And It Is Much More Reasonable To Receive The Hints
Given In Genesis, Concerning Direct Instruction From God To Our
First
parents or their children in religious or moral duty, and probably in
the knowledge of the arts of life,
{6} than to give credence to the
theory that untaught savage man subsisted in a state which would
prove fatal to all his descendants, and that in such helpless state
he made many inventions which most of his progeny retained, but never
improved upon during some thirty centuries.
We crossed in canoes the arm of the Lake, which joins Chia to Nyassa,
and spent the night on its northern bank. The whole country adjacent
to the Lake, from this point up to Kota-kota Bay, is densely peopled
by thousands who have fled from the forays of the Mazitu in hopes of
protection from the Arabs who live there. In three running rivulets
we saw the Shuare palm, and an oil palm which is much inferior to
that on the West Coast. Though somewhat similar in appearance, the
fruit is not much larger than hazel-nuts, and the people do not use
them, on account of the small quantity of oil which they afford.
The idea of using oil for light never seems to have entered the
African mind. Here a bundle of split and dried bamboo, tied together
with creeping plants, as thick as a man's body, and about twenty feet
in length, is employed in the canoes as a torch to attract the fish
at night. It would be considered a piece of the most wasteful
extravagance to burn the oil they obtain from the castor-oil bean and
other seeds, and also from certain fish, or in fact to do anything
with it but anoint their heads and bodies.
We arrived at Kota-kota Bay in the afternoon of the 10th September,
1863; and sat down under a magnificent wild fig-tree with leaves ten
inches long, by five broad, about a quarter of a mile from the
village of Juma ben Saidi, and Yakobe ben Arame, whom we had met on
the River Kaombe, a little north of this, in our first exploration of
the Lake. We had rested but a short time when Juma, who is evidently
the chief person here, followed by about fifty people, came to salute
us and to invite us to take up our quarters in his village. The hut
which, by mistake, was offered, was so small and dirty, that we
preferred sleeping in an open space a few hundred yards off.
Juma afterwards apologized for the mistake, and presented us with
rice, meal, sugar-cane, and a piece of malachite. We returned his
visit on the following day, and found him engaged in building a dhow
or Arab vessel, to replace one which he said had been wrecked. This
new one was fifty feet long, twelve feet broad, and five feet deep.
The planks were of a wood like teak, here called Timbati, and the
timbers of a closer grained wood called Msoro.
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