and the prisoners, including women and children, were
slaughtered in a most fearful manner. Twenty wives of
powerful chiefs were among the slain. Fourteen chiefs had
been captured, and it was intended that a great execution
carnival was to take place at the king’s kraal, for the
entertainment of all the people.
But the elephant hunter begged hard that the king
should refrain from such wholesale butchery, and after the
first two victims had been immolated, he had the satisfaction
of obtaining the tyrant’s reluctant consent that the
rest should be in the meantime spared.
The Makanga were deceitful to the last degree, and
envious as well, never hesitating to kill their own relatives
in a cause of self-interest or jealousy.
In superstition, da Costa said, their nature is just like
that of the Angoni. He saw a woman, who was supposed
to have bewitched some of the royal wives, executed in the
king’s presence. Pleading upon that occasion was unavailing.
•
Her arms were first amputated, and then she was decapitated.
The wives, who were supposed to have been
influenced by the sorcerer’s enchantment, walked in procession
afterwards, carrying the head and arms of the victim
from eight o’clock in the morning until the sun had set.
Kankune was constantly killing his own wives. Two of
these executions were seen by da Costa. Brandy, which
the fiend unfortunately procures on the Zambesi, was, alas!
and still is, the cause of all this terror. Of the two murders
of which my friend was a spectator, the first took place
about ten o’clock at night. The unfortunate woman was
first felled with a club, and then the contents of a rifle was
discharged into her quivering body. In the second case,
the king led the victim to the Eevuqwe river (close in front
of the royal kraal), and with a rope secured her firmly to
the bank, there to remain until the crocodiles should come,
for this river teems in all its length with these reptiles.
About ten minutes afterwards da Costa saw one of the brutes
seize the poor woman, who vainly struggled a few moments
before the animal carried her off into the river.
With this horror da Costa’s narrative finished. I would
not have mentioned the circumstances, had it not been
that I wish to throw some light upon the horrible life of
the black victim to brandy, the leader of a people who
naturally follow the king in his example of indulgence,
vice, and crime.
In other ways da Costa’s brief story is interesting; in
particular it shows some of the vicissitudes and dangers
of a hunter’s life in the wilds of Central Africa, and in a
trustworthy way describes real observations of the habits
and modes of existence which characterise the native tribes.