A FEMALE CHIEF. 131 



into the valley of the Leeba and Leeanibye, which seem so wonderful in the 

 eyes of the simple natives that they could hardly believe that they were the 

 work of mortal hand. No explanation satisfies them. " How can the irons 

 spin, weave, and print so beautifully ? Truly, ye are Gods ! " It was impos- 

 sible for them to understand the hard and prosaic toil endured in the manu- 

 facture of similar fabrics for years by the white man who stood before them — 

 toil sweetened by the opportunity the remuneration for it gave it to prepare 

 himself for the great work he was to accomplish on their behalf, a work which 

 to the worldly and unthinking brought no adequate reward for these early 

 trials and toils. 



Sheakondo, chief of the village of the same name at the mouth of the 

 Lonkonye, visited the bivouac of the party with two of his sons. The people 

 who accompanied him had their teeth filed to a point, by way of beautifying 

 themselves. They were tattooed and marked on the body with stars formed 

 by the skin being raised in small cicatrices. They wear little or no clothing, 

 and anoint their bodies with butter or ox-fat, and when these fail them, with 

 oil they extract from the castor-oil plant. Sheakondo, who appears to have 

 been a fine specimen of an unsophisticated savage, seemed awe-struck when 

 told some of the "words of God." The elder of his wives presented some 

 manioc roots, begging for butter to anoint herself in exchange, which was 

 given to her ; and, as she had little clothing and was not very clean, he says: 

 " I can readily believe that she felt her comfort greatly enhanced thereby." 

 The younger and more favoured wife also begged for butter ; and she had 

 numbers of iron rings on her ankles, to which were suspended small pieces of 

 sheet-iron, which made a tinkling as she walked mincingly in African style — 

 simple ornaments which appeared to give her a great deal of pleasure. 

 Livingstone drily remarks, "The same thing is thought pretty by our own 

 dragoons in walking jauntily." 



Wending their way up stream, they arrived at the village of another 

 female chief, Nyamoana, the mother of Manenko and the sister of Shinte, the 

 greatest Balonda chief of the Leeba district. Nyamoana gave Livingstone an 

 audience. She was seated alongside of her husband, on skins, on a raised 

 couch, surrounded by a trench. Round this trench sat about a hundred of 

 her people of all ages, the men armed with bows, spears, and broad swords. 

 After a palaver, Livingstone drew their attention to his hair, which was 

 always a subject of curiosity in the district. They imagined it a wig made 

 of a lion's mane, and could hardly believe it to be hair. He explained to 

 them that his was the real original hair, "Such as theirs would have been, 

 had it not been scorched and frizzled by the sun." In proof of what the sun 

 could do, he uncovered his bosom, and showed them the contrast between its 

 white hue, and his bronzed face and hands. As they go nearly naked and 

 exposed to the sun, this practical lesson enabled them readily to grasp the 



