The fourteenth wife was Silala, and there were two others, but both of these had been presented by the king to two of his chiefs. The true heir to the throne had died two years previously. His name was Maritella, and he was the son of Marishwati. Just before his death he was lying on his bed, and complained of being thirsty, whereupon the Barotse chieftain, who happened to be present, poured him out some drink from a pitcher standing by; the lad died very soon afterwards, and Sepopo immediately accused the chieftain of having poisoned him, and condemned him, in spite of his being universally beloved by his people, to be poisoned himself.
The king’s daughter, Moquai, had married Manengo, one of the few Makololos who had survived the general massacre. The king of the Makololos, Sepopo informed me, had died a miserable death, his body having become a mass of ulcers, and after his demise the whole tribe had been distracted by party squabbles.
I was determined to give the king no peace on the subject of my journey, and on the 12th I had a long conference with him and the Portuguese. He told me that although I might make up my mind to stay only two days at each of the towns in the Barotse, the whole boat-journey through his kingdom could not take me less than two months, and that after I had reached the kingdom of the Iwan-yoe, where I should find the sources of the Zambesi, I should have to go on for about another nine weeks to get to Matimbundu.
I went more than once to visit the queens, and always found that they were treated with great
