X PALM WINE 195 



called " Ra-Monare " (Sir), when he passed through 

 the Barotse valley some twenty years ago. Several 

 of the women held out their babies to have a look at 

 me ; but they must have previously told them that 

 the devil was white, as the little imps, one and all, 

 screamed in a most appalling manner and struggled to 

 get away. After a while, one of my guides brought 

 me a calabash of palm wine, the first 1 had ever seen, 

 and a wooden bowl of palm nuts (very nasty). 



This wine is of a clear bluish colour, and tastes at 

 the same time both sweet and acid : it is never drunk 

 cold, but always first warmed over the fire, which 

 removes a tendency it would otherwise have to make 

 one sick. It is said to be very intoxicating,' but, 

 though I drank a great deal, I never found it so. 

 To collect the juice from which palm wine is made, 

 little earthenware vessels are tied on to the stems of 

 the trees, just below wounds purposely made in the 

 bark, from which the sap trickles. As I looked 

 round me I saw some of these ingenious contrivances 

 attached to all the palm-trees on the island. The 

 only food these people had, besides fish, was some 

 very uninviting-looking stuff closely resembling saw- 

 dust in appearance. This I found was made from 

 the roots of the palm-tree, which are first roasted 

 under the ashes, and then hammered, when this 

 substance falls out from between the fibres. The 

 description I have given applies to all the people I 

 found living in the marsh of the Chobe during my 

 visit in i 874. 



Through my interpreter I gathered that, being 

 dissatisfied with the government of Sipopo, the 

 paramount chief of the Barotse, they had fled from 

 the Zambesi a few months previously, and, being 

 without corn or any other sort of food, had lived 



