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Updated: April 30, 2025
On hearing the report of the journey given by my companions, and receiving a piece of cotton cloth about two yards square, he said, "These Mambari cheat us by bringing little pieces only; but the next time you pass I shall send men with you to trade for me in Loanda."
He had given them cattle, ivory, and children, and had received in return a large blunderbuss to be mounted as a cannon. When the slight circumstance of my having covered the body of the chief with my own deranged the whole conspiracy, the Mambari, in their stockade, were placed in very awkward circumstances.
On asking the head man of the Mambari party, named Porto, whether he had ever heard of Naliele being visited previously, he replied in the negative, and stated that he "had himself attempted to come from Bihe three times, but had always been prevented by the tribe called Ganguellas." He nearly succeeded in 1852, but was driven back.
As this was the only case I have met with in the interior in which a fugitive was sent back to a chief against his own will, I am anxious to mention it. On Intemese claiming her as his master's wife, she protested loudly against it, saying "she knew she was not going back to be a wife again; she was going back to be sold to the Mambari."
There were many Mambari with them, and the establishment was conducted with that military order which pervades all the arrangements of the Portuguese colonists. A drum was beaten and trumpet sounded at certain hours, quite in military fashion. It was the first time most of my men had seen slaves in chains.
When I explained the use made of the slaves he sold, and that he was just destroying his own tribe by selling his people, and enlarging that of the Mambari for the sake of these small pieces of cloth, it seemed to him quite a new idea.
His country was sometimes called Nyenko, but by the Mambari and native Portuguese traders "Mboela" the place where they "turned again", or back. As one of the fruits of polygamy, the children of different mothers are always in a state of variance. Each son endeavors to gain the ascendency by enticing away the followers of the others.
I explained to them again and again that, when it was said we came out of the sea, it did not mean that we came from beneath the water; but the fiction has been widely spread in the interior by the Mambari that the real white men live in the sea, and the myth was too good not to be taken advantage of by my companions; so, notwithstanding my injunctions, I believe that, when I was out of hearing, my men always represented themselves as led by a genuine merman: "Just see his hair!"
A party of Mambari, with two native Portuguese traders, had come up to obtain slaves, and, while Dr Livingstone was residing with Shinti, some young children were kidnapped, evidently to be sold to them.
Masiko expressed delight, by his principal men, at the return of the captives, and at the proposal of peace and alliance with the Makololo. He stated that he never sold any of his own people to the Mambari, but only captives whom his people kidnapped from small neighboring tribes.
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