

MANENKO'S WHIMS. $09 



not, etc., I learned that the Balonda, and even the Barotse, be- 

 lieve that divination may be performed by means of these blocks 

 of wood and clay ; and though the wood itself could not hear, 

 the owners had medicines by which it could be made to hear and 

 give responses, so that if an enemy were approaching they 

 would have full information. Manenko having brought us to a 

 stand on account of slight indisposition and a desire to send for- 

 ward notice of our approach to her uncle, I asked why it was nec- 

 essary to send forward information of our movements, if Shinte 

 had idols who could tell him every thing. " She did it only,"* 

 was the reply. It is seldom of much use to show one who wor- 

 ships idols the folly of idolatry without giving something else as 

 an object of adoration instead. They do not love them. They 

 fear them, and betake themselves to their idols only when in per- 

 plexity and danger. 



While delayed, by Manenko's management, among the Ba- 

 londa 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 sup- 

 plies 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, I 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 Eev. 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, 



* This is a curious African idiom, by which a person implies he had no particular 

 reason for his act. 



