It Was Simply A Human Head Carved On A Block Of Wood.
Certain Charms Mixed With Red Ochre And White Pipe-Clay Are Dotted Over Them
When They Are In Use; And A Crooked Stick Is Used In The Same Way For An Idol
When They Have No Professional Carver.
As the Leeba seemed still to come from the direction in which we wished to go,
I was desirous
Of proceeding farther up with the canoes;
but Nyamoana was anxious that we should allow her people
to conduct us to her brother Shinte; and when I explained
the advantage of water-carriage, she represented that her brother
did not live near the river, and, moreover, there was a cataract in front,
over which it would be difficult to convey the canoes. She was afraid, too,
that the Balobale, whose country lies to the west of the river,
not knowing the objects for which we had come, would kill us.
To my reply that I had been so often threatened with death
if I visited a new tribe that I was now more afraid of killing any one
than of being killed, she rejoined that the Balobale would not kill me,
but the Makololo would all be sacrificed as their enemies.
This produced considerable effect on my companions, and inclined them
to the plan of Nyamoana, of going to the town of her brother
rather than ascending the Leeba. The arrival of Manenko herself on the scene
threw so much weight into the scale on their side that I was forced
to yield the point.
Manenko was a tall, strapping woman about twenty, distinguished by
a profusion of ornaments and medicines hung round her person;
the latter are supposed to act as charms. Her body was smeared all over
with a mixture of fat and red ochre, as a protection against the weather;
a necessary precaution, for, like most of the Balonda ladies,
she was otherwise in a state of frightful nudity. This was not
from want of clothing, for, being a chief, she might have been as well clad
as any of her subjects, but from her peculiar ideas of elegance in dress.
When she arrived with her husband, Sambanza, they listened for some time
to the statements I was making to the people of Nyamoana, after which
the husband, acting as spokesman, commenced an oration, stating the reasons
for their coming, and, during every two or three seconds of the delivery,
he picked up a little sand, and rubbed it on the upper part
of his arms and chest. This is a common mode of salutation in Londa;
and when they wish to be excessively polite, they bring
a quantity of ashes or pipe-clay in a piece of skin, and, taking up handfuls,
rub it on the chest and upper front part of each arm; others, in saluting,
drum their ribs with their elbows; while others still touch the ground
with one cheek after the other, and clap their hands.
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