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
The next feature was Npunga Bay, low and leek-green, between the
blue-brown water, here some 700 yards broad, and the yellow sun-
burnt trough-sides. A little further on, at 2 P.M., the canoe-men
halted beyond a sandy point with two large "Bondeiro" trees, and
declared their part of the bargain to have been fulfilled.
"Bonderro" is a corruption of the Lusitanianized imbundeiro, the
calabash, or adansonia (digitata?): the other baobab is called
nkondo, probably the Aliconda and Elicandy of Battel and old
travellers, who describe the water-tanks hollowed in its huge
trunk, and the cloth made from the bark fibre. Thus the "Condo
Sonio" of the Chart should be "Nkondo Sonho," the latter a proper
name. It is seldom that we find trees turned to all the uses of
which they are capable: the Congo people despise the nutritious
and slightly laxative flour of the "monkey bread," and the young
leaves are not used as pickles; the bast is not valued for cloth
and ropes, nor are the boles cut into cisterns.
As will be seen, we ought to have insisted upon being paddled to
Kala cliff and bight, the Mayumba Bay of the Chart, where the bed
trends west-east, and shows the lowest rapids: the First Congo
Expedition went up even higher. At Nkongo ka Lunga, the point
marked by two calabashes, we inquired for the Nokki Congo, of
which we had heard at Chisalla, and which still exists upon the
chart,--districts and villages being often confounded. All
laughed, and declared that the "port-town" had long been sold
off, the same had been the case, even in Tuckey's day, with the
next settlement, "Condo Sonio" (the Baobab of Sonho), formerly
the great up-stream mart, where the slave-traders transacted
their business. All the population was now transferred inland
and, like our predecessors, we were promised a two hours' climb
over the rough, steep highland which lay in front. Then we
understood that "Nokki" was the name of a canton, not of a
settlement. Its south-eastern limits may have contained the "City
of Norchie, the best situated of any place hitherto seen in
Ethiopia," where Father Merolla (p. 280) baptized 126 souls,--and
this is rendered probable by the crucifixes and coleworts which
were found by the First Congo Expedition.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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