He Said
That I Should Be Displeased With Him For Not Coming And Making Some Present.
This Was The Only Instance In Which I Was Shunned In This Quarter.
As it would have been impolitic to pass Manenko, or any chief,
without at least showing so much respect
As to call and explain
the objects of our passing through the country, we waited two entire days
for the return of the messengers to Manenko; and as I could not hurry matters,
I went into the adjacent country to search for meat for the camp.
The country is furnished largely with forest, having occasionally open lawns
covered with grass, not in tufts as in the south, but so closely planted that
one can not see the soil. We came upon a man and his two wives and children,
burning coarse rushes and the stalks of tsitla, growing in a brackish marsh,
in order to extract a kind of salt from the ashes. They make
a funnel of branches of trees, and line it with grass rope,
twisted round until it is, as it were, a beehive-roof inverted.
The ashes are put into water, in a calabash, and then it is allowed
to percolate through the small hole in the bottom and through the grass.
When this water is evaporated in the sun, it yields sufficient salt
to form a relish with food. The women and children fled with precipitation,
but we sat down at a distance, and allowed the man time to gain
courage enough to speak. He, however, trembled excessively
at the apparition before him; but when we explained that our object
was to hunt game, and not men, he became calm, and called back his wives.
We soon afterward came to another party on the same errand with ourselves.
The man had a bow about six feet long, and iron-headed arrows about
thirty inches in length; he had also wooden arrows neatly barbed, to shoot
in cases where he might not be quite certain of recovering them again.
We soon afterward got a zebra, and gave our hunting acquaintances
such a liberal share that we soon became friends. All whom we saw that day
then came with us to the encampment to beg a little meat;
and as they have so little salt, I have no doubt they felt grateful
for what we gave.
Sekelenke and his people, twenty-four in number, defiled past our camp
carrying large bundles of dried elephants' meat. Most of them came
to say good-by, and Sekelenke himself sent to say that he had gone to visit
a wife living in the village of Manenko. It was a mere African manoeuvre
to gain information, and not commit himself to either one line of action
or another with respect to our visit. As he was probably
in the party before us, I replied that it was all right,
and when my people came up from Masiko I would go to my wife too.
Another zebra came to our camp, and, as we had friends near, it was shot.
It was the `Equus montanus', though the country is perfectly flat,
and was finely marked down to the feet, as all the zebras are in these parts.
To our first message, offering a visit of explanation to Manenko,
we got an answer, with a basket of manioc roots, that we must remain
where we were till she should visit us. Having waited two days already
for her, other messengers arrived with orders for me to come to her.
After four days of rains and negotiation, I declined going at all,
and proceeded up the river to the small stream Makondo (lat. 13d 23' 12" S.),
which enters the Leeba from the east, and is between twenty and thirty
yards broad.
JANUARY 1ST, 1854. We had heavy rains almost every day; indeed,
the rainy season had fairly set in. Baskets of the purple fruit called mawa
were frequently brought to us by the villagers; not for sale,
but from a belief that their chiefs would be pleased to hear
that they had treated us well; we gave them pieces of meat in return.
When crossing at the confluence of the Leeba and Makondo,
one of my men picked up a bit of a steel watch-chain of English manufacture,
and we were informed that this was the spot where the Mambari cross
in coming to Masiko. Their visits explain why Sekelenke kept his tusks
so 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.
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