Close to the river on the left bank were villages which are deserted in the rains, but which were now inhabited by people called the Wagenya. These seemed one and all to be engaged in making pots of various shapes and sizes out of the clay obtained from pools left by the river when falling. While in the woods, we had come across men cutting down trees and fashioning them into canoes.
We struck the river some little distance above Nyangwe, and from the natives Tipolo managed to hire some canoes, in which he and his immediate followers, together with Hatibu, Bilal, and myself, embarked, and with the aid of a current which must have run from four to five knots an hour we reached Nyangwe about nine o’clock in the morning, having left those who were to follow by land about six. The river was full of islands. On the larger were villages inhabited by a tribe quite different in their habits and pursuits from the Wagenya, who lived on the left bank. On the numerous sand-banks were quantities of duck and other wild-fowl, while the water abounded with fish, hippopotami, and crocodiles. We passed many canoes between the islands and the shore, some with their occupants engaged in fishing. Their numbers kept on increasing as we drew nearer to Nyangwe, which I quite expected to find a very large place from the number of people I saw going there.
I tried to find out from my companions what was the cause of such a concourse of people, but the only answer I could get was, “Soko leo”—that is, Soko to-day. As I had seen the monkeys that had acted as masters of the ceremonies on the occasion of my first introduction to Hatibu, the words puzzled me exceedingly. What could “Monkeys to-day” mean? Was there going to be a great hunt of these monster apes, and were all those people going to take part in it? Thicker and thicker grew the canoes; and when a bluff crowned with some large houses with high thatched roofs came in sight, I was told it was Nyangwe, and
GOING TO MARKET.
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I saw that at the landing-place were literally hundreds of empty canoes.