422 TREATMENT OF SLAVES. 



This, when carried into central Londa, might purchase 

 seven thousand five hundred fowls, or feed with meal and 

 fowls seven thousand persons for one day, giving each a 

 fowl and 5 lbs. of meal. When food is purchased here 

 with either salt or coarse calico, four persons can be well 

 fed with animal and vegetable food at the rate of one 

 penny a day. The chief vegetable food is tho manioc and 

 lotsa meal. These contain a very large proportion of 

 starch, and when eaten alone for any length of time, 

 produce most distressing heartburn. As we ourselves ex- 

 perienced in coming north, they also cause a weakness of 

 vision, which occurs in the case of animals fed on pure 

 gluten or amyllaceous matter only. I now discovered that 

 when these starchy substances are eaten along with a 

 proportion of ground-nuts, which contain a considerable 

 quantity of oil, no injurious effects follow. 



While on the way to Cabango, we saw fresh tracks of 

 elands, the first we had observed in this country. A poor 

 little slave-girl, being ill, turned aside in the path, and, 

 though we waited all the next day making search for her, 

 she was lost. She was tall and slender for her age, as if 

 of too quick growth, and probably, unable to bear the 

 fatigue of the march, lay down and slept in the forest, 

 then, waking in the dark, went farther and farther astray. 

 The treatment of the slaves witnessed by my men, certainly 

 did not raise slaveholders in their estimation. Their usual 

 exclamation was, " Ga ba na pelu " (They have no heart) ; 

 and they added, with reference to the slaves, " Why do 

 they let them ? •" as if they thought that the slaves had 

 the natural right to rid the world of such heartless 

 creatures, and ought to do it. The uneasiness of the 

 trader was continually showing itself, and, upon the 

 whole, he had reason to be on the alert both day and 

 night. The carriers perpetually stole the goods intrusted 

 to their care, and he could not openly accuse them, lest 

 they should plunder him of all, and leave him quite in the 

 lurch. He could only hope to manage them after getting 

 all the remaining goods safely into a house in Cabango ; he 

 might then deduct something from their pay, for what 

 they had purloined on the way. 



Cabango (lat. 9 31' S., long. 20 31' or 32' B.) is the 

 dwelling-place of Muanzanza, one of Matiamvo's subor- 

 dinate chiefs. His village consists of about two hundred 

 huts, and ten or twelve square houses, constructed of 



