Some Of These Mambari Visited Us While At Naliele.
They are of
the Ambonda family, which inhabits the country southeast of Angola,
and speak the Bunda dialect, which is of the same family of languages
with the Barotse, Bayeiye, etc., or those black tribes comprehended
under the general term Makalaka.
They plait their hair in three-fold cords,
and lay them carefully down around the sides of the head.
They are quite as dark as the Barotse, but have among them
a number of half-castes, with their peculiar yellow sickly hue.
On inquiring why they had fled on my approach to Linyanti, they let me know
that they had a vivid idea of the customs of English cruisers on the coast.
They showed also their habits in their own country by digging up and eating,
even here where large game abounds, the mice and moles which infest
the country. The half-castes, or native Portuguese, could all read and write,
and the head of the party, if not a real Portuguese, had European hair,
and, influenced probably by the letter of recommendation which I held
from the Chevalier Duprat, his most faithful majesty's Arbitrator
in the British and Portuguese Mixed Commission at Cape Town,
was evidently anxious to show me all the kindness in his power.
These persons I feel assured were the first individuals of Portuguese blood
who ever saw the Zambesi in the centre of the country, and they had reached it
two years after our discovery in 1851.
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