This Custom Gives All The Batoka
An Uncouth, Old-Man-Like Appearance.
Their laugh is hideous,
yet they are so attached to it that even Sebituane was unable
to eradicate the practice.
He issued orders that none of the children
living under him should be subjected to the custom by their parents,
and disobedience to his mandates was usually punished with severity;
but, notwithstanding this, the children would appear in the streets
without their incisors, and no one would confess to the deed.
When questioned respecting the origin of this practice, the Batoka reply
that their object is to be like oxen, and those who retain their teeth
they consider to resemble zebras. Whether this is the true reason or not,
it is difficult to say; but it is noticeable that the veneration for oxen
which prevails in many tribes should here be associated with hatred
to the zebra, as among the Bakwains; that this operation
is performed at the same age that circumcision is in other tribes;
and that here that ceremony is unknown. The custom is so universal
that a person who has his teeth is considered ugly, and occasionally,
when the Batoka borrowed my looking-glass, the disparaging remark
would be made respecting boys or girls who still retained their teeth,
"Look at the great teeth!" Some of the Makololo give a more facetious
explanation of the custom: they say that the wife of a chief
having in a quarrel bitten her husband's hand, he, in revenge,
ordered her front teeth to be knocked out, and all the men in the tribe
followed his example; but this does not explain why they afterward
knocked out their own.
The Batoka of the Zambesi are generally very dark in color, and very degraded
and negro-like in appearance, while those who live on the high lands
we are now ascending are frequently of the color of coffee and milk.
We had a large number of the Batoka of Mokwine in our party,
sent by Sekeletu to carry his tusks. Their greater degradation was probably
caused by the treatment of their chiefs - the barbarians of the islands.
I found them more difficult to manage than any of the rest of my companions,
being much less reasonable and impressible than the others.
My party consisted of the head men aforementioned, Sekwebu, and Kanyata.
We were joined at the falls by another head man of the Makololo,
named Monahin, in command of the Batoka. We had also some of the Banajoa
under Mosisinyane, and, last of all, a small party of Bashubia and Barotse
under Tuba Mokoro, which had been furnished by Sekeletu
because of their ability to swim. They carried their paddles with them,
and, as the Makololo suggested, were able to swim over the rivers by night
and steal canoes, if the inhabitants should be so unreasonable as to refuse
to lend them. These different parties assorted together into messes;
any orders were given through their head man, and when food was obtained
he distributed it to the mess. Each party knew its own spot
in the encampment; and as this was always placed so that our backs
should be to the east, the direction from whence the prevailing winds came,
no time was lost in fixing the sheds of our encampment. They each
took it in turn to pull grass to make my bed, so I lay luxuriously.
NOVEMBER 26TH. As the oxen could only move at night,
in consequence of a fear that the buffaloes in this quarter
might have introduced the tsetse, I usually performed the march by day
on foot, while some of the men brought on the oxen by night.
On coming to the villages under Marimba, an old man, we crossed the Unguesi,
a rivulet which, like the Lekone, runs backward. It falls into the Leeambye
a little above the commencement of the rapids. The stratified gneiss,
which is the underlying rock of much of this part of the country,
dips toward the centre of the continent, but the strata are often
so much elevated as to appear nearly on their edges. Rocks of augitic trap
are found in various positions on it; the general strike is north and south;
but when the gneiss was first seen, near to the basalt of the falls,
it was easterly and westerly, and the dip toward the north,
as if the eruptive force of the basalt had placed it in that position.
We passed the remains of a very large town, which, from the only
evidence of antiquity afforded by ruins in this country, must have been
inhabited for a long period; the millstones of gneiss, trap, and quartz
were worn down two and a half inches perpendicularly. The ivory grave-stones
soon rot away. Those of Moyara's father, who must have died
not more than a dozen years ago, were crumbling into powder;
and we found this to be generally the case all over the Batoka country.
The region around is pretty well covered with forest; but there is
abundance of open pasturage, and, as we are ascending in altitude,
we find the grass to be short, and altogether unlike the tangled herbage
of the Barotse valley.
It is remarkable that we now meet with the same trees we saw in descending
toward the west coast. A kind of sterculia, which is the most common tree
at Loanda, and the baobab, flourish here; and the tree called moshuka,
which we found near Tala Mungongo, was now yielding its fruit, which resembles
small apples. The people brought it to us in large quantities:
it tastes like a pear, but has a harsh rind, and four large seeds within.
We found prodigious quantities of this fruit as we went along.
The tree attains the height of 15 or 20 feet, and has leaves, hard and glossy,
as large as one's hand. The tree itself is never found on the lowlands,
but is mentioned with approbation at the end of the work of Bowditch.
My men almost lived upon the fruit for many days.
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