A NATIVE SNUFF TAKER. 137 



depth of a few inches to several feet with water, the result of the incessant 

 rains which fell daily. In this vast plain the rivers which unite to form the 

 Zambesi take their rise. The people at the various villages were very 

 friendly, presenting Livingstone and his party with abundance of food, and 

 even striving who should have the pleasure of entertaining them. The 

 people were very superstitious, their superstition taking the form of a dread 

 and terror of some being or beings unseen, and supposed to be near and dan- 

 gerous. In the forests medicines were found fixed to the trees as charms ; 

 human faces cut out of the bark, and propitiatory gifts hung in the branches, 

 and bundles of twigs, to which every passer by added his or her quota, all 

 designed as offerings to the unseen powers, who draw them by fear and not 

 by love, were frequently met with. 



Several remarkable chiefs and headmen were met and conversed with 

 during this stage of the journey. Mozinkwa, a headman of Katema's and 

 his wife (he had only one), were above the ordinary run in character and 

 intelligence. They had a large and well-kept garden, hedged round. The 

 hut and courtyard were surrounded by a living and impenetrable wall of 

 banian trees. Cotton grew round all the premises. Plants used as relishes 

 to the insipid porridge of the district, castor-oil plants, Indian brignalls, yams, 

 and sweet potatoes were carefully and successfully cultivated. Several large 

 trees planted in the middle of the yard formed a grateful shade to the huts of the 

 family, who were fine specimens of the negro race at its best. Livingstone 

 was much touched by the worth and kindness of this family, and amongst 

 other things promised to bring the wife a cloth from the white man's country 

 on his return ; but alas ! before his return she was dead, and Mozinkwa and 

 his family had forsaken their pleasant huts and gardens, as a Balonda man 

 cannot live in a spot where a favourite wife has died. 



In speaking to these people on religious subjects, he found that nothing 

 made so much impression upon them as the fact that the Son of God came 

 down from heaven to die for men, and really endured death in our stead out 

 of pure love, and to tell about God and the place from whence He had come. 

 If this method of interesting them did not succeed, he found it impossible to 

 move them. As human sacrifices had been at one time common among the 

 Balonda, and at the time of Livingstone's visit were still practised to a limited 

 extent, on the occasion of the death of great chiefs, &c, they readily appre- 

 ciated the extent of the sacrifice made by a great being in submitting himself 

 to death in the place of others. 



Quendende, the father-in-law of Katema, a fine old man with long woolly 

 hair reaching to the shoulders, plaited on either side, and the back hair 

 gathered into a lump on the nape of the neck, received a visit which gratified 

 him much. Quendende was a snuff-taker and prepared the titillating powder 

 in a primitive fashion; the leaves of the tobacco plant after being dried at the 



