19th June, 1872.—Whydahs, though full fledged, still gladly take a feed from their dam, putting down the breast to the ground and cocking up the bill and chirruping in the most engaging manner and winning way they know. She still gives them a little, but administers a friendly shove off too. They all pick up feathers or grass, and hop from side to side of their mates, as if saying, "Come, let us play at making little houses." The wagtail has shaken her young quite off, and has a new nest. She warbles prettily, very much like a canary, and is extremely active in catching flies, but eats crumbs of bread-and-milk too. Sun-birds visit the pomegranate flowers and eat insects therein too, as well as nectar. The young whydah birds crouch closely together at night for heat. They look like a woolly ball on a branch. By day they engage in pairing and coaxing each other. They come to the same twig every night. Like children they try and lift heavy weights of feathers above their strength.
[How fully he hoped to reach the hill from which he supposed the Nile to flow is shown in the following words written at this time:—]
I trust in Providence still to help me. I know the four rivers Zambesi, Kafué, Luapula, and Lomamé, their fountains must exist in one region.
An influential Muganda is dead of dysentery: no medicine had any effect in stopping the progress of the disease. This is much colder than his country. Another is blind from ophthalmia.
Great hopes are held that the war which has lasted a full year will now be brought to a close, and Mirambo either be killed or flee. As he is undoubtedly an able man, his flight may involve much trouble and guerilla warfare.
Clear cold weather, and sickly for those who have only thin clothing, and not all covered.
The women work very hard in providing for their husbands' kitchens. The rice is the most easily prepared grain: three women stand round a huge wooden mortar with pestles in their hands, a gallon or so of the unhusked rice—called Mopunga here and paddy in India—is poured in, and the three heavy pestles worked in exact time; each jerks up her body as she lifts the pestle and strikes it into the mortar with all her might, lightening the labour with some wild ditty the while, though one hears by the strained voice that she is nearly out of breath. When the husks are pretty well loosened, the grain is put into a large plate-shaped basket and tossed so as to bring the chaff to one side, the vessel is then heaved downwards and a little horizontal motion given to it which throws the refuse out; the partially cleared grain is now returned to the mortar, again pounded and cleared of husks, and a semicircular toss of the vessel sends all the remaining unhusked grain to one side, which is lifted out with the hand, leaving the chief part quite clean: they certainly work hard and well. The maize requires more labour by far: it is first pounded to remove the outer scales from the grain, then steeped for three days in water, then pounded, the scales again separated by the shallow-basket tossings, then pounded fine, and the fine white flour separated by the basket from certain hard rounded particles, which are cooked as a sort of granular porridge—"Mtyéllé."
When Ntaoéka chose to follow us rather than go to the coast, I did not like to have a fine-looking woman among us unattached, and proposed that she should marry one of my three worthies, Chuma, Gardner, or Mabruki, but she smiled at the idea. Chuma was evidently too lazy ever to get a wife; the other two were contemptible in appearance, and she has a good presence and is buxom. Chuma promised reform: "he had been lazy, he admitted, because he had no wife." Circumstances led to the other women wishing Ntaoéka married, and on my speaking to her again she consented. I have noticed her ever since working hard from morning to night: the first up in the cold mornings, making fire and hot water, pounding, carrying water, wood, sweeping, cooking.
21st June, 1872.—No jugglery or sleight-of-hand, as was recommended to Napoleon III., would have any effect in the civilization of the Africans; they have too much good sense for that. Nothing brings them to place thorough confidence in Europeans but a long course of well-doing. They believe readily in the supernatural as effecting any new process or feat of skill, for it is part of their original faith to ascribe everything above human agency to unseen spirits. Goodness or unselfishness impresses their minds more than any kind of skill or power. They say, "You have different hearts from ours; all black men's hearts are bad, but yours are good." The prayer to Jesus for a new heart and right spirit at once commends itself as appropriate. Music has great influence on those who have musical ears, and often leads to conversion.
[Here and there he gives more items of intelligence from the war which afford a perfect representation of the rumours and contradictions which harass the listener in Africa, especially if he is interested, as Livingstone was, in the re-establishment of peace between the combatants.]