It Is Round In Shape, Spotted, Brown In Color,
And The Body Half An Inch In Diameter; The Spread Of The Legs
Is An Inch And A Half.
It makes a smooth spot for itself on the wall,
covered with the above-mentioned white silky substance.
There it is seen
standing the whole day, and I never could ascertain how it fed.
It has no web, but a carpet, and is a harmless, though an ugly neighbor.
Immediately beyond Dilolo there is a large flat about twenty miles in breadth.
Here Shakatwala insisted on our remaining to get supplies of food
from Katema's subjects, before entering the uninhabited watery plains.
When asked the meaning of the name Dilolo, Shakatwala gave
the following account of the formation of the lake. A female chief,
called Moene (lord) Monenga, came one evening to the village of Mosogo,
a man who lived in the vicinity, but who had gone to hunt with his dogs.
She asked for a supply of food, and Mosogo's wife gave her
a sufficient quantity. Proceeding to another village standing on the spot
now occupied by the water, she preferred the same demand,
and was not only refused, but, when she uttered a threat
for their niggardliness, was taunted with the question, "What could she do
though she were thus treated?" In order to show what she could do,
she began a song, in slow time, and uttered her own name, Monenga-wo-o.
As she prolonged the last note, the village, people, fowls, and dogs
sank into the space now called Dilolo. When Kasimakate,
the head man of this village, came home and found out the catastrophe,
he cast himself into the lake, and is supposed to be in it still.
The name is derived from "ilolo", despair, because this man gave up all hope
when his family was destroyed. Monenga was put to death.
This may be a faint tradition of the Deluge, and it is remarkable
as the only one I have met with in this country.
Heavy rains prevented us from crossing the plain in front (N.N.W.) in one day,
and the constant wading among the grass hurt the feet of the men.
There is a footpath all the way across, but as this is worn down
beneath the level of the rest of the plain, it is necessarily
the deepest portion, and the men, avoiding it, make a new walk by its side.
A path, however narrow, is a great convenience, as any one
who has traveled on foot in Africa will admit. The virtual want of it here
caused us to make slow and painful progress.
Ants surely are wiser than some men, for they learn by experience.
They have established themselves even on these plains,
where water stands so long annually as to allow the lotus,
and other aqueous plants, to come to maturity. When all the ant horizon
is submerged a foot deep, they manage to exist by ascending to little houses
built of black tenacious loam on stalks of grass, and placed higher
than the line of inundation. This must have been the result of experience;
for, if they had waited till the water actually invaded
their terrestrial habitations, they would not have been able to procure
materials for their aerial quarters, unless they dived down to the bottom
for every mouthful of clay. Some of these upper chambers
are about the size of a bean, and others as large as a man's thumb.
They must have built in anticipation, and if so, let us humbly hope
that the sufferers by the late inundations in France may be possessed
of as much common sense as the little black ants of the Dilolo plains.
Chapter 18.
The Watershed between the northern and southern Rivers - A deep Valley -
Rustic Bridge - Fountains on the Slopes of the Valleys -
Village of Kabinje - Good Effects of the Belief in the Power of Charms -
Demand for Gunpowder and English Calico - The Kasai - Vexatious Trick -
Want of Food - No Game - Katende's unreasonable Demand -
A grave Offense - Toll-bridge Keeper - Greedy Guides -
Flooded Valleys - Swim the Nyuana Loke - Prompt Kindness of my Men -
Makololo Remarks on the rich uncultivated Valleys -
Difference in the Color of Africans - Reach a Village of the Chiboque -
The Head Man's impudent Message - Surrounds our Encampment
with his Warriors - The Pretense - Their Demand - Prospect of a Fight -
Way in which it was averted - Change our Path - Summer -
Fever - Beehives and the Honey-guide - Instinct of Trees -
Climbers - The Ox Sinbad - Absence of Thorns in the Forests -
Plant peculiar to a forsaken Garden - Bad Guides -
Insubordination suppressed - Beset by Enemies - A Robber Party -
More Troubles - Detained by Ionga Panza - His Village -
Annoyed by Bangala Traders - My Men discouraged -
Their Determination and Precaution.
24TH OF FEBRUARY. On reaching unflooded lands beyond the plain, we found
the villages there acknowledged the authority of the chief named Katende,
and we discovered, also, to our surprise, that the almost level plain
we had passed forms the watershed between the southern and northern rivers,
for we had now entered a district in which the rivers flowed
in a northerly direction into the Kasai or Loke, near to which we now were,
while the rivers we had hitherto crossed were all running southward.
Having met with kind treatment and aid at the first village,
Katema's guides returned, and we were led to the N.N.W. by the inhabitants,
and descended into the very first really deep valley we had seen
since leaving Kolobeng. A stream ran along the bottom of a slope
of three or four hundred yards from the plains above.
We crossed this by a rustic bridge at present submerged thigh-deep
by the rains. The trees growing along the stream of this lovely valley
were thickly planted and very high. Many had sixty or eighty feet of
clean straight trunk, and beautiful flowers adorned the ground beneath them.
Ascending the opposite side, we came, in two hours' time,
to another valley, equally beautiful, and with a stream also in its centre.
It may seem mere trifling to note such an unimportant thing
as the occurrence of a valley, there being so many in every country
under the sun; but as these were branches of that in which
the Kasai or Loke flows, and both that river and its feeders
derive their water in a singular manner from the valley sides,
I may be excused for calling particular attention to the more furrowed nature
of the country.
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