This Reptile Is Said By The Natives
To Strike The Victim With Its Tail, Then Drag Him In And Drown
Him.
When lying in the water watching for prey, the body never appears.
Many calves are lost also, and it
Is seldom that a number of cows
can swim over at Sesheke without some loss. I never could avoid shuddering
on seeing my men swimming across these branches, after one of them
had been caught by the thigh and taken below. He, however,
retained, as nearly all of them in the most trying circumstances do,
his full presence of mind, and, having a small, square, ragged-edged javelin
with him, when dragged to the bottom gave the alligator a stab
behind the shoulder. The alligator, writhing in pain, left him,
and he came out with the deep marks of the reptile's teeth on his thigh.
Here the people have no antipathy to persons who have met
with such an adventure, but, in the Bamangwato and Bakwain tribes,
if a man is either bitten or even has had water splashed over him
by the reptile's tail, he is expelled his tribe. When on the Zouga
we saw one of the Bamangwato living among the Bayeiye, who had the misfortune
to have been bitten and driven out of his tribe in consequence.
Fearing that I would regard him with the same disgust which his countrymen
profess to feel, he would not tell me the cause of his exile,
but the Bayeiye informed me of it, and the scars of the teeth were visible
on his thigh. If the Bakwains happened to go near an alligator
they would spit on the ground, and indicate its presence
by saying "Boleo ki bo" - "There is sin". They imagine the mere sight of it
would give inflammation of the eyes; and though they eat the zebra
without hesitation, yet if one bites a man he is expelled the tribe,
and obliged to take his wife and family away to the Kalahari.
These curious relics of the animal-worship of former times
scarcely exist among the Makololo. Sebituane acted on the principle,
"Whatever is food for men is food for me;" so no man is here
considered unclean. The Barotse appear inclined to pray to alligators
and eat them too, for when I wounded a water-antelope, called mochose,
it took to the water; when near the other side of the river
an alligator appeared at its tail, and then both sank together.
Mashauana, who was nearer to it than I, told me that,
"though he had called to it to let his meat alone, it refused to listen."
One day we passed some Barotse lads who had speared an alligator,
and were waiting in expectation of its floating soon after.
The meat has a strong musky odor, not at all inviting for any one
except the very hungry.
When we had gone thirty or forty miles above Libonta we sent
eleven of our captives to the west, to the chief called Makoma,
with an explanatory message.
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