They Possess No Fear,
Attacking With Equal Ferocity The Largest As Well As The Smallest Animals.
When Any Person Has Leaped Over The Band, Numbers Of Them Leave The Ranks
And Rush Along The Path, Seemingly Anxious For A Fight.
They are very useful
in ridding the country of dead animal matter, and, when they visit
a human habitation, clear it entirely of the destructive white ants
and other vermin.
They destroy many noxious insects and reptiles.
The severity of their attack is greatly increased by their vast numbers,
and rats, mice, lizards, and even the `Python natalensis',
when in a state of surfeit from recent feeding, fall victims
to their fierce onslaught. These ants never make hills like the white ant.
Their nests are but a short distance beneath the soil,
which has the soft appearance of the abodes of ants in England.
Occasionally they construct galleries over their path
to the cells of the white ant, in order to secure themselves
from the heat of the sun during their marauding expeditions.
JANUARY 15TH, 1855. We descended in one hour from the heights
of Tala Mungongo. I counted the number of paces made on the slope downward,
and found them to be sixteen hundred, which may give a perpendicular height
of from twelve to fifteen hundred feet. Water boiled at 206 Degrees
at Tala Mungongo above, and at 208 Deg. at the bottom of the declivity,
the air being at 72 Deg. in the shade in the former case,
and 94 Deg. in the latter. The temperature generally throughout the day
was from 94 Deg. to 97 Deg. in the coolest shade we could find.
The rivulets which cut up the valley of Cassange were now dry,
but the Lui and Luare contained abundance of rather brackish water.
The banks are lined with palm, wild date-trees, and many guavas,
the fruit of which was now becoming ripe. A tree much like the mango abounds,
but it does not yield fruit. In these rivers a kind of edible muscle
is plentiful, the shells of which exist in all the alluvial beds
of the ancient rivers as far as the Kuruman. The brackish nature of the water
probably enables it to exist here. On the open grassy lawns
great numbers of a species of lark are seen. They are black,
with yellow shoulders. Another black bird, with a long tail
(`Centropus Senegalensis'), floats awkwardly, with its tail
in a perpendicular position, over the long grass. It always chooses
the highest points, and is caught on them with bird-lime,
the long black tail-feathers being highly esteemed by the natives for plumes.
We saw here also the "Lehututu" (`Tragopan Leadbeaterii'),
a large bird strongly resembling a turkey; it is black on the ground,
but when it flies the outer half of the wings are white. It kills serpents,
striking them dexterously behind the head. It derives its native name
from the noise it makes, and it is found as far as Kolobeng.
Another species like it is called the Abyssinian hornbill.
Before we reached Cassange we were overtaken by the commandant,
Senhor Carvalho, who was returning, with a detachment of fifty men
and a field-piece, from an unsuccessful search after some rebels.
The rebels had fled, and all he could do was to burn their huts.
He kindly invited me to take up my residence with him; but, not wishing
to pass by the gentleman (Captain Neves) who had so kindly received me
on my first arrival in the Portuguese possessions, I declined.
Senhor Rego had been superseded in his command, because the Governor Amaral,
who had come into office since my departure from Loanda,
had determined that the law which requires the office of commandant
to be exclusively occupied by military officers of the line
should once more come into operation. I was again most kindly welcomed
by my friend, Captain Neves, whom I found laboring under
a violent inflammation and abscess of the hand. There is nothing
in the situation of this village to indicate unhealthiness,
except, perhaps, the rank luxuriance of the vegetation.
Nearly all the Portuguese inhabitants suffer from enlargement of the spleen,
the effects of frequent intermittents, and have generally a sickly appearance.
Thinking that this affection of the hand was simply an effort of nature
to get rid of malarious matter from the system, I recommended
the use of quinine. He himself applied the leaf of a plant called cathory,
famed among the natives as an excellent remedy for ulcers.
The cathory leaves, when boiled, exude a gummy juice,
which effectually shuts out the external air. Each remedy, of course,
claimed the merit of the cure.
Many of the children are cut off by fever. A fine boy of Captain Neves' had,
since my passage westward, shared a similar fate. Another child died
during the period of my visit. During his sickness, his mother,
a woman of color, sent for a diviner in order to ascertain
what ought to be done. The diviner, after throwing his dice,
worked himself into the state of ecstasy in which they pretend to be
in communication with the Barimo. He then gave the oracular response
that the child was being killed by the spirit of a Portuguese trader
who once lived at Cassange. The case was this: on the death of the trader,
the other Portuguese merchants in the village came together,
and sold the goods of the departed to each other, each man accounting
for the portion received to the creditors of the deceased at Loanda.
The natives, looking on, and not understanding the nature of written
mercantile transactions, concluded that the merchants of Cassange
had simply stolen the dead man's goods, and that now the spirit was killing
the child of Captain Neves for the part he had taken in the affair.
The diviner, in his response, revealed the impression made on his own mind
by the sale, and likewise the native ideas of departed souls.
As they give the whites credit for greater stupidity than themselves
in all these matters, the mother of the child came, and told the father
that he ought to give a slave to the diviner as a fee to make a sacrifice
to appease the spirit and save the life of the child.
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