When we had finished our repast, several servants brought bowls of water, with which the inner circle were expected to moisten their lips. After our primitive method of feeding, it was quite necessary that we should get rid of the grease from our fingers; and to assist us in this, one of the servants brought a platter containing about twenty dirty little green balls of the size of a walnut. The king and the courtiers each took one and rubbed it over their hands, which they afterwards washed. When it came to my turn to help myself to one of the balls, my curiosity to know of what it consisted provoked very general amusement. By the king’s direction Jan Mahura, the interpreter, called out to me, “Smell them, sir,” and I was at once aware that they were of the nature of soap. After washing, Blockley and I dried our hands upon our pocket-handkerchiefs, but Sepopo and his officers scraped the moisture off their fingers with their “libekos.” The outer ranks of the assembly merely rubbed their hands on the dry sand.
The libeko used by the Bantu tribes in the place of our pocket-handkerchief is a miniature shovel made of very different sizes, being from half an inch to an inch wide, but varying from two inches to ten inches in length. It is usually attached to a small strap or a chain of grass or beads, and its effect is not only to widen the nostrils, but to disfigure the countenance generally.
As the afternoon was advancing, the king rose, and attended by his vocal and instrumental performers, led the way to the landing-place, where we all embarked in three canoes for an airing on the water. We were not long upon the main stream before we turned into a lagoon, whence, after about a quarter of an hour, we entered another side lagoon, which brought us to the landing-place of Old Sesheke. This town, which the king was now leaving for his new settlement, was on the border of a sandy wood, and scarcely twenty-five feet above the valley. Close to it, built of wood or reeds, were the storehouses in which Westbeech put his goods until Sepopo was ready to pay for them in ivory. The courtyard contained three huts, one occupied by Westbeech’s cook, one by his other servants, and a third used as his kitchen. Behind his own little house, and between it and the hedge, stood a fourth hut, about five feet high and seven feet in diameter, similar in shape to a Koranna hut, with a doorway that could only be entered on all fours. This was assigned to me during my residence in the king’s domains.
Vol. II.
Page 140.
PORT OF SHESHEKE.
Before I took possession of my mansion, I was invited, Blockley with me, to join the king at supper. He was in a little cemented courtyard sitting on a mat; we were accommodated in a similar way, and conducted to our seats upon his left hand, the queen and some officials being placed upon his right. The meal consisted of boiled eland flesh served upon plates, and this time we found ourselves provided with knives and forks, which had been introduced by the traders from the west coast. As sauce to the meat we were offered manza, a transparent sort of meal-pap, that upon analyzing, I afterwards ascertained was very nutritious. After supper some impote (honey-beer) was brought in a round-bodied gourd-shell with a twisted neck, and poured out into large tin mugs that had been a present from Westbeech. The butler, after clapping his hands, sat down in the open space in front of the king and drank off the first goblet; the king took the next, and, after sipping it, passed it to the queen on his left, and then received it back from her and offered it to us; although several of the chiefs that were present were allowed to partake of the beverage, no one but ourselves was permitted to put his lips to the royal cup. When the drinking was over, the king rose from his seat, took off his boots, and gave them to the waiting-maid who had brought in the meat, and retired to his house, though not until he had invited me to breakfast with him in the morning.
I had been asleep in my new quarters for about two hours, when I was roused by a noise in the small front room of the storehouse, and looking out I saw a glimmer of light, by which I could distinctly make out that Sepopo and some of his people were rummaging amongst the goods that Blockley had just deposited there; after waiting a little longer, I saw Sepopo come out and walk off with a waggonlantern that Blockley had refused to give him during the day. It was a transaction that opened my eyes to the way which the Marutse king had of getting possession of any articles that might take his fancy.
Before concluding my account of my first day at Sesheke, I may mention a little incident that occurred while we were sitting drinking the impote. Four men arrived laden with ivory, and after depositing the load of tusks in the middle of the enclosure, they clapped their hands and prostrated themselves five times with their foreheads to the ground, crying out, “Shangwe! Shangwe!” They then retired quite into the rear of all the rest, to remain till the meal was over. When the king summoned them, they crept forward, and kept clapping their hands very gently all the time the king was speaking to them, and when he ceased they proceeded with great volubility to recount all the particulars of the hunting-excursion from which they had returned. They were much commended, and told to come in the morning to receive some ammunition and their proper reward. The ivory was crown property, and the guns used by the hunters were only lent to them, and were liable to be recalled at any moment at the royal pleasure.