NA Tl VE GRA VEYARDS. 309 



" The Batoka having lived at peace for ages, had evidently attained to a 

 degree of civilization very much in advance of any other tribe we have yet 

 discovered. They planted and cultivated fruit-trees. Nowhere else has this 

 been the case, not even among the tribes which have been in contact with the 

 Portuguese for two hundred years, and have seen and tasted mangoes, 

 oranges, &c, &c. The natives round Senna and Tete will on no account 

 plant the stone of a mango. They are firm believers in a superstition that 

 ' if any one plants a mango, he will die soon afterwards.' 



" In and around the Batoka villages some of the most valuable timber- 

 trees have been allowed to stand, but every worthless tree has been cut down 

 and rooted out, and the best of the various fruit-trees of the country have 

 been carefully planted and preserved, and also a few trees from whose seeds 

 they extracted oil. We saw fruit-trees which had been planted in regular 

 rows, the trunks being about three feet in diameter, and also grand old 

 Motsakiri fruit-trees still bearing abundantly, which had certainly seen a 

 hundred summers. 



" Two of the ancient Batoka once travelled as far as the river Loangwa. 

 There they saw the massan-tree in fruit, carried some all the way back to the 

 Great Falls, and planted them. Two of the trees are still standing, the only 

 ones of the kind in all that region. 



" They made a near approach to the custom of even the most refined 

 nations in having permanent graveyards, either on the sides of sacred hills, 

 or under the shady fig-trees near the villages. They reverenced the tombs of 

 their ancestors, and erected monuments of the costliest ivory at the head of 

 the grave, and often even entirely enclosed it with the choicest ivory. Other 

 tribes on the Zambesi throw the body into the river, to be devoured by 

 alligators ; or, sewing it in a mat, place it on the branches of the baobab, or 

 cast it into some gloomy, solitary spot overgrown with thorns and noxious 

 weeds, to be devoured by the foul hyena. But the Batoka reverently buried 

 their dead, and regarded the ground as sacred to their memories. Near the 

 confluence of the Kafue, the chief, accompanied by some of his headmen, 

 came to our sleeping-place with a present ; their foreheads were marked 

 with white flour, and there was an unusual seriousness in their de- 

 meanour. 



" We were informed that shortly before our arrival they had been accused 

 of witchcraft. Conscious of innocence they accepted the terrible ordeal, or 

 offered to drink the poisoned muavi. For this purpose they made a journey 

 to the sacred hill where reposed the bodies of their ancestors, and, after a 

 solemn appeal to the unseen spirits of their fathers to judge of the innocence 

 of these their children, drank the muavi, vomited, and were therefore 

 declared to be ' Not guilty.' They believed in the immortality of the soul, 

 and that the souls of their ancestor? knew what they were doing, and were 



