All Whom We Saw That Day
Then Came With Us To The Encampment To Beg A Little Meat;
And As They Have So Little Salt, I Have No Doubt They Felt Grateful
For What We Gave.
Sekelenke and his people, twenty-four in number, defiled past our camp
carrying large bundles of dried elephants' meat.
Most of them came
to say good-by, and Sekelenke himself sent to say that he had gone to visit
a wife living in the village of Manenko. It was a mere African manoeuvre
to gain information, and not commit himself to either one line of action
or another with respect to our visit. As he was probably
in the party before us, I replied that it was all right,
and when my people came up from Masiko I would go to my wife too.
Another zebra came to our camp, and, as we had friends near, it was shot.
It was the `Equus montanus', though the country is perfectly flat,
and was finely marked down to the feet, as all the zebras are in these parts.
To our first message, offering a visit of explanation to Manenko,
we got an answer, with a basket of manioc roots, that we must remain
where we were till she should visit us. Having waited two days already
for her, other messengers arrived with orders for me to come to her.
After four days of rains and negotiation, I declined going at all,
and proceeded up the river to the small stream Makondo (lat. 13d 23' 12" S.),
which enters the Leeba from the east, and is between twenty and thirty
yards broad.
JANUARY 1ST, 1854. We had heavy rains almost every day; indeed,
the rainy season had fairly set in. Baskets of the purple fruit called mawa
were frequently brought to us by the villagers; not for sale,
but from a belief that their chiefs would be pleased to hear
that they had treated us well; we gave them pieces of meat in return.
When crossing at the confluence of the Leeba and Makondo,
one of my men picked up a bit of a steel watch-chain of English manufacture,
and we were informed that this was the spot where the Mambari cross
in coming to Masiko. Their visits explain why Sekelenke kept his tusks
so carefully. These Mambari are very enterprising merchants:
when they mean to trade with a town, they deliberately begin the affair
by building huts, as if they knew that little business could be transacted
without a liberal allowance of time for palaver. They bring Manchester goods
into the heart of Africa; these cotton prints look so wonderful
that the Makololo could not believe them to be the work of mortal hands.
On questioning the Mambari they were answered that English manufactures
came out of the sea, and beads were gathered on its shore.
To Africans our cotton mills are fairy dreams. "How can the irons spin,
weave, and print so beautifully?" Our country is like what Taprobane was
to our ancestors - a strange realm of light, whence came the diamond,
muslin, and peacocks; an attempt at explanation of our manufactures
usually elicits the expression, "Truly ye are gods!"
When about to leave the Makondo, one of my men had dreamed that Mosantu
was shut up a prisoner in a stockade:
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