2
For another two months did the Jaqqas remain at the town of Calicansamba, until they had utterly laid waste to everything that had belonged to those people, and most of the villagers had fled to Cashil and Mofarigosat and other lords, and the town had become an empty thing where those mean beasts the jackall and the hyaena did roam, snuffling for scraps. Then the word came down from Imbe Calandola and his viceroy Kinguri that the tribe was to take up its wanderings again, and they did gather their cattle and their gourds laden with palm-wine and their weapons and make ready to go on the march, inland toward the mountains of Cashindcabar.
These mountains be mighty high, and have great copper mines, which the blackamoors do work, going in and taking the ore and melting it some, and hammering it to use for ornaments and weapons. The Jaqqas do none of this themselves, but only prey on the metal-working tribes. Kinguri explained this to me as a matter more of religion than sloth, saying, “It is forbidden by our custom to draw metal from the earth, this being a shameful handling of our mother. But we must have tools; and so we do allow lesser nations to engage in the commerce of metals on our behalf.”
As we passed toward Cashindcabar, the Jaqqas took the spoil all the way as they went. The towns of the makers of copper bells and chains and bracelets did unresistingly surrender their hoards, out of fear of Imbe Calandola. Also did he take from them their goats and their cattle, and destroyed many of their palm-wine trees, in that manner most wasteful that the Jaqqas practice. And now and then when the hunger for human meat came upon the tribe, they did choose a few townsfolk whose flesh they coveted, and killed and ate them in their great feasts, which were ever a heavy spectacle to behold.
This devouring of men was done not only for the flavor of it, though that was very dear to the Jaqqas, but also because it did strike terror into the nations of this land, being so unnatural and monstrous. Thus it invested the Jaqqas with a mantle of strange grandeur and frightfulness: offtimes a town would surrender without a struggle, so fearful of the Jaqqas were they.
Onward did we proceed, looting and eating, eating and looting. I took each day as it came, and lived easily my life among them, doing as they did by quick nature, the way one breathes without thinking on it. Yet also did I hold myself back in at least one part, that was the observer, the scholar of their doings and the doings of the nations that were about them. For I did know that no man before me had had the opportunity to witness such things, and that if God’s grace ever brought me to a place where I might set down my experiences, I would have such a tale to tell as few wanderers and journeyers before me had had, except peradventure for the great Marco himself, of Cathay.
In the mining country of Cashindcabar I saw how the working of metals is carried out among the Bakongo peoples, who used molds of wax to shape their bangles, the wax melting away and leaving the bracelet or armlet behind, full formed. In the working of iron they are very skilful also, and even amazing. For the blacksmiths do light a fire on the ground and, sitting nearby, practice their art in a most tranquil way, using neither hammer nor anvil. In the place of the hammer they employ a piece of iron large enough to fill the hand, and whose shape resembles a nail. The anvil is a piece of iron to the weight of some ten pounds, that they place on the ground like a log. On this they do their forging. The bellows is made of hollow logs over which a hide has been stretched. They raise and lower this hide by hand, and in this way blow air on the fire; this serves them very well and without difficulty. With these three simple instruments they do fashion all their iron goods, even the most elaborate.
I asked a blacksmith what art of magic he used in accomplishing this, and he replied most blandly, “It is in the arm, the directing of it, the weight of the thrust. Which we learn as boys, and it must be of the soul, of the inner spirit: I mean there is a mokisso in it, or the work is worthless.” And perhaps that is true of whatsoever labor any one does, in any land, that if there is no mokisso in it, and the spirit is not just right to aim the thrust and shape the weight of the task, then it matters not what fine tools you do employ.
These blacksmiths have other special skills. If someone is troubled by a disease, he goes to the blacksmith, makes some payment to him, and has his face blown on three times by the bellows. When you ask them why they do this, they reply that the air that comes out of the bellows drives the evil from the body and preserves their health for a long time. At one of the mining towns under Cashindcabar all the lordlings of the Jaqqas did form a long line, that stretched far out into the country, and one by one all the day long they came forward to have the blacksmith of that place blow air thus into their faces.
Gold is of little interest to all these peoples. At Cashindcabar I picked up a Jaqqa hatchet to admire it and found some gold inlaid into its handle, along with other workings of copper. This I showed to Kinguri.
“Where is this metal to be found?” I asked.
“You mean this copper?” said he.
“Nay, not the copper, but this other bright stuff, which is gold.” I said the name of that word to him both in English and also in Portuguese, which is ouro, for I had never heard any African name for it, they having so little respect for it.
“Gold?” said Kinguri. “Why, this other metal is copper also, but of another color.”
“Aye,” I said, not wishing to dispute it, “and from whence does this other copper come?”
“Out of a river that is to the southward of the Bay of Vaccas,” he said, “that has great store of it. In the time of rain the fresh water drives grains of this metal out on the sand, and we gather it then, for it is not forbidden to us to take metal that we find lying on the surface of our mother’s breast. It has a good shine, but it is soft and useless stuff.”
I pressed him to tell me more precisely where this river lay, but he could only say, southward of the Bay of Vaccas, that is, the bay about Benguela. Certainly I had heard nothing from the Portugals about finding gold there when we made our voyages thither; it was slaves that they sought, only slaves and slaves and slaves. But I may hope that one day Englishmen will scoop up this easy gold of the river-sands, if ever we do displace the Portugals from that part of the globe. And so I set the information down now that it not be forgotten.
Kinguri became my close companion in these first months of my wandering with the Jaqqas. Though he was a frightful man-eater and monster and all of that, yet also was he a person of thought and wisdom, with a far-seeing mind, that would have carried him to a high place in whatever country he was born: it was only the jest of fate that gave him off to spend his life in so barbarous a fashion. In this tribe he was a counsellor and companion to his elder brother the Imbe-Jaqqa, but in no way was he a partner in the government, for Calandola held that absolute unto himself. There was not room in that great tyrant’s soul for a sharing of power, though I know it to be true that he did love Kinguri and hold him in high esteem—while at the same time he was jealous of him, and most watchful that Kinguri should not usurp so much as one shred of the Imbe-Jaqqa’s authority and privilege.
Since in time I came to be close friend, if “friend” is the true and proper word, both to Calandola and Kinguri, I felt the pull of conflict sometimes between these two, and was much torn in my loyalties and strained by their brotherly rivalry. But the extent of that was not apparent to me at first, though of course any man of even slight wisdom knows that there are risks in getting too close to princes, or of seeming to favor the brother of a prince over the prince himself. The prince does love his brother, but also does he fear him, and for good reason, generally: so then does he fear the brother’s friend.