On Leaving This Place We Were Deserted By One Of Our Party, Mboenga,
An Ambonda Man, Who Had Accompanied Us All The Way To Loanda And Back.
His Father Was Living With Masiko, And It Was Natural For Him
To Wish To Join His Own Family Again.
He went off honestly,
with the exception of taking a fine "tari" skin given me by Nyamoana,
but he left a parcel of gun-flints which he had carried for me
all the way from Loanda.
I regretted parting with him thus,
and sent notice to him that he need not have run away,
and if he wished to come to Sekeletu again he would be welcome.
We subsequently met a large party of Barotse fleeing in the same direction;
but when I represented to them that there was a probability
of their being sold as slaves in Londa, and none in the country of Sekeletu,
they concluded to return. The grievance which the Barotse most feel
is being obliged to live with Sekeletu at Linyanti, where there is neither
fish nor fowl, nor any other kind of food, equal in quantity
to what they enjoy in their own fat valley.
A short distance below the confluence of the Leeba and Leeambye
we met a number of hunters belonging to the tribe called Mambowe,
who live under Masiko. They had dried flesh of hippopotami, buffaloes,
and alligators. They stalk the animals by using the stratagem of a cap
made of the skin of a leche's or poku's head, having the horns still attached,
and another made so as to represent the upper white part of the crane
called jabiru (`Mycteru Senegalensis'), with its long neck and beak above.
With these on, they crawl through the grass; they can easily
put up their heads so far as to see their prey without being recognized until
they are within bow-shot.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 730 of 1070
Words from 209451 to 209766
of 306638
