DOMESTIC LIFE IN CENTRAL AFRICA. 531 



of medicine, it may have been the irritability produced by that disease that 

 made me so absurdly pig-headed in doubting the intentions of my really 

 kind benefactors three several times. The same cause may be in operation, 

 when modern travellers are unable to say a civil word about the natives ; or 

 if it must be admitted, for instance, that savages will seldom deceive you if 

 placed on their honour, why must we turn up the whites of our eyes, and say 

 it is an instance of the anomalous character of the Africans ? Being heaps of 

 anomalies ourselves, it would be just as easy to say that it is interesting to 

 find other people like us. The tone which we modern travellers use is that of 

 infinite superiority, and it is utterly nauseous to see at every step our great 

 and noble elevation cropping out in low cunning. Unable to go north-west, we 

 turned off to go due south one hundred and fifty miles or so ; then proceeded 

 west till past the disturbed district, and again resumed our northing. But 

 on going some sixty miles we heard that the Arab camp was twenty miles 

 farther south, and we went to hear the news. The reception was extremely 

 kind, for the party consisted of gentlemen from Zanzibar, and of a very dif- 

 ferent stamp from the murderers we afterwards saw at Manyema. They were 

 afraid that the chief with whom they had been fighting might flee south- 

 wards, and that in going that way I might fall into his hands. Being now 

 recovered, I could readily believe them; and they, being eager ivory traders, 

 as readily believed me when I asserted that a continuance of hostilities meant 

 shutting up the ivory market. No one would like to sell if he stood a chance 

 of being shot. Peace, therefore, was to be made; but the process of 'mixing 

 blood,' forming a matrimonial alliance with the chief's daughter, etc., required 

 three and a half months, and during long intervals of that time I remained 

 at Chitimbwa's. The stockade was situated by a rivulet, and had a dense 

 grove of high, damp-loving trees round a spring on one side, and open country, 

 pretty well cultivated, on the other. It was cold, and over four thousand 

 seven hundred feet above the sea, with a good deal of forest land and ranges 

 of hills in the distance. The Arabs were on the west side of the stockade, 

 and one of Chitimbwa's wives at once vacated her house on the east side for 

 my convenience. 



"Chitimbwa was an elderly man, with grey hair and beard, of quiet self- 

 possessed manners. He had five wives ; and my hut being one of the circle 

 which their houses formed, I often sat reading or writing outside, and had a 

 good opportunity of seeing the domestic life in this Central African harem, 

 without appearing to be prying. The chief wife, the mother of Chitimbwa's 

 son and heir, was somewhat aged, but exercised her matronly authority 

 over the whole of the establishment. The rest were young, with fine 

 shapes, pleasant countenances, and nothing of the West Coast African about 

 them. Three of them had each a child, making, with the eldest son, a 

 family of four children to Chitimbwa. The matron seemed to reverence her 



