AFRICAN EXPEDITION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 14531, 19 November 1910, Page 2 (Supplement)

AFRICAN EXPEDITION.

" TASTER" WHO HAS FIRST DRINK.

QUAINT CEREMONY.

An interesting account of an expedition through the little-known Angoche and Matadane territory, in the province of Mozambique, is given by the American Consul at Lorenco Marques. It is believed the journey had never before been made by a white man.

The report, says: The Angoche people are remarkably intelligent, humourous, and independent, even among themselves and to their own chiefs. This has given rise to an endless subdivision of power, which makes a hamlet of three houses a village and its head a man to be reckoned with:

The Angoche and the Manillas of Matadane have much dignity ; ceremony comes naturally to them, and haste is foreign to their hablits and even shocking when they see it in others. The universal arm, carried by slave and master alike, was the assegaia, a spear point from one to two feet in length, with a cane shaft from two feet to five feet long. These spears are mostly home-made and beautifully tempered and finished, but Germany has already made a bid for the market with inexpensive and fantastic imitations.

During the day spent at Itite-Muno's village the tents were surrounded by hundreds of blacks, many of whom had never seen a white man, and who looked upon pipes and cigars as a new development of the cigarette. When a chief arrived a chair had to be offered to him, and .on such a chief being presented the formula, "The king is not of our religion," meant he could be offered a drink. There was no grasping for tho proffered glass. It was quietly handed to the court-taster, who, gladly taking the risk of poison, promptly drained it, whereupon the chief took the bottle.

As the expedition was about to start from a village tho women and sightseers crowded in closer and closer, and a baby, seeing a white man for tho first time, buret into shrieks of terror. A penny was thrown to the baby, and immediately every mother started pinching her offspring to make it cry, and finally the men started pommelling each other and bawling.