326 MANIOC GARDENS. 



CHAPTER XVII. 



Leave Shinte. — Manioc Gardens. — Mode of preparing the poisonous kind. — 

 Its general Use. — Presents of Food. — Punctiliousness of the Balonda. — 

 Their Idols and Superstition. — Dress of the Balonda. — Villages beyond 

 Lonaje. — Cazembe. — Our Guides and the Makololo. — Night Rains. — Inqui- 

 ries for English cotton Goods. — Intemese's Fiction. — Visit from an old Man. — 

 Theft. — Industry of our Guide. — Loss of Pontoon. — Plains covered with 

 Water. — Affection of the Balonda for their Mothers. — A Night on an Isl- 

 and. — The Grass on the Plains. — Source of the Rivers. — Loan of the Roofs 

 of Huts. — A Halt. — Fertility of the Country through which the Lokalueje 

 flows. — Omnivorous Fish. — Natives' Mode of catching them. — The Village of a 

 Half-brother of Katema, his Speech and Present. — Our Guide's Perversity. — 

 Mozenkwa's pleasant Home and Family. — Clear Water of the flooded Rivers. — 

 A Messenger from Katema. — Quendende's Village : his Kindness. — Crop of 

 Wool. — Meet People from the Town of Matiamvo. — Fireside Talk. — Matiam- 

 vo's Character and Conduct. — Presentation at Katema's Court: his Present, 

 good Sense, and Appearance. — Interview on the following Day. — Cattle. — A 

 Feast and a Makololo Dance. — Arrest of a Fugitive. — Dignified old Courtier. — 

 Katema's lax Government. — Cold Wind from the North. — Canaries and other 

 singing Birds. — Spiders, their Nests and Webs. — Lake Dilolo. — Tradition. — Sa- 

 gacity of Ants. 



26tA. Leaving Shinte, with eight of his men to aid in carrying 

 our luggage, we passed, in a northerly direction, down the lovely 

 valley on which the town stands, then went a little to the west 

 through pretty open forest, and slept at a village of Balonda. In 

 the morning we had a fine range of green hills, called Saloisho, 

 on our right, and were informed that they were rather thickly in- 

 habited by the people of Shinte, who worked in iron, the ore of 

 which abounds in these hills. 



The country through which we passed possessed the same 

 general character of flatness and forest that we noticed before. 

 The soil is dark, with a tinge of red — in some places it might 

 be called red — and appeared very fertile. Every valley con- 

 tained villages of twenty or thirty huts, with gardens of manioc, 

 which here is looked upon as the staff of life. Very little labor 

 is required for its cultivation. The earth is drawn up into 

 oblong beds, about three feet broad and one in height, and in 



