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

Next day we came to Namilanga, or "The Well of Joy". It is a small well dug beneath a very large fig-tree, the shade of which renders the water delightfully cool. The temperature through the day was 104 Deg. in the shade and 94 Deg. after sunset, but the air was not at all oppressive.

This well received its name from the fact that, in former times, marauding parties, in returning with cattle, sat down here and were regaled with boyaloa, music, and the lullilooing of the women from the adjacent towns.

All the surrounding country was formerly densely peopled, though now desolate and still. The old head man of the place told us that his father once went to Bambala, where white traders lived, when our informant was a child, and returned when he had become a boy of about ten years. He went again, and returned when it was time to knock out his son's teeth. As that takes place at the age of puberty, he must have spent at least five years in each journey. He added that many who went there never returned, because they liked that country better than this. They had even forsaken their wives and children; and children had been so enticed and flattered by the finery bestowed upon them there, that they had disowned their parents and adopted others.

The place to which they had gone, which they named Bambala, was probably Dambarari, which was situated close to Zumbo.

This was the first intimation we had of intercourse with the whites.

The Barotse, and all the other tribes in the central valley, have no such tradition as this, nor have either the one or the other any account of a trader's visit to them in ancient times.

All the Batoka tribes follow the curious custom of knocking out the upper front teeth at the age of puberty. This is done by both sexes; and though the under teeth, being relieved from the attrition of the upper, grow long and somewhat bent out, and thereby cause the under lip to protrude in a most unsightly way, no young woman thinks herself accomplished until she has got rid of the upper incisors. This custom gives all the Batoka an uncouth, old-man-like appearance. Their laugh is hideous, yet they are so attached to it that even Sebituane was unable to eradicate the practice. He issued orders that none of the children living under him should be subjected to the custom by their parents, and disobedience to his mandates was usually punished with severity; but, notwithstanding this, the children would appear in the streets without their incisors, and no one would confess to the deed.

When questioned respecting the origin of this practice, the Batoka reply that their object is to be like oxen, and those who retain their teeth they consider to resemble zebras. Whether this is the true reason or not, it is difficult to say; but it is noticeable that the veneration for oxen which prevails in many tribes should here be associated with hatred to the zebra, as among the Bakwains; that this operation is performed at the same age that circumcision is in other tribes; and that here that ceremony is unknown. The custom is so universal that a person who has his teeth is considered ugly, and occasionally, when the Batoka borrowed my looking-glass, the disparaging remark would be made respecting boys or girls who still retained their teeth, "Look at the great teeth!" Some of the Makololo give a more facetious explanation of the custom: they say that the wife of a chief having in a quarrel bitten her husband's hand, he, in revenge, ordered her front teeth to be knocked out, and all the men in the tribe followed his example; but this does not explain why they afterward knocked out their own.

The Batoka of the Zambesi are generally very dark in color, and very degraded and negro-like in appearance, while those who live on the high lands we are now ascending are frequently of the color of coffee and milk.

We had a large number of the Batoka of Mokwine in our party, sent by Sekeletu to carry his tusks. Their greater degradation was probably caused by the treatment of their chiefs -- the barbarians of the islands.

I found them more difficult to manage than any of the rest of my companions, being much less reasonable and impressible than the others.

My party consisted of the head men aforementioned, Sekwebu, and Kanyata.

We were joined at the falls by another head man of the Makololo, named Monahin, in command of the Batoka. We had also some of the Banajoa under Mosisinyane, and, last of all, a small party of Bashubia and Barotse under Tuba Mokoro, which had been furnished by Sekeletu because of their ability to swim. They carried their paddles with them, and, as the Makololo suggested, were able to swim over the rivers by night and steal canoes, if the inhabitants should be so unreasonable as to refuse to lend them. These different parties assorted together into messes; any orders were given through their head man, and when food was obtained he distributed it to the mess. Each party knew its own spot in the encampment; and as this was always placed so that our backs should be to the east, the direction from whence the prevailing winds came, no time was lost in fixing the sheds of our encampment. They each took it in turn to pull grass to make my bed, so I lay luxuriously.

NOVEMBER 26TH. As the oxen could only move at night, in consequence of a fear that the buffaloes in this quarter might have introduced the tsetse, I usually performed the march by day on foot, while some of the men brought on the oxen by night.

On coming to the villages under Marimba, an old man, we crossed the Unguesi, a rivulet which, like the Lekone, runs backward. It falls into the Leeambye a little above the commencement of the rapids. The stratified gneiss, which is the underlying rock of much of this part of the country, dips toward the centre of the continent, but the strata are often so much elevated as to appear nearly on their edges. Rocks of augitic trap are found in various positions on it; the general strike is north and south; but when the gneiss was first seen, near to the basalt of the falls, it was easterly and westerly, and the dip toward the north, as if the eruptive force of the basalt had placed it in that position.

We passed the remains of a very large town, which, from the only evidence of antiquity afforded by ruins in this country, must have been inhabited for a long period; the millstones of gneiss, trap, and quartz were worn down two and a half inches perpendicularly. The ivory grave-stones soon rot away. Those of Moyara's father, who must have died not more than a dozen years ago, were crumbling into powder; and we found this to be generally the case all over the Batoka country.

The region around is pretty well covered with forest; but there is abundance of open pasturage, and, as we are ascending in altitude, we find the grass to be short, and altogether unlike the tangled herbage of the Barotse valley.

It is remarkable that we now meet with the same trees we saw in descending toward the west coast. A kind of sterculia, which is the most common tree at Loanda, and the baobab, flourish here; and the tree called moshuka, which we found near Tala Mungongo, was now yielding its fruit, which resembles small apples. The people brought it to us in large quantities: it tastes like a pear, but has a harsh rind, and four large seeds within.

We found prodigious quantities of this fruit as we went along.

The tree attains the height of 15 or 20 feet, and has leaves, hard and glossy, as large as one's hand. The tree itself is never found on the lowlands, but is mentioned with approbation at the end of the work of Bowditch.

My men almost lived upon the fruit for many days.

The rains had fallen only partially: in many parts the soil was quite dry and the leaves drooped mournfully, but the fruit-trees are unaffected by a drought, except when it happens at the time of their blossoming.

The Batoka of my party declared that no one ever dies of hunger here.

We obtained baskets of maneko, a curious fruit, with a horny rind, split into five pieces: these sections, when chewed, are full of a fine glutinous matter, and sweet like sugar. The seeds are covered with a yellow silky down, and are not eaten: the entire fruit is about the size of a walnut. We got also abundance of the motsouri and mamosho.

We saw the Batoka eating the beans called nju, which are contained in a large square pod; also the pulp between the seeds of nux vomica, and the motsintsela. Other fruits become ripe at other seasons, as the motsikiri, which yields an oil, and is a magnificent tree, bearing masses of dark evergreen leaves; so that, from the general plenty, one can readily believe the statement made by the Batoka.

We here saw trees allowed to stand in gardens, and some of the Batoka even plant them, a practice seen nowhere else among natives.

A species of leucodendron abounds. When we meet with it on a spot on which no rain has yet fallen, we see that the young ones twist their leaves round during the heat of the day, so that the edge only is exposed to the rays of the sun; they have then a half twist on the petiole.

The acacias in the same circumstances, and also the mopane (`Bauhania'), fold their leaves together, and, by presenting the smallest possible surface to the sun, simulate the eucalypti of Australia.

Chapter 27.

Low Hills -- Black Soldier-Ants; their Cannibalism --

The Plasterer and its Chloroform -- White Ants; their Usefulness --

Mutokwane-smoking; its Effects -- Border Territory --

Healthy Table-lands -- Geological Formation -- Cicadae --

Trees -- Flowers -- River Kalomo -- Physical Conformation of Country --

Ridges, sanatoria -- A wounded Buffalo assisted -- Buffalo-bird --

Rhinoceros-bird -- Leaders of Herds -- The Honey-guide --

The White Mountain -- Mozuma River -- Sebituane's old Home --

Hostile Village -- Prophetic Phrensy -- Food of the Elephant --

Ant-hills -- Friendly Batoka -- Clothing despised -- Method of Salutation --

Wild Fruits -- The Captive released -- Longings for Peace --

Pingola's Conquests -- The Village of Monze -- Aspect of the Country --

Visit from the Chief Monze and his Wife -- Central healthy Locations --

Friendly Feelings of the People in reference to a white Resident --

Fertility of the Soil -- Bashukulompo Mode of dressing their Hair --

Gratitude of the Prisoner we released -- Kindness and Remarks of Monze's Sister -- Dip of the Rocks -- Vegetation --

Generosity of the Inhabitants -- Their Anxiety for Medicine --

Hooping-cough -- Birds and Rain.

NOVEMBER 27TH. Still at Marimba's. In the adjacent country palms abound, but none of that species which yields the oil; indeed, that is met with only near the coast. There are numbers of flowers and bulbs just shooting up from the soil. The surface is rough, and broken into gullies; and, though the country is parched, it has not that appearance, so many trees having put forth their fresh green leaves at the time the rains