Then There Are Niggards Among Them Too.
Some Of Them Are Born Without Hearts!" One White Trader,
Having Presented An
OLD GUN to a chief, became a standing joke in the tribe:
"The white man who made a present of
A gun that was new
when his grandfather was sucking his great-grandmother."
When these tricks are repeated, the natives come to the conclusion
that people who show such a want of sense must be told their duty;
they therefore let them know what they ought to give,
and travelers then complain of being pestered with their "shameless begging".
I was troubled by importunity on the confines of civilization only,
and when I first came to Africa.
FEBRUARY 4TH. We were much detained by rains, a heavy shower without wind
falling every morning about daybreak; it often cleared up after that,
admitting of our moving on a few miles. A continuous rain of several hours
then set in. The wind up to this point was always from the east,
but both rain and wind now came so generally from the west,
or opposite direction to what we had been accustomed to in the interior,
that we were obliged to make our encampment face the east,
in order to have them in our backs. The country adjacent to the river
abounds in large trees; but the population is so numerous that,
those left being all green, it is difficult to get dry firewood.
On coming to some places, too, we were warned by the villagers
not to cut the trees growing in certain spots, as they contained
the graves of their ancestors. There are many tamarind-trees,
and another very similar, which yields a fruit as large as a small walnut,
of which the elephants are very fond. It is called Motondo,
and the Portuguese extol its timber as excellent for building boats,
as it does not soon rot in water.
On the 6th we came to the village of Boroma, which is situated among
a number of others, each surrounded by extensive patches of cultivation.
On the opposite side of the river we have a great cluster of conical hills
called Chorichori. Boroma did not make his appearance,
but sent a substitute who acted civilly. I sent Sekwebu in the morning
to state that we intended to move on; his mother replied that,
as she had expected that we should remain, no food was ready, but she sent
a basket of corn and a fowl. As an excuse why Boroma did not present himself,
she said that he was seized that morning by the Barimo, which probably meant
that his lordship was drunk.
We marched along the river to a point opposite the hill Pinkwe
(lat. 15d 39' 11" S., long. 32d 5' E.), but the late abundant rains
now flooded the Zambesi again, and great quantities of wreck
appeared upon the stream. It is probable that frequent freshets,
caused by the rains on this side of the ridge, have prevented the Portuguese
near the coast from recognizing the one peculiar flood of inundation
observed in the interior, and caused the belief that it is flooded
soon after the commencement of the rains. The course of the Nile
being in the opposite direction to this, it does not receive
these subsidiary waters, and hence its inundation is recognized
all the way along its course. If the Leeambye were prolonged southward
into the Cape Colony, its flood would be identical with that of the Nile.
It would not be influenced by any streams in the Kalahari, for there,
as in a corresponding part of the Nile, there would be no feeders.
It is to be remembered that the great ancient river which flowed
to the lake at Boochap took this course exactly, and probably flowed thither
until the fissure of the falls was made.
This flood having filled the river, we found the numerous rivulets
which flow into it filled also, and when going along the Zambesi,
we lost so much time in passing up each little stream
till we could find a ford about waist deep, and then returning to the bank,
that I resolved to leave the river altogether, and strike away
to the southeast. We accordingly struck off when opposite the hill Pinkwe,
and came into a hard Mopane country. In a hole of one of the mopane-trees
I noticed that a squirrel (`Sciurus cepapi') had placed
a great number of fresh leaves over a store of seed. It is not against
the cold of winter that they thus lay up food, but it is a provision
against the hot season, when the trees have generally no seed.
A great many silicified trees are met with lying on the ground
all over this part of the country; some are broken off horizontally,
and stand upright; others are lying prone, and broken across
into a number of pieces. One was 4 feet 8 inches in diameter,
and the wood must have been soft like that of the baobab,
for there were only six concentric rings to the inch. As the semidiameter
was only 28 inches, this large tree could have been but 168 years old.
I found also a piece of palm-tree transformed into oxide of iron,
and the pores filled with pure silica. These fossil trees
lie upon soft gray sandstone containing banks of shingle, which forms
the underlying rock of the country all the way from Zumbo to near Lupata.
It is met with at Litubaruba and in Angola, with similar banks of shingle
imbedded exactly like those now seen on the sea-beach, but I never could
find a shell. There are many nodules and mounds of hardened clay upon it,
which seem to have been deposited in eddies made round the roots of these
ancient trees, for they appear of different colors in wavy and twisted lines.
Above this we have small quantities of calcareous marl.
As we were now in the district of Chicova, I examined
the geological structure of the country with interest, because here,
it has been stated, there once existed silver mines.
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