278

DONNA EUGENIA.

CHAP. XII.

East Coast. A lady now living at Tette, Donna Eugenia, remembers distinctly these slaves-their woolly hair dressed in the Londa fashion-arriving and remaining at Tette till letters came from the Governor General of Mozambique, which they successfully carried back to Cassange. On this slender fibre hangs all the Portuguese pretension to having possessed a road across Africa. Their maps show the source of the Zambesi S.S.W. of Zumbo, about where the Falls were found; and on this very questionable authority an untraveled English map-maker, with most amusing assurance, asserts that the river above the Falls runs under the Kalahari Desert and is lost.

Where one Englishman goes, others are sure to follow. Mr. Baldwin, a gentleman from Natal, succeeded in reaching the Falls guided by his pocket-compass alone. On meeting the second subject of her majesty who had ever beheld the greatest of African wonders, we found him a sort of prisoner at large. He had called on Mashotlane to ferry him over to the north side of the river, and, when nearly over, he took a bath by jumping in and swimming ashore. "If,” said Mashotlane, "he had been devoured by one of the crocodiles which abound there, the English would have blamed us for his death. He nearly inflicted a great injury upon us, therefore we said he must pay a fine." As Mr. Baldwin had nothing with him wherewith to pay, they were taking care of him till he should receive beads from his wagon two days distant.

Mashotlane's education had been received in the camp of Sebituane, where but little regard was paid to human life. He was not yet in his prime, and his fine open countenance presented to us no indication of the evil influences which unhappily, from infancy, had been at work on his mind. The native eye was more penetrating than ours; for the expres

CHAP. XII.

GROUND STREWN WITH AGATES.

279

sion of our men was, "He has drunk the blood of menyou may see it in his eyes." He made no farther difficulty about Mr. Baldwin; but, the week after we left, he inflicted a severe wound on the head of one of his wives with his rhinoceros-horn club. She, being of a good family, left him, and we subsequently met her and another of his wives proceeding up the country.

The ground is strewn with agates for a number of miles above the Falls; but the fires, which burn off the grass yearly, have injured most of those on the surface. Our men were delighted to hear that they do as well as flints for muskets; and this, with the new ideas of the value of gold (dalama) and malachite that they had acquired at Tette, made them conceive that we were not altogether silly in picking up and looking at stones.

280

NAMBOWE AND HIS WIVES.

СНАР. ХІІІ.

CHAPTER XIII.

Condition of Fugitives and Captives in native Tribes.-Servitude in the Interior light as compared to Slavery on the Coast.-Molele's Village.-Scarcity of Food.-Tianyane identical with Ourebi.-The Poku.-Dr. Livingstone consulted on the Value of Horses.-Mparira, village of Mokompa.-Stingless Bee.-Take Canoe for Sesheke.-Sekeletu's Attempt at enforcing Quarantine. The Chiefs' Messengers.-"The Argument" for learning to read."Free Pratique."-Native Instructions.-The Cattle-post School. -Sesheke Old and New Town.-Sekeletu.-Nothing like Beef.-"Beef with and Beef without."-Visitors.-Sekeletu's Leprosy and its attendant Evils.-Disease pronounced Incurable by native Doctors.-Taken in hand by a Doctress.Handed over to Drs. Livingstone and Kirk.—Improvement of the Patient. -Description of the Disease.-Tea and preserved Fruits from Benguela.No Ivory, no Slave-trade.—Effect of Sekeletu's Orders in closing the Slavemarket. Fashion. - Horse-dealing. Peculiar Style of Racing."The household Cavalry."-Produce of the Interior in Grain.-No Vegetables.No Fruit.—Mr. Baldwin, and Mr. Helmore's Party.—Sad breaking up of the Mission.-Fever, not Poison, the cause of Deaths.

MARCHING up the river, we crossed the Lekone at its confluence, about eight miles above the island Kalai, and went on to a village opposite the island Chundu. Nambowe, the head man, is one of the Matebele or Zulus, who have had to flee from the anger of Moselekatse, to take refuge with the Makololo. During our interview, his six handsome wives came and sat behind him. He had only two children. The ladies were amused with our question whether they ever quarreled, to which the monster answered, "Oh yes, they are always quarreling among themselves." Among the Coast tribes a fugitive is almost always sold, but here a man retains the same rank he held in his own tribe. The children of captives even have the same privileges as the children of their captors. The Rev. T. M. Thomas, a missionary now

CHAP. XIII. SERVITUDE COMPARATIVELY LIGHT.

281

living with Moselekatse, finds the same system prevailing among his Zulus or Matebele. He says that "the African slave brought by a foray to the tribe enjoys from the beginning the privileges and name of a child, and looks upon his master and mistress in every respect as his new parents. He is not only nearly his master's equal, but he may, with impunity, leave his master and go wherever he likes within the boundary of the kingdom: although a bondman or servant, his position, especially in Moselekatse's country, does not convey the true idea of a state of slavery; for, by care and diligence, he may soon become a master himself, and even more rich and powerful than he who led him captive."

The practice pursued by these people on returning from a foray, of selling the captives to each other for corn or cattle, might lead one to imagine that slavery existed in all its intensity among the native Africans; but Mr. Thomas, observing, as we have often done, the actual working of the system, says very truly, "Neither the punctuality, quickness, thoroughness, nor amount of exertion is required by the African as by the European master. In Europe the difficulty is want of time; in Africa, what is to be done with it." Apart from the shocking waste of life, which takes place in these and all slave forays, their slavery is not so repulsive as it always becomes in European hands. It is perhaps a failure in a traveler to be affected with a species of home-sickness, so that the mind always turns from the conditions and circumstances of the poor abroad to the state of the lonely in our native land; but so it is. When we see with how much ease the very lowest class here can subsist, we can not help remembering, with sorrow, with what difficulty our own poor can manage to live —with what timid eagerness employment is sought-how hard the battle of life; while so much of this fair earth re

282

MOLELE'S VILLAGE.

CHAP. XIII.

mains unoccupied, and not put to the benevolent purpose for which it was intended by its Maker.

We spent Sunday, the 12th, at the village of Molele, a tall old Batoka, who was proud of having formerly been a great favorite with Sebituane. In coming hither we passed through patches of forest abounding in all sorts of game. The elephants' tusks, placed over graves, are now allowed to decay, and the skulls, which the former Batoka stuck on poles to ornament their villages, not being renewed, now crumble into dust. Here the famine, of which we had heard, became ap parent, Molele's people being employed in digging up the tsitla root out of the marshes, and cutting out the soft core of the young palm-trees for food.

The village, situated on the side of a wooded ridge, commands an extensive view of a great expanse of meadow and marsh lying along the bank of the river. On these holmes herds of buffaloes and waterbucks daily graze in security, as they have in the reedy marshes a refuge into which they can run on the approach of danger. The pretty little tinyane or ourebi is abundant farther on,* and herds of blue weldebeests

* From being entirely unknown in the Bechuana country south of this, it was thought to be a new antelope, and is so mentioned by Dr. Livingstone; but the description of the appearance, gait, alarm-call, and habits (given by another African traveler, Mr. W. F. Webb) of the ourebi, as found in Natal, leaves no doubt but that the two animals are identical. Having made this mistake himself, Dr. Livingstone is quite disposed to be lenient to others; but would respectfully suggest a doubt, whether it be advisable to multiply names when there is no more variation than a bend in the shape of the horns, or a slight difference in the color of the hair. An eland, for instance, described, from specimens shot on these very plains in 1853, as retaining in maturity the stripes which appear on the young of all elands in the Kalahari Desert, ten years later has been rediscovered as djikijunka, named from specimens seen in West Africa. This has been the case also with the nakong or nzoe, and the reason assigned in this case was its being "faintly spotted." A young waterbuck's head has also been brought from West Africa and figured as a new species; and the common bushbuck was called A. Roualeyni, though well known and described before any of us were born.