"She Did It Only,"* Was The Reply.
It Is Seldom Of Much Use To Show One Who Worships Idols The Folly Of Idolatry
Without Giving Something Else As An Object Of Adoration Instead.
They Do Not Love Them.
They fear them, and betake themselves to their idols
only when in perplexity and danger.
-
* This is a curious African idiom, by which a person implies
he had no particular reason for his act.
-
While delayed, by Manenko's management, among the Balonda villages,
a little to the south of the town of Shinte, we were well supplied
by the villagers with sweet potatoes and green maize;
Sambanza went to his mother's village for supplies of other food.
I was laboring under fever, and did not find it very difficult
to exercise patience with her whims; but it being Saturday,
I thought we might as well go to the town for Sunday (15th).
"No; her messenger must return from her uncle first."
Being sure that the answer of the uncle would be favorable,
I thought we might go on at once, and not lose two days in the same spot.
"No, it is our custom;" and every thing else I could urge was answered
in the genuine pertinacious lady style. She ground some meal for me
with her own hands, and when she brought it told me she had actually
gone to a village and begged corn for the purpose. She said this with an air
as if the inference must be drawn by even a stupid white man:
"I know how to manage, don't I?" It was refreshing to get food
which could be eaten without producing the unpleasantness described
by the Rev. John Newton, of St. Mary's, Woolnoth, London,
when obliged to eat the same roots while a slave in the West Indies.
The day (January 14th), for a wonder, was fair, and the sun shone,
so as to allow us to dry our clothing and other goods, many of which
were mouldy and rotten from the long-continued damp. The guns rusted,
in spite of being oiled every evening.
During the night we were all awakened by a terrific shriek
from one of Manenko's ladies. She piped out so loud and long
that we all imagined she had been seized by a lion, and my men snatched up
their arms, which they always place so as to be ready at a moment's notice,
and ran to the rescue; but we found the alarm had been caused
by one of the oxen thrusting his head into her hut and smelling her:
she had put her hand on his cold, wet nose, and thought it was all over
with her.
On Sunday afternoon messengers arrived from Shinte, expressing his approbation
of the objects we had in view in our journey through the country,
and that he was glad of the prospect of a way being opened by which white men
might visit him, and allow him to purchase ornaments at pleasure.
Manenko now threatened in sport to go on, and I soon afterward perceived
that what now seemed to me the dilly-dallying way of this lady
was the proper mode of making acquaintance with the Balonda;
and much of the favor with which I was received in different places
was owing to my sending forward messengers to state the object of our coming
before entering each town and village. When we came in sight of a village
we sat down under the shade of a tree and sent forward a man to give notice
who we were and what were our objects. The head man of the village
then sent out his principal men, as Shinte now did, to bid us welcome
and show us a tree under which we might sleep. Before I had profited
by the rather tedious teaching of Manenko, I sometimes entered a village
and created unintentional alarm. The villagers would continue
to look upon us with suspicion as long as we remained. Shinte sent us
two large baskets of manioc and six dried fishes. His men had
the skin of a monkey, called in their tongue "poluma" (`Colobus guereza'),
of a jet black color, except the long mane, which is pure white:
it is said to be found in the north, in the country of Matiamvo,
the paramount chief of all the Balonda. We learned from them
that they are in the habit of praying to their idols when unsuccessful
in killing game or in any other enterprise. They behaved with reverence
at our religious services. This will appear important if the reader remembers
the almost total want of prayer and reverence we encountered in the south.
Our friends informed us that Shinte would be highly honored
by the presence of three white men in his town at once. Two others
had sent forward notice of their approach from another quarter (the west);
could it be Barth or Krapf? How pleasant to meet with Europeans
in such an out-of-the-way region! The rush of thoughts
made me almost forget my fever. Are they of the same color as I am?
"Yes; exactly so." And have the same hair? "Is that hair?
we thought it was a wig; we never saw the like before; this white man
must be of the sort that lives in the sea." Henceforth my men took the hint,
and always sounded my praises as a true specimen of the variety of white men
who live in the sea. "Only look at his hair; it is made quite straight
by the sea-water!"
I explained to them again and again that, when it was said
we came out of the sea, it did not mean that we came from beneath the water;
but the fiction has been widely spread in the interior by the Mambari
that the real white men live in the sea, and the myth was too good not to be
taken advantage of by my companions; so, notwithstanding my injunctions,
I believe that, when I was out of hearing, my men always
represented themselves as led by a genuine merman:
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