MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS OF THE MARUTSE.
Nearly the whole of these which I have thus briefly enumerated are, with the marked distinction of the Marutse, held as vassals, the people being treated to a certain degree as slaves. However it is not more than a quarter of them who actually pay any tribute, these being chiefly the eastern tribes, such as the Batokas, eastern Makalakas and Mabimbis. As a consequence of Sepopo’s oppression, many of the natives have withdrawn from the kingdom, generally going south, and the difficulty of collecting tribute anywhere has very greatly increased. The imposts levied upon such as can be induced to pay them consist chiefly of cereals, either wheat, kaffir-corn, and maize, or of consignments of dried fruits, gourds, india-rubber, mats, canoes, weapons of any kind, wooden utensils, and musical instruments. Ivory, honey, and manza are crown-property, and it is a capital offence for any one to carry on any transactions with regard to them on his own account. Without exception, all the tribes are bound to supply the Marutse sovereign with a stated number of tusks, both of male and female elephants, and with a stipulated quantity of the skins of a large dark brown species of lemur.
The prevailing language of the kingdom, and the principal medium of correspondence between the different tribes, is that of the extirpated Makololos. Overtaken as they have been by the arm of fate, and swept away from existence as a recognized community, they have yet bequeathed to their conquerors the heritage of their dialect. The enlargement of the kingdom by the annexation of the Mabunda territory, and the ever-increasing traffic with the population south of the Zambesi, have resulted in the Sesuto of the Makololos being adopted as the common tongue. It is of immense advantage to an explorer to be familiar with it, as although it may not be found in its purity, having been corrupted more or less by the admixture of the Serotse, it will rarely fail to enable him to make himself understood in any quarter of the kingdom.
When I asked the king the extent of his dominions, he told me that it took his people fifteen or twenty days to reach the northern frontier; and after making strict inquiries, first of the native chiefs, then of the envoys from the Mashukulumbe, and lastly from the Portuguese traders, and reducing the days’ journeys to miles, I think that I am quite borne out in assigning the boundaries as they are marked in my map; that is to say, with the Mashukulumbe on the north and east, the Bamashis on the west, and the Bamangwatos and Matabele country on the south.
Sepopo’s name in the Serotse dialect means “a dream,” and his mother was called Mangala. After introducing me to the principal chiefs and officials that were then in Sesheke, amongst whom was Kapella the commander-in-chief, he presented Mashoku the executioner, a repulsive Mabunda, and his two fathers-in-law, who were about to become his sons-in-law as well, as, having married their daughters, he was going to give them two of his own young daughters as wives in return.
During the time that these introductions were going on, honey-beer was being drunk, and it occurred to me that Lunga, the handsomest of the ladies, took an uncommonly large share. Very shortly afterwards three Marutse came into the tent uttering a loud cry of “Shangwe,” and each carrying a buffalo’s tail; they had been sent by the king to procure some meat for Blockley and myself. Before I left, Sepopo pointed out to me his two doctors who provided him with charms when he went hunting.
I spent the remainder of the day in making an investigation of the town, returning in the evening to the royal residence, where I found that Makumba had just come in from Impalera, bringing the melancholy intelligence that Y., the trader that I had met at Schneemann’s Pan, and had urged to go on as quickly as possible to my waggon at Panda ma Tenka, had died before reaching there.
On the night of the 20th an event occurred that rather tended to disturb the harmonious relations between Sepopo and myself. By Blockley’s hospitality a very lively evening had been spent in his courtyard, and it was getting on for midnight before his black guests of both sexes had emptied the three great pitchers of beer with which he had entertained them, and had set out on their way home. For a long time afterwards the uproar they made, and the harsh notes of their calabash keyboards, made sleep quite out of the question, but at length I dropped into a doze, from which I was almost immediately aroused by the barking of a dog. I opened my eyes, and at once observed that my hut was peculiarly light, although I had blocked up the entrance with a chest. In another instant I made out that there was a dark figure in the aperture, and that a native was in the very act of taking my clothes, which I had thrown on the top of the chest. The only weapon that was at hand was an assegai which I had bought on the previous day, but it was hanging out of my reach; and before I could get at it, the thief and a partner he had with him had run away towards the huts. I followed as quickly as I could, but too late to see them. On my way I found that they had left a stick and a fish behind. It was not likely that I could get much more sleep that night, and the first thing I did in the morning was to go and tell the king what had happened. He made a very evasive reply, and I could feel evidently enough that my company that day gave him anything but pleasure. Nevertheless I determined to do what I could to sift the matter to the bottom. In spite of the absurdity of expecting to get an applicant, I sent one of Blockley’s servants to the town to circulate the report that I had found a stick, which I should be happy to return to its proper owner. Late in the afternoon a middle-aged man appeared and claimed the stick, and as he said that the fish was also his property, I took him off forthwith to the king. Meanwhile the stolen articles had been concealed, and when the man’s hut was searched by the king’s messenger nothing could be found, and accordingly the man was declared not guilty. I expressed my dissatisfaction with the judgment, whereupon the king said that if I wished it the man should be punished, but as I quite understood that this punishment meant death, I acquiesced in his being released; nevertheless I made it thoroughly well known that I should shoot the very next burglar that I found trying to get into my hut. Sepopo assented to all I said, and repeated my words aloud to the crowd that had been drawn together by the affair.
Later in the evening some Barotse men arrived with their subsidies of corn, one of them being a Matabele who had been captured by Sekeletu. Sepopo took them in and showed them over his hut, of which he was not a little proud.
As it had been intimated to me by Masangu, an official who might be described as the controller of the arsenal, that the king was willing to grant me some favour by way of compensation for my annoyance at the robbery, I considered it a good opportunity to prefer my formal request for permission to explore his dominions. For this purpose I was conducted into the little courtyard, where I found Sepopo sitting with about thirty men squatting around him in perfect silence; my eye, as I entered, at once lighted upon one of these men who was bent down in a peculiarly demure attitude. It struck me immediately that he was not a Marutse native, and on looking again I saw that he was a half-caste.