When The Strangers Visited Us Again In The Evening, They Were Accompanied
By A Number Of The People Of An Ambonda Chief Named Sekelenke.
The Ambonda Live Far To The N.W.; Their Language, The Bonda,
Is The Common Dialect In Angola.
Sekelenke had fled, and was now living
with his village as a vassal of Masiko.
As notices of such men
will perhaps convey the best idea of the state of the inhabitants
to the reader, I shall hereafter allude to the conduct of Sekelenke,
whom I at present only introduce. Sekelenke had gone with his villagers
to hunt elephants on the right bank of the Leeba, and was now on his way
back to Masiko. He sent me a dish of boiled zebra's flesh, and a request
that I should lend him a canoe to ferry his wives and family across the river
to the bank on which we were encamped. Many of Sekelenke's people came
to salute the first white man they ever had an opportunity of seeing;
but Sekelenke himself did not come near. We heard he was offended
with some of his people for letting me know he was among the company. He said
that I should be displeased with him for not coming and making some present.
This was the only instance in which I was shunned in this quarter.
As it would have been impolitic to pass Manenko, or any chief,
without at least showing so much respect as to call and explain
the objects of our passing through the country, we waited two entire days
for the return of the messengers to Manenko; and as I could not hurry matters,
I went into the adjacent country to search for meat for the camp.
The country is furnished largely with forest, having occasionally open lawns
covered with grass, not in tufts as in the south, but so closely planted that
one can not see the soil. We came upon a man and his two wives and children,
burning coarse rushes and the stalks of tsitla, growing in a brackish marsh,
in order to extract a kind of salt from the ashes. They make
a funnel of branches of trees, and line it with grass rope,
twisted round until it is, as it were, a beehive-roof inverted.
The ashes are put into water, in a calabash, and then it is allowed
to percolate through the small hole in the bottom and through the grass.
When this water is evaporated in the sun, it yields sufficient salt
to form a relish with food. The women and children fled with precipitation,
but we sat down at a distance, and allowed the man time to gain
courage enough to speak. He, however, trembled excessively
at the apparition before him; but when we explained that our object
was to hunt game, and not men, he became calm, and called back his wives.
We soon afterward came to another party on the same errand with ourselves.
The man had a bow about six feet long, and iron-headed arrows about
thirty inches in length; he had also wooden arrows neatly barbed, to shoot
in cases where he might not be quite certain of recovering them again.
We soon afterward got a zebra, and gave our hunting acquaintances
such a liberal share that we soon became friends.
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