It Seems As If Their Minds Were Ever In Doubt And Dread
In These Gloomy Recesses Of The Forest, And That They Were Striving
To Propitiate, By Their Offerings, Some Superior Beings Residing There.
The dress of the Balonda men consists of the softened skins of small animals,
as the jackal or wild cat, hung before and behind from a girdle
round the loins.
The dress of the women is of a nondescript character;
but they were not immodest. They stood before us as perfectly
unconscious of any indecorum as we could be with our clothes on.
But, while ignorant of their own deficiency, they could not
maintain their gravity at the sight of the nudity of my men behind.
Much to the annoyance of my companions, the young girls laughed outright
whenever their backs were turned to them.
After crossing the Lonaje, we came to some pretty villages,
embowered, as the negro villages usually are, in bananas, shrubs, and manioc,
and near the banks of the Leeba we formed our encampment
in a nest of serpents, one of which bit one of our men,
but the wound was harmless. The people of the surrounding villages
presented us with large quantities of food, in obedience to
the mandate of Shinte, without expecting any equivalent.
One village had lately been transferred hither from the country of Matiamvo.
They, of course, continue to acknowledge him as paramount chief;
but the frequent instances which occur of people changing
from one part of the country to another, show that the great chiefs possess
only a limited power. The only peculiarity we observed in these people
is the habit of plaiting the beard into a three-fold cord.
The town of the Balonda chief Cazembe was pointed out to us
as lying to the N.E. and by E. from the town of Shinte,
and great numbers of people in this quarter have gone thither
for the purpose of purchasing copper anklets, made at Cazembe's,
and report the distance to be about five days' journey.
I made inquiries of some of the oldest inhabitants of the villages
at which we were staying respecting the visit of Pereira and Lacerda
to that town. An old gray-headed man replied that they had often
heard of white men before, but never had seen one, and added that one
had come to Cazembe when our informant was young, and returned again
without entering this part of the country. The people of Cazembe
are Balonda or Baloi, and his country has been termed Londa, Lunda, or Lui,
by the Portuguese.
It was always difficult to get our guides to move away from a place.
With the authority of the chief, they felt as comfortable
as king's messengers could, and were not disposed to forego
the pleasure of living at free quarters. My Makololo friends
were but ill drilled as yet; and since they had never left
their own country before, except for purposes of plunder,
they did not take readily to the peaceful system we now meant to follow.
They either spoke too imperiously to strangers, or, when reproved for that,
were disposed to follow the dictation of every one we met.
When Intemese, our guide, refused to stir toward the Leeba
on the 31st of January, they would make no effort to induce him to go;
but, having ordered them to get ready, Intemese saw the preparations,
and soon followed the example.
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