Chap. XVII. 
VILLAGES BEYOND THE LONAJE. 
305 
ever in doubt and dread in these gloomy recesses of the forest, 
and that they were striving to propitiate, by their offerings, some 
superior beings residing there. 
The dress of the Balonda men consists of the softened skins of 
small animals, as the jackal or wild cat, hung before and behind 
from a girdle round the loins. The dress of the women is of a 
nondescript character; but they were not immodest. They 
stood before us as perfectly unconscious of any indecorum as 
we could be with our clothes on. But, wliile ignorant of their 
own deficiency, they could not maintain their gravity at the sight 
of the nudity of my men behind. Much to the annoyance of my 
companions, the young girls laughed outright whenever their 
backs were turned to them. 
After crossing the Lonaje, we came to some pretty villages, 
embowered, as the negro villages usually are, in bananas, shi’ubs, 
and manioc, and near the banks of the Leeba we formed our 
encampment in a nest of serpents, one of which bit one of our 
men, but the wound was harmless. The people of the sur¬ 
rounding villages presented us with large quantities of food, in 
obedience to the mandate of Shinte, without expecting any equi¬ 
valent. One village had lately been transferred hither from the 
country of Matiamvo. They, of course, continue to acknowledge 
him as paramount chief; but the frequent instances which occur 
of people changing from one part of the country to another, 
show that the great cliiefs possess only a limited power. The 
only peculiarity we observed in these people is the habit of 
plaiting the beard into a threefold cord. 
The town of the Balonda chief, Cazembe, was pointed out to 
us as lying to the N.E. and by E. from the town of Shinte, and 
great numbers of people in tliis quarter have gone thither for 
the purpose of purchasing copper anklets, made at Cazembe’s, 
and report the distance to be about five days’ journey. I made 
inquiries of some of the oldest inhabitants of the villages at 
which we were staying, respecting the visit of Pereira and 
Lacerda to that town. An old grey-headed man replied that 
they had often heard of white men before, but never had seen 
one, and added that one had come to Cazembe when our informant 
was young, and returned again without entering this part of the 
country. The people of Cazembe are Balonda or Baloi, and 
X 
