Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/366

 is governed by a chief and a council of elders, who are seated for the greater part of the day in a public hall hung with leopard skins. The Makuas are very fluent orators, and at all the feasts, celebrated by the neighbouring peoples with music and the dance, they hold rhetorical tournaments. Each orator is accompanied by a second, who, like the flute-player in classic times, stands behind to regulate the movement of the voice by his modulated utterance of harmonious syllables, filling by his music the gaps in the flowing periods, lending more insinuating softness to the pathetic phrases, heightening the effect of the peroration by a low cadenced

muttering, and terminating the discourse by a muffled sound which seems to die away like a distant echo.

The Lomwes, who according to O'Neill belong to the same stock as the Makuas, dwell chiefly in the Lurio basin to the north of the Namuli highlands, and of the mountains continuing this system eastwards. They are usually looked on merely as an ordinary Makua tribe, although they are clearly distinguished by their peculiar idiom, and also regard themselves as a separate people. Before their territory was explored, the Lomwes had the reputation of being a most formidable nation. All strangers were supposed to require a special invitation

.