Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo, Volume 2Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
History
Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo, Volume 2
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
Africa, West -- Description and travel; Congo River -- Description and travel; Ethnology -- Africa, West
These quitandas are attended by people living a dozen miles off,
and they give names to the days, which consequently everywhere
vary. Thus at Boma Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday are
respectively called "Nkenge," "Sona," "Kandu," and "Konzo." This
style of dividing time, which is common throughout Pagan West
Africa, is commonly styled a week: thus the Abbé Proyart tells us
that the Loango week consists of four days, and that on the
fourth the men "rest" by hunting and going to market. Tuckey also
recognizes the "week of four days," opposed to the seven days'
week of the Gold Coast.
After half an hour's run to the north-west my bearers, raising
loud shouts of "Alii! vai sempre!" dashed into the market-place
where about a hundred souls were assembled. The women rose in
terror from their baskets and piles of vendibles; some began
hastily to pack up, others threw themselves into the bush. Order
was soon restored by the interpreter; both sexes and all ages
crowded round me with hootings of wonder, and, when they had
stared their fill, allowed me to sit down under a kind of ficus,
not unlike the banyan-tree (Ficus Indica). Tuckey (p. 181) says
that this fig is planted in all market-places and is considered
sacred; his people got into trouble by piling their muskets
against one of them: I heard of nothing of the kind. The scanty
supplies--a few fowls, sun-dried fish, kola-nuts, beans, and red
peppers--were spread upon skins, or stored in well-worked
baskets, an art carried to perfection in Africa; even the Somali
Bedawin weave pots that will hold water. The small change was
represented by a medium which even Montesquieu would not set down
as a certain mark of civilization. The horse-shoe of Loggun
(Denham and Clapperton), the Fán fleam, the "small piece of iron
like an ace of spades on the upper Nile" (Baker), and the iron
money of the brachycephalic Nyam-nyams described and drawn by
Schwein furth (i. 279), here becomes a triangle or demi-square of
bast-cloth, about 5 inches of max. length, fringed, coloured like
a torchon after a month of kitchen use, and worth one-twentieth
of the dollar or fathom of cloth. These money-mats or coin-clouts
are known to old travellers as Macuitas and Libonges (in Angolan
Libangos). Carli and Merolla make them equivalent to brass money;
the former were grass-cloth a yard long, and ten = 100 reis; in
1694 they were changed at Angola for a small copper coin worth 2
1/2 d., and the change caused a disturbance for which five
soldiers were shot. Silver was represented by "Intagas," thick
cottons the size of two large kerchiefs (=. Is. 6d.) and
"Folingas," finer sorts used for waist-cloths (=. 3s. 6d.); and
gold by Beirames (alii Biramis): Carli says the latter are coarse
Indian cottons 5 ells long and each = 200 reis; others describe
them as fine linen each piece worth 7s. 6d. to 8s. The bank-note
was the "Indian piece or Mulech, a young black about twenty years
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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