We Were Forced To Prepay Our Guide And His Father Too,
And He Went But One Day, Although He Promised
To go with us to Katema.
He was not in the least ashamed at breaking his engagements,
and probably no
Disgrace will be attached to the deed by Muanzanza.
Among the Bakwains he would have been punished. My men would have
stripped him of the wages which he wore on his person, but thought that,
as we had always acted on the mildest principles, they would let him move off
with his unearned gains.
They frequently lamented the want of knowledge in these people, saying,
in their own tongue, "Ah! they don't know that we are men as well as they,
and that we are only bearing with their insolence with patience
because we are men." Then would follow a hearty curse,
showing that the patience was nearly expended; but they seldom quarreled
in the language of the Balonda. The only one who ever lost his temper
was the man who struck a head man of one of the villages on the mouth,
and he was the most abject individual in our company.
The reason why we needed a guide at all was to secure the convenience
of a path, which, though generally no better than a sheep-walk,
is much easier than going straight in one direction, through tangled forests
and tropical vegetation. We knew the general direction we ought to follow,
and also if any deviation occurred from our proper route;
but, to avoid impassable forests and untreadable bogs, and to get to
the proper fords of the rivers, we always tried to procure a guide,
and he always followed the common path from one village to another
when that lay in the direction we were going.
After leaving Cabango on the 21st, we crossed several little streams
running into the Chihombo on our left, and in one of them
I saw tree ferns (`Cyathea dregei') for the first time in Africa.
The trunk was about four feet high and ten inches in diameter.
We saw also grass trees of two varieties, which, in damp localities,
had attained a height of forty feet. On crossing the Chihombo, which we did
about twelve miles above Cabango, we found it waist-deep and rapid.
We were delighted to see the evidences of buffalo and hippopotami
on its banks. As soon as we got away from the track of the slave-traders,
the more kindly spirit of the southern Balonda appeared,
for an old man brought a large present of food from one of the villages,
and volunteered to go as guide himself. The people, however,
of the numerous villages which we passed always made efforts to detain us,
that they might have a little trade in the way of furnishing our suppers.
At one village, indeed, they would not show us the path at all
unless we remained at least a day with them. Having refused,
we took a path in the direction we ought to go, but it led us
into an inextricable thicket.
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