I thought we might go on at once, and not lose two days in the same spot.  “No, it is our custom;” and every thing else I could urge was answered in the genuine pertinacious lady style.  She ground some meal for me with her own hands, and when she brought it told me she had actually gone to a village and begged corn for the purpose.  She said this with an air as if the inference must be drawn by even a stupid white man:  “I know how to manage, don’t I?” It was refreshing to get food which could be eaten without producing the unpleasantness described by the Rev. John Newton, of St. Mary’s, Woolnoth, London, when obliged to eat the same roots while a slave in the West Indies.  The day (January 14th), for a wonder, was fair, and the sun shone, so as to allow us to dry our clothing and other goods, many of which were mouldy and rotten from the long-continued damp.  The guns rusted, in spite of being oiled every evening.

During the night we were all awakened by a terrific shriek from one of Manenko’s ladies.  She piped out so loud and long that we all imagined she had been seized by a lion, and my men snatched up their arms, which they always place so as to be ready at a moment’s notice, and ran to the rescue; but we found the alarm had been caused by one of the oxen thrusting his head into her hut and smelling her:  she had put her hand on his cold, wet nose, and thought it was all over with her.

On Sunday afternoon messengers arrived from Shinte, expressing his approbation of the objects we had in view in our journey through the country, and that he was glad of the prospect of a way being opened by which white men might visit him, and allow him to purchase ornaments at pleasure.  Manenko now threatened in sport to go on, and I soon afterward perceived that what now seemed to me the dilly-dallying way of this lady was the proper mode of making acquaintance with the Balonda; and much of the favor with which I was received in different places was owing to my sending forward messengers to state the object of our coming before entering each town and village.  When we came in sight of a village we sat down under the shade of a tree and sent forward a man to give notice who we were and what were our objects.  The head man of the village then sent out his principal men, as Shinte now did, to bid us welcome and show us a tree under which we might sleep.  Before I had profited by the rather tedious teaching of Manenko, I sometimes entered a village and created unintentional alarm.  The villagers would continue to look upon us with suspicion as long as we remained.  Shinte sent us two large baskets of manioc and six dried fishes.  His men had the skin of a monkey, called in their tongue “poluma” (’Colobus guereza’), of a jet black color, except the long mane, which is pure white:  it is said to be found in the north, in the country of Matiamvo, the paramount chief of all the Balonda.  We learned from them that they are in the habit of praying to their idols when unsuccessful in killing game or in any other enterprise.  They behaved with reverence at our religious services.  This will appear important if the reader remembers the almost total want of prayer and reverence we encountered in the south.