We now saw many good-looking young men and women.The dresses of the ladies are identical with those of Nubian women in Upper Egypt.To a belt on the waist a great number of strings are attached to hang all round the person.These fringes are about six or eight inches long.
The matrons wear in addition a skin cut like the tails of the coatee formerly worn by our dragoons.The younger girls wear the waist-belt exhibited in the woodcut, ornamented with shells, and have the fringes only in front.Marauding parties of Batoka, calling themselves Makololo, have for some time had a wholesome dread of Sinamane's "long spears."Before going to Tette our Batoka friend, Masakasa, was one of a party that came to steal some of the young women; but Sinamane, to their utter astonishment, attacked them so furiously that the survivors barely escaped with their lives.
Masakasa had to flee so fast that he threw away his shield, his spear, and his clothes, and returned home a wiser and a sadder man.
Sinamane's people cultivate large quantities of tobacco, which they manufacture into balls for the Makololo market.Twenty balls, weighing about three-quarters of a pound each, are sold for a hoe.
The tobacco is planted on low moist spots on the banks of the Zambesi; and was in flower at the time we were there, in October.
Sinamane's people appear to have abundance of food, and are all in good condition.He could sell us only two of his canoes; but lent us three more to carry us as far as Moemba's, where he thought others might be purchased.They were manned by his own canoe-men, who were to bring them back.The river is about 250 yards wide, and flows serenely between high banks towards the North-east.Below Sinamane's the banks are often worn down fifty feet, and composed of shingle and gravel of igneous rocks, sometimes set in a ferruginous matrix.The bottom is all gravel and shingle, how formed we cannot imagine, unless in pot-holes in the deep fissure above.The bottom above the Falls, save a few rocks close by them, is generally sandy or of soft tufa.Every damp spot is covered with maize, pumpkins, water-melons, tobacco, and hemp.There is a pretty numerous Batoka population on both sides of the river.As we sailed slowly down, the people saluted us from the banks, by clapping their hands.A headman even hailed us, and brought a generous present of corn and pumpkins.
Moemba owns a rich island, called Mosanga, a mile in length, on which his village stands.He has the reputation of being a brave warrior, and is certainly a great talker; but he gave us strangers something better than a stream of words.We received a handsome present of corn, and the fattest goat we had ever seen; it resembled mutton.
His people were as liberal as their chief.They brought two large baskets of corn, and a lot of tobacco, as a sort of general contribution to the travellers.One of Sinamane's canoe-men, after trying to get his pay, deserted here, and went back before the stipulated time, with the story, that the Englishman had stolen the canoes.Shortly after sunrise next morning, Sinamane came into the village with fifty of his "long spears," evidently determined to retake his property by force; he saw at a glance that his man had deceived him.Moemba rallied him for coming on a wildgoose chase.
"Here are your canoes left with me, your men have all been paid, and the Englishmen are now asking me to sell my canoes."Sinamane said little to us; only observing that he had been deceived by his follower.A single remark of his chief's caused the foolish fellow to leave suddenly, evidently much frightened and crestfallen.
Sinamane had been very kind to us, and, as he was looking on when we gave our present to Moemba, we made him also an additional offering of some beads, and parted good friends.Moemba, having heard that we had called the people of Sinamane together to tell them about our Saviour's mission to man, and to pray with them, associated the idea of Sunday with the meeting, and, before anything of the sort was proposed, came and asked that he and his people might be "sundayed"
As well as his neighbours; and be given a little seed wheat, and fruit-tree seeds; with which request of course we very willingly complied.The idea of praying direct to the Supreme Being, though not quite new to all, seems to strike their minds so forcibly that it will not be forgotten.Sinamane said that he prayed to God, Morungo, and made drink-offerings to him.Though he had heard of us, he had never seen white men before.
Beautiful crowned cranes, named from their note "ma-wang," were seen daily, and were beginning to pair.Large flocks of spur-winged geese, or machikwe, were common.This goose is said to lay her eggs in March.We saw also pairs of Egyptian geese, as well as a few of the knob-nosed, or, as they are called in India, combed geese.When the Egyptian geese, as at the present time, have young, the goslings keep so steadily in the wake of their mother, that they look as if they were a part of her tail; and both parents, when on land, simulate lameness quite as well as our plovers, to draw off pursuers.
The ostrich also adopts the lapwing fashion, but no quadrupeds do:
They show fight to defend their young instead.In some places the steep banks were dotted with the holes which lead into the nests of bee-eaters.These birds came out in hundreds as we passed.When the red-breasted species settle on the trees, they give them the appearance of being covered with red foliage.
