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Updated: May 3, 2025
The headman here, Mokalaosé, is a real Manganja, and he and all his people exhibit the greater darkness of colour consequent on being in a warm moist climate; he is very friendly, and presented millet, porridge, cassava, and hippopotamus meat boiled and asked if I liked milk, as he had some of Mataka's cattle here.
The headman seemed very sorry about it, and so did several villagers who were with him; and I suggested that if the Nat-houses were rebuilt, and flowers and water offered, the Nat might know and return. I even offered to contribute myself, that it might be taken as an amende honorable on behalf of the English Government. But they did not think this would be any use.
Then the villagers made them swear by their children and the woman and the headman laid their hands on the heads of their sons and swore; and when the woman swore her son fell down dead and she took up the dead body in her arms and ran away with it. The villagers were very sorry for what had happened but the headman and his wife abused them for not having believed their word.
Mopo gave it out that the youth was killed by a lion near these mountains, and Chaka would learn if this is true." "We know nothing of the youth," said the headman. "But what would ye with him?" "Only this," answered the captain, "to kill him." "That is yet to do," thought Umslopogaas. "Who is this Mopo?" asked the headman.
Though so arid now, yet the great abundance of the dried stalks of a water-loving plant, a sort of herbaceous acacia, with green pea-shaped flowers, proves that at other times it is damp enough. The marks of people's feet floundering in slush, but now baked, show that the country can be sloppy. The headman of the village where we spent the night of 17th is a martyr to rheumatism.
There had been much mirth, music, drinking, and dancing. The men, and women too, had taken "a wee drap too much," but had not passed the complimentary stage. The wife of the headman, after looking at us a few moments, called out to the others, "Black traders have come before, calling themselves Bazungu, or white men, but now, for the first time, have we seen the real Bazungu."
We came on to Makochera, the principal headman in this quarter, and found him a merry laughing mortal, without any good looks to recommend his genial smile, low forehead, covered with deep wrinkles; flat nose, somewhat of the Assyrian shape; a big mouth and lean body.
One of the youths who had just returned stepped into the circle. "These many days we searched the forest and the sandbars, but found nothing," he said impressively. "So we returned." A hush had fallen upon all. Even the women and children peeping out of the palm-leaf hovels stopped their chatter and looked with wide-open eyes. "Build the fires!" the headman ordered.
In fact, not until darkness fell did he arouse himself sufficiently to rise unsteadily to his feet and to limp away from the bank of the treacherous river. It was the seventh year since the great drought. Choflo, headman, sorcerer and oracle of the Cantanas, scanned the brassy sky and smote his breast with clenched fists.
"Alas, then," exclaimed Ten-teh, "is there, under the most enlightened form of government in the world, no prescribed method of obtaining redress?" "Assuredly," replied the headman; "the prescribed method is the part of the system that has received the most attention.
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