Happily Livingstone had brought back with him several Balonda children
who had been carried off by the Makololo. This, and his speeches to
Manenko, the chieftainess of the district and niece of Shinte, the head
chief of the Balonda, gained them a welcome. This Amazon was a strapping
young woman of twenty, who led their party through the forest at a pace
which tried the best walkers. She seems to have been the only native
whose will ever prevailed against Livingstone's.
He intended to proceed up to her uncle Shinte's town in canoes: she
insisted that they should march by land, and ordered her people to
shoulder his baggage in spite of him. "My men succumbed, and left me
powerless. I was moving off in high dudgeon to the canoes, when she
kindly placed her hand on my shoulder, and with a motherly look said,
'Now, my little man, just do as the rest have done.' My feeling of
annoyance of course vanished, and I went out to try for some meat. My
men, in admiration of her pedestrian powers, kept remarking, 'Manenko is
a soldier,' and we were all glad when she proposed a halt for the
night.
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