530 
SAVAGE CUSTOMS OF BATOKA, 
OiiAP. xxvr. 
descend it, I found, after all tlie care I could bestow, that tlie 
alterations I was able to make in the original native plan, were 
very trifling. The general idea their map gave was wonder¬ 
fully accm^ate; and now I give, in the larger map appended, 
their views of the other rivers, in the hope that they may 
prove helpful to any traveller who may pursue the investigation 
farther. 
24^A.—We remained a day at the village of Moyara. Here 
the valley in which the Lekone flows, trends away to the east¬ 
ward, while our course is more to the H.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 
pomts. These were Matebele, who, unable to approach Sebituane 
on the island of Loyela, 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 tliis 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 Matebele came again, he 
rephed, “When I hear of their coming I shall liide the bones.” 
He was evidently proud of these tropliies of his father’s ferocity, 
and I was assured by other Batoka, that few strangers ever 
returned from a visit to tliis 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 
wlien he brought the head back to the chief, it was mounted as a 
