Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa by David Livingstone (fun to read .txt) 📕

This being the rainy season, great quantities of mushrooms were met with, and were eagerly devoured by my companions: the edible variety is always found growing out of ant-hills, and attains the diameter of the crown of a hat; they are quite white, and very good, even when eaten raw; they occupy an extensive region of the interior; some, not edible, are of a brilliant red, and others are of the same light blue as the paper used by apothecaries to put up their medicines.

There was a considerable pleasure, in spite of rain and fever, in this new scenery. The deep gloom contrasted strongly with the shadeless glare of the Kalahari, which had left an indelible impression on my memory. Though drenched day by day at this time, and for months afterward, it was long before I could believe that we were getting too much of a good thing. Nor could I look at water being thrown away without a slight, quick impression flitting across the mind that we were guilty of wasting it. Every now and then we emerged from the deep gloom into a pretty little valley, having a damp portion in the middle; which, though now filled with water, at other times contains moisture enough for wells only. These wells have shades put over them in the form of little huts.

We crossed, in canoes, a little never-failing stream, which passes by the name of Lefuje, or "the rapid". It comes from a goodly high mountain, called Monakadzi (the woman), which gladdened our eyes as it rose to our sight about twenty or thirty miles to the east of our course.

It is of an oblong shape, and seemed at least eight hundred feet above the plains. The Lefuje probably derives its name from the rapid descent of the short course it has to flow from Monakadzi to the Leeba.

The number of little villages seemed about equal to the number of valleys.

At some we stopped and rested, the people becoming more liberal as we advanced. Others we found deserted, a sudden panic having seized the inhabitants, though the drum of Manenko was kept beaten pretty constantly, in order to give notice of the approach of great people. When we had decided to remain for the night at any village, the inhabitants lent us the roofs of their huts, which in form resemble those of the Makololo, or a Chinaman's hat, and can be taken off the walls at pleasure.

They lifted them off, and brought them to the spot we had selected as our lodging, and, when my men had propped them up with stakes, they were then safely housed for the night. Every one who comes to salute either Manenko or ourselves rubs the upper parts of the arms and chest with ashes; those who wish to show profounder reverence put some also on the face.

We found that every village had its idols near it. This is the case all through the country of the Balonda, so that, when we came to an idol in the woods, we always knew that we were within a quarter of an hour of human habitations. One very ugly idol we passed rested on a horizontal beam placed on two upright posts.

This beam was furnished with two loops of cord, as of a chain, to suspend offerings before it. On remarking to my companions that these idols had ears, but that they heard not, etc., I learned that the Balonda, and even the Barotse, believe that divination may be performed by means of these blocks of wood and clay; and though the wood itself could not hear, the owners had medicines by which it could be made to hear and give responses, so that if an enemy were approaching they would have full information. Manenko having brought us to a stand on account of slight indisposition and a desire to send forward notice of our approach to her uncle, I asked why it was necessary to send forward information of our movements, if Shinte had idols who could tell him every thing. "She did it only,"* was the reply.

It is seldom of much use to show one who worships idols the folly of idolatry without giving something else as an object of adoration instead.

They do not love them. They fear them, and betake themselves to their idols only when in perplexity and danger.

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While delayed, by Manenko's management, among the Balonda villages, a little to the south of the town of Shinte, we were well supplied by the villagers with sweet potatoes and green maize; Sambanza went to his mother's village for supplies of other food.

I was laboring under fever, and did not find it very difficult to exercise patience with her whims; but it being Saturday, I thought we might as well go to the town for Sunday (15th).

"No; her messenger must return from her uncle first."

Being sure that the answer of the uncle would be favorable, I thought we might go on at once, and not lose two days in the same spot.

"No, it is our custom;" and every thing else I could urge was answered in the genuine pertinacious lady style. She ground some meal for me with her own hands, and when she brought it told me she had actually gone to a village and begged corn for the purpose. She said this with an air as if the inference must be drawn by even a stupid white man: "I know how to manage, don't I?" It was refreshing to get food which could be eaten without producing the unpleasantness described by the Rev. John Newton, of St. Mary's, Woolnoth, London, when obliged to eat the same roots while a slave in the West Indies.

The day (January 14th), for a wonder, was fair, and the sun shone, so as to allow us to dry our clothing and other goods, many of which were mouldy and rotten from the long-continued damp. The guns rusted, in spite of being oiled every evening.

During the night we were all awakened by a terrific shriek from one of Manenko's ladies. She piped out so loud and long that we all imagined she had been seized by a lion, and my men snatched up their arms, which they always place so as to be ready at a moment's notice, and ran to the rescue; but we found the alarm had been caused by one of the oxen thrusting his head into her hut and smelling her: she had put her hand on his cold, wet nose, and thought it was all over with her.

On Sunday afternoon messengers arrived from Shinte, expressing his approbation of the objects we had in view in our journey through the country, and that he was glad of the prospect of a way being opened by which white men might visit him, and allow him to purchase ornaments at pleasure.

Manenko now threatened in sport to go on, and I soon afterward perceived that what now seemed to me the dilly-dallying way of this lady was the proper mode of making acquaintance with the Balonda; and much of the favor with which I was received in different places was owing to my sending forward messengers to state the object of our coming before entering each town and village. When we came in sight of a village we sat down under the shade of a tree and sent forward a man to give notice who we were and what were our objects. The head man of the village then sent out his principal men, as Shinte now did, to bid us welcome and show us a tree under which we might sleep. Before I had profited by the rather tedious teaching of Manenko, I sometimes entered a village and created unintentional alarm. The villagers would continue to look upon us with suspicion as long as we remained. Shinte sent us two large baskets of manioc and six dried fishes. His men had the skin of a monkey, called in their tongue "poluma" (`Colobus guereza'), of a jet black color, except the long mane, which is pure white: it is said to be found in the north, in the country of Matiamvo, the paramount chief of all the Balonda. We learned from them that they are in the habit of praying to their idols when unsuccessful in killing game or in any other enterprise. They behaved with reverence at our religious services. This will appear important if the reader remembers the almost total want of prayer and reverence we encountered in the south.

Our friends informed us that Shinte would be highly honored by the presence of three white men in his town at once. Two others had sent forward notice of their approach from another quarter (the west); could it be Barth or Krapf? How pleasant to meet with Europeans in such an out-of-the-way region! The rush of thoughts made me almost forget my fever. Are they of the same color as I am?

"Yes; exactly so." And have the same hair? "Is that hair?

we thought it was a wig; we never saw the like before; this white man must be of the sort that lives in the sea." Henceforth my men took the hint, and always sounded my praises as a true specimen of the variety of white men who live in the sea. "Only look at his hair; it is made quite straight by the sea-water!"

I explained to them again and again that, when it was said we came out of the sea, it did not mean that we came from beneath the water; but the fiction has been widely spread in the interior by the Mambari that the real white men live in the sea, and the myth was too good not to be taken advantage of by my companions; so, notwithstanding my injunctions, I believe that, when I was out of hearing, my men always represented themselves as led by a genuine merman: "Just see his hair!"

If I returned from walking to a little distance, they would remark of some to whom they had been holding forth, "These people want to see your hair."

As the strangers had woolly hair like themselves, I had to give up the idea of meeting any thing more European than two half-caste Portuguese, engaged in trading for slaves, ivory, and bees'-wax.

16TH. After a short march we came to a most lovely valley about a mile and a half wide, and stretching away eastward up to a low prolongation of Monakadzi. A small stream meanders down the centre of this pleasant green glen; and on a little rill, which flows into it from the western side, stands the town of Kabompo, or, as he likes best to be called, Shinte. (Lat. 12d 37' 35" S., long. 22d 47' E.) When Manenko thought the sun was high enough for us to make a lucky entrance, we found the town embowered in banana and other tropical trees having great expansion of leaf; the streets are straight, and present a complete contrast to those of the Bechuanas, which are all very tortuous.

Here, too, we first saw native huts with square walls and round roofs.

The fences or walls of the courts which surround the huts are wonderfully straight, and made of upright poles a few inches apart, with strong grass or leafy bushes neatly woven between.