Our first halt was at Ngungungo, a large and very picturesque town, where there is a considerable trade carried on in mandioca root and its different preparations, as well as in beans and ground-nuts, the produce of the country around.
After passing this town the road becomes very rocky and stony, necessitating getting out of the hammocks and walking a good deal over the rough ground. Farther on, another steep but bare hill had to be ascended, and finally we reached a little new town called Quioanquilla, where we slept. This had been a large and important town, but the natives having robbed several caravans going up to the mines, the Portuguese punished them by burning it some years ago. We saw a considerable quantity of wild pineapples growing about this town, but the natives make no use of its fine fibre, contenting themselves with eating the unripe fruit.
Next day’s journey brought us, early in the afternoon, to a very prettily situated new town, of which a little old woman was the queen; her two sons were the head men, and we were most hospitably received by them.
We had, fortunately, thus far escaped rain-storms during the day whilst travelling; rain had always come down at night, when we were comfortably housed in our tent or in the hut at Quiballa. We put up our tent in an open space in the middle of the town, and took the precaution, as usual, of cutting a small trench round it to carry away the water in case of rain. When we retired the weather was fine, but we had not been asleep long before we were awakened by a terrific thunderstorm, accompanied by torrents of rain. The trench overflowed, and a stream of water began to enter our tent. In the greatest hurry I cut another trench along the side of our bed, a foot wide and about nine inches deep, and for two hours did this drain run full of water, such was the downpour of rain. Next morning we continued our journey, and in about half-an-hour’s time arrived at a rivulet that drained what was usually a large marsh, but the storm of the previous night had turned the marsh into a lake and the rivulet into a roaring stream quite impassable. After trying it lower down, and finding we could not ford it, we had no alternative but to return to the town and remain there for that day, or till the water should have subsided sufficiently to enable us to cross. The remainder of the day we employed in collecting insects and in drying the plants we had gathered the last few days.
A child was born whilst we were in this town, and, being a girl, it was at once named Rose, after my wife, who had therefore to make the mother a present of a piece of handkerchiefs and an extra fine red cotton one for the baby.
Next day we were able to pass the swollen stream in our chair, after a couple of hours spent in cutting away branches of trees, &c., that obstructed the passage, at a place where the depth of water was about five feet. In a fish-trap I here found the curious new fish described by Dr. A. Günther, and named by him Gymnallabes apus (‘Annals and Magazine of Natural History’ for August, 1873).
Plate VII.
QUILUMBO.
To face page 185.
That day’s journey, through a country alternately covered with lovely forest and high grass, brought us to the large town of Quilumbo, beautifully situated in a forest, and with a great number of oil-palm trees ([Plate VII.]). This is at present the largest and most important town on the road to Bembe, containing several hundred huts and quite a swarm of inhabitants. About noon we halted for breakfast at a market-place near a town on the River Lifua. Here were about forty or fifty armed blacks, with the king from the neighbouring town, all getting rapidly drunk on “garapa,” or indian-corn beer; their faces and bodies painted bright red, with a few white spots, looking like so many stage demons, dancing, singing, and flourishing their guns about. They were all going to a town where we heard the kings of five towns were to have their heads cut off that day for complicity in the murder of a woman by one of them. They were accompanied by a man blowing a large wooden trumpet of most extraordinary form ([Plate V.]).
This trumpet is made of the hollow root and stem of a tree, said to grow in the mud of rivers and marshes; it does not appear to have been thinned away much at its narrow end, but seems to have grown naturally from the large flat root to a thin stem at a short distance above it. I immediately wanted to buy this instrument, but nothing would induce the king to part with it till I offered to exchange it for a brass bugle. I had to give them a “mucanda” or order for one at our store at Ambriz; even then it was not delivered to me, but the king agreed to send one of his sons to Ambriz with it on my return from Bembe, which he did, and thus I became possessed of it.