The Country Is Rocky And Rough,
The Soil Being Red Sand, Which Is Covered With Beautiful Green Trees,
Yielding Abundance Of Wild Fruits.
The father of Moyara
was a powerful chief, but the son now sits among the ruins of the town,
with four or five wives and very few people.
At his hamlet a number of stakes
are planted in the ground, and I counted fifty-four human skulls
hung on their points. These were Matebele, who, unable to approach Sebituane
on the island of Loyela, had returned sick and famishing. Moyara's father
took advantage of their reduced condition, and after putting them to death,
mounted their heads in the Batoka fashion. The old man
who perpetrated this deed now lies in the middle of his son's huts,
with a lot of rotten ivory over his grave. One can not help feeling thankful
that the reign of such wretches is over. They inhabited
the whole of this side of the country, and were probably the barrier
to the extension of the Portuguese commerce in this direction. When looking
at these skulls, I remarked to Moyara that many of them were those
of mere boys. He assented readily, and pointed them out as such. I asked
why his father had killed boys. "To show his fierceness," was the answer.
"Is it fierceness to kill boys?" "Yes; they had no business here."
When I told him that this probably would insure his own death if the Matebele
came again, he replied, "When I hear of their coming I shall hide the bones."
He was evidently proud of these trophies of his father's ferocity,
and I was assured by other Batoka that few strangers ever returned
from a visit to this quarter.
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