They Struck Upon The Face Like Fine Drifting Snow.
Thousands Lay In The Boat When She Emerged From The Cloud Of Midges.
The People Gather These Minute Insects By Night, And Boil Them Into
Thick Cakes, To Be Used As A Relish - Millions Of Midges In A Cake.
A
kungo cake, an inch thick, and as large as the blue bonnet of a
Scotch ploughman, was offered to us; it was very dark in colour, and
tasted not unlike caviare, or salted locusts.
Abundance of excellent fish is found in the lake, and nearly all were
new to us. The mpasa, or sanjika, found by Dr. Kirk to be a kind of
carp, was running up the rivers to spawn, like our salmon at home:
the largest we saw was over two feet in length; it is a splendid
fish, and the best we have ever eaten in Africa. They were ascending
the rivers in August and September, and furnished active and
profitable employment to many fishermen, who did not mind their being
out of season. Weirs were constructed full of sluices, in each of
which was set a large basket-trap, through whose single tortuous
opening the fish once in has but small chance of escape. A short
distance below the weir, nets are stretched across from bank to bank,
so that it seemed a marvel how the most sagacious sanjika could get
up at all without being taken. Possibly a passage up the river is
found at night; but this is not the country of Sundays or "close
times" for either men or fish. The lake fish are caught chiefly in
nets, although men, and even women with babies on their backs, are
occasionally seen fishing from the rocks with hooks.
A net with small meshes is used for catching the young fry of a
silvery kind like pickerel, when they are about two inches long;
thousands are often taken in a single haul. We had a present of a
large bucketful one day for dinner: they tasted as if they had been
cooked with a little quinine, probably from their gall-bladders being
left in. In deep water, some sorts are taken by lowering fish-
baskets attached by a long cord to a float, around which is often
tied a mass of grass or weeds, as an alluring shade for the deep-sea
fish. Fleets of fine canoes are engaged in the fisheries. The men
have long paddles, and stand erect while using them. They sometimes
venture out when a considerable sea is running. Our Makololo
acknowledge that, in handling canoes, the Lake men beat them; they
were unwilling to cross the Zambesi even, when the wind blew fresh.
Though there are many crocodiles in the lake, and some of an
extraordinary size, the fishermen say that it is a rare thing for any
one to be carried off by these reptiles. When crocodiles can easily
obtain abundance of fish - their natural food - they seldom attack men;
but when unable to see to catch their prey, from the muddiness of the
water in floods, they are very dangerous.
Many men and boys are employed in gathering the buaze, in preparing
the fibre, and in making it into long nets. The knot of the net is
different from ours, for they invariably use what sailors call the
reef knot, but they net with a needle like that we use. From the
amount of native cotton cloth worn in many of the southern villages,
it is evident that a great number of hands and heads must be employed
in the cultivation of cotton, and in the various slow processes
through which it has to pass, before the web is finished in the
native loom. In addition to this branch of industry, an extensive
manufacture of cloth, from the inner bark of an undescribed tree, of
the botanical group, Caesalpineae, is ever going on, from one end of
the lake to the other; and both toil and time are required to procure
the bark, and to prepare it by pounding and steeping it to render it
soft and pliable. The prodigious amount of the bark clothing worn
indicates the destruction of an immense number of trees every year;
yet the adjacent heights seem still well covered with timber.
The Lake people are by no means handsome: the women are VERY plain;
and really make themselves hideous by the means they adopt to render
themselves attractive. The pelele, or ornament for the upper lip, is
universally worn by the ladies; the most valuable is of pure tin,
hammered into the shape of a small dish; some are made of white
quartz, and give the wearer the appearance of having an inch or more
of one of Price's patent candles thrust through the lip, and
projecting beyond the tip of the nose.
In character, the Lake tribes are very much like other people; there
are decent men among them, while a good many are no better than they
should be. They are open-handed enough: if one of us, as was often
the case, went to see a net drawn, a fish was always offered.
Sailing one day past a number of men, who had just dragged their nets
ashore, at one of the fine fisheries at Pamalombe, we were hailed and
asked to stop, and received a liberal donation of beautiful fish.
Arriving late one afternoon at a small village on the lake, a number
of the inhabitants manned two canoes, took out their seine, dragged
it, and made us a present of the entire haul. The northern chief,
Marenga, a tall handsome man, with a fine aquiline nose, whom we
found living in his stockade in a forest about twenty miles north of
the mountain Kowirwe, behaved like a gentleman to us. His land
extended from Dambo to the north of Makuza hill. He was specially
generous, and gave us bountiful presents of food and beer. "Do they
wear such things in your country?" he asked, pointing to his iron
bracelet, which was studded with copper, and highly prized.
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