Most Of The Africans Are Natural-Born Traders,
They Love Trade More For The Sake Of Trading Than For What They Make
By It.
An intelligent gentleman of Tette told us that native traders
often come to him with a tusk for sale,
Consider the price he offers,
demand more, talk over it, retire to consult about it, and at length
go away without selling it; next day they try another merchant, talk,
consider, get puzzled and go off as on the previous day, and continue
this course daily until they have perhaps seen every merchant in the
village, and then at last end by selling the precious tusk to some
one for even less than the first merchant had offered. Their love of
dawdling in the transaction arises from the self-importance conferred
on them by their being the object of the wheedling and coaxing of
eager merchants, a feeling to which even the love of gain is
subordinate.
The native medical profession is reasonably well represented. In
addition to the regular practitioners, who are a really useful class,
and know something of their profession, and the nature and power of
certain medicines, there are others who devote their talents to some
speciality. The elephant doctor prepares a medicine which is
considered indispensable to the hunters when attacking that noble and
sagacious beast; no hunter is willing to venture out before investing
in this precious nostrum. The crocodile doctor sells a charm which
is believed to possess the singular virtue of protecting its owner
from crocodiles. Unwittingly we offended the crocodile school of
medicine while at Tette, by shooting one of these huge reptiles as it
lay basking in the sun on a sandbank; the doctors came to the
Makololo in wrath, clamouring to know why the white man had shot
their crocodile.
A shark's hook was baited one evening with a dog, of which the
crocodile is said to be particularly fond; but the doctors removed
the bait, on the principle that the more crocodiles the more demand
for medicine, or perhaps because they preferred to eat the dog
themselves. Many of the natives of this quarter are known, as in the
South Seas, to eat the dog without paying any attention to its
feeding. The dice doctor or diviner is an important member of the
community, being consulted by Portuguese and natives alike. Part of
his business is that of a detective, it being his duty to discover
thieves. When goods are stolen, he goes and looks at the place,
casts his dice, and waits a few days, and then, for a consideration,
tells who is the thief: he is generally correct, for he trusts not
to his dice alone; he has confidential agents all over the village,
by whose inquiries and information he is enabled to detect the
culprit. Since the introduction of muskets, gun doctors have sprung
up, and they sell the medicine which professes to make good marksmen;
others are rain doctors, etc., etc. The various schools deal in
little charms, which are hung round the purchaser's neck to avert
evil: some of them contain the medicine, others increase its power.
Indigo, about three or four feet high, grows in great luxuriance in
the streets of Tette, and so does the senna plant. The leaves are
undistinguishable from those imported in England. A small amount of
first-rate cotton is cultivated by the native population for the
manufacture of a coarse cloth. A neighbouring tribe raises the
sugar-cane, and makes a little sugar; but they use most primitive
wooden rollers, and having no skill in mixing lime with the extracted
juice, the product is of course of very inferior quality. Plenty of
magnetic iron ore is found near Tette, and coal also to any amount; a
single cliff-seam measuring twenty-five feet in thickness. It was
found to burn well in the steamer on the first trial. Gold is washed
for in the beds of rivers, within a couple of days of Tette. The
natives are fully aware of its value, but seldom search for it, and
never dig deeper than four or five feet. They dread lest the falling
in of the sand of the river's bed should bury them. In former times,
when traders went with hundreds of slaves to the washings, the
produce was considerable. It is now insignificant. The gold-
producing lands have always been in the hands of independent tribes.
Deep cuttings near the sources of the gold-yielding streams seem
never to have been tried here, as in California and Australia, nor
has any machinery been used save common wooden basins for washing.
CHAPTER II.
Kebrabasa Rapids - Tette - African fever - Exploration of the Shire -
Discovery of Lake Shirwa.
Our curiosity had been so much excited by the reports we had heard of
the Kebrabasa rapids, that we resolved to make a short examination of
them, and seized the opportunity of the Zambesi being unusually low,
to endeavour to ascertain their character while uncovered by the
water. We reached them on the 9th of November. The country between
Tette and Panda Mokua, where navigation ends, is well wooded and
hilly on both banks. Panda Mokua is a hill two miles below the
rapids, capped with dolomite containing copper ore.
Conspicuous among the trees, for its gigantic size, and bark coloured
exactly like Egyptian syenite, is the burly Baobab. It often makes
the other trees of the forest look like mere bushes in comparison. A
hollow one, already mentioned, is 74 feet in circumference, another
was 84, and some have been found on the West Coast which measure 100
feet. The lofty range of Kebrabasa, consisting chiefly of conical
hills, covered with scraggy trees, crosses the Zambesi, and confines
it within a narrow, rough, and rocky dell of about a quarter of a
mile in breadth; over this, which may be called the flood-bed of the
river, large masses of rock are huddled in indescribable confusion.
The drawing, for the use of which, and of others, our thanks are due
to Lord Russell, conveys but a faint idea of the scene, inasmuch as
the hills which confine the river do not appear in the sketch.
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