“the African sheep are clothed with hair, and men’s heads with wool.”  So I had to be content with asserting that mine was the real original hair, such as theirs would have been had it not been scorched and frizzled by the sun.  In proof of what the sun could do, I compared my own bronzed face and hands, then about the same in complexion as the lighter-colored Makololo, with the white skin of my chest.  They readily believed that, as they go nearly naked and fully exposed to that influence, we might be of common origin after all.  Here, as every where, when heat and moisture are combined, the people are very dark, but not quite black.  There is always a shade of brown in the most deeply colored.  I showed my watch and pocket compass, which are considered great curiosities; but, though the lady was called on by her husband to look, she would not be persuaded to approach near enough.

These people are more superstitious than any we had yet encountered; though still only building their village, they had found time to erect two little sheds at the chief dwelling in it, in which were placed two pots having charms in them.  When asked what medicine they contained, they replied, “Medicine for the Barimo;” but when I rose and looked into them, they said they were medicine for the game.  Here we saw the first evidence of the existence of idolatry in the remains of an old idol at a deserted village.  It was simply a human head carved on a block of wood.  Certain charms mixed with red ochre and white pipe-clay are dotted over them when they are in use; and a crooked stick is used in the same way for an idol when they have no professional carver.

As the Leeba seemed still to come from the direction in which we wished to go, I was desirous of proceeding farther up with the canoes; but Nyamoana was anxious that we should allow her people to conduct us to her brother Shinte; and when I explained the advantage of water-carriage, she represented that her brother did not live near the river, and, moreover, there was a cataract in front, over which it would be difficult to convey the canoes.  She was afraid, too, that the Balobale, whose country lies to the west of the river, not knowing the objects for which we had come, would kill us.  To my reply that I had been so often threatened with death if I visited a new tribe that I was now more afraid of killing any one than of being killed, she rejoined that the Balobale would not kill me, but the Makololo would all be sacrificed as their enemies.  This produced considerable effect on my companions, and inclined them to the plan of Nyamoana, of going to the town of her brother rather than ascending the Leeba.  The arrival of Manenko herself on the scene threw so much weight into the scale on their side that I was forced to yield the point.