The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873: Continued By A Narrative Of His Last Moments And Sufferings, Obtained From His Faithful Servants Chuma And SusiLivingstone, David
History
The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873: Continued By A Narrative Of His Last Moments And Sufferings, Obtained From His Faithful Servants Chuma And Susi
Livingstone, David
Africa, Central -- Description and travel
The Bakuss live near Lomamé; they were very civil and kind to the
strangers, but refused passage into the country. At my suggestion, the
effect of a musket-shot was shown on a goat: they thought it
supernatural, looked up to the clouds, and offered to bring ivory to buy
the charm that could draw lightning down. When it was afterwards
attempted to force a path, they darted aside on seeing the Banyamwezi's
followers putting the arrows into the bowstrings, but stood in mute
amazement looking at the guns, which mowed them down in large numbers.
They thought that muskets were the insignia of chieftainship. Their
chiefs all go with a long straight staff of rattan, having a quantity of
black medicine smeared on each end, and no weapons in their hands: they
imagined that the guns were carried as insignia of the same kind; some,
jeering in the south, called them big tobacco-pipes; they have no fear
on seeing a gun levelled at them.
They use large and very long spears very expertly in the long grass and
forest of their country, and are terrible fellows among themselves, and
when they become acquainted with firearms will be terrible to the
strangers who now murder them. The Manyuema say truly, "If it were not
for your guns, not one of you would ever return to your country." The
Bakuss cultivate more than the southern Manyuema, especially Pennisetum
and dura, or _Holeus sorghum;_ common coffee is abundant, and they use
it, highly scented with vanilla, which must be fertilized by insects;
they hand round cups of it after meals. Pineapples too are abundant.
They bathe regularly twice a day: their houses are of two storeys. The
women have rather compressed heads, but very pleasant countenances; and
ancient Egyptian, round, wide-awake eyes. Their numbers are prodigious;
the country literally swarms with people, and a chief's town extends
upwards of a mile. But little of the primeval forest remains. Many large
pools of standing water have to be crossed, but markets are held every
eight or ten miles from each other, and to these the people come from
far, for the market is as great an institution as shopping is with the
civilized. Illicit intercourse is punished by the whole of the
offender's family being enslaved.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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