My Poor Fellows
Were Dreadfully Alarmed When They Saw Me Parted From The Cattle,
And About Twenty Of Them Made A Simultaneous Rush Into The Water
For My Rescue, And Just As I Reached The Opposite Bank One Seized My Arm,
And Another Threw His Around My Body.
When I stood up, it was most gratifying
to see them all struggling toward me.
Some had leaped off the bridge,
and allowed their cloaks to float down the stream. Part of my goods,
abandoned in the hurry, were brought up from the bottom after I was safe.
Great was the pleasure expressed when they found that I could swim,
like themselves, without the aid of a tail, and I did and do feel grateful
to these poor heathens for the promptitude with which they dashed in to save,
as they thought, my life. I found my clothes cumbersome in the water;
they could swim quicker from being naked. They swim like dogs,
not frog-fashion, as we do.
In the evening we crossed the small rivulet Lozeze,
and came to some villages of the Kasabi, from whom we got some manioc
in exchange for beads. They tried to frighten us by telling of
the deep rivers we should have to cross in our way. I was drying my clothes
by turning myself round and round before the fire. My men laughed
at the idea of being frightened by rivers. "We can all swim:
who carried the white man across the river but himself?"
I felt proud of their praise.
SATURDAY, 4TH MARCH. Came to the outskirts of the territory
of the Chiboque. We crossed the Konde and Kaluze rivulets.
The former is a deep, small stream with a bridge, the latter insignificant;
the valleys in which these rivulets run are beautifully fertile.
My companions are continually lamenting over the uncultivated vales
in such words as these: "What a fine country for cattle!
My heart is sore to see such fruitful valleys for corn lying waste."
At the time these words were put down I had come to the belief
that the reason why the inhabitants of this fine country
possess no herds of cattle was owing to the despotic sway of their chiefs,
and that the common people would not be allowed to keep any domestic animals,
even supposing they could acquire them; but on musing on the subject since,
I have been led to the conjecture that the rich, fertile country of Londa
must formerly have been infested by the tsetse, but that, as the people
killed off the game on which, in the absence of man, the tsetse must subsist,
the insect was starved out of the country. It is now found
only where wild animals abound, and the Balonda, by the possession of guns,
having cleared most of the country of all the large game,
we may have happened to come just when it was possible to admit of cattle.
Hence the success of Katema, Shinte, and Matiamvo with their herds.
It would not be surprising, though they know nothing of the circumstance;
a tribe on the Zambesi, which I encountered, whose country
was swarming with tsetse, believed that they could not keep any cattle,
because "no one loved them well enough to give them the medicine of oxen;"
and even the Portuguese at Loanda accounted for the death of the cattle
brought from the interior to the sea-coast by the prejudicial influence
of the sea air!
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 274 of 572
Words from 146297 to 146876
of 306638
