MANENKO's WHIMS. 167 



of adoration instead. They do not love them. They fear 

 them, and betake themselves to their idols only when in 

 perplexity and danger. 



"While delayed, by Manenko's management, among the 

 Balonda villages, a little to the south of the town of 

 Shinte, we were well supplied by the villagers with sweet 

 potatoes and green maize : Sambanza went to his mother's 

 village for supplies of other food. I was laboring under 

 fever, and did not find it very difficult to exercise patience 

 with her whims; but, it being Saturday, I thought we 

 might as well go to the town for Sunday, (15th.) "No: 

 her messenger must return from her uncle first." Being 

 sure that the answer of the uncle would be favorable, 1 

 thought we might go on at once, and not lose two days in 

 the same spot. "No : it is our custom;" and every thing 

 else I could urge was answered in the genuine pertinacious 

 lady style. She ground some meal for me with her own 

 hands, and when she brought it told me she had actually 

 gone to a village and begged corn for the purpose. She 

 said this with an air as if the inference must be drawn by 

 even a stupid white man, "I know how to manage, don't 

 I ?" It was refreshing to get food which could be eaten 

 without producing the unpleasantness described by the 

 Bev. John Newton, of St, Mary's, Woolnoth, London, 

 when obliged to eat the same roots while a slave in the 

 West Indies. The day, (January 14th,) for a wonder, was 

 fair, and the sun shone, so as to allow us to dry our cloth- 

 ing and other goods, many of which were mouldy and 

 rotten from the long-continued damp. The guns rusted, 

 in spite of being oiled every evening. 



On Sunday afternoon, messengers arrived from Shinte, 

 expressing his approbation of the objects we had in view 

 in our journey through the country, and that he was glad 

 of the prospect of a way being opened by which white 

 men might visit and allow him to purchase ornaments at 

 pleasure. Manenko now threatened in sport to go on, and 

 L soon afterward perceived that what now seemed to me 



