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This trifling incident was the more pleasing, as it was the first attempt at neatness I had seen since leaving the establishment of Mozinkwa in Londa. Rows of trees had been planted along each side of the road, with pine-apples and flowers between.
But, while vegetable aliment is abundant, there is a want of salt and animal food, so that numberless traps are seen, set for mice, in all the forests of Londa. The vegetable diet leaves great craving for flesh, and I have no doubt but that, when an ordinary quantity of mixed food is supplied to freed slaves, they actually do feel more comfortable than they did at home.
After hunting it for two days it was dispatched at last by another ball. Here we saw a flock of jackdaws, a rare sight in Londa, busy with the grubs in the valley, which are eaten by the people too. Leaving Katema's town on the 19th, and proceeding four miles to the eastward, we forded the southern branch of Lake Dilolo.
As Katema did not offer an ox, as would have been done by a Makololo or Caffre chief, we slaughtered one of our own, and all of us were delighted to get a meal of meat, after subsisting so long on the light porridge and green maize of Londa. On occasions of slaughtering an animal, some pieces of it are in the fire before the skin is all removed from the body.
But better still, in the shade, there's a group of men and women seated, putting in time eating from heaps of emerald green bananas and sanguine pomegranates how I wish I could stay for hours to paint! Out of Londa the trees get finer and taller, and you see real live bamboos in great masses of soft grey-green, their foliage a little like willows at a distance.
In the Bechuana country, continuous rains are always from the northeast or east, while in Londa and Angola they are from the north. At Pungo Andongo, for instance, the whitewash is all removed from the north side of the houses. It cleared up, however, about midday, and Monze's sister conducted us a mile or two upon the road.
My men formed many friendships with the people of Katema, and some of the poorer classes said in confidence, "We wish our children could go back with you to the Makololo country; here we are all in danger of being sold." My men were of opinion that it was only the want of knowledge of the southern country which prevented an exodus of all the lower portions of Londa population thither.
This mode, with the somewhat Egyptian cast of countenance in other parts of Londa, reminded me strongly of the paintings of that nation in the British Museum. We had now rain every day, and the sky seldom presented that cloudless aspect and clear blue so common in the dry lands of the south.
This is a common mode of salutation in Londa; and when they wish to be excessively polite, they bring a quantity of ashes or pipe-clay in a piece of skin, and, taking up handfuls, rub it on the chest and upper front part of each arm; others, in saluting, drum their ribs with their elbows; while others still touch the ground with one cheek after the other, and clap their hands.
When he came, it was in the usual Londa way of showing the exalted position he occupies, mounted on the shoulders of his spokesman, as schoolboys sometimes do in England, and as was represented to have been the case in the southern islands when Captain Cook visited them. My companions, amused at his idea of dignity, greeted him with a hearty laugh.
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