These quitandas are attended by people living a dozen miles off, and they give names to the days, which consequently everywhere vary. Thus at Boma Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday are respectively called "Nkenge," "Sona," "Kandu," and "Konzo." This style of dividing time, which is common throughout Pagan West Africa, is commonly styled a week: thus the Abbé Proyart tells us that the Loango week consists of four days, and that on the fourth the men "rest" by hunting and going to market. Tuckey also recognizes the "week of four days," opposed to the seven days' week of the Gold Coast.
After half an hour's run to the north-west my bearers, raising loud shouts of "Alii! vai sempre!" dashed into the market-place where about a hundred souls were assembled. The women rose in terror from their baskets and piles of vendibles; some began hastily to pack up, others threw themselves into the bush. Order was soon restored by the interpreter; both sexes and all ages crowded round me with hootings of wonder, and, when they had stared their fill, allowed me to sit down under a kind of ficus, not unlike the banyan-tree (Ficus Indica). Tuckey (p. 181) says that this fig is planted in all market-places and is considered sacred; his people got into trouble by piling their muskets against one of them: I heard of nothing of the kind. The scanty supplies—a few fowls, sun-dried fish, kola-nuts, beans, and red peppers—were spread upon skins, or stored in well-worked baskets, an art carried to perfection in Africa; even the Somali Bedawin weave pots that will hold water. The small change was represented by a medium which even Montesquieu would not set down as a certain mark of civilization. The horse-shoe of Loggun (Denham and Clapperton), the Fán fleam, the "small piece of iron like an ace of spades on the upper Nile" (Baker), and the iron money of the brachycephalic Nyam-nyams described and drawn by Schwein furth (i. 279), here becomes a triangle or demi-square of bast-cloth, about 5 inches of max. length, fringed, coloured like a torchon after a month of kitchen use, and worth one-twentieth of the dollar or fathom of cloth. These money-mats or coin-clouts are known to old travellers as Macuitas and Libonges (in Angolan Libangos). Carli and Merolla make them equivalent to brass money; the former were grass-cloth a yard long, and ten = 100 reis; in 1694 they were changed at Angola for a small copper coin worth 2 1/2 d., and the change caused a disturbance for which five soldiers were shot. Silver was represented by "Intagas," thick cottons the size of two large kerchiefs (=. Is. 6d.) and "Folingas," finer sorts used for waist-cloths (=. 3s. 6d.); and gold by Beirames (alii Biramis): Carli says the latter are coarse Indian cottons 5 ells long and each = 200 reis; others describe them as fine linen each piece worth 7s. 6d. to 8s. The bank-note was the "Indian piece or Mulech, a young black about twenty years of age, worth 20 Mil Keys (dollars) each." (Carli.) In the Barbots' day each "coin-clout") was equivalent to 2d.; some were unmarked, whilst others bore the Portuguese arms single or double. The wilder Kru-men still keep up their "buyapart" (= 25 cents), a cloth 4 inches square and thickly sewn over with cowries.
The only liquor was palm wine in huge calabashes. The smoking of Lyamba (Bhang or Cannabis sativa) seems to become more common as we advance. I did not find the plant growing, as did Dr. Livingstone at Linyanti and amongst the Batoka ("First Expedition," 198, 541). The pipe is the gourd of a baobab, which here sometimes grows a foot and a half long; it is cleared, filled with water and provided with a wooden tube fixed in the upper part away from the mouth, and supporting a small "chillam" or bowl of badly baked clay. The people when smoking affect the bunched shoulders, the deep inhalation, and the loud and body- shaking bark, which seems inseparable from the enjoyment of this stimulant. I have used it for months together, and my conclusion is, that mostly the cough is an affectation. Tobacco is smoked in the usual heavy clay pipes, with long mouthpieces of soft wood, quite as civilized as the best European. "Progress" seems unknown to the pipe; the most advanced nations are somewhat behind the barbarians, and in the matter of snuff the Tupi or Brazilian savage has never been rivalled.
The greater part of the vendors seemed to be women, of the buyers men; there was more difference of appearance than in any European fair, and the population about Nkulu seemed to be a very mixed race. Some were ultra-negro, of the dead dull-black type, prognathous and long-headed like apes; others were of the red variety, with hair and eyes of a brownish tinge, and a few had features which if whitewashed could hardly be distinguished from Europeans. The tattoo was remarkable as amongst the tribes of the lower Zambeze.[33] There were waistcoats, epaulettes, braces and cross-belts of huge welts, and raised polished lumps which must have cost not a little suffering; the skin is pinched up between the fingers and sawn across with a bluntish knife, the deeper the better; various plants are used as styptics, and the proper size of the cicatrice is maintained by constant pressure, which makes the flesh protrude from the wound. The teeth were as barbarously mutilated as the skin; these had all the incisors sharp-tipped; those chipped a chevron-shaped hole in the two upper or lower frontals, and not a few seemed to attempt converting the whole denture into molars. The legs were undeniably fine; even Hieland Mary's would hardly be admired here. Whilst the brown mothers smoked and carried their babies, the men bore guns adorned with brass tacks, or leaned upon their short, straight, conical "spuds" and hoes, long-handled bits of iron whose points, after African fashion, passed through the wood. I nowhere saw the handsome carved spoons, the hafts and knife-sheaths figured by the Congo Expedition.
We left the quitanda with the same shouting and rushing which accompanied my appearance.
Chapter XV. — Return to the Congo Mouth.
In the evening there was a palaver.
I need hardly say that my guide, after being paid to show me Nsundi, never had the slightest intention to go beyond the Yellala. Irritated by sleeping in the open air, and by the total want of hospitality amongst the bushmen, he and his moleques had sat apart all day, the picture of stubborn discontent, and