in.] SOUTH AFRICAN TRIBES. 99 



These are probably the most complete savages 

 ^.mJL with whom our traveller has held intercourse in 



BATOKA. 



Africa. They reside on the islands of the Zam- 

 besi, and amid the fastnesses of its banks. He found them a 

 large-bodied race, fierce, blood-thirsty, and the men entirely 

 naked. They seemed to be more astonished at his disproving 

 of their nude condition, than ashamed of it. 



These people were numerous, and possessed immense herds 

 of cattle until Sebituane utterly routed and subdued them, 

 capturing their cattle. " Secure in their own island fortresses, 

 they often inveigled wandering or fugitive tribes on to others 

 which are uninhabited, and left them there to perish. The 

 river is so broad, that, when being ferried across, you often 

 cannot see whether you are going to the main land or not. To 

 remove temptation out of the way of our friends, we drew the 

 borrowed canoes last night into our midst on the island where 

 we slept, and some of the men made their beds in them. I 

 counted between fifty and sixty human skulls mounted on 

 poles in a village near Kalai, being those of men slain when 

 famishing with hunger; and I felt thankful that Sebituane 

 had rooted out the bloody imperious i Lords of the Isles 1 .' " 



A Batoka chief whom Dr Livingstone visited had his 

 village adorned with fifty-four human skulls, on pointed poles. 

 They boasted that few strangers ever returned from a visit to 

 that quarter. The way to propitiate a chief is to cut off a 

 strangers head, and bring it to him. 



In manners they are most brutal. Their mode of salutation 

 is to lie down on the back and slap the thighs. Their lan- 

 guage is a dialect of the others spoken in the great valley. 



Their tribe is now a mere shadow of what it was, having 

 been almost rooted out by the successive onslaughts of Sebi- 

 tuane, Pingola, a chieftain from the north-west, and the Mate- 

 bele of Moselekatse. Dr Livingstone almost came to blows 

 with them on two occasions. 



1 Letter, dated Hill Chanyune'. 



15 



