1867.] NATIVE POLITENESS. GOVERNMENT. 218 



Close observation of the natives of Ulungu makes me 

 believe them to be extremely polite. The mode of saluta- 

 tion among relatives is to place the hands round each other's 

 chests kneeling, they then clap their hands close to the 

 ground. Some more abject individuals kiss the soil before 

 a chief ; the generality kneel only, with the fore-arms close 

 to the ground, and the head bowed down to them, saying, 

 " Ajadla chiusa, Mari a bwino." The Usanga say, " Aje 

 senga." The clapping of hands to superiors, and even 

 equals, is in some villages a perpetually recurring sound. 

 Aged persons are usually saluted : how this extreme defer- 

 ence to each other could have arisen, I cannot conceive ; it 

 does not seem to be fear of each other that elicits it. Even 

 the chiefs inspire no fear, and those cruel old platitudes 

 about governing savages by fear seem unknown, yet governed 

 they certainly are, and upon the whole very well. The 

 people were not very willing to go to punish Nsama's breach 

 of public law, yet, on the decision of the chiefs, they went, 

 and came back, one with a wooden stool, another with a 

 mat, a third with a calabash of ground-nuts or some dried 

 meat, a hoe, or a bow — poor, poor pay for a fortnight's hard 

 work hunting fugitives and burning villages. 



16th June. — News came to-day that an Arab party in 

 the south-west, in Lunda, lost about forty people by the 

 small-pox (" ndue"), and that the people there, having heard 

 of the disturbance with Nsama, fled from the Arabs, and 

 would sell neither ivory nor food : this looks like another 

 obstacle to our progress thither. 



17th-19th June. — Hamees went to meet the party from 

 the south-west, probably to avoid bringing the small-pox 

 here. They remain at about two hours' distance. Hamees 

 reports that though the strangers had lost a great many 

 people by small-pox, they had brought good news of certain 

 Arabs still further west : one, Seide ben Umale, or Salem, 

 lived at a village near Casembe, ten days distant, and 



