Baskets Of The Purple Fruit Called Mawa
Were Frequently Brought To Us By The Villagers; Not For Sale,
But From A Belief That Their Chiefs Would Be Pleased To Hear
That They Had Treated Us Well; We Gave Them Pieces Of Meat In Return.
When crossing at the confluence of the Leeba and Makondo,
one of my men picked up a bit of a steel watch-chain of English manufacture,
and we were informed that this was the spot where the Mambari cross
in coming to Masiko.
Their visits explain why Sekelenke kept his tusks
so carefully. These Mambari are very enterprising merchants:
when they mean to trade with a town, they deliberately begin the affair
by building huts, as if they knew that little business could be transacted
without a liberal allowance of time for palaver. They bring Manchester goods
into the heart of Africa; these cotton prints look so wonderful
that the Makololo could not believe them to be the work of mortal hands.
On questioning the Mambari they were answered that English manufactures
came out of the sea, and beads were gathered on its shore.
To Africans our cotton mills are fairy dreams. "How can the irons spin,
weave, and print so beautifully?" Our country is like what Taprobane was
to our ancestors - a strange realm of light, whence came the diamond,
muslin, and peacocks; an attempt at explanation of our manufactures
usually elicits the expression, "Truly ye are gods!"
When about to leave the Makondo, one of my men had dreamed that Mosantu
was shut up a prisoner in a stockade:
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