We Took Four Elephants' Tusks, Belonging To Sekeletu,
With Us, As A Means Of Testing The Difference Of Prices
Between The Portuguese, Whom We Expected To Reach, And The White Traders
From The South.
Moriantsane supplied us well with honey, milk, and meal.
The rains were just commencing in this district; but, though
Showers
sufficient to lay the dust had fallen, they had no influence whatever
on the amount of water in the river, yet never was there less in any part
than three hundred yards of a deep flowing stream.
Our progress up the river was rather slow; this was caused
by waiting opposite different villages for supplies of food.
We might have done with much less than we got; but my Makololo man, Pitsane,
knew of the generous orders of Sekeletu, and was not at all disposed
to allow them to remain a dead letter. The villages of the Banyeti
contributed large quantities of mosibe, a bright red bean
yielded by a large tree. The pulp inclosing the seed is not much thicker
than a red wafer, and is the portion used. It requires the addition of honey
to render it at all palatable.
To these were added great numbers of the fruit which yields
a variety of the nux vomica, from which we derive that
virulent poison strychnia. The pulp between the nuts is the part eaten,
and it is of a pleasant juicy nature, having a sweet acidulous taste.
The fruit itself resembles a large yellow orange, but the rind is hard,
and, with the pips and bark, contains much of the deadly poison.
They evince their noxious qualities by an intensely bitter taste.
The nuts, swallowed inadvertently, cause considerable pain, but not death;
and to avoid this inconvenience, the people dry the pulp before the fire,
in order to be able the more easily to get rid of the noxious seeds.
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