I Then Said That,
As One Thing After Another Had Failed To Satisfy Them, It Was Evident
That THEY Wanted To Fight, While WE Only Wanted To Pass Peaceably
Through The Country; That They Must Begin First, And Bear The Guilt
Before God:
We would not fight till they had struck the first blow.
I then sat silent for some time.
It was rather trying for me,
because I knew that the Chiboque would aim at the white man first;
but I was careful not to appear flurried, and, having four barrels
ready for instant action, looked quietly at the savage scene around.
The Chiboque countenance, by no means handsome, is not improved
by the practice which they have adopted of filing the teeth to a point.
The chief and counselors, seeing that they were in more danger than I,
did not choose to follow our decision that they should begin
by striking the first blow, and then see what we could do,
and were perhaps influenced by seeing the air of cool preparation
which some of my men displayed at the prospect of a work of blood.
The Chiboque at last put the matter before us in this way:
"You come among us in a new way, and say you are quite friendly:
how can we know it unless you give us some of your food,
and you take some of ours? If you give us an ox, we will give you
whatever you may wish, and then we shall be friends." In accordance with
the entreaties of my men, I gave an ox; and when asked what I should like
in return, mentioned food as the thing which we most needed.
In the evening Njambi sent us a very small basket of meal,
and two or three pounds of the flesh of our own ox! with the apology
that he had no fowls, and very little of any other food.
It was impossible to avoid a laugh at the coolness of the generous creatures.
I was truly thankful, nevertheless, that, though resolved to die
rather than deliver up one of our number to be a slave,
we had so far gained our point as to be allowed to pass on
without having shed human blood.
In the midst of the commotion, several Chiboque stole pieces of meat
out of the sheds of my people, and Mohorisi, one of the Makololo,
went boldly into the crowd and took back a marrow-bone from one of them.
A few of my Batoka seemed afraid, and would perhaps have fled
had the affray actually begun, but, upon the whole, I thought my men
behaved admirably. They lamented having left their shields at home
by command of Sekeletu, who feared that, if they carried these,
they might be more disposed to be overbearing in their demeanor to the tribes
we should meet. We had proceeded on the principles of peace and conciliation,
and the foregoing treatment shows in what light our conduct was viewed;
in fact, we were taken for interlopers trying to cheat
the revenue of the tribe. They had been accustomed to get a slave or two
from every slave-trader who passed them, and now that we disputed the right,
they viewed the infringement on what they considered lawfully due
with most virtuous indignation.
MARCH 6TH. We were informed that the people on the west
of the Chiboque of Njambi were familiar with the visits of slave-traders;
and it was the opinion of our guides from Kangenke that
so many of my companions would be demanded from me, in the same manner
as the people of Njambi had done, that I should reach the coast
without a single attendant; I therefore resolved to alter our course
and strike away to the N.N.E., in the hope that at some point farther north
I might find an exit to the Portuguese settlement of Cassange.
We proceeded at first due north, with the Kasabi villages on our right,
and the Kasau on our left. During the first twenty miles
we crossed many small, but now swollen streams, having the usual boggy banks,
and wherever the water had stood for any length of time
it was discolored with rust of iron. We saw a "nakong" antelope one day,
a rare sight in this quarter; and many new and pretty flowers
adorned the valleys. We could observe the difference in the seasons in
our northing in company with the sun. Summer was now nearly over at Kuruman,
and far advanced at Linyanti, but here we were in the middle of it;
fruits, which we had eaten ripe on the Leeambye, were here quite green;
but we were coming into the region where the inhabitants are favored
with two rainy seasons and two crops, i.e., when the sun is going south,
and when he comes back on his way to the north, as was the case at present.
On the 8th, one of the men had left an ounce or two of powder
at our sleeping-place, and went back several miles for it.
My clothing being wet from crossing a stream, I was compelled to wait for him;
had I been moving in the sun I should have felt no harm, but the inaction
led to a violent fit of fever. The continuance of this attack
was a source of much regret, for we went on next day to a small rivulet
called Chihune, in a lovely valley, and had, for a wonder,
a clear sky and a clear moon; but such was the confusion
produced in my mind by the state of my body, that I could scarcely manage,
after some hours' trial, to get a lunar observation in which
I could repose confidence. The Chihune flows into the Longe,
and that into the Chihombo, a feeder of the Kasai. Those who know
the difficulties of taking altitudes, times, and distances,
and committing all of them to paper, will sympathize with me
in this and many similar instances.
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