Before I had profited
by the rather tedious teaching of Manenko, I sometimes entered a village
and created unintentional alarm. The villagers would continue
to look upon us with suspicion as long as we remained. Shinte sent us
two large baskets of manioc and six dried fishes. His men had
the skin of a monkey, called in their tongue "poluma" (`Colobus guereza'),
of a jet black color, except the long mane, which is pure white:
it is said to be found in the north, in the country of Matiamvo,
the paramount chief of all the Balonda. We learned from them
that they are in the habit of praying to their idols when unsuccessful
in killing game or in any other enterprise. They behaved with reverence
at our religious services. This will appear important if the reader remembers
the almost total want of prayer and reverence we encountered in the south.
Our friends informed us that Shinte would be highly honored
by the presence of three white men in his town at once. Two others
had sent forward notice of their approach from another quarter (the west);
could it be Barth or Krapf? How pleasant to meet with Europeans
in such an out-of-the-way region! The rush of thoughts
made me almost forget my fever. Are they of the same color as I am?
"Yes; exactly so." And have the same hair? "Is that hair?
we thought it was a wig; we never saw the like before; this white man
must be of the sort that lives in the sea." Henceforth my men took the hint,
and always sounded my praises as a true specimen of the variety of white men
who live in the sea. "Only look at his hair; it is made quite straight
by the sea-water!"
I explained to them again and again that, when it was said
we came out of the sea, it did not mean that we came from beneath the water;
but the fiction has been widely spread in the interior by the Mambari
that the real white men live in the sea, and the myth was too good not to be
taken advantage of by my companions; so, notwithstanding my injunctions,
I believe that, when I was out of hearing, my men always
represented themselves as led by a genuine merman: "Just see his hair!"
If I returned from walking to a little distance, they would remark of some
to whom they had been holding forth, "These people want to see your hair."
As the strangers had woolly hair like themselves, I had to give up the idea
of meeting any thing more European than two half-caste Portuguese,
engaged in trading for slaves, ivory, and bees'-wax.
