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Yet I can hardly lay down the "curriculum vitae" as longer than fifty-five years, and there are few signs of great age. Merolla declares the women to be longer-lived than the men. Gidi Mavunga, who told me that the Congo Expedition visited their Banza when his mother was a child, can hardly be forty-five, as his eldest son shows, and yet he looks sixty.
September 8. Shortly after sunrise appeared Gidi Mavunga, father to the "king," accompanied by five "princes," in the usual black coats, and some forty slaves, armed with pistols, blunderbusses, and guns of French and Yankee build.
His father, Gidi Mavunga, knelt before him on the ground, a mat being forbidden in the presence: he made the "batta-palmas" before he addressed his "filho de pistola," as he called him, in opposition to filho de fazenda. The "king" had lately been crowned in virtue of his mother being a uterine sister of his predecessor.
The visitors showed all that African calinerie, which, as fatal experience told me, would vanish for ever, changing velvet paw to armed claws, at the first question of cloth or rum. Meanwhile, we had only to visit their village "upon the head of Gidi Mavunga." About 9 A.M. we attacked a true Via Dolorosa, the normal road of the Lower Congo.
As usual amongst Fetish worshippers, the only trace of belief in a future state is faith in revenants returning men or ghosts. Each village has an idol under a little wall-less roof, apparently an earthern pot of grease and feathers, called Mavunga.
Lastly, if the Senhor Gidi Mafung wanted to quarrel, the contents of a Colt's six-shooter were at his disposal. Such a tone would have made a European furious; it had a contrary effect upon the African. Gidi Mavunga advanced from his mat, and taking my hand placed it upon his head, declaring me his "Mwenemputo."
Gidi Mavunga, wearing pagne and fetish-bag, and handling a thin stick in which two bulges had been cut, led us out of Banza Nokki, and took a S.S.W. direction. I sent home specimens of this gossypium arboreum, which everywhere grows wild and which is chiefly used for wicks. There is scant hope of cotton-culture amongst a people whose industry barely suffices for ground-nuts.
Old Gidi Mavunga flings off his upper garment, and with the fire of a youth of twenty enters the circle, where his performance is looked upon with respect, if not with admiration. Wilder and wilder waxeth the "Devil's delight," till even the bystanders, especially the women, though they keep their places in the outer circle, cannot restrain that wonderful movement of haunch and flank.
"We are all cousins; why shall one be treated better than the other?" "As you please! you have received your due, and to-day we march." After this I rose and returned to my hut ready for the inevitable "row." It was not long coming; the new arrivals set up the war-song, and Gidi Mavunga thought it time to make a demonstration.
Gidi Mavunga, finding me in his power, began, like a thoroughbred African, to raise obstacles. The distance was short, but it would occupy five days, meaning a week. Before positively promising an escort he said it would be necessary to inspect my outfit; I at once placed it in the old man's hands, the better to say, "This is not mine, ask Gidi Mavunga for it."
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