Besides the large stores in their “small countries,” the middle-men have a multitude of retainers, who may at any moment be converted into capital.  Yet “slave” is a term hardly applicable to such “chattels,” who, as a rule, are free as their lords.  They hold at their disposal all that the master possesses, except his wives; they sleep when they choose, they work when they like; they attend to their private affairs, and, if blamed or punished, they either run away, as at Zanzibar, to their own country, or they take sanctuary with some neighbouring Mfumo, who, despite the inevitable feud, is bound by custom to protect them.  Cold and hunger, the torments of the poor in Europe, are absolutely unknown to them, and their condition contrasts most favourably with the “vassus” and the “servus” of our feudal times.  Their wives and children are their own:  the master cannot claim the tyrannous marriage-rights of the baron; no “wedding-dish” is carried up to the castle; nor is the eldest born “accounted the son of the serf’s lord, for he perchance it was who begat him.”  The brutality of slavery, I must repeat, is mainly the effect of civilization.  “I shall never forget,” says Captain Boteler, “the impatient tosses of the head and angry looks displayed by a—­ lady—­when the subject was canvassed.  ’A negro, a paltry negro, ever understand or conform to the social tie of wedlock!  No, never! never!’ Yet this lady was an English-woman.”  And when James Barbot’s supercargo begins to examine his negroes like cattle he is begged, for decency’s sake, to do it in a private place, “which shows these blacks are very modest.”  It rather proved the whites to be the reverse.

At 7.20 A.M. on September 11, the “moleques” seized our luggage, and we suddenly found ourselves on the path.  Gidi Mavunga, wearing pagne and fetish-bag, and handling a thin stick in which two bulges had been cut, led us out of Banza Nokki, and took a S.S.W. direction.  The uneven ground was covered with a bitter tomato (nenga) and with the shrub which, according to Herodotus, bears wool instead of fruit.  I sent home specimens of this gossypium arboreum, which everywhere grows wild and which is chiefly used for wicks.  There is scant hope of cotton-culture amongst a people whose industry barely suffices for ground-nuts.  The stiff clay soil everywhere showed traces of iron, and the guide pointed out a palm-tree which had been split by the electric fluid, and a broad, deep furrow, several feet long, ending in a hole.  The Nzazhi (lightning) is as dangerous and as much dreaded on these hills as in Uganda:  the south-west trade meets the land wind from the north-east; strata of clouds in different states of electricity combine, says the popular theory, to produce the thunder and lightning which accompany rain like the storms upon the mountains of Yemen.  After 30’ (- 1.50 miles) we reached our destination, Banza Chinguvu, the head-quarters of Gidi Mavunga.  As we entered it he pointed to a pot full of greasy stuff under a dwarf shed, saying, “Isso e meu Deus:”  it was in fact his Baka chya Mazinga.  Beyond it stood the temple of Nbambi; two suspended pieces of wood, cut in the shape of horns, bore monkey skins on both sides of a dead armadillo, an animal supposed to attract lightning when alive, and to repel it after death.