A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries: And of the Discovery of Lakes Shirwa and Nyassa, 1858-1864Livingstone, David
History
A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries: And of the Discovery of Lakes Shirwa and Nyassa, 1858-1864
Livingstone, David
Africa, Central -- Description and travel; Africa, Central -- Discovery and exploration
Matebele, who coming afterwards, drove even their conquerors, the
Makololo, out of the country. Sebetuane, however, profiting by the
tactics which he had learned of the Batoka, inveigled a large body of
this new enemy on to another island, and after due starvation there
overcame the whole. A much greater army of "Moselekatse's own" followed
with canoes, but were now baffled by Sebetuane's placing all his people
and cattle on an island and so guarding it that none could approach.
Dispirited, famished, borne down by fever, they returned to the Falls,
and all except five were cut off.
But though the Batoka appear never to have had much inclination to fight
with men, they are decidedly brave hunters of buffaloes and elephants.
They go fearlessly close up to these formidable animals, and kill them
with large spears. The Banyai, who have long bullied all Portuguese
traders, were amazed at the daring and bravery of the Batoka in coming at
once to close quarters with the elephant; and Chisaka, a Portuguese
rebel, having formerly induced a body of this tribe to settle with him,
ravaged all the Portuguese villas around Tette. They bear the name of
Basimilongwe, and some of our men found relations among them. Sininyane
and Matenga also, two of our party, were once inveigled into a Portuguese
expedition against Mariano, by the assertion that the Doctor had arrived
and had sent for them to come down to Senna. On finding that they were
entrapped to fight, they left, after seeing an officer with a large
number of Tette slaves killed.
The Batoka had attained somewhat civilized ideas, in planting and
protecting various fruit and oil-seed yielding trees of the country. No
other tribe either plants or abstains from cutting down fruit trees, but
here we saw some which had been planted in regular rows, and the trunks
of which were quite two feet in diameter. The grand old Mosibe, a tree
yielding a bean with a thin red pellicle, said to be very fattening, had
probably seen two hundred summers. Dr. Kirk found that the Mosibe is
peculiar, in being allied to a species met with only in the West Indies.
The Motsikiri, sometimes called Mafuta, yields a hard fat, and an oil
which is exported from Inhambane. It is said that two ancient Batoka
travellers went down as far as the Loangwa, and finding the Macaa tree
(_jujube_ or _zisyphus_) in fruit, carried the seed all the way back to
the great Falls, in order to plant them. Two of these trees are still to
be seen there, the only specimens of the kind in that region.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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