The natives about here followed us with bags of bark fibre full of figs of a rich brown colour, which we purchased, and found excellent when they were not inhabited, as was generally the case, by hundreds of little ants.
At about thirty miles from Fort Salisbury we reached a nest of seven or eight kraals ruled over by a chief called Kunzi. Here we elected to stay and wait for the interpreter, and as he did not join us for two days we had a pleasant time for rest and for studying the inhabitants. Kunzi, the paramount chief of this community, is a young and enterprising individual; he corresponds to the nouveau riche of Kaffirdom, being spoken of as ‘a chief of the assegai’ in contradistinction to the old hereditary chiefs around. He came originally from ’Mtigeza’s country, got together a band of followers, and won for himself with his assegai the territory he now occupies. To a chief of this description all the youth and prowess of the country flock, hence he had a remarkably fine set of followers, and these he rules with marvellous strictness. We had an example of his power, for we wanted to get bearers from him. He brought the men in person, and would not allow them to go with us until we had [[307]]paid the stipulated quantity of cloth in advance and deposited it with him. This arrangement did not please me at all, knowing well the tendency paid bearers have to run away, but it was inevitable. The men served us extremely well, accompanied us for a fortnight until we reached the spot arranged upon with the chief, and when I offered them more to go farther they refused, saying that they dare not do so without the consent of their chief.
Kunzi is an ambitious man, and talks of becoming king of Mashonaland, but as he was driven back during his last attack on his neighbour Mangwendi, and as the Chartered Company may have something to say to it, this eventuality seems at present in the dim future. Kunzi is, however, a man of promise, and if he had been born a little earlier he might have been in a position to resuscitate the fallen glories of the race.
Outside Kunzi’s kraal is a fine iron smelting furnace, decorated with the breast and furrow pattern, and with a large quantity of newly made blow-pipes of dried mud, and decorated with a spiral pattern, lying in heaps outside. We watched the process here at our leisure. First they crush the ore obtained from the neighbouring mountains, which has a large quantity of manganese in it, and spread it on the rocks; the forge is heated with charcoal and kindled by two men with four bellows, each worked by one hand; the nozzles are inserted into the blow-pipes, and the blow-pipes into the charcoal; they press the bellows with their hands by means of a wooden handle, and work [[308]]with great vigour, singing and perspiring freely as they work. Around the furnace is a hedge of tall grass, and at night time, when the ore is cool, they remove it from the furnace and afterwards weld it into the required shapes with stone hammers. This time-honoured handicraft interested us much, mentioned as it is by Dos Santos three hundred years ago, and by the Arabian writers close upon a thousand years ago, as a speciality of the country.
MAKALANGA IRON SMELTING FURNACE
One of the neighbouring kraals is ruled over by Kunzi’s brother Gwadeli, who, in his anxiety to be hospitable, gave us warm beer to drink, which nearly had the effect of an emetic. A rock rises out of the centre of this kraal, where is an induna’s grave walled into the rock, with four pots of beer before it, and hedged off by a rope of bark.
GOATSKIN BELLOWS AND BLOW-PIPE FOR IRON SMELTING
The following morning we watched with some [[309]]interest a trader from Fort Salisbury selling goods to the natives. Beads, gunpowder, and salt were the favourite commodities he had to offer, in return for which he rapidly acquired a fine lot of pumpkins, maize, potatoes, and other vegetables; whilst for blankets and rifles he obtained cattle which I am sure would bring him in a handsome profit when he reached the capital. We ourselves got a few interesting things at Kunzi’s, including a quill with gold in it which the natives had found in the ’Nyagowe River, and a dexterously wrought garment for a young lady, about half the size of a freemason’s apron; it is made of bark fibre, with geometrical patterns of excellent design worked into it, a species of textile with which we were to become better acquainted in ’Mtoko’s country. Here, too, we saw [[310]]sticks set up in the ground with the bark peeled off and bound round the top—a sort of fetich, which they call their Maklosi or luck sign. They set these things up whenever they come to a new country; also, on similar occasions, they kneel before a tree and burn snuff, saying as they do so: ‘Muali!’ (the native name for God) ‘we have brought knives, give us meat.’ Then they do the same at another tree, asking the same petition for their children.