When nine speakers had concluded their orations, Shinte stood up, and so did all the people. He had maintained true African dignity of manner all the while, but my people remarked that he scarcely ever took his eyes off me for a moment. About a thousand people were present, according to my calculation, and three hundred soldiers. The sun had now become hot; and the scene ended by the Mambari discharging their guns.
18TH. We were awakened during the night by a message from Shinte, requesting a visit at a very unseasonable hour. As I was just in the sweating stage of an intermittent, and the path to the town lay through a wet valley, I declined going. Kolimbota, who knows their customs best, urged me to go; but, independent of sickness, I hated words of the night and deeds of darkness. "I was neither a hyaena nor a witch." Kolimbota thought that we ought to conform to their wishes in every thing: I thought we ought to have some choice in the matter as well, which put him into high dudgeon. However, at ten next morning we went, and were led into the courts of Shinte, the walls of which were woven rods, all very neat and high. Many trees stood within the inclosure and afforded a grateful shade. These had been planted, for we saw some recently put in, with grass wound round the trunk to protect them from the sun. The otherwise waste corners of the streets were planted with sugar-cane and bananas, which spread their large light leaves over the walls.
The Ficus Indica tree, under which we now sat, had very large leaves, but showed its relationship to the Indian banian by sending down shoots toward the ground. Shinte soon came, and appeared a man of upward of fifty-five years of age, of frank and open countenance, and about the middle height. He seemed in good humor, and said he had expected yesterday "that a man who came from the gods would have approached and talked to him." That had been my own intention in going to the reception; but when we came and saw the formidable preparations, and all his own men keeping at least forty yards off from him, I yielded to the solicitations of my men, and remained by the tree opposite to that under which he sat. His remark confirmed my previous belief that a frank, open, fearless manner is the most winning with all these Africans. I stated the object of my journey and mission, and to all I advanced the old gentleman clapped his hands in approbation. He replied through a spokesman; then all the company joined in the response by clapping of hands too.
After the more serious business was over, I asked if he had ever seen a white man before. He replied, "Never; you are the very first I have seen with a white skin and straight hair; your clothing, too, is different from any we have ever seen." They had been visited by native Portuguese and Mambari only.
On learning from some of the people that "Shinte's mouth was bitter for want of tasting ox-flesh," I presented him with an ox, to his great delight; and, as his country is so well adapted for cattle, I advised him to begin a trade in cows with the Makololo. He was pleased with the idea, and when we returned from Loanda, we found that he had profited by the hint, for he had got three, and one of them justified my opinion of the country, for it was more like a prize heifer for fatness than any we had seen in Africa. He soon afterward sent us a basket of green maize boiled, another of manioc-meal, and a small fowl. The maize shows by its size the fertility of the black soil of all the valleys here, and so does the manioc, though no manure is ever applied. We saw manioc attain a height of six feet and upward, and this is a plant which requires the very best soil.
During this time Manenko had been extremely busy with all her people in getting up a very pretty hut and court-yard, to be, as she said, her residence always when white men were brought by her along the same path. When she heard that we had given an ox to her uncle, she came forward to us with the air of one wronged, and explained that "this white man belonged to her; she had brought him here, and therefore the ox was hers, not Shinte's." She ordered her men to bring it, got it slaughtered by them, and presented her uncle with a leg only. Shinte did not seem at all annoyed at the occurrence.
19TH. I was awakened at an early hour by a messenger from Shinte; but the thirst of a raging fever being just assuaged by the bursting forth of a copious perspiration, I declined going for a few hours. Violent action of the heart all the way to the town did not predispose me to be patient with the delay which then occurred, probably on account of the divination being unfavorable: "They could not find Shinte." When I returned to bed, another message was received, "Shinte wished to say all he had to tell me at once." This was too tempting an offer, so we went, and he had a fowl ready in his hand to present, also a basket of manioc-meal, and a calabash of mead. Referring to the constantly-recurring attacks of fever, he remarked that it was the only thing which would prevent a successful issue to my journey, for he had men to guide me who knew all the paths which led to the white men. He had himself traveled far when a young man. On asking what he would recommend for the fever, "Drink plenty of the mead, and as it gets in, it will drive the fever out." It was rather strong, and I suspect he liked the remedy pretty well, even though he had no fever. He had always been a friend to Sebituane, and, now that his son Sekeletu was in his place, Shinte was not merely a friend, but a father to him; and if a son asks a favor, the father must give it. He was highly pleased with the large calabashes of clarified butter and fat which Sekeletu had sent him, and wished to detain Kolimbota, that he might send a present back to Sekeletu by his hands. This proposition we afterward discovered was Kolimbota's own, as he had heard so much about the ferocity of the tribes through which we were to pass that he wished to save his skin. It will be seen farther on that he was the only one of our party who returned with a wound.
We were particularly struck, in passing through the village, with the punctiliousness of manners shown by the Balonda. The inferiors, on meeting their superiors in the street, at once drop on their knees and rub dust on their arms and chest; they continue the salutation of clapping the hands until the great ones have passed. Sambanza knelt down in this manner till the son of Shinte had passed him.
We several times saw the woman who occupies the office of drawer of water for Shinte; she rings a bell as she passes along to give warning to all to keep out of her way; it would be a grave offense for any one to come near her, and exercise an evil influence by his presence on the drink of the chief. I suspect that offenses of the slightest character among the poor are made the pretext for selling them or their children to the Mambari. A young man of Lobale had fled into the country of Shinte, and located himself without showing himself to the chief. This was considered an offense sufficient to warrant his being seized and offered for sale while we were there. He had not reported himself, so they did not know the reason of his running away from his own chief, and that chief might accuse them of receiving a criminal. It was curious to notice the effect of the slave-trade in blunting the moral susceptibility: no chief in the south would treat a fugitive in this way. My men were horrified at the act, even though old Shinte and his council had some show of reason on their side; and both the Barotse and the Makololo declared that, if the Balonda only knew of the policy pursued by them to fugitives, but few of the discontented would remain long with Shinte. My men excited the wonder of his people by stating that every one of them had one cow at least in his possession.
Another incident, which occurred while we were here, may be mentioned, as of a character totally unknown in the south. Two children, of seven and eight years old, went out to collect firewood a short distance from their parents' home, which was a quarter of a mile from the village, and were kidnapped; the distracted parents could not find a trace of them. This happened so close to the town, where there are no beasts of prey, that we suspect some of the high men of Shinte's court were the guilty parties: they can sell them by night. The Mambari erect large huts of a square shape to stow these stolen ones in; they are well fed, but aired by night only. The frequent kidnapping from outlying hamlets explains the stockades we saw around them; the parents have no redress, for even Shinte himself seems fond of working in the dark. One night he sent for me, though I always stated I liked all my dealings to be aboveboard. When I came he presented me with a slave girl about ten years old; he said he had always been in the habit of presenting his visitors with a child. On my thanking him, and saying that I thought it wrong to take away children from their parents, that I wished him to give up this system altogether, and trade in cattle, ivory, and bees'-wax, he urged that she was "to be a child" to bring me water, and that a great man ought to have a child for the purpose, yet I had none. As I replied that I had four children, and should be very sorry if my chief were to take my little girl and give her away, and that I would prefer this child to remain and carry water for her own mother, he thought I was dissatisfied with her size, and sent for one a head taller; after many explanations of our abhorrence of slavery, and how displeasing it must be to God to see his children selling one another, and giving each other so much grief as this child's mother must feel, I declined her also. If I could have taken her into my family for the purpose of instruction, and then returned her as a free woman, according to a promise I should have made to the parents, I might have done so; but to take her away, and probably never be able to secure her return, would have produced no good effect on the minds of the Balonda; they would not then have seen evidence of our hatred to slavery, and the kind attentions of my friends would, as it almost always does in similar cases, have turned the poor thing's head. The difference in position between them and us is as great as between the lowest and highest in England, and we know the effects of sudden elevation on wiser heads than hers, whose owners had not been born to it.