SAVAGE CUSTOMS OF BATOKA. 495 



24th. — We remained a day at the village of Moyara. 

 Here the valley in which the I^ekone flows, trends away 

 to the eastward, while our course is more to the N.E. 

 The country is rocky and rough, the soil being red sand, 

 which is covered with beautiful green trees, yielding 

 abundance of wild fruits. The father of Moyara was a 

 powerful chief, but the son now sits among the ruins of 

 the town, with four or five wives and very few people. 

 At his hamlet a number of stakes are planted in the 

 ground, and I counted fifty-four human skulls hung on 

 their points. These were Matabele, who, unable to 

 approach Sebituane on the island of Ivoyela, had returned 

 sick and famishing. Moyara 's father took advantage of 

 their reduced condition, and, after putting them to death, 

 mounted their heads in the Batoka fashion. The old man 

 who perpetrated this deed now lies in the middle of his 

 son's huts, with a lot of rotten ivory over his grave. One 

 cannot help feeling thankful that the reign of such wretches 

 is over. They inhabited the whole of this side of the 

 country, and were probably the barrier to the extension 

 of the Portuguese commerce in this direction. When 

 looking at these skulls, I remarked to Moyara, that many 

 of them were those of mere boys. He assented readily 

 and pointed them out as such. I asked why his father 

 had killed boys. " To show his fierceness," was the 

 answer. "Is it fierceness to kill boys ? " " Yes, they 

 had no business here." When I told him that this 

 probably would ensure his own death if the Matabele 

 came again, he replied, " When I hear of their coming I 

 shall hide the bones." He was evidently proud of these 

 trophies of his father's ferocity, and I was assured by 

 other Batoka, that few strangers ever returned from a visit 

 to this quarter. If a man wished to curry favour with a 

 Batoka chief, he ascertained when a stranger was about 

 to leave, and waylaid him at a distance from the town, 

 and when he brought the head back to the chief, it was 

 mounted as a trophy ; the different chiefs vieing with 

 each other as to which should mount the greatest number 

 of skulls in his village. 



If, as has been asserted, the Portuguese ever had a 

 chain of trading stations across the country from Caconda 

 to Tete, it must have passed through these people, but the 

 total ignorance of the Zambesi flowing from north to 

 south m the centre of the country, and the want of 



