstitious feelings of the people. In other quarters, where they are not subjected to this influence, I have heard the chiefs issue proclamations to the effect that real witchcraft medicines had been placed at certain gardens from which produce had been stolen, the thieves having