In Different Parts Of This Country, We Remarked That When Old Friends
Were Inquired For, The Reply Was, "Ba Hola"
(They are getting better);
or if the people of a village were inquired for, the answer was,
"They are recovering,
" As if sickness was quite a common thing.
Indeed, many with whom we had made acquaintance in going north we now found
were in their graves. On the 15th Katema came home from his hunting,
having heard of our arrival. He desired me to rest myself and eat abundantly,
for, being a great man, I must feel tired; and he took good care
to give the means of doing so. All the people in these parts are
exceedingly kind and liberal with their food, and Katema was not behindhand.
When he visited our encampment, I presented him with a cloak of red baize,
ornamented with gold tinsel, which cost thirty shillings,
according to the promise I had made in going to Londa; also a cotton robe,
both large and small beads, an iron spoon, and a tin pannikin
containing a quarter of a pound of powder. He seemed greatly pleased
with the liberality shown, and assured me that the way was mine,
and that no one should molest me in it if he could help it.
We were informed by Shakatwala that the chief never used any part of a present
before making an offer of it to his mother, or the departed spirit
to whom he prayed. Katema asked if I could not make a dress for him
like the one I wore, so that he might appear as a white man
when any stranger visited him. One of the councilors, imagining that
he ought to second this by begging, Katema checked him by saying,
"Whatever strangers give, be it little or much, I always receive it
with thankfulness, and never trouble them for more." On departing,
he mounted on the shoulders of his spokesman, as the most dignified
mode of retiring. The spokesman being a slender man, and the chief
six feet high, and stout in proportion, there would have been a break-down
had he not been accustomed to it. We were very much pleased with Katema;
and next day he presented us with a cow, that we might enjoy
the abundant supplies of meal he had given with good animal food.
He then departed for the hunting-ground, after assuring me that the town
and every thing in it were mine, and that his factotum, Shakatwala,
would remain and attend to every want, and also conduct us to the Leeba.
On attempting to slaughter the cow Katema had given, we found the herd
as wild as buffaloes; and one of my men having only wounded it,
they fled many miles into the forest, and were with great difficulty
brought back. Even the herdsman was afraid to go near them.
The majority of them were white, and they were all beautiful animals.
After hunting it for two days it was dispatched at last by another ball.
Here we saw a flock of jackdaws, a rare sight in Londa, busy with the grubs
in the valley, which are eaten by the people too.
Leaving Katema's town on the 19th, and proceeding four miles to the eastward,
we forded the southern branch of Lake Dilolo. We found it
a mile and a quarter broad; and, as it flows into the Lotembwa,
the lake would seem to be a drain of the surrounding flats,
and to partake of the character of a fountain. The ford was waist-deep,
and very difficult, from the masses of arum and rushes
through which we waded. Going to the eastward about three miles,
we came to the Southern Lotembwa itself, running in a valley two miles broad.
It is here eighty or ninety yards wide, and contains numerous islands
covered with dense sylvan vegetation. In the rainy season the valley
is flooded, and as the waters dry up great multitudes of fish are caught.
This happens very extensively over the country, and fishing-weirs are met with
every where. A species of small fish, about the size of the minnow,
is caught in bagfuls and dried in the sun. The taste is a pungent
aromatic bitter, and it was partaken of freely by my people, although they
had never met with it before. On many of the paths which had been flooded
a nasty sort of slime of decayed vegetable matter is left behind,
and much sickness prevails during the drying up of the water.
We did not find our friend Mozinkwa at his pleasant home on the Lokaloeje;
his wife was dead, and he had removed elsewhere. He followed us
some distance, but our reappearance seemed to stir up his sorrows.
We found the pontoon at the village in which we left it.
It had been carefully preserved, but a mouse had eaten a hole in it
and rendered it useless.
We traversed the extended plain on the north bank of the Leeba,
and crossed this river a little farther on at Kanyonke's village,
which is about twenty miles west of the Peri hills, our former ford.
The first stage beyond the Leeba was at the rivulet Loamba,
by the village of Chebende, nephew of Shinte; and next day
we met Chebende himself returning from the funeral of Samoana, his father.
He was thin and haggard-looking compared to what he had been before,
the probable effect of the orgies in which he had been engaged.
Pitsane and Mohorisi, having concocted the project of a Makololo village
on the banks of the Leeba, as an approach to the white man's market,
spoke to Chebende, as an influential man, on the subject,
but he cautiously avoided expressing an opinion. The idea which had sprung up
in their own minds of an establishment somewhere near the confluence
of the Leeba and Leeambye, commended itself to my judgment at the time
as a geographically suitable point for civilization and commerce.
The right bank of the Leeba there is never flooded; and from that point
there is communication by means of canoes to the country of the Kanyika,
and also to Cazembe and beyond, with but one or two large waterfalls between.
There is no obstruction down to the Barotse valley; and there is probably
canoe navigation down the Kafue or Bashukulompo River, though it is reported
to contain many cataracts.
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