24TH. Ionga Panza's Sons Agreed To Act As Guides Into The Territory
Of The Portuguese If I Would Give Them
The shell given by Shinte.
I was strongly averse to this, and especially to give it beforehand,
but yielded to
The entreaty of my people to appear as if showing confidence
in these hopeful youths. They urged that they wished to leave the shell
with their wives, as a sort of payment to them for enduring
their husbands' absence so long. Having delivered the precious shell,
we went west-by-north to the River Chikapa, which here (lat. 10d 22' S.)
is forty or fifty yards wide, and at present was deep;
it was seen flowing over a rocky, broken cataract with great noise
about half a mile above our ford. We were ferried over in a canoe,
made out of a single piece of bark sewed together at the ends,
and having sticks placed in it at different parts to act as ribs.
The word Chikapa means bark or skin; and as this is the only river
in which we saw this kind of canoe used, and we heard that this stream
is so low during most of the year as to be easily fordable,
it probably derives its name from the use made of the bark canoes
when it is in flood. We now felt the loss of our pontoon, for the people
to whom the canoe belonged made us pay once when we began to cross,
then a second time when half of us were over, and a third time
when all were over but my principal man Pitsane and myself.
Loyanke took off his cloth and paid my passage with it.
The Makololo always ferried their visitors over rivers without pay,
and now began to remark that they must in future fleece the Mambari
as these Chiboque had done to us; they had all been loud
in condemnation of the meanness, and when I asked if they could descend
to be equally mean, I was answered that they would only do it in revenge.
They like to have a plausible excuse for meanness.
Next morning our guides went only about a mile, and then told us
they would return home. I expected this when paying them beforehand,
in accordance with the entreaties of the Makololo, who are rather
ignorant of the world. Very energetic remonstrances were addressed
to the guides, but they slipped off one by one in the thick forest
through which we were passing, and I was glad to hear my companions
coming to the conclusion that, as we were now in parts visited by traders,
we did not require the guides, whose chief use had been
to prevent misapprehension of our objects in the minds of the villagers.
The country was somewhat more undulating now than it had been,
and several fine small streams flowed in deep woody dells.
The trees are very tall and straight, and the forests gloomy and damp;
the ground in these solitudes is quite covered with yellow and brown mosses,
and light-colored lichens clothe all the trees.
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