However Accounted For, The Wild Animals Here Do Select
The Forests By Day, While Those Farther South Generally Shun These Covers,
And, On Several Occasions, I Have Observed There Was No Sunshine
To Cause Them To Seek For Shade.
Chapter 16.
Nyamoana's Present - Charms - Manenko's pedestrian Powers - An Idol -
Balonda Arms - Rain - Hunger - Palisades - Dense Forests -
Artificial Beehives - Mushrooms - Villagers lend the Roofs of their Houses
- Divination and Idols - Manenko's Whims - A night Alarm -
Shinte's Messengers and Present - The proper Way to approach a Village -
A Merman - Enter Shinte's Town: its Appearance -
Meet two half-caste Slave-traders - The Makololo scorn them -
The Balonda real Negroes - Grand Reception from Shinte -
His Kotla - Ceremony of Introduction - The Orators - Women -
Musicians and Musical Instruments - A disagreeable Request -
Private Interviews with Shinte - Give him an Ox - Fertility of Soil -
Manenko's new Hut - Conversation with Shinte - Kolimbota's Proposal -
Balonda's Punctiliousness - Selling Children - Kidnapping -
Shinte's Offer of a Slave - Magic Lantern - Alarm of Women -
Delay - Sambanza returns intoxicated - The last and greatest
Proof of Shinte's Friendship.
11TH OF JANUARY, 1854. On starting this morning,
Samoana (or rather Nyamoana, for the ladies are the chiefs here)
presented a string of beads, and a shell highly valued among them,
as an atonement for having assisted Manenko, as they thought,
to vex me the day before. They seemed anxious to avert any evil
which might arise from my displeasure; but having replied
that I never kept my anger up all night, they were much pleased
to see me satisfied. We had to cross, in a canoe, a stream which flows
past the village of Nyamoana. Manenko's doctor waved some charms over her,
and she took some in her hand and on her body before she ventured
upon the water. One of my men spoke rather loudly when near
the doctor's basket of medicines. The doctor reproved him,
and always spoke in a whisper himself, glancing back to the basket
as if afraid of being heard by something therein. So much superstition
is quite unknown in the south, and is mentioned here to show the difference
in the feelings of this new people, and the comparative want of reverence
on these points among Caffres and Bechuanas.
Manenko was accompanied by her husband and her drummer;
the latter continued to thump most vigorously until a heavy, drizzling mist
set in and compelled him to desist. Her husband used
various incantations and vociferations to drive away the rain,
but down it poured incessantly, and on our Amazon went,
in the very lightest marching order, and at a pace that few of the men
could keep up with. Being on ox-back, I kept pretty close to our leader,
and asked her why she did not clothe herself during the rain,
and learned that it is not considered proper for a chief to appear effeminate.
He or she must always wear the appearance of robust youth,
and bear vicissitudes without wincing. My men, in admiration of
her pedestrian powers, every now and then remarked, "Manenko is a soldier;"
and thoroughly wet and cold, we were all glad when she proposed a halt
to prepare our night's lodging on the banks of a stream.
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