After The More Serious Business Was Over, I Asked If He Had Ever Seen
A White Man Before.
He replied, "Never; you are the very first I have seen
with a white skin and straight hair; your clothing, too,
is different from any we have ever seen." They had been visited
by native Portuguese and Mambari only.
On learning from some of the people that "Shinte's mouth was bitter
for want of tasting ox-flesh," I presented him with an ox,
to his great delight; and, as his country is so well adapted for cattle,
I advised him to begin a trade in cows with the Makololo.
He was pleased with the idea, and when we returned from Loanda,
we found that he had profited by the hint, for he had got three,
and one of them justified my opinion of the country, for it was more
like a prize heifer for fatness than any we had seen in Africa.
He soon afterward sent us a basket of green maize boiled,
another of manioc-meal, and a small fowl. The maize shows by its size
the fertility of the black soil of all the valleys here,
and so does the manioc, though no manure is ever applied.
We saw manioc attain a height of six feet and upward, and this is a plant
which requires the very best soil.
During this time Manenko had been extremely busy with all her people
in getting up a very pretty hut and court-yard, to be, as she said,
her residence always when white men were brought by her along the same path.
When she heard that we had given an ox to her uncle, she came forward to us
with the air of one wronged, and explained that "this white man
belonged to her; she had brought him here, and therefore the ox was hers,
not Shinte's." She ordered her men to bring it, got it slaughtered by them,
and presented her uncle with a leg only.
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