They Urged That They Wished To Leave The Shell
With Their Wives, As A Sort Of Payment To Them For Enduring
Their Husbands' Absence So Long.
Having delivered the precious shell,
we went west-by-north to the River Chikapa, which here (lat.
10d 22' S.)
is forty or fifty yards wide, and at present was deep;
it was seen flowing over a rocky, broken cataract with great noise
about half a mile above our ford. We were ferried over in a canoe,
made out of a single piece of bark sewed together at the ends,
and having sticks placed in it at different parts to act as ribs.
The word Chikapa means bark or skin; and as this is the only river
in which we saw this kind of canoe used, and we heard that this stream
is so low during most of the year as to be easily fordable,
it probably derives its name from the use made of the bark canoes
when it is in flood. We now felt the loss of our pontoon, for the people
to whom the canoe belonged made us pay once when we began to cross,
then a second time when half of us were over, and a third time
when all were over but my principal man Pitsane and myself.
Loyanke took off his cloth and paid my passage with it.
The Makololo always ferried their visitors over rivers without pay,
and now began to remark that they must in future fleece the Mambari
as these Chiboque had done to us; they had all been loud
in condemnation of the meanness, and when I asked if they could descend
to be equally mean, I was answered that they would only do it in revenge.
They like to have a plausible excuse for meanness.
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