After Explanations And Re-Explanations, I Perceived That Our New Friends
Were Mixing Up My Message Of Peace And Friendship
With Makololo affairs,
and stated that it was not delivered on the authority of any one less
than that of
Their Creator, and that if the Makololo did again
break His laws and attack the Balonda, the guilt would rest with the Makololo
and not with me. The palaver then came to a close.
By way of gaining their confidence, I showed them my hair,
which is considered a curiosity in all this region. They said,
"Is that hair? It is the mane of a lion, and not hair at all."
Some thought that I had made a wig of lion's mane, as they sometimes do
with fibres of the "ife", and dye it black, and twist it so as to resemble
a mass of their own wool. I could not return the joke by telling them
that theirs was not hair, but the wool of sheep, for they have none of these
in the country; and even though they had, as Herodotus remarked,
"the African sheep are clothed with hair, and men's heads with wool."
So I had to be content with asserting that mine was the real original hair,
such as theirs would have been had it not been scorched and frizzled
by the sun. In proof of what the sun could do, I compared
my own bronzed face and hands, then about the same in complexion
as the lighter-colored Makololo, with the white skin of my chest.
They readily believed that, as they go nearly naked and fully exposed
to that influence, we might be of common origin after all.
Here, as every where, when heat and moisture are combined, the people
are very dark, but not quite black.
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