KING SEPOPO.
I called the next morning upon Captain M’Leod, Captain Fairly, and Cowley, whom the king had accommodated in a round hut near the royal enclosure; they were full of complaints because Sepopo persisted in putting off the great elephant-hunt for which they had come the second time. I also went with Westbeech to pay my respects to the newly-arrived queens, most of whom he had already seen in the Barotse valley. Amongst them was the chief wife, Mokena, or “mother of the country.” Altogether I made acquaintance with sixteen of the wives. Sepopo’s favourite was a Makololo named Lunga. The third wife was Marishwati, the mother of Kaika, already nominated as the future heiress to the throne. The fourth wife was named Makaloe; the fifth, Uesi; the sixth, Liapaleng; then came Makkapelo, on whose account two men were put to death in 1874; next in order were Mantaralucha, Manatwa, Sybamba, and Kacindo. The twelfth was called Molechy; this wife, as well as another named Sitan, had been all but drowned by Sepopo for faithlessness.
A seducer of any of the royal wives is at once handed over to the executioner’s assistants, with the instruction that he is “to be sent to fetch buffalo-meat for the king,” meaning that he is to be taken to the woods, and there assegaied. The mode of dealing with an adulterous wife may be illustrated by Sepopo’s proceedings with Sitan. He ordered a number of canoes full of people to push off into the middle of the stream, taking his place in one of them with the culprit. He then had her bound hand and foot, and ducked under the water repeatedly until she became insensible; on her recovering consciousness, he asked her to tell the people how she liked being drowned, and warned her that if ever her offence should be repeated, he should simply put her under water, and leave her there.
The fourteenth wife was Silala, and there were two others, but both of these had been presented by the king to two of his chiefs. The true heir to the throne had died two years previously. His name was Maritella, and he was the son of Marishwati. Just before his death he was lying on his bed, and complained of being thirsty, whereupon the Barotse chieftain, who happened to be present, poured him out some drink from a pitcher standing by; the lad died very soon afterwards, and Sepopo immediately accused the chieftain of having poisoned him, and condemned him, in spite of his being universally beloved by his people, to be poisoned himself.
The king’s daughter, Moquai, had married Manengo, one of the few Makololos who had survived the general massacre. The king of the Makololos, Sepopo informed me, had died a miserable death, his body having become a mass of ulcers, and after his demise the whole tribe had been distracted by party squabbles.
I was determined to give the king no peace on the subject of my journey, and on the 12th I had a long conference with him and the Portuguese. He told me that although I might make up my mind to stay only two days at each of the towns in the Barotse, the whole boat-journey through his kingdom could not take me less than two months, and that after I had reached the kingdom of the Iwan-yoe, where I should find the sources of the Zambesi, I should have to go on for about another nine weeks to get to Matimbundu.
I went more than once to visit the queens, and always found that they were treated with great respect, their quarters being nearly always surrounded by residents patiently waiting their turn to be admitted to an audience.
On the 14th I received a visit from a dancer. The calves of his legs were covered with bells made of fruit-shells, and his dancing consisted of little more than shaking himself so that the bells were all set in motion.
Amongst the other inmates of Sepopo’s court was a Mambari named Kolintshintshi, who held the office of royal tailor; he had been taken prisoner during one of the raids of the Marutse to the west; two companions who had been captured at the same time had been restored to their home after receiving a liberal present of cattle, whilst Kolintshintshi had been detained.