Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa by David Livingstone (interesting books to read for teens TXT) 📖

adorned with beads.

The hair of the tails of buffaloes, which are to be found farther east, is sometimes added. This is represented in No. 2. While others, as in No. 3, weave their own hair on pieces of hide into the form of buffalo horns; or, as in No. 4, make a single horn in front. The features given are frequently met with, but they are by no means universal.

Many tattoo their bodies by inserting some black substance beneath the skin, which leaves an elevated cicatrix about half an inch long: these are made in the form of stars, and other figures of no particular beauty.

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No. 1 appears like a wheel with spokes of hair connecting it to the head.

No. 2 appears somewhat like a tiara sloped forward, as the bow of a ship.

No. 3 appears like gently curving horns. There is a part in the middle, and the hair, on leather frames, curls outward and upward at the temples.

No. 4 is likewise, but the single horn curves outward and upward from the forehead -- it is labelled "A Young Man's Fashion".

Except for No. 1, all are represented as having the rest of their hair hanging in braids around the sides and back. All of the faces, as Livingstone asserts, appear much like paintings of ancient Egyptians, and could easily be European except for the shading and the slanted eyes.

They are all handsome. -- A. L., 1997.

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Chapter 23.

Make a Detour southward -- Peculiarities of the Inhabitants --

Scarcity of Animals -- Forests -- Geological Structure of the Country --

Abundance and Cheapness of Food near the Chihombo -- A Slave lost --

The Makololo Opinion of Slaveholders -- Funeral Obsequies in Cabango --

Send a Sketch of the Country to Mr. Gabriel -- Native Information respecting the Kasai and Quango -- The Trade with Luba --

Drainage of Londa -- Report of Matiamvo's Country and Government --

Senhor Faria's Present to a Chief -- The Balonda Mode of spending Time --

Faithless Guide -- Makololo lament the Ignorance of the Balonda --

Eagerness of the Villagers for Trade -- Civility of a Female Chief --

The Chief Bango and his People -- Refuse to eat Beef -- Ambition of Africans to have a Village -- Winters in the Interior -- Spring at Kolobeng --

White Ants: "Never could desire to eat any thing better" --

Young Herbage and Animals -- Valley of the Loembwe --

The white Man a Hobgoblin -- Specimen of Quarreling --

Eager Desire for Calico -- Want of Clothing at Kawawa's --

Funeral Observances -- Agreeable Intercourse with Kawawa --

His impudent Demand -- Unpleasant Parting -- Kawawa tries to prevent our crossing the River Kasai -- Stratagem.

We made a little detour to the southward in order to get provisions in a cheaper market. This led us along the rivulet called Tamba, where we found the people, who had not been visited so frequently by the slave-traders as the rest, rather timid and very civil.

It was agreeable to get again among the uncontaminated, and to see the natives look at us without that air of superciliousness which is so unpleasant and common in the beaten track.

The same olive color prevailed. They file their teeth to a point, which makes the smile of the women frightful, as it reminds one of the grin of an alligator. The inhabitants throughout this country exhibit as great a variety of taste as appears on the surface of society among ourselves. Many of the men are dandies; their shoulders are always wet with the oil dropping from their lubricated hair, and every thing about them is ornamented in one way or another. Some thrum a musical instrument the livelong day, and, when they wake at night, proceed at once to their musical performance. Many of these musicians are too poor to have iron keys to their instrument, but make them of bamboo, and persevere, though no one hears the music but themselves. Others try to appear warlike by never going out of their huts except with a load of bows and arrows, or a gun ornamented with a strip of hide for every animal they have shot; and others never go any where without a canary in a cage. Ladies may be seen carefully tending little lap-dogs, which are intended to be eaten.

Their villages are generally in forests, and composed of groups of irregularly-planted brown huts, with banana and cotton trees, and tobacco growing around. There is also at every hut a high stage erected for drying manioc roots and meal, and elevated cages to hold domestic fowls.

Round baskets are laid on the thatch of the huts for the hens to lay in, and on the arrival of strangers, men, women, and children ply their calling as hucksters with a great deal of noisy haggling; all their transactions are conducted with civil banter and good temper.

My men, having the meat of the oxen which we slaughtered from time to time for sale, were entreated to exchange it for meal; no matter how small the pieces offered were, it gave them pleasure to deal.

The landscape around is green, with a tint of yellow, the grass long, the paths about a foot wide, and generally worn deeply in the middle.

The tall overhanging grass, when brushed against by the feet and legs, disturbed the lizards and mice, and occasionally a serpent, causing a rustling among the herbage. There are not many birds; every animal is entrapped and eaten. Gins are seen on both sides of the path every ten or fifteen yards, for miles together. The time and labor required to dig up moles and mice from their burrows would, if applied to cultivation, afford food for any amount of fowls or swine, but the latter are seldom met with.

We passed on through forests abounding in climbing-plants, many of which are so extremely tough that a man is required to go in front with a hatchet; and when the burdens of the carriers are caught, they are obliged to cut the climbers with their teeth, for no amount of tugging will make them break. The paths in all these forests are so zigzag that a person may imagine he has traveled a distance of thirty miles, which, when reckoned as the crow flies, may not be fifteen.

We reached the River Moamba (lat. 9d 38' S., long. 20d 13' 34" E.) on the 7th May. This is a stream of thirty yards wide, and, like the Quilo, Loange, Chikapa, and Loajima, contains both alligators and hippopotami.

We crossed it by means of canoes. Here, as on the slopes down to the Quilo and Chikapa, we had an opportunity of viewing the geological structure of the country -- a capping of ferruginous conglomerate, which in many parts looks as if it had been melted, for the rounded nodules resemble masses of slag, and they have a smooth scale on the surface; but in all probability it is an aqueous deposit, for it contains water-worn pebbles of all sorts, and generally small. Below this mass lies a pale red hardened sandstone, and beneath that a trap-like whinstone.

Lowest of all lies a coarse-grained sandstone containing a few pebbles, and, in connection with it, a white calcareous rock is occasionally met with, and so are banks of loose round quartz pebbles. The slopes are longer from the level country above the further we go eastward, and every where we meet with circumscribed bogs on them, surrounded by clumps of straight, lofty evergreen trees, which look extremely graceful on a ground of yellowish grass.

Several of these bogs pour forth a solution of iron, which exhibits on its surface the prismatic colors. The level plateaus between the rivers, both east and west of the Moamba, across which we traveled, were less woody than the river glens. The trees on them are scraggy and wide apart. There are also large open grass-covered spaces, with scarcely even a bush. On these rather dreary intervals between the rivers it was impossible not to be painfully struck with the absence of all animal life. Not a bird was to be seen, except occasionally a tomtit, some of the Sylviadae' andDrymoica', also a black bird (`Dicrurus Ludwigii', Smith) common throughout the country.

We were gladdened by the voice of birds only near the rivers, and there they are neither numerous nor varied. The Senegal longclaw, however, maintains its place, and is the largest bird seen.

We saw a butcher-bird in a trap as we passed. There are remarkably few small animals, they having been hunted almost to extermination, and few insects except ants, which abound in considerable number and variety.

There are scarcely any common flies to be seen, nor are we ever troubled by mosquitoes.

The air is still, hot, and oppressive; the intensely bright sunlight glances peacefully on the evergreen forest leaves, and all feel glad when the path comes into the shade. The want of life in the scenery made me long to tread again the banks of the Zambesi, and see the graceful antelopes feeding beside the dark buffaloes and sleek elands.

Here hippopotami are known to exist only by their footprints on the banks.

Not one is ever seen to blow or put his head up at all; they have learned to breathe in silence and keep out of sight.

We never heard one uttering the snorting sound so common on the Zambesi.

We crossed two small streams, the Kanesi and Fombeji, before reaching Cabango, a village situated on the banks of the Chihombo. The country was becoming more densely peopled as we proceeded, but it bears no population compared to what it might easily sustain. Provisions were to be had in great abundance; a fowl and basket of meal weighing 20 lbs.

were sold for a yard and a half of very inferior cotton cloth, worth not more than threepence. An idea of the cheapness of food may be formed from the fact that Captain Neves purchased 380 lbs. of tobacco from the Bangalas for about two pounds sterling. This, when carried into central Londa, might purchase seven thousand five hundred fowls, or feed with meal and fowls seven thousand persons for one day, giving each a fowl and 5 lbs. of meal. When food is purchased here with either salt or coarse calico, four persons can be well fed with animal and vegetable food at the rate of one penny a day.

The chief vegetable food is the manioc and lotsa meal.

These contain a very large proportion of starch, and, when eaten alone for any length of time produce most distressing heartburn.

As we ourselves experienced in coming north, they also cause a weakness of vision, which occurs in the case of animals fed on pure gluten or amylaceous matter only. I now discovered that when these starchy substances are eaten along with a proportion of ground-nuts, which contain a considerable quantity of oil, no injurious effects follow.

While on the way to Cabango we saw fresh tracks of elands, the first we had observed in this country. A poor little slave girl, being ill, turned aside in the path, and, though we waited all the next day making search for her, she was lost. She was tall and slender for her age, as if of too quick growth, and probably, unable to bear the fatigue of the march, lay down and slept in