The Birds Here Sing Very Sweetly, And I Thought I Heard The Canary,
As In Londa.
We had a heavy shower of rain, and I observed
that the thermometer sank 14 Deg.
In one hour afterward.
From the beginning of February we experienced a sensible diminution
of temperature. In January the lowest was 75 Deg., and that at sunrise;
the average at the same hour (sunrise) being 79 Deg.; at 3 P.M., 90 Deg.;
and at sunset, 82 Deg. In February it fell as low as 70 Deg.
in the course of the night, and the average height was 88 Deg.
Only once did it rise to 94 Deg., and a thunder-storm followed this;
yet the sensation of heat was greater now than it had been
at much higher temperatures on more elevated lands.
We passed several villages by going roundabout ways through the forest.
We saw the remains of a lion that had been killed by a buffalo,
and the horns of a putokwane (black antelope), the finest I had ever seen,
which had met its death by a lion. The drums, beating all night
in one village near which we slept, showed that some person in it
had finished his course. On the occasion of the death of a chief,
a trader is liable to be robbed, for the people consider themselves
not amenable to law until a new one is elected. We continued
a very winding course, in order to avoid the chief Katolosa,
who is said to levy large sums upon those who fall into his hands.
One of our guides was a fine, tall young man, the very image of Ben Habib
the Arab. They were carrying dried buffalo's meat to the market at Tete
as a private speculation.
A great many of the Banyai are of a light coffee-and-milk color,
and, indeed, this color is considered handsome throughout the whole country,
a fair complexion being as much a test of beauty with them as with us.
As they draw out their hair into small cords a foot in length,
and entwine the inner bark of a certain tree round each separate cord,
and dye this substance of a reddish color, many of them put me
in mind of the ancient Egyptians. The great mass of dressed hair
which they possess reaches to the shoulders, but when they intend to travel
they draw it up to a bunch, and tie it on the top of the head.
They are cleanly in their habits.
As we did not come near human habitations, and could only take short stages
on account of the illness of one of my men, I had an opportunity of observing
the expedients my party resorted to in order to supply their wants.
Large white edible mushrooms are found on the ant-hills, and are very good.
The mokuri, a tuber which abounds in the Mopane country,
they discovered by percussing the ground with stones; and another tuber,
about the size of a turnip, called "bonga", is found in the same situations.
It does not determine to the joints like the mokuri, and in winter
has a sensible amount of salt in it. A fruit called "ndongo" by the Makololo,
"dongolo" by the Bambiri, resembles in appearance a small plum,
which becomes black when ripe, and is good food, as the seeds are small.
Many trees are known by tradition, and one receives curious
bits of information in asking about different fruits that are met with.
A tree named "shekabakadzi" is superior to all others for making fire
by friction. As its name implies, women may even readily make fire by it
when benighted.
The country here is covered over with well-rounded shingle and gravel
of granite, gneiss with much talc in it, mica schist, and other rocks
which we saw `in situ' between the Kafue and Loangwa. There are
great mounds of soft red sand slightly coherent, which crumble in the hand
with ease. The gravel and the sand drain away the water so effectually
that the trees are exposed to the heat during a portion of the year
without any moisture; hence they are not large, like those on the Zambesi,
and are often scrubby. The rivers are all of the sandy kind,
and we pass over large patches between this and Tete in which,
in the dry season, no water is to be found. Close on our south,
the hills of Lokole rise to a considerable height, and beyond them flows
the Mazoe with its golden sands. The great numbers of pot-holes
on the sides of sandstone ridges, when viewed in connection with
the large banks of rolled shingle and washed sand which are met with
on this side of the eastern ridge, may indicate that the sea
in former times rolled its waves along its flanks. Many of the hills
between the Kafue and Loangwa have their sides of the form seen
in mud banks left by the tide. The pot-holes appear most abundant
on low gray sandstone ridges here; and as the shingle
is composed of the same rocks as the hills west of Zumbo,
it looks as if a current had dashed along from the southeast
in the line in which the pot-holes now appear; and if the current
was deflected by those hills toward the Maravi country, north of Tete,
it may have hollowed the rounded, water-worn caverns in which these people
store their corn, and also hide themselves from their enemies.
I could detect no terraces on the land, but, if I am right in my supposition,
the form of this part of the continent must once have resembled the curves
or indentations seen on the southern extremity of the American continent.
In the indentation to the S.E., S., S.W., and W. of this,
lie the principal gold-washings; and the line of the current,
supposing it to have struck against the hills of Mburuma,
shows the washings in the N. and N.E. of Tete.
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