The Showers Are Refreshing,
But The Air Feels Hot And Close; The Thermometer, However, In A Cool Hut,
Stands Only At 84 Deg.
The access of the external air to any spot
at once raises its temperature above 90 Deg.
A new attack of fever here
caused excessive languor; but, as I am already getting tired
of quoting my fevers, and never liked to read travels myself
where much was said about the illnesses of the traveler,
I shall henceforth endeavor to say little about them.
We here sent back the canoe of Sekeletu, and got the loan of others
from Mpololo. Eight riding oxen, and seven for slaughter,
were, according to the orders of that chief, also furnished;
some were intended for our own use, and others as presents
to the chiefs of the Balonda. Mpololo was particularly liberal
in giving all that Sekeletu ordered, though, as he feeds on the cattle
he has in charge, he might have felt it so much abstracted
from his own perquisites. Mpololo now acts the great man,
and is followed every where by a crowd of toadies, who sing songs
in disparagement of Mpepe, of whom he always lived in fear.
While Mpepe was alive, he too was regaled with the same fulsome adulation,
and now they curse him. They are very foul-tongued; equals, on meeting,
often greet each other with a profusion of oaths, and end the volley
with a laugh.
In coming up the river to Naliele we met a party of fugitive Barotse
returning to their homes, and, as the circumstance illustrates
the social status of these subjects of the Makololo, I introduce it here.
The villagers in question were the children, or serfs, if we may use the term,
of a young man of the same age and tribe as Sekeletu, who,
being of an irritable temper, went by the nickname of Sekobinyane -
a little slavish thing.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 381 of 1070
Words from 109373 to 109692
of 306638
