every one knows the tendency of the Portuguese to
substitute r for I. Umtali is called by the Portuguese
Umtare;1 ‘bianco’ is ‘branco’ in Portuguese, and
numerous similar instances could be adduced ;
hence with this small Portuguese variant the
names are identical. Father Torrend, in his late
work on this part of the country, states, ‘The
Karanga certainly have been for centuries the paramount
tribe of the vast empire of Monomatapa,’ and
the best derivation that suggests itself is the initial
TVTfl. orBa, ‘ children,’ ka, ‘ of,’ langa, ‘ the sun.’ They
are an Abantu race, akin to the Zulus, only a weaker
branch whose day is over. Several tribes of Bakalanga
came into Natal in 1720, forced down by the powerful
Zulu hordes, with traditions of having once formed
a part of a powerful tribe further north. Three
centuries and a half ago, when the Portuguese first
visited the country, they were then all-powerful in
this country, and were ruled over by a chief with the
dynastic name of Monomatapa, which community
split up, like all Kaffir combinations do after a generation
or so, into a hopeless state of disintegration.2
Each petty chief still has his high-sounding dynastic
name, like the Monomatapa or the Pharaoh of his
day. Chibi, M’tegeza, M’toko, and countless lesser
names are as hereditary as the chiefdoms themselves,
1 M’, which looks so mysterious in all African books, is supposed
to express that the first syllable may be pronounced either urn or mu;
there are four correct ways of pronouncing the name in question,
Umtali or Mutare, Umtare or Mutali. The English have adopted the
first and the Portuguese the second.
2 Vide Chap. VII.
/
and each chief, as he succeeds, drops his own identity
and takes the tribal appellative. Such, briefly, is the
political aspect of the country we are about to
enter.
This is a strange, weird country to look upon, and
after the flat monotony of Bechuanaland a perfect
paradise. The granite hills are so oddly fantastic in
their forms; the deep river-beds so richly luxuriant
in their wealth of tropical vegetation; the great baobab
trees, the elephants of the vegetable world, so
antediluvian in their aspect. Here one would never
be surprised to come across the roc’s egg of Sind-
bad or the golden valley of Easselas ; the dreams
of the old Arabian story-tellers here seem to have a
reality.
Our first real, intercourse with the natives was at a
lovely spot called Inyamanda, where we ‘ outspanned ’
on a small plain surrounded by domed granite kopjes,
near the summit of one of which is a cluster of villages. _____ O
Here we unpacked our beads and our cloth, and
commenced African trading in real earnest; what
money we had we put away in our boxes, and never
wanted it again during our stay in the country. The
naked natives swarmed around us like flies, with
grain, flour, sour milk, and honey, which commodities
can be acquired for a few beads; but for a sheep
they wanted a blanket, for meat is scarce enough and
valuable amongst this much-raided people. We lost
an ox here by one of the many sicknesses fatal to
cattle m this region, and the natives hovered round
him like vultures till the breath was out of his body;
D