The starlings of darkest shades of blue, with bright yellow eyes, are strikingly beautiful when seen flying, the sunshine reflecting the metallic lustre of their plumage.
The cooing of the doves serves the natives at night instead of a clock, as they coo at the same hours as the common cock, and in travelling, if the natives are asked the time during the night, they always refer to the “dove having sung,” as they term it, or not. Its cooing a little before day-dawn is the signal to prepare for the start that day.
At the town of Quirillo, where we slept one night, the Madeira chair first came into use, to cross a stream and marsh in which the water came up to the men’s necks. Our hammock-boys thought it fine fun to pass us over the different streams in the chair; all twelve would stand in the water close together, with the chair on their shoulders, and pass my wife across first, singing in chorus, “Mundelle mata-bicho, Mundelle mata-bicho” (Mundelle = white-man, mata-bicho = a “dash” of a drink of rum). On landing her safely they would yell and whistle like demons, accompanied by all the rest on the banks, and splash and dabble about like ducks in the water. The chair would then come back for me, and the same scene be again enacted. A bottle of rum, or a couple of bunches of beads, was always the reward for crossing us over without wetting us.
Quiballa is by far the largest town to be met with from Ambriz, and contains several hundred huts distributed irregularly over the flat top of the hill on which it stands. The huts are square, built of sticks covered with clay, and roofed with grass. The principal room in the largest hut was swept out, and placed at our disposal by the king, and we made ourselves very comfortable in it. The king, Dom Paolo, is a fine, tall old negro, and knowing of our arrival sent his son and a number of men to meet us, when they took my wife’s hammock, and raced her into the town at a great pace. He has considerable influence in the country, where his is an important town, as it marks the limits of the coast or Ambriz race, and that of the Mushicongo tribe beyond.
There is a good deal of rivalry between the two races;—the Ambriz blacks do not like going beyond Quiballa, and the Mushicongos object to go into the Ambriz country. Before the road was taken possession of by the Portuguese, Quiballa was the great halting-place for the two tribes, the Mushicongos bringing the proceeds of the copper mines at Bembe to sell to the Ambriz natives, who then carried it to the traders on the coast. With the increased trade in other produce, a great deal of this separation has been done away with, and both tribes now mingle more freely; but at the time I was engaged at the Bembe mines we were obliged to have a large store at Quiballa to receive loads going up from Ambriz, and copper ore coming down from Bembe, and there change carriers.
The Ambriz negroes, being very much stronger, never objected to any loads, however heavy, some of these going up the country with sixteen or twenty carriers, such as the heavy pieces of the steam-engine, saw-mill, pumps, &c. There was great difficulty in inducing the Mushicongos to take these heavy and very often cumbersome loads from Quiballa to Bembe, and once, when loads for upwards of 1000 carriers had accumulated at the store, I was obliged to hit upon the following plan to get the Mushicongos to take them up, and it succeeded admirably.
I engaged 1000 carriers at Bembe to go empty-handed to Quiballa for the cargo there, and paid them only the customary number of beads for rations on the road, rations for the return journey to be paid at Quiballa, and pay for the whole journey at Bembe, on delivery of the loads. My calculation was that the greater number would be forced from hunger to take them, and so it happened. The morning after we arrived at Quiballa they all flatly refused to take a single load of the machinery in the store;—I very quietly told them they might go about their business, and for three days I was yelled at by them, but they were at last forced to accept my terms, and I returned to Bembe with 800 loads.
It was at Quiballa that we were so fortunate as to obtain specimens of the flowers, and a quantity of ripe seeds of the beautiful plant named Camoensia maxima by its discoverer, Dr. Welwitsch. We saw it growing along the sides of the road as soon as we left the gneiss formation and entered on the mica slate, but most abundantly in the more bare places on the sides of the hills at Quiballa, in the very hard clay of the decomposed mica slate.
Plate VI.
VIEW IN THE HILLY COUNTRY OF QUIBALLA—CAMOENSIA MAXIMA.
To face page 177.