Seven Years in South Africa/Volume 2/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII.
FIRST VISIT TO THE MARUTSE KINGDOM.
IN THE PAPYRUS THICKETS.
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| VOL. II. | RECEPTION AT SEPOPO’S. | Page 137. |
Blockley was able to dispense with the services of this corpulent, sly-looking individual, but to me he proceeded formally to introduce his Majesty as “Sepopo, Morena of the Zambesi.” The king then seated himself upon a little wooden stool that a servant had been carrying for him, and made signs to us to be seated on the ground; but seeingthat I hesitated about taking such a position in my best suit of black, he sent for two trusses of dry grass upon which Blockley and I had to sit down without more ado.
Sepopo began to besiege Blockley with question after question, and as I was not sufficiently versed in the Sesuto-Serotse dialect to follow their conversation, I entertained myself by criticizing the company. Presently the crowd opened to admit a young man, preceded by a herald, and carrying a great wooden dish which, after making an obeisance, he placed on the open space between us and the king. The odour was quite sufficient to make us aware that the dish contained broiled fish. Sepopo picked out a fish at random and handed it to the chiefs Kapella and Mashoku, who had to eat a portion of it; and having thus satisfied himself that the food was not poisoned, he handed one each to Blockley and me, and took another himself. Our fingers had to do duty in the absence of forks, the mighty sovereign of many and many a thousand miles setting us the example in a very dexterous fashion. We had eaten nothing since breakfast, and were consequently by no means disinclined to make a good meal now; but the etiquette of the country did not permit us to eat more than half a fish, and we were expected to pass over the rest to the chiefs who were sitting next us, they in their turn taking a bit and handing the remnant to their neighbours. Ten fish constituted the whole repast, and the servants were permitted to pick the heads.
The Marutse excel in their methods of dressing fish, some being stewed in their own oil, and others, after they have been dried in the sun, being broiled on ashes. The kinds that are stewed are those known among the Zambesi tribes as tshi-mo, tshi-gvatshimshi, and tshi-mashona, all rapacious fish, except the hard-lipped inquisi, being disliked by them. I rarely saw them eat the common flat-headed sheat-fish; they avoid it chiefly because its flesh is so often perforated by a parasite, a sort of spiral worm about an inch long, not unlike a trichina. A great many fish, after being sun-dried, are kept for months, and then packed in baskets and sent to the north for sale.
When we had finished our repast, several servants brought bowls of water, with which the inner circle were expected to moisten their lips. After our primitive method of feeding, it was quite necessary that we should get rid of the grease from our fingers; and to assist us in this, one of the servants brought a platter containing about twenty dirty little green balls of the size of a walnut. The king and the courtiers each took one and rubbed it over their hands, which they afterwards washed. When it came to my turn to help myself to one of the balls, my curiosity to know of what it consisted provoked very general amusement. By the king’s direction Jan Mahura, the interpreter, called out to me, “Smell them, sir,” and I was at once aware that they were of the nature of soap. After washing, Blockley and I dried our hands upon our pocket-handkerchiefs, but Sepopo and his officers scraped the moisture off their fingers with their “libekos.” The outer ranks of the assembly merely rubbed their hands on the dry sand.
The libeko used by the Bantu tribes in the place of our pocket-handkerchief is a miniature shovel made of very different sizes, being from half an inch to an inch wide, but varying from two inches to ten inches in length. It is usually attached to a small strap or a chain of grass or beads, and its effect is not only to widen the nostrils, but to disfigure the countenance generally.
As the afternoon was advancing, the king rose, and attended by his vocal and instrumental performers, led the way to the landing-place, where we all embarked in three canoes for an airing on the water. We were not long upon the main stream before we turned into a lagoon, whence, after about a quarter of an hour, we entered another side lagoon, which brought us to the landing-place of Old Sesheke. This town, which the king was now leaving for his new settlement, was on the border of a sandy wood, and scarcely twenty-five feet above the valley. Close to it, built of wood or reeds, were the storehouses in which Westbeech put his goods until Sepopo was ready to pay for them in ivory. The courtyard contained three huts, one occupied by Westbeech’s cook, one by his other servants, and a third used as his kitchen. Behind his own little house, and between it and the hedge, stood a fourth hut, about five feet high and seven feet in diameter, similar in shape to a Koranna hut, with a doorway that could only be entered on all fours. This was assigned to me during my residence in the king’s domains.
Before I took possession of my mansion, I was invited, Blockley with me, to join the king at supper. He was in a little cemented courtyard sitting on a  | ||
| VOL. II. | PORT OF SHESHEKE. | Page 140. |
I had been asleep in my new quarters for about two hours, when I was roused by a noise in the small front room of the storehouse, and looking out I saw a glimmer of light, by which I could distinctly make out that Sepopo and some of his people were rummaging amongst the goods that Blockley had just deposited there; after waiting a little longer, I saw Sepopo come out and walk off with a waggon-lantern that Blockley had refused to give him during the day. It was a transaction that opened my eyes to the way which the Marutse king had of getting possession of any articles that might take his fancy.
Before concluding my account of my first day at Sesheke, I may mention a little incident that occurred while we were sitting drinking the impote. Four men arrived laden with ivory, and after depositing the load of tusks in the middle of the enclosure, they clapped their hands and prostrated themselves five times with their foreheads to the ground, crying out, “Shangwe! Shangwe!” They then retired quite into the rear of all the rest, to remain till the meal was over. When the king summoned them, they crept forward, and kept clapping their hands very gently all the time the king was speaking to them, and when he ceased they proceeded with great volubility to recount all the particulars of the hunting-excursion from which they had returned. They were much commended, and told to come in the morning to receive some ammunition and their proper reward. The ivory was crown property, and the guns used by the hunters were only lent to them, and were liable to be recalled at any moment at the royal pleasure.
It was quite customary for all white men, before entering Impalera, to send the king a present by way of securing a pass from the banks of the Chobe to his territory. No such impost, however, was demanded from me. It was entirely a voluntary act on my part, that I made an offering of a Snider breech-loader and 200 cartridges.
Unlike supper, breakfast was not served in the open air, but inside the house. The long grass-hut, similar to a gabled roof some eight feet high, was divided by a partition into two compartments, the walls of the front one, in which we took our meal, being decorated with guns, Marutse weapons, elephants’ tusks, and various articles of apparel, amongst which I noticed the uniform of a Portuguese dragoon. I took advantage of the good humour and communicative mood of the king, to gain from him some information about Marutse history and the growth of the kingdom; and as various points were afterwards confirmed by several of the chiefs, it may not be inopportune to introduce them here.
Under the leadership of their chief Sebituani, a branch of the Basutos between the upper courses of the Orange and Vaal rivers emigrated northwards. After forcing their way through the Bechuana countries, and subduing various tribes on the lower Chobe and central Zambesi (amongst whom were the eastern Bamashi and Barutse, who occupied an area of 2000 square miles), they not only succeeded in exacting tribute from other tribes as far eastward as the river Kafue, but they consolidated themselves into the Makololo Empire. Their next king was Sekeletu. The discords that sprung up amongst the people during his reign opened the way for the vanquished Marutse tribe to resume arms against them, and that with such success that after several battles the Makololos residing between the Chobe and the Zambesi, already decimated by disease, were reduced to two men and some boys, while their male population south of the Chobe, who had numbered more than 2000, were in like manner brought down to a mere handful. Had they remained on the right bank of the Chobe, the Makololos would probably have existed to this day; but fearing that the Marutse would be reinforced by the Mabundas and other subject tribes, they made their way towards Lake N’gami in the territory of the western Bamangwatos. There they were sadly deceived; they were received with apparent cordiality, but were ultimately the victims of a cruel stratagem; messengers from King Letshuatabele greeted them with the salutation, “If you come as friends and not as foes, leave your spears and battle-axes and come into the city” in full confidence they accepted the invitation, but no sooner had they entered the kotla than the citizens barred the entrance with poles and boughs, and massacred them to a man. The women were divided amongst the conquerors, the king having his first choice of the most attractive; the chiefs took the next pick, leaving the rest to be distributed amongst their subjects. From that time women of brown complexion have been found amongst the Bathowanas and people north of the Zambesi, though the dark-skinned tribes always regard it as a sign of degeneration of race. Sepopo subsequently took possession of the whole of the Makololo country, with the exception of the eastern Bamashi territory and their land south of the Chobe, where he did not enter from fear of the Matabele.
To the north of the Marutse was the Mabunda kingdom, which was governed by members of the Marutse royal family. The queen on her death-bed some years before had designated Sepopo’s eldest daughter Moquai as her successor, but Moquai, alarmed at the prospect of persecution from her father, handed over the government to him; and thus it happened that now I found a conjoint Marutse-Mabunda rule, under the sovereignty of Sepopo, a direct descendant of the original royal family of the Marutse.
During breakfast Sepopo sent for the chief representatives of eighteen of the larger tribes and introduced them to me. These tribes are subdivided into eighty-three smaller ones, and their chiefs are all more or less in communication with Sesheke. In addition to those that have been settled for some time within the kingdom, there are the Matabele, Menon’s Malalakas, and the Masarwas scattered in various districts; of these the two latter are fugitive tribes from the south, the Matabele having been tributary to the Bamangwatos, and Menon’s Malalakas to the Matabele.
The Marutse occupy the fertile valleys of the Barotse country on both sides the Zambesi, from Sekhose to about 150 miles south of the confluence of the Kabompo and the Liba. I believe the Barotse valley to be the most productive portion of the kingdom, and as well adapted for agriculture as for cattle-breeding; it abounds in game, but is likewise prolific in wild vegetable products, of which india-rubber is not the least important. The country, formerly the residence of various members of the royal family, contains several towns; the districts east and north-east of it are occupied by the Mabundas, so that it follows that the bulk of the population that lies outside the Barotse is, for the most part, to be found near the rivers Nyoko, Lombe, and Loi.
The district joming the Mabundas on the north is in the occupation of the Mankoë, but it does not extend beyond the west bank of the Zambesi; again to the north of this is the settlement of the Mamboë, on the lower Kabompo and Liba. Around the town of Kavagola, on the upper Zambesi, are the Bamomba and Manengo tribes, while the Masupia region lies for fifty miles up the river from a point about thirty miles below its junction with the Chobe. East of this the Batoka people range for thirty miles below the Victoria Falls, where their frontier is joined by the Matongas, who reside near the middle of the Kashteja, Livingstone’s Majeela. On the lower course of the Kashteja, between the Matongas and Masupias, are the western Makalakas, the eastern Makalakas being farther down the Zambesi, with Wankie’s kraal as their principal property. The Luyana tribe is settled south of the Zambesi to the west of the Masupias, and the other tribes either extend in small districts thence towards the Barotse valley, north of the Matongas, and east of the Mamboë, or have scattered themselves about in little detached settlements here and there over the kingdom.
Nearly the whole of these which I have thus briefly enumerated are, with the marked distinction of the Marutse, held as vassals, the people being treated to a certain degree as slaves. However it is not more than a quarter of them who actually pay any tribute, these being chiefly the eastern tribes, such as the Batokas, eastern Makalakas and Mabimbis. As a consequence of Sepopo’s oppression, many of the natives have withdrawn from the kingdom, generally going south, and the difficulty of collecting tribute anywhere has very greatly increased. The imposts levied upon such as can be induced to pay them  | ||
| VOL. II. | MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS OF THE MARUTSE. | Page 147. |
The prevailing language of the kingdom, and the principal medium of correspondence between the different tribes, is that of the extirpated Makololos. Overtaken as they have been by the arm of fate, and swept away from existence as a recognized community, they have yet bequeathed to their conquerors the heritage of their dialect. The enlargement of the kingdom by the annexation of the Mabunda territory, and the ever-increasing traffic with the population south of the Zambesi, have resulted in the Sesuto of the Makololos being adopted as the common tongue. It is of immense advantage to an explorer to be familiar with it, as although it may not be found in its purity, having been corrupted more or less by the admixture of the Serotse, it will rarely fail to enable him to make himself understood in any quarter of the kingdom.
When I asked the king the extent of his dominions, he told me that it took his people fifteen or twenty days to reach the northern frontier; and after making strict inquiries, first of the native chiefs, then of the envoys from the Mashukulumbe, and lastly from the Portuguese traders, and reducing the days’ journeys to miles, I think that I am quite borne out in assigning the boundaries as they are marked in my map; that is to say, with the Mashukulumbe on the north and east, the Bamashis on the west, and the Bamangwatos and Matabele country on the south.
Sepopo’s name in the Serotse dialect means “a dream,” and his mother was called Mangala. After introducing me to the principal chiefs and officials that were then in Nesheke, amongst whom was Kapella the commander-in-chief, he presented Mashoku the executioner, a repulsive Mabunda, and his two fathers-in-law, who were about to become his sons-in-law as well, as, having married their daughters, he was going to give them two of his own young daughters as wives in return.
During the time that these introductions were going on, honey-beer was being drunk, and it occurred to me that Lunga, the handsomest of the ladies, took an uncommonly large share. Very shortly afterwards three Marutse came into the tent uttering a loud cry of “Shangwe,” and each carrying a buffalo’s tail; they had been sent by the king to procure some meat for Blockley and myself. Before I left, Sepopo pointed out to me his two doctors who provided him with charms when he went hunting.
I spent the remainder of the day in making an investigation of the town, returning in the evening to the royal residence, where I found that Makumba had just come in from Impalera, bringing the melancholy intelligence that Y., the trader that I had met at Schneemann’s Pan, and had urged to go on as quickly as possible to my waggon at Panda ma Tenka, had died before reaching there.
On the night of the 20th an event occurred that rather tended to disturb the harmonious relations between Sepopo and myself. By Blockley’s hospitality a very lively evening had been spent in his courtyard, and it was getting on for midnight before his black guests of both sexes had emptied the three great pitchers of beer with which he had entertained them, and had set out on their way home. For a long time afterwards the uproar they made, and the harsh notes of their calabash keyboards, made sleep quite out of the question, but at length I dropped into a doze, from which I was almost immediately aroused by the barking of a dog. I opened my eyes, and at once observed that my hut was peculiarly light, although I had blocked up the entrance with a chest. In another instant I made out that there was a dark figure in the aperture, and that a native was in the very act of taking my clothes, which I had thrown on the top of the chest. The only weapon that was at hand was an assegai which I had bought on the previous day, but it was hanging out of my reach; and before I could get at it, the thief and a partner he had with him had run away towards the huts. I followed as quickly as I could, but too late to see them. On my way I found that they had left a stick and a fish behind. It was not likely that I could get much more sleep that night, and the first thing I did in the morning was to go and tell the king what had happened. He made a very evasive reply, and I could feel evidently enough that my company that day gave him anything but pleasure. Nevertheless I determined to do what I could to sift the matter to the bottom. In spite of the absurdity of expecting to get an applicant, I sent one of Blockley’s servants to the town to circulate the report that I had found a stick, which I should be happy to return to its proper owner.” Late in the afternoon a middle-aged man appeared and claimed the stick, and as he said that the fish was also his property, I took him off forthwith to the king. Meanwhile the stolen articles had been concealed, and when the man’s hut was searched by the king’s messenger nothing could be found, and accordingly the man was declared not guilty. I expressed my dissatisfaction with the judgment, whereupon the king said that if I wished it the man should be punished, but as I quite understood that this punishment meant death, I acquiesced in his being released; nevertheless I made it thoroughly well known that I should shoot the very next burglar that I found trying to get into my hut. Sepopo assented to all I said, and repeated my words aloud to the crowd that had been drawn together by the affair.
Later in the evening some Barotse men arrived with their subsidies of corn, one of them being a Matabele who had been captured by Sekeletu. Sepopo took them in and showed them over his hut, of which he was not a little proud.
As it had been intimated to me by Masangu, an official who might be described as the controller of the arsenal, that the king was willing to grant me some favour by way of compensation for my annoyance at the robbery, I considered it a good opportunity to prefer my formal request for permission to explore his dominions. For this purpose I was conducted into the little courtyard, where I found Sepopo sitting with about thirty men squatting around him in perfect silence; my eye, as I entered, at once lighted upon one of these men who was bent down in a peculiarly demure attitude. It struck me immediately that he was not a Marutse native, and on looking again I saw that he was a half-caste.
Having asked the king whether he had heard of my wishes from Westbeech, and receiving an answer in the affirmative, I proceeded to explain to him, as definitely as I could, the object of my journey. He listened to me very attentively, and was silent for some moments, after which he said,—
“Can the white doctor speak Serotse or Sesuto?”
I replied that I knew neither.
“Can he then speak the language of these men?” and he pointed to two of the attendants squatting on the ground beside him, one of which was the sly-looking half-caste that I had already noticed.
On my asking who they were, the man servilely raised his hat, and in a fawning voice informed me that he and the companion at his side were Portuguese traders and good Christians. I further ascertained that they belong to the so-called Mambari, of whom I had heard all kinds of unpleasant stories. Sepopo introduced the man who had spoken to me by the name of Sykendu, adding that he was “a great man” and “a doctor,” but the hypocritical look which the fellow put on only confirmed me in the unfavourable impression I had formed of his character. Finding that I was not acquainted with their language, the king said that he considered it was quite necessary I should learn something of it before leaving Sesheke, as then these men might act as my guides and interpreters, and would be able to render me invaluable assistance. On further conversation I learnt that the Portuguese traders from Loanda, Mossamedes, and Benguela are thoroughly acquainted with the district between the west coast and Lake Bangweolo, and with all the country eastwards as far as the mouth of the Kafue, the whole of which we are accustomed to consider as “terra incognita;” they not only are acquainted with the rulers of the native states, but are intimate with all the sub-chieftains, knowing their individual peculiarities; they are familiar with the winding of every hill, and the passage of every river; but meanwhile they are most careful, in conjunction with their white colleagues, to keep all their knowledge to themselves, always fearful that the traders of other nations may be attracted to what they are wont to consider their own proper fields for ivory and caoutchouce.
Overhearing that Sepopo was speaking to me about my having the services of two guides, Sykendu came up and put in his word again. He raised his hat, bowed almost to the ground, crossed himself, and swore by the Holy Virgin that he and his brother were two of the best Christians in the interior, and as such would be the most suitable guides I could find. Probably this attestation on his part was made in answer to the suspicious look with which I regarded him and his associate.
Sepopo waited a moment or two to see whether I had more to say, and then remarked that he was satisfied it would be a good thing for me to learn either the Serotse or the Makololo dialect, as it might enable me to avoid what had happened to Monari (Livingstone), who, in consequence of not being able to make himself understood by the chiefs, had been taken for a magician who had come down from heaven with the rain, an impression which he only removed by making them a present of some muskets.
Again Sykendu interrupted the conversation between the king and myself, by saying he supposed that I was aware that the guides always expected a good remuneration for their services, and although Sepopo told him that that would be settled all right, he went on to say that they would require four tusks weighing eighty pounds apiece. I told him that I should give four tusks weighing forty pounds apiece, and that only on condition that I should deposit them with Sepopo, to be handed over to them on their return from Matimbundu, whither they were to conduct me.
However, after all these arrangements had been made, when I really went on my tour from Sesheke, it was not with the two Mambari for my guides. I had meantime learnt that they were slave-dealers, and having various other reasons for distrusting them, I declined their services altogether.
After I had made what I then supposed would be my final contract with the guides, Sepopo promised to provide me with canoes and boatmen to convey me to the Barotse valley, beyond which I should have to procure a change of crews in every fresh district as far as the Mamboë country. The Mamboë, who would ultimately accompany me to the great water, i.e. the sea, would have to be recompensed for their services by a musket apiece; but the boatmen who took me only for the short stages I should find would be satisfied with shirts or pieces of calico. The king moreover undertook to order all the tribes along the river to supply my party with whatever provisions should be requisite. He strongly advised me to wend my way northwards towards Lake Bangweolo, a route, he said, by which I should be able to dispense with canoes and to travel with bearers, and which would be at once more convenient to him and less dangerous to myself.
I have since very much repented that I did not follow this advice, but at that time I was under the conviction that I should be doing much more for the advancement of science by following the Zambesi to its source; I likewise thought that I should find the canoe-voyage less fatiguing to myself, so that my strength might be reserved for the prolonged land-journey that would come after.
My next proceeding might have been at once to return to Panda ma Tenka to conclude my necessary preparations, but I did not leave Sesheke for another day or two, and amused myself on one occasion by going to inspect the site selected for the new town. I came upon a very animated and interesting scene; the building-operations were in full swing, and the river was alive with canoes laden with grass, stakes, and reeds, some going straight along the stream, and some crossing from bank to bank. On the shore, men and women in single file were carrying loads of grass in bundles that almost swept the ground behind them; others were conveying long poles, from which were suspended the great clay vessels, in which the store of corn was being removed from the old granary to the new. Every here and there was what might be called a peripatetic roof, being a thatch in the course of removal, nothing of its means of locomotion being visible but the thirty or forty feet of the bearers, the foremost of whom had some holes pierced in the roof by which they could see their way; many of the people were singing at their work, and some of them carrying heavy burdens passed me at a good smart trot. The very queens found work to do, and I noticed them, assisted by their maids, moving large bundles of the grass. Hearing the words “moro, nyaka makoa,” (good morning, white doctor), I turned and found that the greeting came from Makumba the chief, who was passing by with a number of his people. Nearly all the residents in the old town were taking down their huts and preparing to migrate, none more busy than Blockley, who was packing up all his goods in readiness to transfer them from his present enclosure to a grass hut that the king had directed should be built for him in the new settlement.
While I was sitting in my hut writing my journal on the following day, I was startled by the cry of “molemo, molemo!”’ (fire, fire!) and immediately I rushed outside; a single hut was in flames, but as it was standing in the midst of some hundreds more, the reed-thatch roofs of which were all extra dry from the heat of the weather, there was every reason to fear that others would catch fine, and that the brisk east wind that was blowing would fan the flames into a general conflagration. Crowds of women and children came shrieking and holloaing down the pathway from the river, and to increase the commotion, as the fire spread there were the constant reports of the guns that had been left in the huts, the bullets flying about in all directions, and imperilling the lives of all the bystanders. I had hardly managed to get my own little property into a safe place outside the hut, when Blockley came running up to fetch some shovels. All Westbeech’s gunpowder, as well as what he had sold to Sepopo, had been stored in a hut at the edge of the forest, and as nothing was more likely than that the forest itself would catch fire, he was anxious to get the powder away, and to have it buried underground as quickly as possible.
To the west of our quarters and about thirty yards away stood the king’s stable, a building composed of stakes, and on the west was a group of huts, likewise at a considerable distance, so that from these there was no particular danger to be apprehended; but on the north, which was the direction of the fire, there were two huts so close to us, that should they catch light our safety must be seriously compromised; luckily they remained intact, but the crackling flames were getting nearer and nearer to them, lighting up the figures of the men who were doing their utmost to arrest their progress. I had only Pit and one of Blockley’s servants with me; they did what they could to carry up our gourds and clay pitchers full of water from the river, though they smashed a good many of them in their excitement; but I called them off, and made them help me tear down the fence of our enclosure, thus putting a very effectual check upon the spread of any flames towards us. Others of the natives took the hint and did the same, but in spite of all efforts, more than half of Old Sesheke was destroyed.
Sepopo’s mode of showing his annoyance at what had occurred was somewhat extraordinary. He was in New Sesheke at the time, and when he heard what had happened, and saw the flames rising above the old town, he set to work and vigorously belaboured all his attendants with a thick stick, only giving up from sheer fatigue.
In course of time Blockley came back with the satisfactory intelligence that he had succeeded in saving the gunpowder, and on receiving my congratulations, returned the compliment by expressing his gratification at my having prevented the destruction of the warehouses. I little thought to what a risk I had been exposed, for I was not aware until afterwards that Blockley had a chest containing 700 lbs. of gunpowder in the courtyard itself.
On the following day several canoes arrived from the Barotse, and were placed at my disposal by Sepopo, who urged upon me to lose no time in returning to Panda ma Tenka, completing my preparations, and getting back to Sesheke ready to start. However I did not set out until the 30th, being resolved first to see Blockley settled in his new quarters; my time was fully occupied in making additions to my ethnographical collection, in studying the habits of the native tribes, as exhibited by the representatives who were staying in the place, and especially in learning the Sesuto language. Relying upon the king’s promise that the way to the west coast should be open to me, I now arranged with Blockley for him to take my waggon and various collections back to Shoshong, and to deposit them there until my arrival, and as he was in want of bullocks, I let him have my team in exchange for ivory and articles that I should be likely to find serviceable, such as calico and beads.
Before continuing my personal narrative, and concluding my account of my first visit to the residence of king Sepopo, I think it desirable to give some outline of the characteristics of the various tribes dwelling in his dominions.
With the exception of the Mashonas, on the east of the Matabele, there are none of the South African tribes that exhibit so much energy, as these in the Marutse-Mabunda kingdom. The various products of their handicraft to be found throughout the country mark them out to a student of comparative ethnology as people of a relatively high state of culture, an inference which is further illustrated and confirmed by their skill in boating, fishing, and other similar pursuits. Their aptitude in manipulating metal, horn, bone, wood, or leather, augurs well for their mental capacity, and they are very quick in receiving instruction. Compared with the tribes south of the Zambesi it must be confessed that their moral standard is low, but this proceeds so much from their primitive ignorance, and from their long seclusion from the outer world, and not, as is the case with the Hottentots, from wilful and degraded corruption, that I do not hesitate to express my belief that in this respect they will gradually show many signs of improvement.
Perhaps the evil which is most deeply rooted among them is their superstition. In this they are far worse than most other South African tribes, the Zulus and Matabele being hardly their match in this respect. The effect of the vice is both demonstrated and aggravated by the multitude of human lives that are sacrificed to its demands. The royal house on the Zambesi is the very hot-bed of superstition; magic is the pretext under which the worst of barbarities are perpetrated, and the people, associating the enormities with the sovereigns who sanction them, learn at once to dread and hate their rulers. To deliver the people of the district from their superstitious credulity, would be to remove the greatest hindrance that exists to their future civilization.
Among the Marutse the king has a despotic power extending to the land as well as to the population; until the time however of the present ruler, whose rule is that of a tyrant, it has very rarely happened that any king has stretched his right to interfere with private property. During their own lifetime the reigning sovereigns appoint their successors; these may be of either sex, provided they are born of a Marutse mother—and women are especially welcome as sovereigns among the northern tribes, on the presumption that they are less cruel than men. Amongst the Bechuanas, who are more conservative in their instincts, the eldest son of the principal wife is always recognized as the rightful heir, and so strictly is this rule enforced, that even if the king should die before the heir is born, the eldest son of the widowed queen by another husband would still be held to be the legitimate successor to the throne. In 1875 Sepopo appointed his little daughter of six years of age to be queen at his own demise; by right his eldest daughter Moquai should have been nominated, but as she had been formally designated as the proper sovereign of the Mabundas, he feared that she already had too many friends and supporters in that district, to make it advisable for him to name her as successor to the joint kingdom. The king’s principal wife is always called “the mother of the country.”
The king holds the offices of chief doctor and chief magician, and under the cloke of these two arts, he works upon the credulity of the people by the most hideous crimes, being himself quite aware of the hollowness of his pretences.
Large sources of revenue are open to the king of the Marutse people. Besides his own extensive territories, which are cultivated partly by colonies of subjects, and partly by the royal wives with their staff of labourers, the direct taxes, which include contributions of every article which a prince can require, yield an immense revenue. As a consequence, moreover, of ivory and india-rubber, the staple commodities of the country, being crown property, the king is the chief merchant, and from time to time he makes large purchases of goods to the amount of 3000l. to 5000l., which he gives away to the people who reside near him, or to the chiefs or subjects who may happen to visit him, always stipulating that any guns that may be distributed shall be considered not given, but lent. Notwithstanding his wealth, it will often happen that the king looks with a covetous eye upon some property, perhaps a fine herd of cattle, belonging to one of his more well-to-do subjects, and although he considers he has a perfect right to it, he hardly likes to carry it off by force, but proceeds to get the owner convicted of treason or witchcraft, and put to death, after which he appropriates to himself the property he wants.
Quite undisputed is the king’s power to put to death, or to make a slave of any one of his subjects in any way he chooses; he may take a man’s wife simply by providing him with another wife as a substitute, and he is quite at liberty to demand any children he may wish to devote to the purposes of his magic. Reigning queens may choose any husband they like, perfectly regardless of the consideration whether he is married or not. It is high treason for any subject to retain possession of an article that is either more handsome or more valuable than what belongs to the king, and anything of exceptional quality, whether it has been purchased from neighbouring tribes or from white men, or even manufactured in the country, belongs to the king, or at least is free for him to claim as a matter of course. I could not offer anybody a present of anything the least unusual without finding it invariably refused, the excuse being that no one dared to take for himself what he was not quite sure that Sepopo already possessed.
In their style of building, as in other respects, the Marutse-Mabunda people surpass most of the tribes south of the Zambesi. This remark, however, applies only to the stationary tribes, and does not include the temporary erections put up by those who come for hunting and fishing, either on their own sites or in places marked out for them by the chief or king; such structures are generally found on the riverbanks, or on wooded slopes, or in glades where game is likely to resort; but the permanent settlements are scattered over the kingdom, the larger towns being mainly in the Barotse country. The houses in these established towns are as a general rule equally strong and comfortable, and they have the advantage of being very quickly constructed. It may be said that the material required is very abundant, and most conveniently close at hand, but so it is in the case of the tribes much farther south. The northern people are much more adroit in turning their natural advantages to good account. No better example is needed than that of New Sesheke to prove the rapidity of their building-operations; nor can it be objected that their huts are more lable to be burnt down than those of the Bechuana, Zulu, and Hottentot races; the truth is that when any of these are destroyed, they are so easily replaced that the damage is quite inappreciable.
The river-system of the Marutse district is just of the character, on account of its extensive marshlands, to provide the inhabitants with most admirable and productive sites for their settlements; all around is an abundance of reeds for building purposes, wood for framework and for laths, besides bast, palm-leaves for making ropes and twine, metal for nails and bolts, and sand and clay for cement. Even if it should happen that in any particular spot there should be a deficiency of any one of these materials, the light canoes are so available, and the natives so ready to assist one another, that the want is soon supplied. The towns are built as close to the rivers as the annual inundations will permit, and are generally surrounded by villages that are for the most part tenanted by the vassal people, who till the fields and tend the cattle of the masters who reside within the town itself. That cleanliness is comparatively great, both in the settlements and amongst the population, is probably to be attributed to the abundance of water always at their command.
I observed that the Marutse themselves were always to be credited with a more masterly style of workmanship than any of the servile tribes around them and in their employ. They had three distinct classes of buildings, one of a double concentric form, another cylindrical, and a third long and low. That which I designate the concentric hut consists of two compartments, the inner being the loftier and in shape like the inferior half of a cone, the outside one considerably lower and cylindrical in its form. The inner hut is covered by a low vaulted roof of its own, over which is placed another roof, conical in its design, and projecting five or six feet beyond the top of the outer compartment, supported at its extremity by a series of upright posts that form a shady verandah running round the whole. After the owner, with the help of his vassals, has procured the materials, and prepared the foundation by making a layer of level cement, the construction of the edifice is left to the women. A royal residence is always built by the royal wives. The circular sites upon which the structures are reared vary from twenty to forty feet in circumference; round their edge a trench is dug some ten or twelve inches deep and about five inches wide, into which are planted loose bundles of strong reeds, when the trench is filled up with soil again. To bind the loose reeds together several palm-leaf cords are woven amongst them, and as these are drawn tighter and tighter they have the effect of giving the structure a conical form, arising from the tapering character of the reeds themselves; these are then trimmed off evenly at a height of about twelve feet from the ground, after which the outside, and not unfrequently the inside also, is plastered over with cement. Meanwhile a low conical roof has been woven by the men, which is placed in position, and left to be cemented on by the women. The doorway, which generally faces the entrance to the enclosure, is a semi-oval aperture cut in the reeds, and finished off all round with a cement moulding. This completes the inner compartment.
For the outer building the foundation is made in precisely the same way; the trench is dug, but the reeds inserted are some two feet at least shorter than before; in consequence however of this being the wall which has to maintain the great burden of the roof, it is always strengthened by a number of peeled stakes driven in firmly against it at intervals of only a few inches apart, and when the whole has been thoroughly cemented over on both sides, the material of which it has been formed is quite undistinguishable. The doorway is cut so as to correspond exactly with that of the inner compartment, and is generally about six feet high and three feet wide. While the outer wall, ordinarily from forty to sixty feet in circumference, is being finished by the women, the men drive in the verandah-poles about a yard or a yard and a half away, and then proceed to put together the upper or principal roof, the lifting of which into position is the greatest difficulty of the whole; the operation is effected by about fifty men raising it from the ground by long levers and gradually getting it supported all round on a number of short stakes; these stakes are then replaced by longer ones, which in their turn are exchanged for others yet longer, until the roof has been elevated by degrees to such a height that its edge can be laid above the top of the inner roof; it is then driven carefully onwards by main force until it properly covers the two enclosures. The ends of the reeds have then to be clipped off even all round the top of the verandah, after which the entire roof is covered with a layer of last year’s grass five or six inches thick, and bound over with a perfect network of palmcord to make it firm against the wind. Great pains are bestowed upon getting a smooth surface to the cement, particularly where it is laid over the cornice of the inner doorway, which not unfrequently is very delicately moulded. I was told that the former royal residence in the Barotse valley had been very prettily built.
Of the kind of houses that I have been describing the king has three for his own use; they are surrounded by an oval fence, and form the centre of several circles of homesteads, the nearest circle containing eight residences for the queens, built in the Masupia style like ovens, and accommodating two or three ladies apiece; beyond these are placed the storehouse, the culinary offices, and the huts for the royal musicians; the fourth and outer circle consisting of the huts for all the servants of both sexes, and containing likewise the council-hall, which is fitted up very much in European fashion. Ordinarily the chiefs would have their abodes in a wide circle outside the court, but here in New Sesheke, where the royal buildings are bounded on one side by the river, the dwellings are arranged in a semi-circle, the ground assigned to each being very accurately marked out. For protection against wild beasts the entrance to the king’s courtyard is closed every night by a strong palisade of reeds.
The second kind of huts, which I have specified as the cylindrical, are chiefly used by a branch tribe of the Marutse. If the walls of these are cemented at all, it is only on the inside, and they are rarely more than about eleven feet in diameter; their tops, however, are occasionally decorated with ornaments made of wood, grass, or straw.
The other description of huts, the gabled, have a low doorway generally in the middle, opposite the entrance to the courtyard, and their reed-roof projects, so as to form an eave that serves to throw off the rain. In the larger erections of this kind, the gable is supported by stakes, and the interior is divided by matting into two apartments, the larger being used for sleeping in, and the other as a reception-room. Any enclosure larger than usual would often be found to contain two of these huts. The more wealthy inhabitants sometimes have a detached granary as well, and chiefs not unfrequently provide themselves with an additional erection which serves as a consultation hall. As a general rule the courtyards are oval, and the principal building exactly faces the entrance.
I should say that two-thirds of the Marutse in Sesheke live in houses such as I have here described, under their chief Maranzian. The huts of the Mabunda people are in many respects not unlike them, but they are shorter and broader, with flatter roofs, and the courtyards in which they stand are quadrilateral instead of oval, composed of stakes about six feet high, driven into the ground five feet or less apart, and connected by a fence of reeds braced on to strong cross-poles.
Besides the three principal houses of the king’s residences, I noticed within the enclosure three small huts, one of which served the double purpose of bath-room and laboratory. It had a straw roof about two feet in diameter, supported on thin stakes, and in the centre was a post five feet high, covered all over with a most promiscuous collection of articles; there were antelopes’ horns, bones, strings of coral, calabash baskets of herbs, bags of poison used for executions, magical instruments in great variety made of wood or ivory, scales of pangolins and crocodiles, a number of snakes’ skins, and a lot of rags. The floor was strewn with miscellaneous things of a similar character, and up in the roof was a small medicine-chest, which had been a present from a Portuguese trader. Several musical instruments were hanging against the sides of the hut. An immense wooden tub was brought in every evening, in which Sepopo took his bath.
In front of the laboratory-hut stood another, with a roof in the form of a prism; this was devoted to the reception of any deformed elephants’ tusks, and to the storing of the many vessels containing the different charms employed by the king when he went out hunting.
Beyond this again was another hut, also with a prism-shaped roof supported by the stem of a tree, where was deposited a collection of elephants’ tails, trophies of the number of animals that had been killed in the neighbourhood; it was also the place of security for a large number of assegais, the finest and best made in the country.
Between the huts and the high reed fence there were several wooden stands holding the clay vessels, and gourds containing the ordinary hunting-charms; and whatever court I entered I never failed to notice a branch of a tree or small dry stem planted in the ground, where the master of the house hung the skulls of antelopes or the upper vertebræ of the larger mammalia as trophies of his prowess. After a hunter’s death these are always placed upon his grave.
While walking along the river side on the 26th, I saw a crocodile rise from the river and snap at a man in a canoe. Fortunately he observed his danger in time, and managed to save himself by leaping on to the sandy bank.
During this day the king gave a Mabunda dance in my honour—a performance of so objectionable a character that the negroes themselves are quite conscious of its impropriety, and refuse to dance it except in masks. In their ideas of music the Marutse-Mabundas seem to be comparatively well advanced. It is quite true, indeed, that in the skilful handling of their instruments they are surpassed by some of the tribes on the east coast, who have more constant intercourse with the Portuguese, and in singing they are not a match for the Matabele Zulus; but here was the first instance that I found of a king with a private band composed entirely of native artistes. Altogether the band consisted of twenty men, but it was very rarely that more than eight or ten of them performed at the same time, the rest being kept in reserve for the night. There were several drummers among them, who played with the palms of their hands or with their fingers upon long conical or cylindrical kettle-drums, over which they walked astride, or upon double drums in the shape of an hour-glass, which were suspended from their necks by a strap. The principal instruments were the myrimbas, or calabash pianos, which were carried in the same way as the double-drums. The two royal zither-players very seldom performed together. All the musicians were obliged to be singers as well, having to screech out the king’s praises between the intervals in the music, or to the muffled accompaniment of their instruments.
KISHI-DANCE.
The band was never allowed to perform without express orders from the king, but was required to hold itself in constant readiness; its services were always brought into requisition on his entry into the town, and whenever he honoured any public dances, weddings, or other festivities with his presence. Besides the three kinds of drums, the myrimbas, and the zither-like sylimbas, I noticed that the orchestra included some stringed instruments made of the ribs of fan-palms, as well as some iron bells, one sort being double and without clappers, some rattles made of fruit shells, and various pipes
MASK OF A KISHI-DANCER.
formed of ivory, wood, or reeds. The stringed instruments are used at the elephant-dance, the bells at the kishi-dance, and the rattles at weddings. On the occasion of the Masupia prophetic dance, the king lends a number of hollow bottle-shaped gourd-shells filled with dry seeds, which, when they are rattled, are exceedingly noisy. Rattles, bells, and pipes, as well as guitars of a simple make, were to be found amongst the ordinary population, but all the larger and more elaborate instruments were confined to the royal band, consequently I was unable to get hold of any proper specimen of this class of native handicraft for my collection. In nearly all settlements small drums are kept in the council-hut, and are beaten on the occasion of any successful hunting-excursion, and at funerals.
The Marutse-Mabunda melodies are somewhat monotonous, but they are very numerous, and are of a character that make it evident that a little cultivation would soon effect a decided improvement in them. Of course the ordinary manipulation of the different instruments is purely mechanical; but amongst the king’s zither-players I observed two grey-headed old men, who really displayed some amount of taste. As they hummed I could hear that their voices were precisely in time with their instruments, gradually sinking to a whisper in the pianissimo part, and as gradually rising to a forte when the tune required it. Their performance was a pleasant contrast to the discordant shouts of the head drummer, who strove to compete with the noise of his own huge instrument.
There is one more instrument which I much regret to have met with in the Marutse country at all, but which must not be omitted from the enumeration. I allude to the war-drum. In the council-hall there were four of these ghastly-looking objects. The skins were painted all over with red, to represent blood, and they were filled with fragments of dry flesh and bones, these bones being principally the toes and fingers of the live children of distinguished parents, and supposed to be amulets to protect the rising town of Sesheke from fire and sword, and to guard the kingdom generally from assault and rapine.
Singing amongst the Marutse-Mabunda people is better than amongst the Bechuanas, and may be said in many respects to equal that of the Matabele Zulus, though still inferior in the great songs of war and death.
The dance to which I have said the king invited me on the 26th was called the kishi-dance, and is never performed except by the king’s order. Its main object seems to be to inflame animal passion, and it is danced by two men, one of whom is supposed to represent a woman, or occasionally by two couples. The performers step forward from a group of young people, who are all singing most vigorously, and clapping their hands in time to the great tubular drums that are being sounded. Having turned their faces towards the king, they commence a series of gestures indicating, with many contortions, the advances of one party coquettishly rejected by the other. The costumes being royal property I failed to get possession of any of them. They consist of a mask with a network attached to it, and a peculiar covering for the loins. The masks, which are a specialité in Mabunda handicraft, are modelled by boys from clay and cow-dung, and painted with chalk and red ochre. They are considerably larger than the head, completely covering the neck. Altogether they bear a sort of resemblance to a helmet with a vizor; small openings are left for the eyes and mouth, and sometimes for the nose; upon the top are knobs adorned in the middle with an ornament made from the tail of a striped gnu, and at the sides with bunches of feathers; the tout ensemble is not unlike that of a gurgoyle. Attached to the head-piece, and covering the shoulders, is a long, tight jacket of netted bast, with close-fitting sleeves. Gloves and stockings of the same material are likewise worn. The performer personating a woman wears a woollen skirt, reaching from the waist to the ankles, over which is the skin of an animal hanging down before and behind. The only distinction between the male and female mask is that the ornament on the male is more elaborate, and that a wisp of straw is twisted round the neck of the female. A steel girdle is worn round the waist, to the back of which a number of small bells is attached, keeping up a tinkling upon the slightest movement. The dance is repeated in public almost every fortnight. It attracts a large number of spectators at every performance, but children are not allowed to be present.
On the 27th I saw some people of the Alumba tribe, who had their hair dressed in a very peculiar fashion. Over the scalp it was divided into four rows of tufts, nearly two and a half inches long, which were so thickly plastered over with a mixture of grease and manganese that the mass of the hair was completely embedded, and nothing left to appear but the ends of the tufts. Some of the Marutse wore pangolin scales round their necks, or pieces of a kind of tortoiseshell, with which they are skilful in stanching blood. I was also shown a piece of wood, which is a remedy for whooping-cough, being sucked by children with good effect.
Sepopo made repeated visits to us, always accompanied by a number of servants bringing great quantities of ivory, which he bartered with Blockley for guns and ammunition. Whenever he was going to send his hunters on an excursion, he always had the men into his residence over-night, and gave them about a quart of gunpowder each, taking an account of what he had done. Blockley made great complaints because the king always required a present after every transaction. It was a custom that Westbeech had introduced when he was the sole trader who did business on the Zambesi, and could demand what terms he liked for his goods; but now that other dealers had found their way to Sesheke they were all completely in the king’s power; and the result of the competition was to make them bid such high prices for the ivory that they had good cause to grumble at the bad state of trade.
When I went to the king next day to consult him again about my journey, I found that he had just had an altercation with Blockley, and was consequently rather cross; but by interesting him in some of my travelling experiences, I managed to put him into a good temper again, and he began to show me my proper route, by drawing a map of the Upper Zambesi and its affluents with his stick on the sand.
He was much pleased with the interest I took in his communications, and calling to him two Manengos from the Upper Zambesi, who were passing through the place, and who had several times traversed the country, he made them also describe the localities; and to my satisfaction I found that their delineations corresponded precisely with his.
Whatever I had that was new to Sepopo, he not only inquired of what use it was, but almost invariably wanted to have it. He made a great many inquiries about my compass. In order to explain its object I drew a plan of the eastern hemisphere; and then pointing out Africa, showed him the direction I took through the Bechuana countries.
I was invited to pay a visit to the royal kitchen, a department that was under the superintendence of a woman, who had several assistants. Everything was very clean, and the huge corn-bins were placed on wooden stands in little separate huts made of matting and reeds. A fire was kept continually burning on a low hearth in the courtyard, at which, during the time of my visit, a servant was boiling a piece of hippopotamus-flesh. The meat, which was nearly done, was afterwards served on a large wooden dish, then cut up into fragments, placed upon smaller dishes, and so sent in to the queen.
A messenger that evening arriving from Panda ma Tenka brought word that Westbeech and another trader had arrived there from Shoshong, and as I hoped to be off next morning, I sat up nearly all night to work at my drawings. It was quite early when I was summoned to the canoes which were to take me to Makumba’s landing-place, and then wait for Westbeech. The passage down the river was just as pleasant as it had been on the way up. I gave my chief attention to the different varieties of birds, finding some interesting subjects for study in the speckled black-and-white skimmers (Rhynchopinæ), with their lower mandible much elongated, in the huge marabouts, and in the fine kingfishers. The reeds were covered with snails, and the banks literally perforated by crabs. Pools lay close together all along the shore, the stream having fallen eighteen inches in the interval of the few days since I had last passed over it.
ON THE SHORES OF THE ZAMBESI.
We spent the night in a creek, starting off again betimes next morning. The boatmen exerted themselves to their utmost, and our progress was not much short of five miles an hour. On reaching Impalera I found that Westbeech, with a considerable party, had arrived before me; they were now on the point of starting to pay their respects to Sepopo. Their waggons had been left at Panda ma Tenka.
Westbeech, who had married the daughter of a farmer in the Transvaal a few months before, had his young wife with him, and was attended by his clerk Bauren; Francis, the merchant who was travelling with him, had likewise, according to his custom, brought his wife, who had already done much to secure the respect both of the white residents and the natives. They were accompanied by a distant relative named Oppenshaw, who acted as Francis’s clerk. Besides Bauren, Westbeech had also brought a man of the name of Walsh, who had formerly been a soldier, and subsequently a gaoler in Cape Town; he was a proficient in the art of preserving birds’-skins, and had come out to carry on business in that way in the Zambesi district, under the arrangement that he was to share his profits with Westbeech.
The two merchants were anxious to get their visit to Sepopo over as quickly as possible that they might get back to Panda ma Tenka, and start with their wives on a visit to the Victoria Falls. They had brought with them all my correspondence, and I had welcome letters, not only from home, but from various friends in the diamond-diggings. I received about sixty newspapers, the broad white margins of which were subsequently of great service to me, in the dearth of writing-paper; amongst them was a copy of the Diamond News, containing my first article on the subject of my present journey.
My own departure was somewhat delayed by Makumba’s absence from the town; without his assistance I could not procure the bearers which, after crossing the river, I should require to convey the articles that I had collected in Sesheke, and the ivory which I had received from Blockley as payment for my bullocks.
The passage across the river gave me no small amount of anxiety, as independently of my uncertainty about getting bearers, I was much concerned at finding a leak in the ferry-boat as large as my fist, which threatened to do material injury to a good deal of my property. Fortunately, however, on reaching the Leshumo valley I again met Captains M‘Leod and Fairly, the English officers, who most considerately, during the time of their visit to Sepopo, allowed me the use of their waggon to take me to Panda ma Tenka. I waited a little while until the team could be fetched, and started off on the night of the 3rd of September. As I went along I noticed that the burning of the grass in the district had caused a diminution in the number of tsetse fly, although the herbage was already beginning to sprout afresh.
When on the following day we reached the Gashuma Flat, we found plenty of game still lurking in places where the grass had not been burned. With the waggon were two horses that the English officers had left in charge of a servant, who seemed to me unpardonably careless. Notwithstanding my warnings, he would persist in riding on considerably ahead. Approaching the baobab I told Pit and the driver to keep a sharp look-out; I had a kind of presentiment that the horses might invite an attack from the lion that was notoriously haunting the spot. We had gone but a very short distance farther, when the driver called out that he could see Captain M‘Leod’s servant up in a tree and only one horse beside him; another moment and his keen eye detected a lion retreating to the bushes on our right; I was sitting on the box, and almost immediately afterwards caught sight of the other horse lying disembowelled on the ground, the few small wounds in the neck revealing too clearly how the poor brute had met its end.
The servant’s tale was simple enough. About 300 yards from the tree he had been attacked by the lion and thrown, whereupon the lion, taking no notice of him, began the pursuit of his horse; the horse-cloth had entangled itself in the horse’s legs, and the creature was quickly overtaken and killed. The servant had betaken himself to the first mapani-tree, where we found him. The other horse was grazing quietly close at hand.
We all went some way in pursuit of the lion, but without success.