Our progress had always been slow, and I found that our rate of traveling could only be five hours a day for five successive days. On the sixth, both men and oxen showed symptoms of knocking up. We never exceeded two and a half or three miles an hour in a straight line, though all were anxious to get home. The difference in the rate of traveling between ourselves and the slave-traders was our having a rather quicker step, a longer day's journey, and twenty traveling days a month instead of their ten. When one of my men became ill, but still could walk, others parted his luggage among them; yet we had often to stop one day a week, besides Sundays, simply for the sake of rest. The latitude of Lake Dilolo is 11d 32' 1" S., long. 22d 27' E.
JUNE 14TH. We reached the collection of straggling villages over which Katema rules, and were thankful to see old familiar faces again. Shakatwala performed the part of a chief by bringing forth abundant supplies of food in his master's name. He informed us that Katema, too, was out hunting skins for Matiamvo.
In different parts of this country, we remarked that when old friends were inquired for, the reply was, "Ba hola" (They are getting better); or if the people of a village were inquired for, the answer was, "They are recovering," as if sickness was quite a common thing. Indeed, many with whom we had made acquaintance in going north we now found were in their graves. On the 15th Katema came home from his hunting, having heard of our arrival. He desired me to rest myself and eat abundantly, for, being a great man, I must feel tired; and he took good care to give the means of doing so. All the people in these parts are exceedingly kind and liberal with their food, and Katema was not behindhand. When he visited our encampment, I presented him with a cloak of red baize, ornamented with gold tinsel, which cost thirty shillings, according to the promise I had made in going to Londa; also a cotton robe, both large and small beads, an iron spoon, and a tin pannikin containing a quarter of a pound of powder. He seemed greatly pleased with the liberality shown, and assured me that the way was mine, and that no one should molest me in it if he could help it. We were informed by Shakatwala that the chief never used any part of a present before making an offer of it to his mother, or the departed spirit to whom he prayed. Katema asked if I could not make a dress for him like the one I wore, so that he might appear as a white man when any stranger visited him. One of the councilors, imagining that he ought to second this by begging, Katema checked him by saying, "Whatever strangers give, be it little or much, I always receive it with thankfulness, and never trouble them for more." On departing, he mounted on the shoulders of his spokesman, as the most dignified mode of retiring. The spokesman being a slender man, and the chief six feet high, and stout in proportion, there would have been a break-down had he not been accustomed to it. We were very much pleased with Katema; and next day he presented us with a cow, that we might enjoy the abundant supplies of meal he had given with good animal food. He then departed for the hunting-ground, after assuring me that the town and every thing in it were mine, and that his factotum, Shakatwala, would remain and attend to every want, and also conduct us to the Leeba.
On attempting to slaughter the cow Katema had given, we found the herd as wild as buffaloes; and one of my men having only wounded it, they fled many miles into the forest, and were with great difficulty brought back. Even the herdsman was afraid to go near them. The majority of them were white, and they were all beautiful animals. After hunting it for two days it was dispatched at last by another ball. Here we saw a flock of jackdaws, a rare sight in Londa, busy with the grubs in the valley, which are eaten by the people too.
Leaving Katema's town on the 19th, and proceeding four miles to the eastward, we forded the southern branch of Lake Dilolo. We found it a mile and a quarter broad; and, as it flows into the Lotembwa, the lake would seem to be a drain of the surrounding flats, and to partake of the character of a fountain. The ford was waist-deep, and very difficult, from the masses of arum and rushes through which we waded. Going to the eastward about three miles, we came to the Southern Lotembwa itself, running in a valley two miles broad. It is here eighty or ninety yards wide, and contains numerous islands covered with dense sylvan vegetation. In the rainy season the valley is flooded, and as the waters dry up great multitudes of fish are caught. This happens very extensively over the country, and fishing-weirs are met with every where. A species of small fish, about the size of the minnow, is caught in bagfuls and dried in the sun. The taste is a pungent aromatic bitter, and it was partaken of freely by my people, although they had never met with it before. On many of the paths which had been flooded a nasty sort of slime of decayed vegetable matter is left behind, and much sickness prevails during the drying up of the water. We did not find our friend Mozinkwa at his pleasant home on the Lokaloeje; his wife was dead, and he had removed elsewhere. He followed us some distance, but our reappearance seemed to stir up his sorrows. We found the pontoon at the village in which we left it. It had been carefully preserved, but a mouse had eaten a hole in it and rendered it useless.
We traversed the extended plain on the north bank of the Leeba, and crossed this river a little farther on at Kanyonke's village, which is about twenty miles west of the Peri hills, our former ford. The first stage beyond the Leeba was at the rivulet Loamba, by the village of Chebende, nephew of Shinte; and next day we met Chebende himself returning from the funeral of Samoana, his father. He was thin and haggard-looking compared to what he had been before, the probable effect of the orgies in which he had been engaged. Pitsane and Mohorisi, having concocted the project of a Makololo village on the banks of the Leeba, as an approach to the white man's market, spoke to Chebende, as an influential man, on the subject, but he cautiously avoided expressing an opinion. The idea which had sprung up in their own minds of an establishment somewhere near the confluence of the Leeba and Leeambye, commended itself to my judgment at the time as a geographically suitable point for civilization and commerce. The right bank of the Leeba there is never flooded; and from that point there is communication by means of canoes to the country of the Kanyika, and also to Cazembe and beyond, with but one or two large waterfalls between. There is no obstruction down to the Barotse valley; and there is probably canoe navigation down the Kafue or Bashukulompo River, though it is reported to contain many cataracts. It flows through a fertile country, well peopled with Bamasasa, who cultivate the native produce largely.
As this was the middle of winter, it may be mentioned that the temperature of the water in the morning was 47 Deg., and that of the air 50 Deg., which, being loaded with moisture, was very cold to the feelings. Yet the sun was very hot by day, and the temperature in the coolest shade from 88 Deg. to 90 Deg.; in the evenings from 76 Deg. to 78 Deg.
Before reaching the town of Shinte we passed through many large villages of the Balobale, who have fled from the chief Kangenke. The Mambari from Bihe come constantly to him for trade; and, as he sells his people, great numbers of them escape to Shinte and Katema, who refuse to give them up.
We reached our friend Shinte, and received a hearty welcome from this friendly old man, and abundant provisions of the best he had. On hearing the report of the journey given by my companions, and receiving a piece of cotton cloth about two yards square, he said, "These Mambari cheat us by bringing little pieces only; but the next time you pass I shall send men with you to trade for me in Loanda." When I explained the use made of the slaves he sold, and that he was just destroying his own tribe by selling his people, and enlarging that of the Mambari for the sake of these small pieces of cloth, it seemed to him quite a new idea. He entered into a long detail of his troubles with Masiko, who had prevented him from cultivating that friendship with the Makololo which I had inculcated, and had even plundered the messengers he had sent with Kolimbota to the Barotse valley. Shinte was particularly anxious to explain that Kolimbota had remained after my departure of his own accord, and that he had engaged in the quarrels of the country without being invited; that, in attempting to capture one of the children of a Balobale man, who had offended the Balonda by taking honey from a hive which did not belong to him, Kolimbota had got wounded by a shot in the thigh, but that he had cured the wound, given him a wife, and sent a present of cloth to Sekeletu, with a full account of the whole affair. From the statement of Shinte we found that Kolimbota had learned, before we left his town, that the way we intended to take was so dangerous that it would be better for him to leave us to our fate; and, as he had taken one of our canoes with him, it seemed evident that he did not expect us to return. Shinte, however, sent a recommendation to his sister Nyamoana to furnish as many canoes as we should need for our descent of the Leeba and Leeambye.
As I had been desirous of introducing some of the fruit-trees of Angola, both for my own sake and that of the inhabitants, we had carried a pot containing a little plantation of orange, cashew-trees, custard-apple-trees ('anona'), and a fig-tree, with coffee, aracas ('Araca pomifera'), and papaws ('Carica papaya'). Fearing that, if we took them farther south at present, they might be killed by the cold, we planted them out in an inclosure of one of Shinte's principal men, and, at his request, promised to give Shinte a share when grown. They know the value of fruits, but at present have none except wild ones. A wild fruit we frequently met with in Londa is eatable, and, when boiled, yields a large quantity of oil, which is much used in anointing both head and body. He eagerly accepted some of the seeds of the palm-oil-tree ('Elaeis Guineensis'), when told that this would produce oil in much greater quantity than their native tree, which is not a palm. There are very few palm-trees in this country, but near Bango we saw a few of a peculiar palm, the ends of the leaf-stalks of which remain attached to the trunk, giving it a triangular shape.