THE MAMBARI. 203 



Makololo quoted this precedent when speaking of the 

 Mambari, and said that they, as the present masters 

 of the country, had as good a right to expel them as 

 Santuru. The Mambari reside near Bihe, under an Am- 

 bonda chief named Kangombe. They profess to use the 

 slaves for domestic purposes alone. 



Some of these Mambari visited us while at Naliele. 

 They are of the Ambonda family, which inhabits the 

 country south-east of Angola, and speak the Bunda 

 dialect, which is of the same family of languages with 

 the Barotse, Bayeiye, &c, or those black tribes compre- 

 hended under the general term Makalaka. They plait 

 their hair in three-fold cords, and lay them carefully 

 down around the sides of the head. They are quite as 

 dark as the Barotse, but have among them a number 

 of half-castes, with their peculiar yellow sickly hue. On 

 inquiring why they had fled on my approach to Iyinyanti, 

 they let me know that they had a vivid idea of the customs 

 of English cruisers on the coast. They showed also 

 their habits in their own country by digging up and 

 eating, even here where large game abounds, the mice and 

 moles which infest the country. The half-castes, or 

 native Portuguese, could all read and write, and the head 

 of the party, if not a real Portuguese, had European hair, 

 and, influenced probably by the letter of recommendation 

 which I held from the Chevalier Duprat, His Most Faithful 

 Majesty's Arbitrator in the British and Portuguese Mixed 

 Cornmission at Cape Town, was evidently anxious to show 

 me all the kindness in his power. These persons I feel 

 assured were the first individuals of Portuguese blood 

 who ever saw the Zambesi in the centre of the country, 

 and they had reached it two years after our discovery 

 in 1851. 



The town or mound of Santuru's mother was shown 

 to me; this was the first symptom of an altered state 

 of feeling with regard to the female sex that I had observed. 

 There are few or no cases of women being elevated to the 

 headships of towns further south. The Barotse also 

 showed some relics of their chief, which evinced a greater 

 amount of the religious feeling than I had ever known 

 displayed among Bechuanas. His more recent capital, 

 I41onda, built, too, on an artificial mound, is covered 

 with different kinds of trees, transplanted when young 

 by himself. They form a grove on the end of the mound, 



