Our chief guide, Intemese, sent orders to all the villages around our route that Shinte’s friends must have abundance of provisions.  Our progress was impeded by the time requisite for communicating the chief’s desire and consequent preparation of meal.  We received far more food from Shinte’s people than from himself.  Kapende, for instance, presented two large baskets of meal, three of manioc roots steeped and dried in the sun and ready to be converted into flour, three fowls, and seven eggs, with three smoke-dried fishes; and others gave with similar liberality.  I gave to the head men small bunches of my stock of beads, with an apology that we were now on our way to the market for these goods.  The present was always politely received.

We had an opportunity of observing that our guides had much more etiquette than any of the tribes farther south.  They gave us food, but would not partake of it when we had cooked it, nor would they eat their own food in our presence.  When it was cooked they retired into a thicket and ate their porridge; then all stood up, and clapped their hands, and praised Intemese for it.  The Makololo, who are accustomed to the most free and easy manners, held out handfuls of what they had cooked to any of the Balonda near, but they refused to taste.  They are very punctilious in their manners to each other.  Each hut has its own fire, and when it goes out they make it afresh for themselves rather than take it from a neighbor.  I believe much of this arises from superstitious fears.  In the deep, dark forests near each village, as already mentioned, you see idols intended to represent the human head or a lion, or a crooked stick smeared with medicine, or simply a small pot of medicine in a little shed, or miniature huts with little mounds of earth in them.  But in the darker recesses we meet with human faces cut in the bark of trees, the outlines of which, with the beards, closely resemble those seen on Egyptian monuments.  Frequent cuts are made on the trees along all the paths, and offerings of small pieces of manioc roots or ears of maize are placed on branches.  There are also to be seen every few miles heaps of sticks, which are treated in cairn fashion, by every one throwing a small branch to the heap in passing; or a few sticks are placed on the path, and each passer-by turns from his course, and forms a sudden bend in the road to one side.  It seems as if their minds were ever in doubt and dread in these gloomy recesses of the forest, and that they were striving to propitiate, by their offerings, some superior beings residing there.

The dress of the Balonda men consists of the softened skins of small animals, as the jackal or wild cat, hung before and behind from a girdle round the loins.  The dress of the women is of a nondescript character; but they were not immodest.  They stood before us as perfectly unconscious of any indecorum as we could be with our clothes on.  But, while ignorant of their own deficiency, they could not maintain their gravity at the sight of the nudity of my men behind.  Much to the annoyance of my companions, the young girls laughed outright whenever their backs were turned to them.