Most Of His People Were Slain
Or Taken Captive, And The Island Has Ever Since Been Under The Makololo.
It Is Large Enough To Contain A Considerable Town.
On the northern side
I found the kotla of the elder Sekote, garnished with numbers of human skulls
mounted on poles:
A large heap of the crania of hippopotami,
the tusks untouched except by time, stood on one side. At a short distance,
under some trees, we saw the grave of Sekote, ornamented with
seventy large elephants' tusks planted round it with the points turned inward,
and there were thirty more placed over the resting-places of his relatives.
These were all decaying from the effects of the sun and weather;
but a few, which had enjoyed the shade, were in a pretty good condition.
I felt inclined to take a specimen of the tusks of the hippopotami,
as they were the largest I had ever seen, but feared that the people
would look upon me as a "resurrectionist" if I did, and regard
any unfavorable event which might afterward occur as a punishment
for the sacrilege. The Batoka believe that Sekote had a pot of medicine
buried here, which, when opened, would cause an epidemic in the country.
These tyrants acted much on the fears of their people.
As this was the point from which we intended to strike off to the northeast,
I resolved on the following day to visit the falls of Victoria,
called by the natives Mosioatunya, or more anciently Shongwe.
Of these we had often heard since we came into the country; indeed,
one of the questions asked by Sebituane was, "Have you smoke that sounds
in your country?" They did not go near enough to examine them,
but, viewing them with awe at a distance, said, in reference to
the vapor and noise, "Mosi oa tunya" (smoke does sound there).
It was previously called Shongwe, the meaning of which I could not ascertain.
The word for a "pot" resembles this, and it may mean a seething caldron,
but I am not certain of it. Being persuaded that Mr. Oswell and myself
were the very first Europeans who ever visited the Zambesi
in the centre of the country, and that this is the connecting link
between the known and unknown portions of that river, I decided to use
the same liberty as the Makololo did, and gave the only English name
I have affixed to any part of the country. No better proof
of previous ignorance of this river could be desired than that
an untraveled gentleman, who had spent a great part of his life
in the study of the geography of Africa, and knew every thing
written on the subject from the time of Ptolemy downward,
actually asserted in the "Athenaeum", while I was coming up the Red Sea,
that this magnificent river, the Leeambye, had "no connection
with the Zambesi, but flowed under the Kalahari Desert, and became lost;"
and "that, as all the old maps asserted, the Zambesi took its rise
in the very hills to which we have now come." This modest assertion
smacks exactly as if a native of Timbuctoo should declare
that the "Thames" and the "Pool" were different rivers, he having seen
neither the one nor the other.
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