Chap. XVII. VILLAGES BEYOND THE LONAJE. 305 



ever in doubt and dread in these gloomy recesses of the forest, 

 and that they were striving to propitiate, by their offerings, some 

 superior beings residing there. 



The dress of the Balonda men consists of the softened skins of 

 small animals, as the jackal or wild cat, hung before and behind 

 from a girdle round the loins. The dress of the women is of a 

 nondescript character ; but they were not immodest. They 

 stood before us as perfectly unconscious of any indecorum as 

 we could be with our clothes on. But, while ignorant of their 

 own deficiency, they could not maintain their gravity at the sight 

 of the nudity of my men behind. Much to the annoyance of my 

 companions, the young girls laughed outright whenever their 

 backs were turned to them. 



After crossing the Lonaje, we came to some pretty villages, 

 embowered, as the negro villages usually are, in bananas, shrubs, 

 and manioc, and near the banks of the Leeba we formed our 

 encampment in a nest of serpents, one of which bit one of our 

 men, but the wound was harmless. The people of the sur- 

 rounding villages presented us with large quantities of food, in 

 obedience to the mandate of Shinte, without expecting any equi- 

 valent. One village had lately been transferred hither from the 

 country of Matiamvo. They, of course, continue to acknowledge 

 him as paramount chief; but the frequent instances which occur 

 of people changing from one part of the country to another, 

 show that the great chiefs possess only a limited power. The 

 only peculiarity we observed in these people is the habit of 

 plaiting the beard into a threefold cord. 



The town of the Balonda chief, Cazembe, was pointed out to 

 us as lying to the N.E. and by E. from the town of Shinte, and 

 great numbers of people in this quarter have gone thither for 

 the purpose of purchasing copper anklets, made at Cazembe's, 

 and report the distance to be about five days' journey. I made 

 inquiries of some of the oldest inhabitants of the villages at 

 which we were staying, respecting the visit of Pereira and 

 Lacerda to that town. An old grey-headed man replied that 

 they had often heard of white men before, but never had seen 

 one, and added that one had come to Cazembe when our informant 

 was young, and returned again without entering this part of the 

 country. The people of Cazembe are Balonda or Baloi, and 



X 



