When The Slight Circumstance
Of My Having Covered The Body Of The Chief With My Own
Deranged The Whole Conspiracy, The Mambari, In Their Stockade, Were Placed
In Very Awkward Circumstances.
It was proposed to attack them and drive them
out of the country at once; but, dreading a commencement
Of hostilities,
I urged the difficulties of that course, and showed that a stockade
defended by perhaps forty muskets would be a very serious affair.
"Hunger is strong enough for that," said an under-chief;
"a very great fellow is he." They thought of attacking them by starvation.
As the chief sufferers in case of such an attack would have been
the poor slaves chained in gangs, I interceded for them,
and the result of an intercession of which they were ignorant
was that they were allowed to depart in peace.
Naliele, the capital of the Barotse, is built on a mound which was
constructed artificially by Santuru, and was his store-house for grain.
His own capital stood about five hundred yards to the south of that,
in what is now the bed of the river. All that remains of the largest mound
in the valley are a few cubic yards of earth, to erect which
cost the whole of the people of Santuru the labor of many years.
The same thing has happened to another ancient site of a town,
Linangelo, also on the left bank. It would seem, therefore,
that the river in this part of the valley must be wearing eastward.
No great rise of the river is required to submerge the whole valley;
a rise of ten feet above the present low-water mark would reach
the highest point it ever attains, as seen in the markings of the bank
on which stood Santuru's ancient capital, and two or three feet more
would deluge all the villages.
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