Zambo

“ The famous tropical port of Zamboanga lived up to its reputation as an exotic place. As the taxi carried the Spindrifters from the airport past the waterfront area, Rick saw bright-colored sails mixed with the drab steel of cargo ships. There were many Moros, but Christian Filipinos seemed to be in the majority. ”

“ The Zambos are the most miserable class of half-casts. With them every vice seems to have attained its utmost degree of development; and it may confidently be said that not one in a thousand is a useful member of society, or a good subject of the state. ”

“ I notice nobody sleeps in the streets of Zamboula. The very beggars hunt a niche they can barricade before dark. The city must be full of a particularly bloodthirsty band of thieves.”
He gulped the cheap wine with relish and then followed Aram out of the taproom. ”

“ Doctor Tschudi276 says, in speaking of the Zambos (hybrids from aborigines and Negroes at Lima) , “As men, they are greatly inferior to the pure races; and as members of society, they are the worst class of citizens:” they alone furnish four-fifths of the criminals in the prisons of Lima. ”

“ A considerable number of ladinos, however, become mechanics and traders, and many have attained high positions in the church and the state, and become distinguished for their talents and abilities. [XXVIII-34] The zambos and other mixtures of the negro race, like most of the negroes and mulattoes, reside in the coast districts. They do the heaviest work in the towns, and often engage in agriculture. ”

“ Then he fell into a normal slumber.
“When he awakes he will be quite sane,” she whispered, motioning to the silent slave.
With a deep bow he gave into her hands a small leather bag and drew about her shoulders a silken cloak. Her manner had subtly changed when she beckoned Conan to follow her out of the chamber.
In an arch that opened on the street, she turned to him, drawing herself up with a new regality.
“I must now tell you the truth,” she said. “I am not Zabibi. I am Nafertari. And he is not Alafdhal, a poor captain of the guardsmen. He is Jungir Khan, satrap of Zamboula.” ”

“ There is considerable valuable timber in the vicinity, live-stock is extensively raised, and rice, copra, hemp, sugar-cane, tobacco, and sweet potatoes are other important products. Zamboanga was one of the oldest Spanish settlements in the islands, it having been taken and fortified as a base against the Moros, and it still contains an old stone fort. Many of the inhabitants are descendants of slaves who escaped from the Moros and sought Spanish protection. ”

“ Each convent or monastery possessed a set of adjoining out-buildings, where lived and multiplied eight hundred slaves of the Order, negroes, zamboes, mulattoes, and quadroons, with blue eyes, fair and waving hair, limbs as polished as marble, genuine Circassians adorned with every grace, but showing their African origin by their teeth, serving for bait to the passions of man, all for the greater honor and profit of the convent to which these houris belonged. ”

“ Mount Zomba, which is twenty miles long, and from 7000 to 8000 feet high, has a beautiful stream flowing through a verdant valley on its summit, and running away down into Lake Shirwa. The highlands are well wooded, and many trees, admirable for their height and timber, grow on the various watercourses. “Is this country good for cattle?” we inquired of a Makololo herdsman, whose occupation had given him skill in pasturage. “Truly,” he replied, “do you not see abundance of those grasses which the cattle love, and get fat upon?” Yet the people have but few goats, and fewer sheep. ”

“ When we were returning from Zombo last year, and had passed the Zombos safely through the country, our headman said, ‘Oh, master, I have seen a wonderful work of God to-day. The Kibokolo people drove you away, but when these carriers return home your name will be lifted up to the sky through Zombo. Truly God has wrought a marvellous work.’ This prophecy has already become true, and we thank God for it. The people at present have only their material good in view ”

“ Then, as these Zambales have many times been warned, and have promised and sworn peace and amends, and have totally defaulted, as we have already said, and have taken occasion, from the lenity shown them, to do greater mischiefs with more boldness—mistaking for timidity the kindliness that we have used toward them—it follows that, numerous though they are, we ought no longer to dissemble with them, but must punish them sternly; for the more numerous they are, the more mischief they do. ”

“ No canal or railway would ever be thought of for this part of Africa. A few improvements would make the Zambesi a ready means of transit for all the trade that, with a population thinned by Portuguese slaving, will ever be developed in our day. Here there is no instance on record of the natives flocking in thousands to the colony, as they did at Natal, and even to the Arabs on Lake Nyassa. This keeping aloof renders it unlikely that in Portuguese hands the Zambesi will ever be of any more value to the world than it has been. ”

“ And since the blacks are very revengeful in taking vengeance on their enemies, they aid the Zambals to [311] capture them. The Zambal gives the black, whose services he has used for that purpose, some arrows or machetes.
But it must also be noticed that they do not always kill the black who is thus captured, for sometimes they let him live, and he is made a perpetual slave. There are many such slaves today, and I even believe that all the slaves whom they have are of this kind. If the murderer gives a slave in this way, he redeems the murder that he committed. ”

“ In order to perpetuate by might his new but tyrannical dignity, he summoned to his aid the Zambal tribe—a people who know no more civilized mode of life than the savage abode of the mountains and rocks; and without recognizing any one as king save him who, most barbarous of all, distinguishes himself as most courageous. ”

“ However, I am in hopes of getting my first Zombo girl in this week. The chief of Nzamba has promised to bring me some girls, and I believe he is trying to get them; but he owns a number of little girls and does not like to give them up, and the other people are just the same; because in this land little girls are articles that can be bought and sold just like pigs or goats. ”

“ The great deltoid plain, yellow with sun-tanned reeds and sparsely covered with trees, stretches on every side; the sun is blistering hot; the sky, as it will be for months, a monotonous dome of blue—not a frank bright blue like the Canadian sky, but a veiled blue, a suspicious and malarious blue, partly due to the perpetual heat haze and partly to the imagination, for the Zambesi is no friend to the European, and this whole region is heavy with depressing memories. ”

“ Near the south-eastern blockhouse the bulk of the able-bodied men and boys were squatting, rifles and spears lying beside them. At the gate in the north wall stood twenty-five men, the picked men of the corps, the men whom Lokolobolo had twice led out to victory. There was Lepoko, all smiles and consequence. There was Makoko, hugging his rifle as though he loved it. There was Lianza of the brazen throat, and Lingombela the man of hard bargains, and Imbono, the prudent chief of Ilola, and Mboyo, solemn and silent, thinking of Samba. ”

“ No Portuguese live within eighty miles of any mouth of the Zambesi.
The Kongone is five miles east of the Milambe, or western branch, and seven miles west from East Luabo, which again is five miles from the Timbwe. We saw but few natives, and these, by escaping from their canoes into the mangrove thickets the moment they caught sight of us, gave unmistakeable indications that they had no very favourable opinion of white men. They were probably fugitives from Portuguese slavery. In the grassy glades buffaloes, wart-hogs, and three kinds of antelope were abundant, and the latter easily obtained. ”

“ The Zombo and other natives farther to the interior, who come to the coast with ivory, &c., seldom shave their heads: the common lot let their hair grow anyhow, without apparently ever combing it out—a confused mass of wool, dirt, and palm oil—so that it gives them a wild appearance; others comb it straight up, letting it grow about six inches long, and ornament the front with a cock’s feather or a red flower, or sometimes stick two or three brass tacks in it ”

“ Some fifteen years after my darling’s death, when I was a man in middle life, I undertook an expedition to the Zambesi, and one night outspanned at the mouth of the well-known valley beneath the shadow of the great peak. I mounted my horse, and, quite alone, rode up the valley, noticing with a strange prescience of evil that the road was overgrown, and, save for the music of the waterfalls, the place silent as death. The kraals that used to be to the left of the road by the river had vanished. I rode towards their site; the mealie fields were choked with weeds, the paths were dumb with grass. ”

“ On the coast of Africa, in a hitherto unexplored region, some distance to the north of where the Zambesi falls into the sea, there is a headland, at the extremity of which a peak towers up, shaped like the head of a negro, similar to that of which the writing speaks. ”

“ This mode of finishing up an engagement is not at all uncommon on the Zambesi; several cases occurred, when we were on the river, of hired crews decamping with most of the goods in their charge. If the trader cannot redress his own wrongs, he has to endure them. The Landeens will not surrender a fugitive slave, even to his master. One belonging to Mr. Azevedo fled, and was, as a great favour only, returned after a present of much more than his value.
We landed to wood at Shamoara, just below the confluence of the Shiré. Its quartz hills are covered with trees and gigantic grasses ”

“ Samba was eleven years old. His home was the village of Banonga, a street of bamboo huts thatched with palm leaves and shadowed by the broad foliage of bananas and plantains and tall forest trees. His grandfather Mirambo was the village chief, a tall, strong, wise old man, a great fighter in his day, his body scarred with wounds, his memory stored with the things he had seen and done. Samba's father, Mboyo (or Isekasamba, "father of Samba," as he was called after his boy was born) , was the old chief's favourite son, a daring hunter, a skilful fisher, and the most silent man of his tribe. ”

“ A number of the Zambals, including their leaders, hear mass with much reverence, and even confess to the priests, saying that many of their men have come on this raid through fear, rather than their own inclination. Most of the troop, however, proceed to loot the village; the people take refuge in the bishop’s house and the church, thus saving their lives, although they endure great suffering and privation by being shut up indoors for two days, with little food or drink. Finally the fathers persuade the Zambals to let the people return to their houses. ”

“ At Zumbo we had entered upon old gray sandstone, with shingle in it, dipping generally toward the south, and forming the bed of the river. The Zambesi is very broad here, but contains many inhabited islands. We slept opposite one on the 16th called Shibanga. The nights are warm, the temperature never falling below 80 Deg.; it was 91 Deg. even at sunset. One can not cool the water by a wet towel round the vessel, and we feel no pleasure in drinking warm water, though the heat makes us imbibe large quantities. ”

“ The people look very poor, having few or no beads; the ornaments being lines and cuttings on the skin. They trust more to buazé than cotton. I noticed but two cotton patches. The women are decidedly plain; but monopolize all the buazé cloth. Theresa was excessively liberal, and having informed us that Zomba lived some distance up the range and was not the principal man in these parts, we, to avoid climbing the hills, turned away to the north, in the direction of the paramount chief, Chisumpi, whom we found to be only traditionally great. ”

“ It goes to the head, too. A pint puts a white man in a joyous frame of mind and sets a negro, who effervesces easier than his white brother, to singing and whooping. The chiefs, however, are as a general thing animated pombe sponges, constantly soaked and with the gourd seldom out of reach.”
A HUNT ON THE ZAMBESI.
The accounts of all African travelers agree, that both vegetable and animal life in Africa is rankest and noblest on the banks of the Zambesi. Volumes might be written of thrilling adventures in this extensive region. ”

“ When mentioning that great explorer—whose name in this district, after a lapse of nearly fifty years, remains a household word among the natives, handed down from father to son—it is a curious fact, and one that should prove a lesson to many travellers from the old world as well as from the new, that only on one tree is he believed to have cut his initials in Africa, and that tree stands on the island in the centre of the Zambesi, the island that bears his name, and that absolutely overhangs and stems the centre of the awe-inspiring cataract. ”

“ All day the village was cheered by the merry antics and joyous shouts of the children at play. Like children all over the world, the boys and girls of the Congo delight in mimicking their elders. The boys made little hunting-nets and ran hither and thither in mock chase, or spread their fishing-nets in the stream and gleefully boasted of their tiny catches. The girls wove little baskets and played with beads and shells. One and all, the children of Banonga were deft with their fingers, and none so deft as Samba. ”

“ At a table close by, the Portuguese envoy, Dom Francisco Maxara, sat playing at chess with the Commandant of Senna; the two, wholly absorbed in their game, exchanging a word only at intervals. The missionary was unpacking, showing, and repacking, the various skins and small animals he had managed to secure. The birds were singing in the bushes round about, and above all came the buzz of insect life, and the ceaseless roll of the broad Zambesi. ”