Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/540

 446 WEST AEEICA. in elegant tattoo designs and elaborate head-dresses, built up with clay and terminating in coronets or sharp radiating points. They are skilful craftsmen, but subject to the caprice of their rulers, who mutilate slaves and freemen alike, and surround themselves with bands of musicians, composed almost exclusively of eunuchs, the blind, and maimed. The approach to most villages is marked by grinning skulls stuck on tall stakes. The symbol of the royal power consists in red glassware covering a great part of the king's person, and imported bv Nyamezi traders, who take in exchange elephants' tusks of small size, but of extremely fine texture. These dealers have introduced many usages of Arab The Wa-Biza and Kissinga Territories. The Wa-Biza and Ilala, who have maintained their independence against the Ba-Bemba in the islands and morasses of Bangweolo and neighbouring rugged upland valleys, constitute a group of petty republican states, which are constantly on their guard against the attacks of the common enemy. This district teems with multitudes of large game, the very horizon being shut out in some directions by vast herds of many thousand antelopes. South of the marshlands lies the village of Tchitambo, in the Ilala territory, where Livingstone died on May 1st, 1873. On the return of the caravan which conveyed the remains of Livingstone to the coast, the western shores of Bangweolo were held by the Wa-Biza, who, how- ever, have since been either exterminated or reduced to a state of vassalage by the Yua-Ussi conquerors from the south. But the progress of these intruders has been arrested by the valiant Yua- Kissinga nation, which holds its own on the north side of the lake both against the Ba-Bamba in the east and the Yua-Ussi in the west. On one of the eastern affluents of the Lua-Pula in this district are situated the copper mines which have been worked from time immemorial. On their return from the interior in 1885, the explorers Capello and Ivens endeavoured in voin to cross the Lua-Pula and penetrate into this mining district. West of the river they found the whole country wasted by wars, and in the boundless forests of Kaponda had to support themselves on the produce of the chase. The Muata Kazembe's Kingdom. The Lunda territory south of Lake Moero, not to be confounded with the Lunda empire of the Muata Yamvo in the Kassai basin, constituted about the middle of the century a powerful kingdom ruled over by the Muata Kazembe, that is, " Imperial Lord," heir of the ancient Morupwe kings, who were regarded in the sixteenth century as the most powerful potentates in South Africa. But when visited in 1831 by Monteiro and Gamitto he had already lost all control over his eastern neighbours, the Wa-Bemba, and at the time of Livingstone's visit in 1867 several other provinces had become detached from his empire. At present he is a mere vassal of his old Ba-Eemba subjects, retaining, however, the complicated