ONCE MORE AMONG FRIENDS. 175 



instead, and as an earnest of good-will performed the ceremony called Jcasendi 

 — Pitsane and Sambanza being the parties engaged. The hands of the parties 

 were joined, and small incisions sufficient to cause bleeding made in the hands, 

 on the pits of the stomachs, the right cheeks, and the foreheads. Drops of 

 blood were conveyed from the wounds of each on a stalk of grass and dipped 

 in beer — the one drinking the beer mixed with the other's blood. Diuing 

 the drinking of the beer members of the party beat the ground with clubs 

 and muttered sentences by way of ratifying the treaty. This ceremony 

 constitutes the parties engaging in it blood relations, each being bound to 

 warn the other of impending evil, even if it involved the disclosure of an 

 intended attack on the tribe of the other by his own chief. After the 

 ceremony they exchanged presents — Pitsane getting an abundant supply of 

 food and two shells, and Sambanza receiving Pitsane's suit of green baize, 

 faced with red. 



Below the confluence of the Leeba and Leeambye the party met some 

 native hunters, well provided with the dried flesh of the hippopotamus, 

 buffalo, and the crocodile. They stalk these animals among the reeds with a 

 cap made of the skin of the head of an antelope, with the horns attached, 

 and the breast and shoulder skin, or with the neck and head attached, of a 

 species of crane. By adopting these stratagems, they get within bow shot of 

 the animal they wish to kill. They presented Livingstone with three fine 

 water turtles, one of which had upwards of forty eggs in its body. The eggs 

 and flesh of these turtles are most excellent, and were joyfully accepted by 

 the party. Here Livingstone had a narrow escape from a bull buffalo, which 

 charged him at full speed. In rounding a bush the animal exposed his 

 shoulder into which he sent a bullet. " The pain must have made him 

 renounce his purpose, for he bounded past me into the water, where he was 

 found dead." 



At Libonta they were received with every demonstration of joy and 

 thankfulness for their return. For months they had been given up as dead ; 

 such a scene of kissing and hand-shaking ensued, as made Livingstone glad 

 when they were all quietly seated in the kotla to hear the report of their adven- 

 tures. He wisely declined to be the spokesman of the party himself, but 

 Pitsane enlarged for a whole hour on the wonders they had seen, and the ad- 

 ventures they had come through. The members of the party had with par- 

 donable vanity throughout all their trials preserved a suit of white European 

 clothing with red caps, and these were donned for the occasion and excited 

 the admiration of their friends. Next day they had two religious services in 

 the kotla, where Livingstone " addressed them all on the goodness of God in 

 preserving us from all the dangers of strange tribes and disease." The men 

 presented them with two fine oxen, and the women brought abundance of 

 milk, meal, and butter. They explained the total expenditure of their means 



