They Had Evidently Taken Us For
Natives, And The Sight Of A White Man Was Sufficient To Put Them To
Flight.
Had we been nearer the Coast, where the people are
accustomed to the slave-trade, we should have found this affair a
more difficult one to deal with; but, as a rule, the people of the
interior are much more mild in character than those on the confines
of civilization.
The above very small adventure was all the danger we were aware of in
this journey; but a report was spread from the Portuguese villages on
the Zambesi, similar to several rumours that had been raised before,
that Dr. Livingstone had been murdered by the Makololo; and very
unfortunately the report reached England before it could be
contradicted.
One benefit arose from the Mazitu adventure. Zachariah, and others
who had too often to be reproved for lagging behind, now took their
places in the front rank; and we had no difficulty in making very
long marches for several days, for all believed that the Mazitu would
follow our footsteps, and attack us while we slept.
A party of Babisa tobacco-traders came from the N.W. to Molamba,
while we were there; and one of them asserted several times that the
Loapula, after emerging from Moelo, received the Lulua, and then
flowed into Lake Mofu, and thence into Tanganyika; and from the last-
named Lake into the sea. This is the native idea of the geography of
the interior; and, to test the general knowledge of our informant, we
asked him about our acquaintances in Londa; as Moene, Katema, Shinde
or Shinte, who live south-west of the rivers mentioned, and found
that our friends there were perfectly well-known to him and to others
of these travelled natives. In the evening two of the Babisa came
in, and reported that the Mazitu had followed us to the village
called Chigaragara, at which we slept at the bottom of the descent.
The whole party of traders set off at once, though the sun had set.
We ourselves had given rise to the report, for the women of
Chigaragara, supposing us in the distance to be Mazitu, fled, with
all their household utensils on their heads, and had no opportunity
afterwards of finding out their mistake. We spent the night where we
were, and next morning, declining Nkomo's entreaty to go and kill
elephants, took our course along the shores of the Lake southwards.
We have only been at the Lake at one season of the year: then the
wind blows strongly from the east, and indeed this is its prevailing
direction hence to the Orange River; a north or a south wind is rare,
and seldom lasts more than three days. As the breeze now blew over a
large body of water, towards us, it was delightful; but when facing
it on the table-land it was so strong as materially to impede our
progress, and added considerably to the labour of travelling. Here
it brought large quantities of the plant (Vallisneriae), from which
the natives extract salt by burning, and which, if chewed, at once
shows its saline properties by the taste. Clouds of the kungo, or
edible midges, floated on the Lake, and many rested on the bushes on
land.
The reeds along the shores of the Lake were still crowded with
fugitives, and a great loss of life must since have taken place; for,
after the corn they had brought with them was expended, famine would
ensue. Even now we passed many women and children digging up the
roots, about the size of peas, of an aromatic grass; and their wasted
forms showed that this poor hard fare was to allay, if possible, the
pangs of hunger. The babies at the breast crowed to us as we passed,
their mothers kneeling and grubbing for the roots; the poor little
things still drawing nourishment from the natural fountain were
unconscious of that sinking of heart which their parents must have
felt in knowing that the supply for the little ones must soon fail.
No one would sell a bit of food to us: fishermen, even, would not
part with the produce of their nets, except in exchange for some
other kind of food. Numbers of newly-made graves showed that many
had already perished, and hundreds were so emaciated that they had
the appearance of human skeletons swathed in brown and wrinkled
leather. In passing mile after mile, marked with these sad proofs
that "man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn," one
experiences an overpowering sense of helplessness to alleviate human
woe, and breathes a silent prayer to the Almighty to hasten the good
time coming when "man and man the world o'er, shall brothers be for
all that." One small redeeming consideration in all this misery
could not but be felt; these ills were inflicted by heathen Mazitu,
and not by, or for, those who say to Him who is higher than the
highest, "We believe that thou shalt come to be our Judge."
We crossed the Mokole, rested at Chitanda, and then left the Lake,
and struck away N.W. to Chinsamba's. Our companions, who were so
much oppressed by the rarefied air of the plateau, still showed signs
of exhaustion, though now only 1300 feet above the sea, and did not
recover flesh and spirits till we again entered the Lower Shire
Valley, which is of so small an altitude, that, without simultaneous
observations with the barometer there and on the sea-coast, the
difference would not be appreciable.
On a large plain on which we spent one night, we had the company of
eighty tobacco traders on their way from Kasungu to Chinsamba's. The
Mazitu had attacked and killed two of them, near the spot where the
Zulus fled from us without answering our questions. The traders were
now so frightened that, instead of making a straight course with us,
they set off by night to follow the shores of the Lake to Tsenga, and
then turn west.
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