“These are some of the remembrances that crowd on me today, as I lay down on the leaves for noon rest and lunch at Sangue. In the afternoon of to-day I walked nine miles further to ‘Queongwa’ (Kaongwa), not a town, but a camping-ground for carriers and travelers, and a house for upper-class natives, with some villages contiguous and a running stream of water the year round, which is of great utility in this country. Brother Withy, our Superintendent, has bought a sight here for planting a mission school for the towns of this vicinity.
“A resident here, who has always shown kindness to my missionaries,
Sr. Candanga, met me in the path and gave me a welcome to his house of ‘wattle and daub.’ It is 60x18 feet, divides into two large end rooms and a central hall.
“One of these seemed to be reserved for strangers, furnished with a table, two or three chairs, and a European double bedstead with mattress and spread, which he put at my disposal. I had a good portable bed which I preferred to any other, but to honor his hospitality I spread my bedding on his bedstead and enjoyed a night of balmy sleep.
“I had walked twenty-three miles during the day, waded the waters eight times, and verified the truth—the ‘rest of a laboring man is sweet.’
“On Friday, June 7th, I was up at peep ‘o day, rolled up my bedding, took my lunch in my hand, and was on the path long before the sunshine struck the tops of the mountains, and walked to Pungo, about fourteen miles distant, by 11 A.M.
“My second tramp over this path was in company with Sister Wilks and Agnes, in August, 1889, on their way to join Brother Wilks at Pungo. Such was the immense avoirdupois of Sister W. that at Dondo we spent a week in trying to get carriers to take her thence to Nhangue. All our men travel on foot, but the ladies are carried by a couple of strong men—two also as alternates—in a hammock suspended from a long pole. We could find no carriers for her at Nhangue, so she walked fourteen miles to Sangue. On the way that day, we met Brother Wilks coming to meet wife and daughter. Agnes was carried and took a fever; the mother walking, and perspiring freely and sluicing the sewerage of her system, was in no danger of fever. When we reached Sangue, I hired a native to get four strong men to carry her next day to Pungo. He succeeded, but it was 8 A.M. before we could get them on to the path. We stopped at Queongwa for lunch. At 2 P.M., when we were ready and anxious to proceed on our journey, we found our carriers had just hung on the pot for boiling their breakfast. It was Saturday, and fourteen weary miles between us and Pongo, so Brother Wilks ordered them to their burdens: ‘No time now for cooking. You should have done that an hour ago, and we can’t wait any longer. We must be off now.’ The carriers replied: ‘We can’t
go any further to-day; we will camp right here, and rest till tomorrow.’
“I waited till their temper abated, and went to them, and said: ‘You have had a heavy load, boys, and I know you must be very tired and hungry; so, cook away, and eat a good breakfast, and then come on. I and this lady whom you have engaged to carry through to Pungo Andongo to-day, will walk on till you overtake us,’ Then without waiting for a reply, we took the path, and in about an hour afterward they overtook us and shouldered the ‘mulker grande’—woman large—and struggled on. We reached the mission house about 10 P.M., when the poor fellows were relieved of a heavy load from their shoulders, and I from my mind.
“On this day, June 7, 1889, when about a mile short of our mission house in Pungo, I was met by Bertie Withey, a wholly consecrated lad of sixteen and one half years. He was a boy of twelve when he, with his parents and three sisters younger than himself, enlisted for this work. These children, like their parents, walk humbly before God on the line of supreme loyalty and love. They are well up in the use of the Portuguese language, and in the Kimbundu. The native people here bear the name of ‘Umbunda’ plural, Mubunda singular. Kimbundu with them means language. So with them it would be tautology to say Kimbundu language.