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Those who survived their term of six or eight months, were permitted to return to their homes, until the next term commenced. But their homes were often forty, sixty, and eighty leagues distant. They had nothing to sustain them through the journey but a few roots or agi peppers, or a little cassava bread.
They preserve, too, the old Guaraon arts of weaving baskets and other utensils, pretty enough, from the strips of the Aruma leaves. From them the Negro, who will not, or cannot, equal them in handicraft, buys the pack in which wares are carried on the back, and the curious strainer in which the Cassava is deprived of its poisonous juice.
"'Then for God's sake go out and try to find what the people here do eat. We've got to fill 'em up with grub of some kind. "I went out again. Denver was manager. In half an hour I gets back. "'They eat, says I, 'tortillas, cassava, carne de chivo, arroz con pollo, aquacates, zapates, yucca, and huevos fritos.
The missionary told us that the natives become visibly fatter during the two or three months in which they drink this seje, into which they dip their cakes of cassava.
No estimate could be formed by counting the huts, they were so irregularly planted, and hidden by cassava; but my impression from other collections of huts was that the population was under a thousand souls. The court or compound of Casembe some would call it a palace is a square enclosure of 300 yards by 200 yards. It is surrounded by a hedge of high reeds.
Between this range and Mofwé the Luapula flows past into Moero, the Lake called Moero okata = the great Moero, being about fifty miles long. The town of Casembe covers a mile square of cassava plantations, the huts being dotted over that space. Some have square enclosures of reeds, but no attempt has been made at arrangement: it might be called a rural village rather than a town.
I found, after I came about two miles up, that the tide did not flow any higher; and that it was no more than a little brook of running water, very fresh and good: but this being the dry season, there was hardly any water in some parts of it; at least, not any stream. I searched for the cassava root, which the Indians, in all that climate, make their bread of; but I could find none.
The araguatoes, with dried plantains and cassava, were the food of our travellers for several days after. On the evening of the third day they had a change. Guapo succeeded in capturing a very large turtle, which served for relish at several meals. His mode of taking the turtle was somewhat curious, and deserves to be described.
A little cassava and a few plantains only are cultivated; and when the fishery is not abundant, the natives of a country so favoured by nature are exposed to the most cruel privations.
Here and there valleys opened up covered with orange-groves, sugar-cane, cassava, and other valuable productions of the soil.
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