Another Incident, Which Occurred While We Were Here, May Be Mentioned,
As Of A Character Totally Unknown In The South.
Two children,
of seven and eight years old, went out to collect firewood a short distance
from their parents'
Home, which was a quarter of a mile from the village,
and were kidnapped; the distracted parents could not find a trace of them.
This happened so close to the town, where there are no beasts of prey,
that we suspect some of the high men of Shinte's court
were the guilty parties: they can sell them by night.
The Mambari erect large huts of a square shape to stow these stolen ones in;
they are well fed, but aired by night only. The frequent kidnapping
from outlying hamlets explains the stockades we saw around them;
the parents have no redress, for even Shinte himself seems fond of working
in the dark. One night he sent for me, though I always stated
I liked all my dealings to be aboveboard. When I came he presented me
with a slave girl about ten years old; he said he had always been
in the habit of presenting his visitors with a child. On my thanking him,
and saying that I thought it wrong to take away children from their parents,
that I wished him to give up this system altogether, and trade in cattle,
ivory, and bees'-wax, he urged that she was "to be a child" to bring me water,
and that a great man ought to have a child for the purpose, yet I had none.
As I replied that I had four children, and should be very sorry if my chief
were to take my little girl and give her away, and that I would prefer
this child to remain and carry water for her own mother,
he thought I was dissatisfied with her size, and sent for one a head taller;
after many explanations of our abhorrence of slavery, and how displeasing
it must be to God to see his children selling one another,
and giving each other so much grief as this child's mother must feel,
I declined her also. If I could have taken her into my family
for the purpose of instruction, and then returned her as a free woman,
according to a promise I should have made to the parents,
I might have done so; but to take her away, and probably never be able
to secure her return, would have produced no good effect
on the minds of the Balonda; they would not then have seen evidence
of our hatred to slavery, and the kind attentions of my friends would,
as it almost always does in similar cases, have turned the poor thing's head.
The difference in position between them and us is as great as between
the lowest and highest in England, and we know the effects of sudden elevation
on wiser heads than hers, whose owners had not been born to it.
Shinte was most anxious to see the pictures of the magic lantern; but fever
had so weakening an effect, and I had such violent action of the heart,
with buzzing in the ears, that I could not go for several days; when I did go
for the purpose, he had his principal men and the same crowd of court beauties
near him as at the reception. The first picture exhibited was Abraham
about to slaughter his son Isaac; it was shown as large as life,
and the uplifted knife was in the act of striking the lad;
the Balonda men remarked that the picture was much more like a god
than the things of wood or clay they worshiped. I explained that this man
was the first of a race to whom God had given the Bible we now held,
and that among his children our Savior appeared. The ladies listened
with silent awe; but, when I moved the slide, the uplifted dagger
moving toward them, they thought it was to be sheathed in their bodies
instead of Isaac's. "Mother! mother!" all shouted at once,
and off they rushed helter-skelter, tumbling pell-mell over each other,
and over the little idol-huts and tobacco-bushes: we could not get
one of them back again. Shinte, however, sat bravely through the whole,
and afterward examined the instrument with interest. An explanation
was always added after each time of showing its powers,
so that no one should imagine there was aught supernatural in it;
and had Mr. Murray, who kindly brought it from England, seen its popularity
among both Makololo and Balonda, he would have been gratified with
the direction his generosity then took. It was the only mode of instruction
I was ever pressed to repeat. The people came long distances
for the express purpose of seeing the objects and hearing the explanations.
One can not get away quickly from these chiefs; they like to have
the honor of strangers residing in their villages. Here we had
an additional cause of delay in frequent rains; twenty-four hours
never elapsed without heavy showers; every thing is affected by the dampness;
surgical instruments become all rusty, clothing mildewed, and shoes mouldy;
my little tent was now so rotten and so full of small holes
that every smart shower caused a fine mist to descend on my blanket,
and made me fain to cover the head with it. Heavy dews lay on every thing
in the morning, even inside the tent; there is only a short time of sunshine
in the afternoon, and even that is so interrupted by thunder-showers
that we can not dry our bedding.
The winds coming from the north always bring heavy clouds and rain;
in the south, the only heavy rains noticed are those which come
from the northeast or east. The thermometer falls as low as 72 Degrees
when there is no sunshine, though, when the weather is fair,
the protected thermometer generally rises as high as 82 Degrees,
even in the mornings and evenings.
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