This Seems To Be The Duty Of The Makololo Wife To Her Husband,
And Strangers Sometimes Receive The Honour.
One of our party, having
wandered, slept at the village of Nambowe.
When he laid down, to his
surprise two of Nambowe's wives came at once, and carefully and
kindly spread his kaross over him.
A beautiful silvery fish with reddish fins, called Ngwesi, is very
abundant in the river; large ones weigh fifteen or twenty pounds
each. Its teeth are exposed, and so arranged that, when they meet,
the edges cut a hook like nippers. The Ngwesi seems to be a very
ravenous fish. It often gulps down the Konokono, a fish armed with
serrated bones more than an inch in length in the pectoral and dorsal
fins, which, fitting into a notch at the roots, can be put by the
fish on full cock or straight out, - they cannot be folded down,
without its will, and even break in resisting. The name "Konokono,"
elbow-elbow, is given it from a resemblance its extended fins are
supposed to bear to a man's elbows stuck out from his body. It often
performs the little trick of cocking its fins in the stomach of the
Ngwesi, and, the elbows piercing its enemy's sides, he is frequently
found floating dead. The fin bones seem to have an acrid secretion
on them, for the wound they make is excessively painful. The
Konokono barks distinctly when landed with the hook. Our canoe-men
invariably picked up every dead fish they saw on the surface of the
water, however far gone.
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