Make A Detour Southward - Peculiarities Of The Inhabitants -
Scarcity Of Animals - Forests - Geological Structure Of The Country -
Abundance And Cheapness
Of Food near the Chihombo - A Slave lost -
The Makololo Opinion of Slaveholders - Funeral Obsequies in Cabango -
Send a Sketch
Of the Country to Mr. Gabriel - Native Information
respecting the Kasai and Quango - The Trade with Luba -
Drainage of Londa - Report of Matiamvo's Country and Government -
Senhor Faria's Present to a Chief - The Balonda Mode of spending Time -
Faithless Guide - Makololo lament the Ignorance of the Balonda -
Eagerness of the Villagers for Trade - Civility of a Female Chief -
The Chief Bango and his People - Refuse to eat Beef - Ambition of Africans
to have a Village - Winters in the Interior - Spring at Kolobeng -
White Ants: "Never could desire to eat any thing better" -
Young Herbage and Animals - Valley of the Loembwe -
The white Man a Hobgoblin - Specimen of Quarreling -
Eager Desire for Calico - Want of Clothing at Kawawa's -
Funeral Observances - Agreeable Intercourse with Kawawa -
His impudent Demand - Unpleasant Parting - Kawawa tries to prevent
our crossing the River Kasai - Stratagem.
We made a little detour to the southward in order to get provisions
in a cheaper market. This led us along the rivulet called Tamba,
where we found the people, who had not been visited so frequently
by the slave-traders as the rest, rather timid and very civil.
It was agreeable to get again among the uncontaminated,
and to see the natives look at us without that air of superciliousness
which is so unpleasant and common in the beaten track.
The same olive color prevailed. They file their teeth to a point,
which makes the smile of the women frightful, as it reminds one
of the grin of an alligator. The inhabitants throughout this country
exhibit as great a variety of taste as appears on the surface of society
among ourselves. Many of the men are dandies; their shoulders are always wet
with the oil dropping from their lubricated hair, and every thing about them
is ornamented in one way or another. Some thrum a musical instrument
the livelong day, and, when they wake at night, proceed at once
to their musical performance. Many of these musicians are too poor
to have iron keys to their instrument, but make them of bamboo, and persevere,
though no one hears the music but themselves. Others try to appear warlike
by never going out of their huts except with a load of bows and arrows,
or a gun ornamented with a strip of hide for every animal they have shot;
and others never go any where without a canary in a cage. Ladies may be seen
carefully tending little lap-dogs, which are intended to be eaten.
Their villages are generally in forests, and composed of groups
of irregularly-planted brown huts, with banana and cotton trees,
and tobacco growing around. There is also at every hut a high stage erected
for drying manioc roots and meal, and elevated cages to hold domestic fowls.
Round baskets are laid on the thatch of the huts for the hens to lay in,
and on the arrival of strangers, men, women, and children
ply their calling as hucksters with a great deal of noisy haggling;
all their transactions are conducted with civil banter and good temper.
My men, having the meat of the oxen which we slaughtered from time to time
for sale, were entreated to exchange it for meal; no matter how small
the pieces offered were, it gave them pleasure to deal.
The landscape around is green, with a tint of yellow, the grass long,
the paths about a foot wide, and generally worn deeply in the middle.
The tall overhanging grass, when brushed against by the feet and legs,
disturbed the lizards and mice, and occasionally a serpent,
causing a rustling among the herbage. There are not many birds;
every animal is entrapped and eaten. Gins are seen on both sides of the path
every ten or fifteen yards, for miles together. The time and labor required
to dig up moles and mice from their burrows would, if applied to cultivation,
afford food for any amount of fowls or swine, but the latter
are seldom met with.
We passed on through forests abounding in climbing-plants, many of which
are so extremely tough that a man is required to go in front with a hatchet;
and when the burdens of the carriers are caught, they are obliged
to cut the climbers with their teeth, for no amount of tugging
will make them break. The paths in all these forests are so zigzag
that a person may imagine he has traveled a distance of thirty miles,
which, when reckoned as the crow flies, may not be fifteen.
We reached the River Moamba (lat. 9d 38' S., long. 20d 13' 34" E.)
on the 7th May. This is a stream of thirty yards wide, and, like the Quilo,
Loange, Chikapa, and Loajima, contains both alligators and hippopotami.
We crossed it by means of canoes. Here, as on the slopes
down to the Quilo and Chikapa, we had an opportunity of viewing the geological
structure of the country - a capping of ferruginous conglomerate,
which in many parts looks as if it had been melted, for the rounded nodules
resemble masses of slag, and they have a smooth scale on the surface;
but in all probability it is an aqueous deposit, for it contains
water-worn pebbles of all sorts, and generally small. Below this mass
lies a pale red hardened sandstone, and beneath that a trap-like whinstone.
Lowest of all lies a coarse-grained sandstone containing a few pebbles,
and, in connection with it, a white calcareous rock is occasionally met with,
and so are banks of loose round quartz pebbles. The slopes are longer
from the level country above the further we go eastward,
and every where we meet with circumscribed bogs on them,
surrounded by clumps of straight, lofty evergreen trees,
which look extremely graceful on a ground of yellowish grass.
Several of these bogs pour forth a solution of iron, which exhibits
on its surface the prismatic colors.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 187 of 295
Words from 193018 to 194042
of 306638
