The Native Eye Was More Penetrating Than
Ours; For The Expression Of Our Men Was, "He Has Drunk The Blood
Of
men - you may see it in his eyes." He made no further difficulty
about Mr. Baldwin; but the week
After we left he inflicted a severe
wound on the head of one of his wives with his rhinoceros-horn club.
She, being of a good family, left him, and we subsequently met her
and another of his wives proceeding up the country.
The ground is strewn with agates for a number of miles above the
Falls; but the fires, which burn off the grass yearly, have injured
most of those on the surface. Our men were delighted to hear that
they do as well as flints for muskets; and this with the new ideas of
the value of gold (dalama) and malachite, that they had acquired at
Tette, made them conceive that we were not altogether silly in
picking up and looking at stones.
Marching up the river, we crossed the Lekone at its confluence, about
eight miles above the island Kalai, and went on to a village opposite
the Island Chundu. Nambowe, the headman, is one of the Matebele or
Zulus, who have had to flee from the anger of Moselekatse, to take
refuge with the Makololo.
We spent Sunday, the 12th, at the village of Molele, a tall old
Batoka, who was proud of having formerly been a great favourite with
Sebituane. In coming hither we passed through patches of forest
abounding in all sorts of game. The elephants' tusks, placed over
graves, are now allowed to decay, and the skulls, which the former
Batoka stuck on poles to ornament their villages, not being renewed,
now crumble into dust. Here the famine, of which we had heard,
became apparent, Molele's people being employed in digging up the
tsitla root out of the marshes, and cutting out the soft core of the
young palm-trees, for food.
The village, situated on the side of a wooded ridge, commands an
extensive view of a great expanse of meadow and marsh lying along the
bank of the river. On these holmes herds of buffaloes and waterbucks
daily graze in security, as they have in the reedy marshes a refuge
into which they can run on the approach of danger. The pretty little
tianyane or ourebi is abundant further on, and herds of blue
weldebeests or brindled gnus (Katoblepas Gorgon) amused us by their
fantastic capers. They present a much more ferocious aspect than the
lion himself, but are quite timid. We never could, by waving a red
handkerchief, according to the prescription, induce them to venture
near to us. It may therefore be that the red colour excites their
fury only when wounded or hotly pursued. Herds of lechee or lechwe
now enliven the meadows; and they and their younger brother, the
graceful poku, smaller, and of a rounder contour, race together
towards the grassy fens. We venture to call the poku after the late
Major Vardon, a noble-hearted African traveller; but fully anticipate
that some aspiring Nimrod will prefer that his own name should go
down to posterity on the back of this buck.
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