Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - David Livingstone (best romantic books to read .TXT) 📗

them also by means of a spear inserted in a beam of wood, which being suspended on the branch of a tree by a cord attached to a latch fastened in the path, and intended to be struck by the animal's foot, leads to the fall of the beam, and, the spear being poisoned, causes death in a few hours.

We were detained by continuous rains several days at this island.

The clouds rested upon the tops of the hills as they came from the eastward, and then poured down plenteous showers on the valleys below.

As soon as we could move, Tomba Nyama, the head man of the island, volunteered the loan of a canoe to cross a small river, called the Chongwe, which we found to be about fifty or sixty yards broad and flooded.

All this part of the country was well known to Sekwebu, and he informed us that, when he passed through it as a boy, the inhabitants possessed abundance of cattle, and there were no tsetse.

The existence of the insect now shows that it may return in company with the larger game. The vegetation along the bank was exceedingly rank, and the bushes so tangled that it was difficult to get on. The paths had been made by the wild animals alone, for the general pathway of the people is the river, in their canoes.

We usually followed the footpaths of the game, and of these there was no lack.

Buffaloes, zebras, pallahs, and waterbucks abound, and there is also a great abundance of wild pigs, koodoos, and the black antelope.

We got one buffalo as he was rolling himself in a pool of mud.

He had a large piece of skin torn off his flank, it was believed by an alligator.

We were struck by the fact that, as soon as we came between the ranges of hills which flank the Zambesi, the rains felt warm.

At sunrise the thermometer stood at from 82 Deg. to 86 Deg.; at midday, in the coolest shade, namely, in my little tent, under a shady tree, at 96 Deg. to 98 Deg.; and at sunset it was 86 Deg.

This is different from any thing we experienced in the interior, for these rains always bring down the mercury to 72 Deg. or even 68 Deg.

There, too, we found a small black coleopterous insect, which stung like the mosquito, but injected less poison; it puts us in mind of that insect, which does not exist in the high lands we had left.

JANUARY 6TH, 1856. Each village we passed furnished us with a couple of men to take us on to the next. They were useful in showing us the parts least covered with jungle. When we came near a village, we saw men, women, and children employed in weeding their gardens, they being great agriculturists. Most of the men are muscular, and have large plowman hands. Their color is the same admixture, from very dark to light olive, that we saw in Londa. Though all have thick lips and flat noses, only the more degraded of the population possess the ugly negro physiognomy. They mark themselves by a line of little raised cicatrices, each of which is a quarter of an inch long; they extend from the tip of the nose to the root of the hair on the forehead.

It is remarkable that I never met with an Albino in crossing Africa, though, from accounts published by the Portuguese, I was led to expect that they were held in favor as doctors by certain chiefs.

I saw several in the south: one at Kuruman is a full-grown woman, and a man having this peculiarity of skin was met with in the colony.

Their bodies are always blistered on exposure to the sun, as the skin is more tender than that of the blacks. The Kuruman woman lived some time at Kolobeng, and generally had on her bosom and shoulders the remains of large blisters. She was most anxious to be made black, but nitrate of silver, taken internally, did not produce its usual effect.

During the time I resided at Mabotsa, a woman came to the station with a fine boy, an Albino. The father had ordered her to throw him away, but she clung to her offspring for many years. He was remarkably intelligent for his age. The pupil of the eye was of a pink color, and the eye itself was unsteady in vision. The hair, or rather wool, was yellow, and the features were those common among the Bechuanas.

After I left the place the mother is said to have become tired of living apart from the father, who refused to have her while she retained the son.

She took him out one day, and killed him close to the village of Mabotsa, and nothing was done to her by the authorities. From having met with no Albinos in Londa, I suspect they are there also put to death.

We saw one dwarf only in Londa, and brands on him showed he had once been a slave; and there is one dwarf woman at Linyanti.

The general absence of deformed persons is partly owing to their destruction in infancy, and partly to the mode of life being a natural one, so far as ventilation and food are concerned. They use but few unwholesome mixtures as condiments, and, though their undress exposes them to the vicissitudes of the temperature, it does not harbor vomites.

It was observed that, when smallpox and measles visited the country, they were most severe on the half-castes who were clothed. In several tribes, a child which is said to "tlola", transgress, is put to death.

"Tlolo", or transgression, is ascribed to several curious cases.

A child who cut the upper front teeth before the under was always put to death among the Bakaa, and, I believe, also among the Bakwains. In some tribes, a case of twins renders one of them liable to death; and an ox, which, while lying in the pen, beats the ground with its tail, is treated in the same way. It is thought to be calling death to visit the tribe.

When I was coming through Londa, my men carried a great number of fowls, of a larger breed than any they had at home. If one crowed before midnight, it had been guilty of "tlolo", and was killed. The men often carried them sitting on their guns, and, if one began to crow in a forest, the owner would give it a beating, by way of teaching it not to be guilty of crowing at unseasonable hours.

The women here are in the habit of piercing the upper lip, and gradually enlarging the orifice until they can insert a shell.

The lip then appears drawn out beyond the perpendicular of the nose, and gives them a most ungainly aspect. Sekwebu remarked, "These women want to make their mouths like those of ducks;"

and, indeed, it does appear as if they had the idea that female beauty of lip had been attained by the `Ornithorhynchus paradoxus' alone.

This custom prevails throughout the country of the Maravi, and no one could see it without confessing that fashion had never led women to a freak more mad. We had rains now every day, and considerable cloudiness, but the sun often burst through with scorching intensity.

All call out against it then, saying, "O the sun! that is rain again."

It was worth noticing that my companions never complained of the heat while on the highlands, but when we descended into the lowlands of Angola, and here also, they began to fret on account of it. I myself felt an oppressive steaminess in the atmosphere which I had not experienced on the higher lands.

As the game was abundant and my party very large, I had still to supply their wants with the gun. We slaughtered the oxen only when unsuccessful in hunting. We always entered into friendly relations with the head men of the different villages, and they presented grain and other food freely. One man gave a basinful of rice, the first we met with in the country. It is never seen in the interior. He said he knew it was "white man's corn", and when I wished to buy some more, he asked me to give him a slave. This was the first symptom of the slave-trade on this side of the country. The last of these friendly head men was named Mobala; and having passed him in peace, we had no anticipation of any thing else; but, after a few hours, we reached Selole or Chilole, and found that he not only considered us enemies, but had actually sent an express to raise the tribe of Mburuma against us.

All the women of Selole had fled, and the few people we met exhibited symptoms of terror. An armed party had come from Mburuma in obedience to the call; but the head man of the company, being Mburuma's brother, suspecting that it was a hoax, came to our encampment and told us the whole. When we explained our objects, he told us that Mburuma, he had no doubt, would receive us well. The reason why Selole acted in this foolish manner we afterward found to be this: an Italian named Simoens, and nicknamed Siriatomba (don't eat tobacco), had married the daughter of a chief called Sekokole, living north of Tete.

He armed a party of fifty slaves with guns, and, ascending the river in canoes some distance beyond the island Meya makaba, attacked several inhabited islands beyond, securing a large number of prisoners, and much ivory. On his return, the different chiefs, at the instigation of his father-in-law, who also did not wish him to set up as a chief, united, attacked and dispersed the party of Simoens, and killed him while trying to escape on foot. Selole imagined that I was another Italian, or, as he expressed it, "Siriatomba risen from the dead." In his message to Mburuma he even said that Mobala, and all the villages beyond, were utterly destroyed by our fire-arms, but the sight of Mobala himself, who had come to the village of Selole, led the brother of Mburuma to see at once that it was all a hoax.

But for this, the foolish fellow Selole might have given us trouble.

We saw many of the liberated captives of this Italian among the villages here, and Sekwebu found them to be Matebele. The brother of Mburuma had a gun, which was the first we had seen in coming eastward. Before we reached Mburuma my men went to attack a troop of elephants, as they were much in need of meat.

When the troop began to run, one of them fell into a hole, and before he could extricate himself an opportunity was afforded for all the men to throw their spears. When he rose he was like a huge porcupine, for each of the seventy or eighty men had discharged more than one spear at him. As they had no more, they sent for me to finish him.

In order to put him at once out of pain, I went to within twenty yards, there being a bank between us which he could not readily climb.

I rested the gun upon an ant-hill so as to take a steady aim; but, though I fired twelve two-ounce bullets, all I had, into different parts, I could not kill him. As it was becoming dark, I advised my men to let him stand, being sure of finding him dead in the morning; but, though