Chapter 29 (3)

24TH. Mpende sent two of his principal men to order the people of a large island below to ferry us across. The river is very broad, and, though my men were well acquainted with the management of canoes, we could not all cross over before dark. It is 1200 yards from bank to bank, and between 700 and 800 of deep water, flowing at the rate of 3-3/4 miles per hour. We landed first on an island; then, to prevent our friends playing false with us, hauled the canoes up to our bivouac, and slept in them. Next morning we all reached the opposite bank in safety. We observed, as we came along the Zambesi, that it had fallen two feet below the height at which we first found it, and the water, though still muddy enough to deposit a film at the bottom of vessels in a few hours, is not nearly so red as it was, nor is there so much wreck on its surface. It is therefore not yet the period of the central Zambesi inundation, as we were aware also from our knowledge of the interior. The present height of the water has been caused by rains outside the eastern ridge. The people here seem abundantly supplied with English cotton goods. The Babisa are the medium of trade, for we were informed that the Bazunga, who formerly visited these parts, have been prevented by the war from coming for the last two years. The Babisa are said to be so fond of a tusk that they will even sell a newly-married wife for one. As we were now not far from the latitude of Mozambique, I was somewhat tempted to strike away from the river to that port, instead of going to the S.E., in the direction the river flows; but, the great object of my journey being to secure water-carriage, I resolved to continue along the Zambesi, though it did lead me among the enemies of the Portuguese. The region to the north of the ranges of hills on our left is called Senga, from being the country of the Basenga, who are said to be great workers in iron, and to possess abundance of fine iron ore, which, when broken, shows veins of the pure metal in its substance. It has been well roasted in the operations of nature. Beyond Senga lies a range of mountains called Mashinga, to which the Portuguese in former times went to wash for gold, and beyond that are great numbers of tribes which pass under the general term Maravi. To the northeast there are extensive plains destitute of trees, but covered with grass, and in some places it is marshy. The whole of the country to the north of the Zambesi is asserted to be very much more fertile than that to the south. The Maravi, for instance, raise sweet potatoes of immense size, but when these are planted on the southern bank they soon degenerate. The root of this plant ('Convolvulus batata') does not keep more than two or three days, unless it is cut into thin slices and dried in the sun, but the Maravi manage to preserve them for months by digging a pit and burying them therein inclosed in wood-ashes. Unfortunately, the Maravi, and all the tribes on that side of the country, are at enmity with the Portuguese, and, as they practice night attacks in their warfare, it is dangerous to travel among them.

29TH. I was most sincerely thankful to find myself on the south bank of the Zambesi, and, having nothing else, I sent back one of my two spoons and a shirt as a thank-offering to Mpende. The different head men along this river act very much in concert, and if one refuses passage they all do, uttering the sage remark, "If so-and-so did not lend his canoes, he must have had some good reason." The next island we came to was that of a man named Mozinkwa. Here we were detained some days by continuous rains, and thought we observed the confirmation of the Bakwain theory of rains. A double tier of clouds floated quickly away to the west, and as soon as they began to come in an opposite direction the rains poured down. The inhabitants who live in a dry region like that of Kolobeng are nearly all as weather-wise as the rain-makers, and any one living among them for any length of time becomes as much interested in the motions of the clouds as they are themselves. Mr. Moffat, who was as sorely tried by droughts as we were, and had his attention directed in the same way, has noted the curious phenomenon of thunder without clouds. Mrs. L. heard it once, but I never had that good fortune. It is worth the attention of the observant. Humboldt has seen rain without clouds, a phenomenon quite as singular. I have been in the vicinity of the fall of three aerolites, none of which I could afterward discover. One fell into the lake Kumadau with a report somewhat like a sharp peal of thunder. The women of the Bakurutse villages there all uttered a scream on hearing it. This happened at midday, and so did another at what is called the Great Chuai, which was visible in its descent, and was also accompanied with a thundering noise. The third fell near Kuruman, and at night, and was seen as a falling star by people at Motito and at Daniel's Kuil, places distant forty miles on opposite sides of the spot. It sounded to me like the report of a great gun, and a few seconds after, a lesser sound, as if striking the earth after a rebound. Does the passage of a few such aerolites through the atmosphere to the earth by day cause thunder without clouds?

We were detained here so long that my tent became again quite rotten. One of my men, after long sickness, which I did not understand, died here. He was one of the Batoka, and when unable to walk I had some difficulty in making his companions carry him. They wished to leave him to die when his case became hopeless. Another of them deserted to Mozinkwa. He said that his motive for doing so was that the Makololo had killed both his father and mother, and, as he had neither wife nor child, there was no reason why he should continue longer with them. I did not object to his statements, but said if he should change his mind he would be welcome to rejoin us, and intimated to Mozinkwa that he must not be sold as a slave. We are now among people inured to slave-dealing. We were visited by men who had been as far as Tete or Nyungwe, and were told that we were but ten days from that fort. One of them, a Mashona man, who had come from a great distance to the southwest, was anxious to accompany us to the country of the white men; he had traveled far, and I found that he had also knowledge of the English tribe, and of their hatred to the trade in slaves. He told Sekwebu that the "English were men", an emphasis being put upon the term MEN, which leaves the impression that others are, as they express it in speaking scornfully, "only THINGS". Several spoke in the same manner, and I found that from Mpende's downward I rose higher every day in the estimation of my own people. Even the slaves gave a very high character to the English, and I found out afterward that, when I was first reported at Tete, the servants of my friend the commandant said to him in joke, "Ah! this is our brother who is coming; we shall all leave you and go with him." We had still, however, some difficulties in store for us before reaching that point.

The man who wished to accompany us came and told us before our departure that his wife would not allow him to go, and she herself came to confirm the decision. Here the women have only a small puncture in the upper lip, in which they insert a little button of tin. The perforation is made by degrees, a ring with an opening in it being attached to the lip, and the ends squeezed gradually together. The pressure on the flesh between the ends of the ring causes its absorption, and a hole is the result. Children may be seen with the ring on the lip, but not yet punctured. The tin they purchase from the Portuguese, and, although silver is reported to have been found in former times in this district, no one could distinguish it from tin. But they had a knowledge of gold, and for the first time I heard the word "dalama" (gold) in the native language. The word is quite unknown in the interior, and so is the metal itself. In conversing with the different people, we found the idea prevalent that those who had purchased slaves from them had done them an injury. "All the slaves of Nyungwe," said one, "are our children; the Bazunga have made a town at our expense." When I asked if they had not taken the prices offered them, they at once admitted it, but still thought that they had been injured by being so far tempted. From the way in which the lands of Zumbo were spoken of as still belonging to the Portuguese (and they are said to have been obtained by purchase), I was inclined to conclude that the purchase of land is not looked upon by the inhabitants in the same light as the purchase of slaves.

FEBRUARY 1ST. We met some native traders, and, as many of my men were now in a state of nudity, I bought some American calico marked "Lawrence Mills, Lowell", with two small tusks, and distributed it among the most needy. After leaving Mozinkwa's we came to the Zingesi, a sand-rivulet in flood (lat. 15d 38' 34" S., long. 31d 1' E.). It was sixty or seventy yards wide, and waist-deep. Like all these sand-rivers, it is for the most part dry; but by digging down a few feet, water is to be found, which is percolating along the bed on a stratum of clay. This is the phenomenon which is dignified by the name of "a river flowing under ground." In trying to ford this I felt thousands of particles of coarse sand striking my legs, and the slight disturbance of our footsteps caused deep holes to be made in the bed. The water, which is almost always very rapid in them, dug out the sand beneath our feet in a second or two, and we were all sinking by that means so deep that we were glad to relinquish the attempt to ford it before we got half way over; the oxen were carried away down into the Zambesi. These sand-rivers remove vast masses of disintegrated rock before it is fine enough to form soil. The man who preceded me was only thigh-deep, but the disturbance caused by his feet made it breast-deep for me. The shower of particles and gravel which struck against my legs gave me the idea that the amount of matter removed by every freshet must be very great. In most rivers where much wearing is going on, a person diving to the bottom may hear literally thousands of stones knocking against each other. This attrition, being carried on for hundreds of miles in different rivers, must have an effect greater than if all the pestles and mortars and mills of the world were grinding and wearing away the rocks. The pounding to which I refer may be heard most distinctly in the Vaal River, when that is slightly in flood. It was there I first heard it. In the Leeambye, in the middle of the country, where there is no discoloration, and little carried along but sand, it is not to be heard.

While opposite the village of a head man called Mosusa, a number of elephants took refuge on an island in the river. There were two males, and a third not full grown; indeed, scarcely the size of a female. This was the first instance I had ever seen of a comparatively young one with the males, for they usually remain with the female herd till as large as their dams. The inhabitants were very anxious that my men should attack them, as they go into the gardens on the islands, and do much damage. The men went, but the elephants ran about half a mile to the opposite end of the island, and swam to the main land with their probosces above the water, and, no canoe being near, they escaped. They swim strongly, with the proboscis erect in the air. I was not very desirous to have one of these animals killed, for we understood that when we passed Mpende we came into a country where the game-laws are strictly enforced. The lands of each chief are very well defined, the boundaries being usually marked by rivulets, great numbers of which flow into the Zambesi from both banks, and, if an elephant is wounded on one man's land and dies on that of another, the under half of the carcass is claimed by the lord of the soil; and so stringent is the law, that the hunter can not begin at once to cut up his own elephant, but must send notice to the lord of the soil on which it lies, and wait until that personage sends one authorized to see a fair partition made. If the hunter should begin to cut up before the agent of the landowner arrives, he is liable to lose both the tusks and all the flesh. The hind leg of a buffalo must also be given to the man on whose land the animal was grazing, and a still larger quantity of the eland, which here and every where else in the country is esteemed right royal food. In the country above Zumbo we did not find a vestige of this law; and but for the fact that it existed in the country of the Bamapela, far to the south of this, I should have been disposed to regard it in the same light as I do the payment for leave to pass—an imposition levied on him who is seen to be weak because in the hands of his slaves. The only game-laws in the interior are, that the man who first wounds an animal, though he has inflicted but a mere scratch, is considered the killer of it; the second is entitled to a hind quarter, and the third to a fore leg. The chiefs are generally entitled to a share as tribute; in some parts it is the breast, in others the whole of the ribs and one fore leg. I generally respected this law, although exceptions are sometimes made when animals are killed by guns. The knowledge that he who succeeds in reaching the wounded beast first is entitled to a share stimulates the whole party to greater exertions in dispatching it. One of my men, having a knowledge of elephant medicine, was considered the leader in the hunt; he went before the others, examined the animals, and on his decision all depended. If he decided to attack a herd, the rest went boldly on; but if he declined, none of them would engage. A certain part of the elephant belonged to him by right of the office he held, and such was the faith in medicine held by the slaves of the Portuguese whom we met hunting, that they offered to pay this man handsomely if he would show them the elephant medicine.