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Updated: May 25, 2025
Then we understood that "Nokki" was the name of a canton, not of a settlement. Here, then, at 97.50 miles from the sea, ended our clan's cruize. We could only disembark upon the clean sand, surrounded by cool shade and blocks of gneiss, the favourite halting-place, as the husks of ground-nuts show.
This may be your view of "splendid confirmation" I venture to think that it will not be accepted by the geographical world. Life at Banza Nokki. I was now duly established with my books and instruments at Nkaye, and the inevitable delay was employed in studying the country and the people, and in making a botanical collection. But the season was wholly unpropitious.
Winding along the hill-sides, we passed out of the Nokki territory into that of Ntombo, the property of Mfumo Nelongo: here we descended into a little vale or gorge bright as verdure could make it "arborets and flowers Imborder'd on each bank" of a bubbling brook, a true naiad of the hills, which ran to the embrace of the mighty stream; it characteristically stained its bed with iron.
The aneroid now showed 860 feet of absolute altitude, and about sixty-five feet above the landing-place of Banza Nokki; the distance along the stream is fourteen miles, and thus the fall will be about five feet per mile below the Borongwa ya Vivi. We could see from a level the "smaller rapids of Vivi" bursting through their black gate with angry foam, flashing white from side to side.
Carli well describes this season when he says: "The winter of the kingdom of Congo is the mild spring or autumn of Italy; it is not subject to rains, but every morning there falls a dew which fertilizes the earth." This meteor was not observed on the highlands of Banza Nokki and Nkulu; it is probably confined to the low country, where I found it falling heavily. The March to Banza Nkulu.
As regards the cloth and beads advanced by me for the journey to Nsundi, a fair proportion would be returned at Banza Nokki. And so saying the old fox managed to look as if he meant what he said. All this, taken with many a grain, was reasonable. The edge of my curiosity had been taken off by the Yellala, and nothing new could be expected from the smaller formations up stream.
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.
It is only fair to confess that no race is harsher in its language and manners to its "black brethren," than the liberated Africans of the English settlements. At Banza Nokki I saw the first specimen of a Mundongo slave girl. She described her tribe as living inland to the east and north- east of the Congo peoples, distant two moons a detail, of course, not to be depended upon.
But revelry at night brings morning headache, and we did not set out, as agreed, at dawn. By slow degrees the grumbling, loitering party was mustered. The chiefs were Gidi Mavunga, head guide, and his son Papagayo, a dull quiet body; Chico Mpamba, "French landlord" of Banza Nokki, and my interpreter Nchama Chamvu.
The ruler of Nokki wanted, besides gin and cloth, a pair of shoes for his poor feet, which looked clad in alligator's skin; I referred him to his father, and he got little by that motion. On the evening of September 10, Gidi Mavunga, who had been visiting his "small country," returned, and declared himself ready to set out.
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