They Pushed On As Briskly As
Possible After It, But The Mountain Flank Which Forms The Coast
Proved Excessively Tedious And Fatiguing; Travelling All Day, The
Distance Made, In A Straight Line, Was Under Five Miles.
As soon as
day dawned, the march was resumed; and, after hearing at the first
inhabited rock that their
Companions had passed it the day before, a
goat was slaughtered out of the four which they had with them, when
suddenly, to the evident consternation of the men, seven Mazitu
appeared armed with spears and shields, with their heads dressed
fantastically with feathers. To hold a parley, Dr. Livingstone and
Moloka, a Makololo man who spoke Zulu, went unarmed to meet them. On
Dr. Livingstone approaching them, they ordered him to stop, and sit
down in the sun, while they sat in the shade. No, no!" was the
reply, "if you sit in the shade, so will we." They then rattled
their shields with their clubs, a proceeding which usually inspires
terror; but Moloka remarked, "It is not the first time we have heard
shields rattled." And all sat down together. They asked for a
present, to show their chief that they had actually met strangers -
something as evidence of having seen men who were not Arabs. And
they were requested in turn to take these strangers to the boat, or
to their chief. All the goods were in the boat, and to show that no
present such as they wanted was in his pockets, Dr. Livingstone
emptied them, turning out, among other things, a note-book: thinking
it was a pistol they started up, and said, "Put that in again." The
younger men then became boisterous, and demanded a goat. That could
not be spared, as they were the sole provisions. When they insisted,
they were asked how many of the party they had killed, that they thus
began to divide the spoil; this evidently made them ashamed. The
elders were more reasonable; they dreaded treachery, and were as much
afraid of Dr. Livingstone and his party as his men were of them; for
on leaving they sped away up the hills like frightened deer. One of
them, and probably the leader, was married, as seen by portions of
his hair sewn into a ring; all were observed by their teeth to be
people of the country, who had been incorporated into the Zulu tribe.
The way still led over a succession of steep ridges with ravines of
from 500 to 1000 feet in depth; some of the sides had to be scaled on
hands and knees, and no sooner was the top reached than the descent
began again. Each ravine had a running stream; and the whole
country, though so very rugged, had all been cultivated, and densely
peopled. Many banana-trees, uncared for patches of corn, and Congo-
bean bushes attested former cultivation. The population had all been
swept away; ruined villages, broken utensils, and human skeletons,
met with at every turn, told a sad tale.
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