Leaving Selele, we ascended a steep hill with many glissadès, the effect of last night's rain. These hammock-journeys are mostly equivalent to walking and paying for carriage; it would be cruelty to animals were one to ride except when entering the villages. After threading for half an hour lanes of grass, we were received in a little village of the Banza Vivi district by Nessala, linguistère to King Luvungungwete. The guest room was furnished with every luxury; hides of a fine antelope described as the Kudu; cruets, basins, bottles, and other vases; "lustre mugs," John Andersons and Toby Philpots. A good calabash, full of
"Freshening wine
More bounteous far than all the frantic juice
Which Bacchus pours,"
was produced, although the drought and scarcity of June rain had dried the palms. Before I outstretched myself, the fairer half of the population sent a message to say that they had never seen a white man: what less could be done than to distribute a few beads and pat the children, who screamed like sucking pigs and "squirmed" like young monkeys?
The Chrononhotonthologus of a king came in the afternoon with a tail of a hundred vertebræ: he was a milder specimen than usual; he had neither Mambrino's helmet nor beadle's cloak, and perhaps his bashfulness in the presence of strangers arose from a consciousness that his head-gear and robes were not in keeping with his station. But he did not fail to grumble at his "dash;" indeed, he must be more than African who shall say, "Hold! enough." He vouchsafed a small return in fowls and "beneficent manioc," and sent with us three slaves, to serve, not as guides, but as a basis for a separate charge.
After sunset all was made ready for the Batuque. The ball-room was the village square; the decorations were the dense trees; the orchestra consisted of two drums, a grande caisse eight feet and a half long, placed horizontally, and a smaller specimen standing on a foot like that of an old-fashioned champagne-glass; the broader ends were covered with deer skins, upon which both hands perform; and the illuminations were flaming heaps of straw, which, when exhausted, were replaced by ground-nuts spitted upon a bamboo splint. This contrivance is far simpler than a dip- candle, the arachis is broken off as it chars, and, when the lamp dims, turning it upside down causes a fresh flow of oil. The ruder sex occupied one half of the ring, and the rest was appropriated to dame and damsel. The Batuque is said to be the original Cachucha; Barbot calls it a danse des filoux, and it has the merit of perfectly expressing, as Captain Cook's companions remarked of the performances in the South Sea Islands, what it means.
The hero of the night was Chico Mpamba; he must have caused a jealous pang to shoot through many a masculine bosom. With bending waist, arms gracefully extended forwards, and fingers snapping louder than castanets; with the upper half of the body fixed as to a stake, and with the lower convulsive as a scotched snake, he advanced and retired by a complicated shuffle, keeping time with the tom-tom and jingling his brass anklets, which weighed at least three pounds, and which, by the by, lamed him for several days. But he was heroic as the singer who broke his collar-bone by the ut di petto. A peculiar accompaniment was a dulcet whistle with lips protruded; hence probably the fable of Pliny's Astomoi, and the Africans of Eudoxus, whose joined lips compelled them to eat a single grain at a time, and to drink through a cane before sherry-cobblers were known. Others joined him, dancing either vis-à-vis or by his side; and more than one girl, who could no longer endure being a wall-flower, glided into the ring and was received with a roar of applause. In the feminine performance the eyes are timidly bent upon the ground; the steps are shorter and daintier, and the ritrosa appears at once to shun and to entice her cavalier, who, thus repulsed and attracted, redoubles the exciting measure till the delight of the spectators knows no bounds. Old Gidi Mavunga flings off his upper garment, and with the fire of a youth of twenty enters the circle, where his performance is looked upon with respect, if not with admiration. Wilder and wilder waxeth the "Devil's delight," till even the bystanders, especially the women, though they keep their places in the outer circle, cannot restrain that wonderful movement of haunch and flank. I laughed till midnight, and left the dancers dancing still.
At 5 A.M. the strayed revellers found to their disgust a thick fog, or rather a thin drizzle, damping grass and path, and suggesting anything but a pleasant trudge. They declared that starvation awaited us, as the "fancy cloths" were at an end, but I stopped that objection by a reference to the reserved fund. After an hour of sulky talk we set out towards the upper part of Banza Vivi, passing a small but pretty hill plain, with manioc- fields, gum-trees, and the bombax very symmetrical. We saw no animals: here and there appeared the trail of a hyaena, the only larger carnivor that now haunts the mountains. The song of Mkuka Mpela, the wild pigeon, and Fungú, the cuckoo, were loud in the brake: the Abbé Proyart makes the male cuculus chant his coo, coo, coo; mounting one note above another with as much precision as a musician would sound his ut, re, mi: when he reached the third note, his mate takes it up and ascends to the octave. After this both recommence the same song.
The stiff ascent gave us lovely views of the lake-like river and both its banks: after three quarters of an hour we reached Vivi of Banza Simbo. The people vainly called to us, "Wiza!"— "Come thou!" and "Luiza! luiza kwenu!"— "Come, come here!" Our moleques, disliking the dangerous proximity, advanced at a walk which might be called a canter.
Presently we reached the dividing ridge, 1,394 feet high, between Banza Vivi and Nkulu, whose palm-trees, thrown out against the sky, bore 82° (M.) Looking to the north with easting, we had a view of no less than six distinct distances. The actual foreground, a hollow between two land-waves, could not conceal the "Crocodile's Head:" the latter, five miles off and bearing 65° (M.), forms the southern staple of the Yellala Gate, whose rapids were not visible, and it fronts the Quoin, which hems in the stream on the other side. The key-stone of the inverted arch between them was a yellow-flanked, tree-topped hill, rising immediately above the great rapids: beyond if waved, in far succession, three several swells of ground, each flatter and bluer than its nearer neighbour, and capping the whole stood Kongo de Lemba, a tall solitary sugarloaf, bearing 75° (M.), with its outlying conelets concealing like a mass of smoke the world that lay beyond.
The ridges appeared to trend north and south, and to approach the river's bending bed at different angles; their sides were steep, and in places scarped where they fell into the intervening hollows. The valleys conducted many a water to the main drain, and during the wet season they must be well-nigh impassable. At the end of the dries the only green is in the hill-folds and the basin-sinks, where the trees muster strong enough to defend themselves from the destructive annual fires. These bush-burnings have effectually disforested the land, and in some places building timber and even fuel have become scarce. In the Abrus, barely two feet high, I could hardly recognize the tall tree of Eastern Africa, except by its scarlet "carats," which here the people disdain to use as beads. The scorching of the leaves stunts the shrubs, thickens the bark, and makes the growth scrubby, so that the labourer has nothing to do but to clear away the grass: I afterwards remarked the same effects on the Brazilian Campos.