note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h.zip) the last journals of david livingstone, in central africa, from to his death. continued by a narrative of his last moments and sufferings, obtained from his faithful servants chuma and susi, by horace waller, f.r.g.s., rector of twywell, northampton. in two volumes.--vol. i. [ - ] with portrait, maps, and illustrations. london: john murray, albemarle street. introduction. in the midst of the universal sorrow caused by the intelligence that dr. livingstone had lost his life at the furthest point to which he had penetrated in his search for the true sources of the nile, a faint hope was indulged that some of his journals might survive the disaster: this hope, i rejoice to say, has been realized beyond the most sanguine expectations. it is due, in the first place, to his native attendants, whose faithfulness has placed his last writings at our disposal, and also to the reader, before he launches forth upon a series of travels and scientific geographical records of the most extraordinary character, to say that in the following narrative of seven years' continuous work and new discovery _no break whatever occurs_. we have not to deplore the loss, by accident or carelessness, of a single entry, from the time of livingstone's departure from zanzibar in the beginning of to the day when his note-book dropped from his hand in the village of ilala at the end of april, . i trust it will not be uninteresting if i preface the history with a few words on the nature of these journals and writings as they have come to hand from central africa. it will be remembered that when mr. stanley returned to england in , dr. livingstone entrusted to his care a very large letts' diary, sealed up and consigned to the safe keeping of his daughter, miss agnes livingstone. upon the confirmation of the worst news, this book was examined and found to contain a considerable portion of the notes which her father made during his travels previous to the time of mr. stanley's meeting him. the doctor's custom was always to have metallic note-books in use, in which the day's jottings were recorded. when time and opportunity served, the larger volume was posted up with scrupulous care. it seems, however, that in the last three or four years of his life this excellent rule had to give way to the toils of travel and the exhaustion of most distressing illnesses. whilst in the manyuema country he ran out of note-books, ink, and pencils, and had to resort to shifts which at first made it a very debateable point whether the most diligent attempt at deciphering would suceeed after all. such pocket-books as remained at this period of his travels were utilized to the last inch of paper. in some of them we find lunar observations, the names of rivers, and the heights of hills advancing towards the middle from one end, whilst from the other the itinerary grows day by day, interspersed with map routes of the march, botanical notes, and carefully made drawings. but in the mean time the middle portion of the book was filling up with calculations, private memoranda, words intended for vocabularies, and extracts from books, whilst here and there the stain of a pressed flower causes indistinctness; yet the thread of the narrative runs throughout. noting but his invariable habit of constantly repeating the month and year obviates hopeless confusion. nor is this all; for pocket-books gave out at last, and old newspapers, yellow with african damp, were sewn together, and his notes were written across the type with a substitute for ink made from the juice of a tree. to miss livingstone and to the rev. c.a. alington i am very much indebted for help in the laborious task of deciphering this portion of the doctor's journals. their knowledge of his handwriting, their perseverance, coupled with good eyes and a strong magnifying-glass, at last made their task a complete success. in comparing this great mass of material with the journal brought home by mr. stanley, one finds that a great deal of most interesting matter can be added. it would seem that in the hurry of writing and copying despatches previous to his companion's departure, the doctor rapidly entered up as much from his note-books as time and space permitted. most fortunately, he still carried the greater part of these original notes till the time of his death, so that they were forthcoming when his effects were subsequently saved. this brings us to the second instalment of the journals, for we have thus acknowledged the first to have reached us on mr. stanley's return. when the battered tin travelling-case, which was with livingstone to the last, was opened at the foreign office in the spring of this year, not only were these valuable papers disclosed which i have mentioned, but it was found also that livingstone had kept a copious journal during his stay at unyanyembé in some copy-books, and that when his stock of note-books was replenished a daily record of his subsequent travels had been made. it was with fear and trembling that one looked to see whether all had been saved or only part, but with satisfaction and thankfulness i have subsequently discovered that his men preserved every single line, besides his maps, which now come to light for the first time. thus much on the material of the diaries: it remains to say a few words on the map which accompanies these journals. it has been compiled from dr. livingstone's original drawings and note-books, with the corrections and additions he made from time to time as the work of exploration progressed, and the details of physical geography became clearer to him. the compiler, mr. john bolton[ ], implicitly following the original outline of the drawing as far as possible, has honestly endeavoured to give such a rendering of the entire work, as the doctor would have done had he lived to return home, and superintend the construction; and i take this opportunity of expressing my sincere gratification that mr. bolton's rare technical skill, scientific knowledge, and unwearying labour have been available for the purpose. amongst almost the last words that livingstone wrote, i find an unfinished letter to myself, in which he gives me very clear and explicit directions concerning the geographical notes he had previously sent home, and i am but carrying out the sacred duty which is attached to a last wish when i call attention to the fact, that he particularly desired in this letter that _no positions gathered from his observations for latitude and longitude, nor for the levels of the lakes, &c., should be considered correct till sir thomas maclear had examined them_. the position of casembe's town, and of a point near pambetté at the s.e., and of lake liemba (tanganyika), have been computed and corrected by sir t. maclear and dr. mann. the observations for latitude were taken at short intervals, and where it has been possible to test them they have been found very correct, but i repeat that until the imprimatur of his old friend at the cape of good hope stands over the whole of livingstone's work, the map must be accepted as open to further corrections. the journey from kabwabwata to mparru has been inserted _entirely_ from notes, as the traveller was too ill to mark the route: this is the only instance in all his wanderings where he failed to give some indication on his map of the nature of the ground over which he passed. the journey front mikindany bay to lake nyassa has also been laid down from his journal and latitudes in consequence of the section of this part of his route (which he left at ujiji) not having arrived in england at this date.[ ] it will be observed that the outline of lake nyassa differs from that on any published map: it has been drawn from the original exploratory survey of its southern shores made by dr. livingstone in - . for some reason this original plan was not adhered to by a former draughtsman, but the lake has here been restored to a more accurate bearing and position. how often shall we see in the pages of this concluding chapter of his life, that unwavering determination which was pre-eminently the great characteristic of david livingstone! naturally endowed with unusual endurance, able to concentrate faculties of no ordinary kind upon whatever he took in hand, and with a dread of exaggeration which at times almost militated against the importance of some of his greatest discoveries, it may be doubted if ever geographer went forth strengthened with so much true power. let us add to these a sincere trust that slavery, the "great open sore of the world," as he called it, might under god's good guidance receive healing at his hands; a fervent hope that others would follow him after he had removed those difficulties which are comprised in a profound ignorance of the physical features of a new country, and we have the marching orders of him who left us in august never to return alive. privileged to enjoy his near personal friendship for a considerable period in africa, and also at home, it has been easy to trace--more especially from correspondence with him of late years--that livingstone wanted just some such gigantic problem as that which he attacked at the last to measure his strength against: that he finally overrated and overtaxed it i think all must admit. he had not sufficiently allowed for an old wound which his constitution received whilst battling with dysentery and fever, on his celebrated journey across africa, and this finally sapped his vital powers, and, through the irritation of exhaustion, insidiously clouded much of his happiness. many of his old friends were filled with anxiety when they found that he intended to continue the investigation of the nile sources, for the letters sent home by mr. stanley raised the liveliest apprehensions, which, alas! soon proved themselves well grounded. the reader must be warned that, however versed in books of african travel he may be, the very novelty of his situation amongst these pages will render him liable perhaps to a danger which a timely word may avert. truly it may be said he has an _embarras de richesses!_ to follow an explorer who by his individual exertions has filled up a great space in the map of africa, who has not only been the first to set foot on the shores of vast inland seas, but who, with the simple appliances of his bodily stature for a sounding pole and his stalwart stride for a measuring tape, lays down new rivers by the hundreds, is a task calculated to stagger him. it may be provoking to find livingstone busily engaged in bargaining for a canoe upon the shores of bangweolo, much as he would have secured a boat on his own native clyde; but it was not in his nature to be subject to those paroxysms in which travellers too often indite their discoveries and descriptions. at the same time these journals will be found to contain innumerable notes on the habits of animals, birds, and fishes, many of them probably new species, and on phenomena in every direction which the keen eye searched out as the great traveller moved amongst some of the grandest scenes of this beautiful world: it may be doubted if ever eye so keen was backed by so much perseverance to shield it from a mere superficial habit of noticing. let his adventures speak for themselves. amongst the greatest facts recorded here the geographer will perceive that the doctor has placed it beyond doubt that lake nyassa belongs to a totally distinct system of waters to that which holds lake tanganyika, and the rivers running north and west. he was too sagacious to venture the surmise that tanganyika has a subterranean outlet without having duly weighed the probabilities in the scale with his elaborate observations: the idea gathers force when we remember that in the case of limestone cliffs, water so often succeeds in breaking bounds by boring through the solid rock. no more interesting problem is left to solve, and we shall yet learn whether, through the caverns of western kabogo, this lake adds its waters to the vast northerly flow of rivers we now read of for the first time, and which are undoubtedly amongst the largest in the world. i cannot close these remarks without stating how much obliged i am to mr. james young, f.r.s., of kelly, for having ensured the presence of the doctor's men, chuma and susi. ever ready to serve his old friend livingstone, he took care that they should be at my elbow so long as i required them to help me amidst the pile of mss. and maps. their knowledge of the countries they travelled in is most remarkable, and from constantly aiding their master by putting questions to the natives respecting the course of rivers, &c., i found them actual geographers of no mean attainments. in one instance, when in doubt concerning a particular watershed, to my surprise susi returned a few hours afterwards with a plan of the whole system of rivers in the region under examination, and i found his sketch tally well with the doctor's map. known to me previously for years on the zambesi and shiré it was a pleasure to have them with me for four months. amongst other good services they have aided the artist by reproducing the exact facsimile of the hut in which dr. livingstone expired, besides making models of the "kitanda" on which he was carried, and of the village in which his body lay for fourteen days. i need not add what ready and valuable assistance i have derived from the doctor's old companion dr. kirk wherever i have found it necessary to apply to him; some of the illustrations are more particularly owing to his kindness. it only remains to say that it has been thought advisable to retain all the strictly scientific matter found in dr. livingstone's journals for future publication. when one sees that a register of the daily rainfall was kept throughout, that the temperature was continually recorded, and that barometrical and hypsometrical observations were made with unflagging thoroughness of purpose year in and year out, it is obvious that an accumulated mass of information remains for the meteorologist to deal with separately, which alone must engross many months of labour. a constant sense of great responsibility has been mine throughout this task, for one cannot doubt that much of the future welfare of distant tribes and races depends upon livingstone obtaining through these records a distinct hearing for their woes, their misery, and above all for their willingness to welcome men drawn towards them by motives like his. at the same time memory and affection have not failed to bring back vividly the man, the traveller, and the friend. may that which he has said in his journals suffer neither loss of interest nor depth of meaning at the compiler's hands. horace waller. twywell rectory, thrapston, northamptonshire. _nov. , ._ footnotes: [ ] attached to mr. stanford's staff. [ ] in february last this section of the map (as we suppose), together with some of the doctor's papers, was sent off from ujiji by lieutenant cameron. nothing, however, had arrived on the nd september at zanzibar, and h.m. consul, captain prideaux, entertained serious doubts at that time whether they would ever come to hand. all livingstone's journals were saved through other instrumentality, as i have shown. contents. chapter i. arrival at zanzibar. hearty reception by said majid, the sultan. murder of baron van der decken. the slave-market. preparations for starting to the interior. embarkation in h.m.s. _penguin_ and dhow. rovuma bay impracticable. disembarks at mikindany. joy at travelling once more. trouble with sepoys. camels attacked by tsetse fly, and by sepoys. jungle sappers. meets old enemies. the makondé. lake nangandi. gum-copal diggings. chapter ii. effect of _pioneer's_ former visit. the poodle chitané. result of tsetse bites. death of camels and buffaloes. disaffection of followers. disputed right of ferry. mazitu raids. an old friend. severe privations. the river loendi. sepoys mutiny. dr. roscher. desolation. tattooing. ornamental teeth. singular custom. death of the nassick boy, richard. a sad reminiscence. chapter iii. horrors of the slave-trader's track. system of cultivation. pottery. special exorcising. death of the last mule. rescue of chirikaloma's wife. brutalities of the slave-drivers. mtarika's. desperate march to mtaka's. meets arab caravans. dismay of slavers. dismissal of sepoys. mataka. the waiyau metropolis. great hospitality and good feeling. mataka restores stolen cattle. life with the chief. beauty of country and healthiness of climate. the waiyau people and their peculiarities. regrets at the abandonment of bishop mackenzie's plans. chapter iv. geology and description of the waiyau land. leaves mataka's. the nyumbo plant. native iron-foundry. blacksmiths. makes for the lake nyassa. delight at seeing the lake once more. the manganja or nyassa tribe. arab slave crossing. unable to procure passage across. the kungu fly. fear of the english amongst slavers. lake shore. blue ink. chitané changes colour. the nsaka fish. makalaosé drinks beer. the sanjika fish. london antiquities. lake rivers. mukaté's. lake pamalombé. mponda's. a slave gang. wikatani discovers his relatives and remains. chapter v. crosses cape maclear. the havildar demoralised. the discomfited chief. reaches marenga's town. the earth-sponge. description of marenga's town. rumours of mazitu. musa and the johanna men desert. reaches kimsusa's. his delight at seeing the doctor once more. the fat ram. kimsusa relates his experience of livingstone's advice. chuma finds relatives. kimsusa solves the transport difficulty nobly. another old fishing acquaintance. description of the people and country on the west of the lake. the kanthundas. kauma. iron-smelting. an african sir colin campbell. milandos. chapter vi. progress northwards. an african forest. destruction by mazitu. native salutations. a disagreeable chief. on the watershed between the lake and the loangwa river. extensive iron-workings. an old nimrod. the bua river. lovely scenery. difficulties of transport. chilobé. an african pythoness. enlists two waiyou bearers. ill. the chitella bean. rains set in. arrives at the loangwa. chapter vii. crosses the loangwa. distressing march. the king-hunter. great hunger. christmas feast necessarily postponed. loss of goats. honey-hunters. a meal at last. the babisa. the mazitu again. chitembo's. end of . the new year. the northern brim of the great loangwa valley. accident to chronometers. meal gives out. escape from a cobra capella. pushes for the chambezé. death of chitané. great pinch for food. disastrous loss of medicine chest. bead currency. babisa. the chambezé. reaches chitapangwa's town. meets arab traders from zanzibar. sends off letters. chitapangwa and his people. complications. chapter viii. chitapangwa's parting oath. course laid for lake tanganyika. moamba's village. another watershed. the babemba tribe. ill with fever. threatening attitude of chibué's people. continued illness. reaches cliffs overhanging lake liemba. extreme beauty of the scene. dangerous fit of insensibility. leaves the lake. pernambuco cotton. rumours of war between arabs and nsama. reaches chitimba's village. presents sultan's letter to principal arab, hamees. the war in itawa. geography of the arabs. ivory traders and slave-dealers. appeal to the koran. gleans intelligence of the wasongo, to the eastward, and their chief, meréré. hamees sets out against nsama. tedious sojourn. departure for ponda. native cupping. chapter ix. peace negotiations with nsama. geographical gleanings. curious spider. reaches the river lofu. arrives at nsama's. hamees marries the daughter of nsama. flight of the bride. conflagration in arab quarters. anxious to visit lake moero. arab burial. serious illness. continues journey. slave-traders on the march. reaches moero. description of the lake. information concerning the chambezé and luapula. hears of lake bemba. visits spot of dr. lacerda's death. casembe apprised of livingstone's approach. meets mohamad bogharib. lakelet mofwé. arrives at casembe's town. chapter x. grand reception of the traveller. casembe and his wife. long stay in the town. goes to explore moero. despatch to lord clarendon, with notes on recent travels. illness at the end of . further exploration of lake moero. flooded plains. the river luao. visits kabwabwata. joy of arabs at mohamad bin salleh's freedom. again ill with fever. stories of underground dwellings. chapter xi riot in the camp. mohamad's account of his long imprisonment. superstitions about children's teeth. concerning dreams. news of lake chowambé. life of the arab slavers. the katanga gold supply. muabo. ascent of the rua mountains. syde bin habib. birthday, th march, . hostility of mpwéto. contemplates visiting lake bemba. nile sources. men desert. the shores of moero. visits fungafunga. return to casembe's. obstructiveness of "cropped-ears." accounts of pereira and dr. lacerda. major monteiro. the line of casembes. casembe explains the connection of the lakes and the luapula. queen moäri. arab sacrifice. kapika gets rid of his wife. chapter xii. prepares to examine lake bemba. starts from casembe's th june, . dead leopard. moenampanda's reception. the river luongo. weird death-song of slaves. the forest grave. lake bemba changed to lake bangweolo. chikumbi's. the imbozhwa people. kombokombo's stockade. mazitu difficulties. discovers lake bangweolo on th july, . the lake chief mapuni. description of the lake. prepares to navigate it. embarks for lifungé island. immense size of lake. reaches mpabala island. strange dream. fears of canoe men. return to shore. march back. sends letters. meets banyamwezi. reviews recent explorations at length. disturbed state of country. chapter xiii. cataracts of the kalongosi. passage of the river disputed. leeches and method of detaching them. syde bin habib's slaves escape. enormous collection of tusks. ill. theory of the nile sources. tribute to miss tinné. notes on climate. separation of lake nyassa from the nile system. observations on victoria nyanza. slaves dying. repentant deserters. mohamad bogharib. enraged imbozhwa. an attack. narrow escape. renewed attack. a parley. help arrives. bin juma. march from the imbozhwa country. slaves escape. burial of syde bin habib's brother. singular custom. an elephant killed. native game-laws. rumour of baker's expedition. christmas dinners. illustrations. [dr. livingstone, though no artist, had acquired a practice of making rude sketches of scenes and objects, which have furnished material for the engravers in the illustrations for this book.] full-page illustrations. . portrait of dr. livingstone. (from a photograph by annan) . slavers revenging their losses . slaves abandoned . chitapangwa receiving dr. livingstone . the village on lake liemba--tanganyika . the arrival of hamees' bride . discovery of lake bangweolo smaller illustrations. . dr. livingstone's house, zanzibar . dhow used for transport of dr. livingstone's camels . a thorn-climber . tomahawk and axe . carved door, zanzibar . tattoo of matambwÉ . imitation of basket-work in pottery . digging-stick weighted with round stone . manganja and machinga women . tatoo on women . carved stool made of a single wooden block . women's teeth hollowed out . mode of forging hoes . mallet for separating fibres of bark . the chief chitapangwa . chitapangwa's wives . filed teeth of queen moÄh . a forest grave general map of dr. livingstone's own discoveries chapter i. arrival at zanzibar. hearty reception by said majid, the sultan. murder of baron van der decken. the slave-market. preparations for starting to the interior. embarkation in h.m.s. _penguin_ and dhow. rovuma bay impracticable. disembarks at mikindany. joy at travelling once more. trouble with sepoys. camels attacked by tsetse fly, and by sepoys. jungle sappers. meets old enemies. the makondé. lake nangandi. gum-copal diggings. zanzibar, _ th january, ._--after a passage of twenty-three days from bombay we arrived at this island in the _thule_, which was one of captain sherard osborne's late chinese fleet, and now a present from the bombay government to the sultan of zanzibar. i was honoured with the commission to make the formal presentation, and this was intended by h.e. the governor-in-council to show in how much estimation i was held, and thereby induce the sultan to forward my enterprise. the letter to his highness was a commendatory epistle in my favour, for which consideration on the part of sir bartle frere i feel deeply grateful. it runs as follows:-- to his highness sejuel majid, sultan of zanzibar. (_copy._) "your highness,--i trust that this will find you in the enjoyment of health and happiness. "i have requested my friend, dr. david livingstone, who is already personally well and favourably known to your highness, to convey to you the assurance of the continual friendship and goodwill of her majesty's government in india. "your highness is already aware of the benevolent objects of dr. livingstone's life and labours, and i feel assured that your highness will continue to him the favour and protection which you have already shown to him on former occasions, and that your highness will direct every aid to be given him within your highness's dominions which may tend to further the philanthropic designs to which he has devoted himself, and which, as your highness is aware, are viewed with the warmest interest by her majesty's government both in india and england. "i trust your highness will favour me with continued accounts of your good health and welfare. "i remain, your highness's sincere friend, (signed) "h.b.e. frere. "bombay castle, _ nd january, ._" when we arrived dr. seward, the acting consul, was absent at the seychelles on account of serious failure of health: mr. schultz, however, was representing him, but he too was at the time away. dr. seward was expected back daily, and he did arrive on the st. i requested a private interview with the sultan, and on the following day ( th) called and told him the nature of my commission to his highness. he was very gracious, and seemed pleased with the gift, as well he might, for the _thule_ is fitted up in the most gorgeous manner. we asked a few days to put her in perfect order, and this being the ramadân, or fasting month, he was all the more willing to defer a visit to the vessel. dr. seward arranged to have an audience with the sultan, to carry out his instructions, which were to present me in a formal manner; captain bradshaw of the _wasp_, with captain leatham of the _vigilant_, and bishop tozer, were to accompany us in full dress, but the sultan had a toothache and gumboil, and could not receive us; he, however, placed one of his houses at my disposal, and appointed a man who speaks english to furnish board for my men and me, and also for captain brebner, of the _thule_, and his men. [illustration: livingstone's house, zanzibar.] _ th february, ._--the sultan being still unable to come, partly on account of toothache and partly on account of ramadân, he sent his commodore, captain abdullah, to receive the _thule_. when the english flag was hauled down in the _thule_, it went up to the mainmast of the _iskander shah_, and was saluted by twenty-one guns; then the _wasp_ saluted the arab flag with an equal number, which honour being duly acknowledged by a second royal salute from the _iskander shah_, captain abdullah's frigate, the ceremony ended. next day, the th, we were received by the sultan, and through his interpreter, i told him that his friend, the governor of bombay, had lately visited the south mahratta princes, and had pressed on them the necessity of education; the world was moving on, and those who neglected to acquire knowledge would soon find that power slipped through their fingers, and that the bombay government, in presenting his highness with a portion of steam power, showed its desire to impart one of the greatest improvements of modern times, not desiring to monopolize power, but hoping to lift up others with themselves, and i wished him to live a hundred years and enjoy all happiness. the idea was borrowed partly from sir bartle frere's addresses, because i thought it would have more weight if he heard a little from that source than if it emanated from myself. he was very anxious that captain brebner and his men, in returning to india, should take a passage from him in the _nadir shah_, one of his men-of-war, and though he had already placed his things aboard the _vigilant_, to proceed to seychelles, and thence to bombay, we persuaded captain brebner to accept his highness's hospitality. he had evidently set his heart on sending them back with suitable honours, and an hour after consent was given to go by the _nadir shah_, he signed an order for the money to fit her out. _ th february, ._--one of the foremost subjects that naturally occupied my mind here was the sad loss of the baron van der decken, on the river juba, or aljib. the first intimation of the unfortunate termination of his explorations was the appearance of lieutenant von schich at this place, who had left without knowing whether his leader were dead or alive, but an attack had been made on the encampment which had been planned after the steamer struck the rocks and filled, and two of the europeans were killed. the attacking party came from the direction in which the baron and dr. link went, and three men of note in it were slain. von schich went back from zanzibar to brava to ascertain the fate of the baron, and meanwhile several native sailors from zanzibar had been allowed to escape from the scene of confusion to brava. _ th february, ._--all the europeans went to pay visits of congratulation to his highness the sultan upon the conclusion of the ramadân, when sweetmeats were placed before us. he desired me to thank the governor of bombay for his magnificent gift, and to state that although he would like to have me always with him, yet he would show me the same favour in africa which he had done here: he added that the _thule_ was at my service to take me to the rovuma whenever i wished to leave. i replied that nothing had been wanting on his part; he had done more than i expected, and i was sure that his excellency the governor would be delighted to hear that the vessel promoted his health and prosperity; nothing would delight him more than this. he said that he meant to go out in her on wednesday next ( th): bishop tozer, captain fraser, dr. steere, and all the english were present. the sepoys came in and did obeisance; and i pointed out the nassick lads as those who had been rescued from slavery, educated, and sent back to their own country by the governor. surely he must see that some people in the world act from other than selfish motives. in the afternoon sheikh sulieman, his secretary, came with a letter for the governor, to be conveyed by lieutenant brebner, i.n., in the _nadir shah_, which is to sail to-morrow. he offered money to the lieutenant, but this could not be heard of for a moment. the translation of the letter is as follows, and is an answer to that which i brought. to his excellency the governor of bombay. [after compliments.] "... the end of my desire is to know ever that your excellency's health is good. as for me--your friend--i am very well. "your honoured letter borne by dr. livingstone duly reached me, and all that you said about him i understood. "i will show him respect, give him honour, and help him in all his affairs; and that i have already done this, i trust he will tell you. "i hope you will let me rest in your heart, and that you will send me many letters. "if you need anything i shall be glad, and will give it. "your sincere friend, "majid bin said. "dated nd shaul, ( th february, )." _ nd march, ._--a northern dhow came in with slaves; when this was reported to the sultan he ordered it to be burned, and we saw this done from the window of the consulate; but he has very little power over northern arabs. he has shown a little vigour of late. he wished to raise a revenue by a charge of per cent. on all articles brought into town for sale, but this is clearly contrary to treaty, which provides that no monopoly shall be permitted, and no dues save that of per cent. import duty. the french consul bullies him: indeed the french system of dealing with the natives is well expressed by that word; no wonder they cannot gain influence among them: the greatest power they exercise is by lending their flag to slaving dhows, so that it covers that nefarious traffic. the stench arising from a mile and a half or two square miles of exposed sea beach, which is the general depository of the filth of the town, is quite horrible. at night it is so gross or crass one might cut out a slice and manure a garden with it: it might be called stinkibar rather than zanzibar. no one can long enjoy good health here. on visiting the slave-market i found about slaves exposed for sale, the greater part of whom came from lake nyassa and the shiré river; i am so familiar with the peculiar faces and markings or tattooings, that i expect them to recognize me. indeed one woman said that she had heard of our passing up lake nyassa in a boat, but she did not see me: others came from chipéta, s.w. of the lake. all who have grown up seem ashamed at being hawked about for sale. the teeth are examined, the cloth lifted up to examine the lower limbs, and a stick is thrown for the slave to bring, and thus exhibit his paces. some are dragged through the crowd by the hand, and the price called out incessantly: most of the purchasers were northern arabs and persians. this is the period when the sultan's people may not carry slaves coastwise; but they simply cannot, for the wind is against them. many of the dhows leave for madagascar, and thence come back to complete their cargoes. the arabs are said to treat their slaves kindly, and this also may be said of native masters; the reason is, master and slave partake of the general indolence, but the lot of the slave does not improve with the general progress in civilization. while no great disparity of rank exists, his energies are little tasked, but when society advances, wants multiply; and to supply these the slave's lot grows harder. the distance between master and man increases as the lust of gain is developed, hence we can hope for no improvement in the slave's condition, unless the master returns to or remains in barbarism. _ th march, ._--rains have begun now that the sun is overhead. we expect the _penguin_ daily to come from johanna, and take us to the rovuma. it is an unwholesome place; six of my men have fever; few retain health long, and considering the lowness of the island, and the absence of sanitary regulations in the town, it is not to be wondered at. the sultan has little power, being only the successor to the captain of the horde of arabs who came down and overran the island and maritime coasts of the adjacent continent. he is called only said or syed, never sultan; and they can boast of choosing a new one if he does not suit them. some coins were found in digging here which have cufic inscriptions, and are about years old. the island is low; the highest parts may not be more than feet above the sea; it is of a coral formation, with sandstone conglomerate. most of the plants are african, but clove-trees, mangoes, and cocoa-nut groves give a luxuriant south sea island look to the whole scenery. we visited an old man to-day, the richest in zanzibar, who is to give me letters to his friends at tanganyika, and i am trying to get a depôt of goods for provisions formed there, so that when i reach it i may not be destitute. _ th march, ._--i have arranged with koorje, a banian, who farms the custom-house revenue here, to send a supply of beads, cloth, flour, tea, coffee, and sugar, to ujiji, on lake tanganyika. the arab there, with whom one of koorje's people will remain in charge of the goods, is called thani bin suelim. yesterday we went to take leave of the sultan, and to thank him for all his kindness to me and my men, which has indeed been very great. he offered me men to go with me, and another letter if i wished it. he looks very ill. i have received very great kindness during my stay from dr. and mrs. seward. they have done everything for me in their power: may god almighty return it all abundantly into their bosoms, in the way that he best can. dr. seward's views of the policy pursued here i have no doubt are the right ones; in fact, the only ones which can be looked back to with satisfaction, or that have probability of success among a race of pariah arabs. the _penguin_ came a few days ago, and lieutenant garforth in command agrees to take me down to the rovuma river, and land me there. i have a dhow to take my animals: six camels, three buffaloes, and a calf, two mules, and four donkeys. i have thirteen sepoys, ten johanna men, nine nassick boys, two shupanga men, and two wayaus, wekatani and chuma.[ ] [it may be well to point out that several of these men had previously been employed by dr. livingstone on the zambesi and shiré; thus musa, the johanna man, was a sailor on the _lady nyassa_, whilst susi and amoda were engaged at shupanga to cut wood for the _pioneer_. the two waiyau lads, wakatani and chuma, were liberated from the slavers by the doctor and bishop mackenzie in , and lived for three years with the mission party at chibisa's before they were engaged by livingstone. the nassick lads were entire strangers, and were trained in india.] _ th march, ._--we start this morning at a.m. i trust that the most high may prosper me in this work, granting me influence in the eyes of the heathen, and helping me to make my intercourse beneficial to them. _ nd march, ._--we reached rovuma bay to-day, and anchored about two miles from the mouth of the river, in five fathoms. i went up the left bank to see if the gullies which formerly ran into the bay had altered, so as to allow camels to cross them: they seemed to have become shallower. there was no wind for the dhow, and as for the man-of-war towing her, it was out of the question. on the rd the cutter did try to tow the dhow, but without success, as a strong tide runs constantly out of the river at this season. a squall came up from the s.e., which would have taken the dhow in, but the master was on board the _penguin_, and said he had no large sail. i got him off to his vessel, but the wind died away before we could reach the mouth of the river. _ th march, ._--i went to the dhow, and there being no wind i left orders with the captain to go up the right bank should a breeze arise. mr. fane, midshipman, accompanied me up the left bank above, to see if we could lead the camels along in the water. near the point where the river first makes a little bend to the north, we landed and found three formidable gullies, and jungle so thick with bush, date-palms, twining bamboo, and hooked thorns, that one could scarcely get along. further inland it was sticky mud, thickly planted over with mangrove roots and gullies in whose soft banks one sank over the ankles. no camels could have moved, and men with extreme difficulty might struggle through; but we never could have made an available road. we came to a she-hippopotamus lying in a ditch, which did not cover her; mr. fane fired into her head, and she was so upset that she nearly fell backward in plunging up the opposite bank: her calf was killed, and was like sucking-pig, though in appearance as large as a full-grown sow. we now saw that the dhow had a good breeze, and she came up along the right bank and grounded at least a mile from the spot where the mangroves ceased. the hills, about two hundred feet high, begin about two or three miles above that, and they looked invitingly green and cool. my companion and i went from the dhow inland, to see if the mangroves gave way, to a more walkable country, but the swamp covered over thickly with mangroves only became worse the farther we receded from the river. the whole is flooded at high tides, and had we landed all the men we should have been laid up with fever ere we could have attained the higher land, which on the right bank bounds the line of vision, and the first part of which lies so near. i thought i had better land on the sand belt on the left of rovuma bay, and then explore and get information from the natives, none of whom had as yet come near us, so i ordered the dhow to come down to the spot next day, and went on board the _penguin_. lieutenant garforth was excessively kind, and though this is his best time for cruising in the north, he most patiently agreed to wait and help me to land. _ th march, ._--during the night it occurred to me that we should be in a mess if after exploration and information from the natives we could find no path, and when i mentioned this, lieutenant garforth suggested that we should proceed to kilwa, so at a.m. i went up to the dhow with mr. fane, and told the captain that we were going there. he was loud in his protestations against this, and strongly recommended the port of mikindany, as quite near to rovuma, nyassa, and the country i wished to visit, besides being a good landing-place, and the finest port on the coast. thither we went, and on the same evening landed all our animals in mikindany bay, which lies only twenty-five miles n. of rovuma. the _penguin_ then left. the rovuma is quite altered from what it was when first we visited it. it is probable that the freshets form banks inside the mouth, which are washed out into the deep bay, and this periodical formation probably has prevented the arabs from using the rovuma as a port of shipment. it is not likely that mr. may[ ] would have made a mistake if the middle were as shoal as now: he found soundings of three fathoms or more. [illustration: dhow used for transport of dr. livingstone's camels.] _ th march, ._--i hired a house for four dollars a month and landed all our goods from the dhow. the bay gives off a narrow channel, about yards wide and yards long, the middle is deep, but the sides are coral reefs and shoal: the deep part seems about yards wide. outside in the bay of mikindany there is no anchorage except on the edge of the reef where the _penguin_ got seven fathoms, but further in it was only two fathoms. the inner bay is called pemba, not pimlea, as erroneously printed in the charts of owen. it is deep and quite sheltered; another of a similar round form lies somewhat to the south: this bay may be two miles square. the cattle are all very much the worse for being knocked about in the dhow. we began to prepare saddles of a very strong tree called ntibwé, which is also used for making the hooked spear with which hippopotami are killed--the hook is very strong and tough; i applied also for twenty carriers and a banian engaged to get them as soon as possible. the people have no cattle here, they are half-caste arabs mostly, and quite civil to us. _ th march, ._--a few of the nassick boys have the slave spirit pretty strongly; it goes deepest in those who have the darkest skins. two gallah men are the most intelligent and hardworking among them; some look on work with indifference when others are the actors. now that i am on the point of starting on another trip into africa i feel quite exhilarated: when one travels with the specific object in view of ameliorating the condition of the natives every act becomes ennobled. whether exchanging the customary civilities, or arriving at a village, accepting a night's lodging, purchasing food for the party, asking for information, or answering polite african enquiries as to our objects in travelling, we begin to spread a knowledge of that people by whose agency their land will yet become enlightened and freed from the slave-trade. the mere animal pleasure of travelling in a wild unexplored country is very great. when on lands of a couple of thousand feet elevation, brisk exercise imparts elasticity to the muscles, fresh and healthy blood circulates through the brain, the mind works well, the eye is clear, the step is firm, and a day's exertion always makes the evening's repose thoroughly enjoyable. we have usually the stimulus of remote chances of danger either from beasts or men. our sympathies are drawn out towards our humble hardy companions by a community of interests, and, it may be, of perils, which make us all friends. nothing but the most pitiable puerility would lead any manly heart to make their inferiority a theme for self-exaltation; however, that is often done, as if with the vague idea that we can, by magnifying their deficiencies, demonstrate our immaculate perfections. the effect of travel on a man whose heart is in the right place is that the mind is made more self-reliant: it becomes more confident of its own resources--there is greater presence of mind. the body is soon well-knit; the muscles of the limbs grow as hard as a board, and seem to have no fat; the countenance is bronzed, and there is no dyspepsia. africa is a most wonderful country for appetite, and it is only when one gloats over marrow bones or elephant's feet that indigestion is possible. no doubt much toil is involved, and fatigue of which travellers in the more temperate climes can form but a faint conception; but the sweat of one's brow is no longer a curse when one works for god: it proves a tonic to the system, and is actually a blessing. no one can truly appreciate the charm of repose unless he has undergone severe exertion. _ th march, ._--the point of land which on the north side of the entrance to the harbour narrows it to about yards is alone called pemba; the other parts have different names. looking northwards from the point, the first hundred yards has ninety square houses of wattled daub; a ruin (a mosque) has been built of lime and coral. the whole point is coral, and the soil is red, and covered over with dense tropical vegetation, in which the baobab is conspicuous. dhows at present come in with ease by the easterly wind which blows in the evening, and leave next morning, the land wind taking them out. while the camels and other animals are getting over their fatigues and bad bruises, we are making camels' saddles, and repairing those of the mules and buffaloes. oysters abound on all the rocks and on the trees over which the tide flows: they are small, but much relished by the people. the arabs here are a wretched lot physically--thin, washed-out creatures--many with bleared eyes. _ - th march, ._--- this harbour has somewhat the shape of a bent bow or the spade on a playing-card, the shaft of the arrow being the entrance in; the passage is very deep, but not more than yards wide, and it goes in nearly s.w.; inside it is deep and quite secure, and protected from all winds. the lands westward rise at once to about feet, and john, a hill, is the landmark by which it is best known in coming along the coast--so say the arabs. the people have no cattle, but say there are no tsetse flies: they have not been long here, _i.e._ under the present system; but a ruin on the northern peninsula or face of the entrance, built of stone and lime--arab-fashion, and others on the north-west, show that the place has been known and used of old. the adjacent country has large game at different water pools, and as the whole country is somewhat elevated it probably is healthy. there is very little mangrove, but another enclosed piece of water to the south of this probably has more. the language of the people here is swaheli; they trade a little in gum-copal and orchilla weed. an agent of the zanzibar custom-house presides over the customs, which are very small, and a jemidar acknowledging the sultan is the chief authority; but the people are little superior to the natives whom they have displaced. the jemidar has been very civil to me, and gives me two guides to go on to adondé, but no carriers can be hired. water is found in wells in the coral rock which underlies the whole place. _ th april, ._--when about to start from pemba, at the entrance to the other side of the bay one of our buffaloes gored a donkey so badly that he had to be shot: we cut off the tips of the offender's horns, on the principle of "locking the stable-door when the steed is stolen," and marched. we came to level spots devoid of vegetation, and hard on the surface, but a deposit of water below allowed the camels to sink up to their bodies through the crust. hauling them out, we got along to the jemidar's house, which is built of coral and lime. hamesh was profuse in his professions of desire to serve, but gave a shabby hut which let in rain and wind. i slept one night in it, and it was unbearable, so i asked the jemidar to allow me to sleep in his court-room, where many of the sepoys were: he consented, but when i went refused; then, being an excitable, nervous arab, he took fright, mustered all his men, amounting to about fifteen, with matchlocks; ran off, saying he was going to kill a lion; came back, shook hands nervously with me, vowing it was a man who would not obey him, "it was not you." our goods were all out in the street, bound on the pack-saddles, so at night we took the ordinary precaution of setting a guard. this excited our dignitary, and after dark all his men were again mustered with matches lighted. i took no notice of him, and after he had spent a good deal of talk, which we could hear, he called musa and asked what i meant. the explanations of musa had the effect of sending him to bed, and in the morning, when i learned how much i had most unintentionally disturbed him, i told him that i was sorry, but it did not occur to me to tell him about an ordinary precaution against thieves. he thought he had given me a crushing reply when he said with vehemence, "but there are no thieves here." i did not know till afterwards that he and others had done me an ill turn in saying that no carriers could be hired from the independent tribes adjacent. they are low-coast arabs, three-quarters african, and, as usual, possess the bad without the good qualities of both parents. many of them came and begged brandy, and laughed when they remarked that they could drink it in secret but not openly; they have not, however, introduced it as an article of trade, as we christians have done on the west coast. _ th april, ._--we made a short march round to the south-west side of the lake, and spent the night at a village in that direction. there are six villages dotted round the inner harbour, and the population may amount to or souls--coast arabs and their slaves; the southern portion of the harbour is deep, from ten to fourteen fathoms, but the north-western part is shoal and rocky. very little is done in the way of trade; some sorghum, sem-sem seed, gum-copal, and orchilla weed, constitute the commerce of the port: i saw two banian traders settled here. _ th april, ._--went about south from kindany with a somalie guide, named ben ali or bon ali, a good-looking obliging man, who was to get twenty dollars to take us up to ngomano. our path lay in a valley, with well-wooded heights on each side, but the grass towered over our heads, and gave the sensation of smothering, whilst the sun beat down on our heads very fiercely, and there was not a breath of air stirring. not understanding camels, i had to trust to the sepoys who overloaded them, and before we had accomplished our march of about seven miles they were knocked up. _ th april, ._--we spent the sunday at a village called nyañgedi. here on the evening of the th april our buffaloes and camels were first bitten by the tsetse fly.[ ] we had passed through some pieces of dense jungle which, though they offered no obstruction to foot-passengers, but rather an agreeable shade, had to be cut for the tall camels, and fortunately we found the makondé of this village glad to engage themselves by the day either as woodcutters or carriers. we had left many things with the jemidar from an idea that no carriers could be procured. i lightened the camels, and had a party of woodcutters to heighten and widen the path in the dense jungle into which we now penetrated. every now and then we emerged on open spaces, where the makondé have cleared gardens for sorghum, maize, and cassava. the people were very much more taken up with the camels and buffaloes than with me. they are all independent of each other, and no paramount chief exists. their foreheads may be called compact, narrow, and rather low; the _alae nasi_ expanded laterally; lips full, not excessively thick; limbs and body well formed; hands and feet small; colour dark and light-brown; height middle size, and bearing independent. _ th april, ._--we reached a village called narri, lat. ° ' " s. many of the men had touches of fever. i gave medicine to eleven of them, and next morning all were better. food is abundant and cheap. our course is nearly south, and in "wadys," from which, following the trade-road, we often ascend the heights, and then from the villages, which are on the higher land, we descend to another on the same wady. no running water is seen; the people depend on wells for a supply. _ th april, ._--at tandahara we were still ascending as we went south; the soil is very fertile, with a good admixture of sand in it, but no rocks are visible. very heavy crops of maize and sorghum are raised, and the cassava bushes are seven feet in height. the bamboos are cleared off them, spread over the space to be cultivated and burned to serve as manure. iron is very scarce, for many of the men appear with wooden spears; they find none here, but in some spots where an ooze issued from the soil iron rust appeared. at each of the villages where we spent a night we presented a fathom of calico, and the headman always gave a fowl or two, and a basket of rice or maize. the makondé dialect is quite different from swaheli, but from their intercourse with the coast arabs many of the people here have acquired a knowledge of swaheli. [illustration: a thorn-climber.] _ th april, ._--on starting we found the jungle so dense that the people thought "there was no cutting it:" it continued upwards of three miles. the trees are not large, but so closely planted together that a great deal of labour was required to widen and heighten the path: where bamboos prevail they have starved out the woody trees. the reason why the trees are not large is because all the spaces we passed over were formerly garden ground before the makondé had been thinned by the slave-trade. as soon as a garden is deserted, a thick crop of trees of the same sorts as those formerly cut down springs up, and here the process of woody trees starving out their fellows, and occupying the land without dense scrub below, has not had time to work itself out. many are mere poles, and so intertwined with climbers as to present the appearance of a ship's ropes and cables shaken in among them, and many have woody stems as thick as an eleven-inch hawser. one species may be likened to the scabbard of a dragoon's sword, but along the middle of the flat side runs a ridge, from which springs up every few inches a bunch of inch-long straight sharp thorns. it hangs straight for a couple of yards, but as if it could not give its thorns a fair chance of mischief, it suddenly bends on itself, and all its cruel points are now at right angles to what they were before. darwin's observation shows a great deal of what looks like instinct in these climbers. this species seems to be eager for mischief; its tangled limbs hang out ready to inflict injury on all passers-by. another climber is so tough it is not to be broken by the fingers; another appears at its root as a young tree, but it has the straggling habits of its class, as may be seen by its cords stretched some fifty or sixty feet off; it is often two inches in diameter; you cut it through at one part and find it reappear forty yards off. [illustration: tomahawk and axe.] another climber is like the leaf of an aloe, but convoluted as strangely as shavings from the plane of a carpenter. it is dark green in colour, and when its bark is taken off it is beautifully striated beneath, lighter and darker green, like the rings of growth on wood; still another is a thin string with a succession of large knobs, and another has its bark pinched up all round at intervals so as to present a great many cutting edges. one sort need scarcely be mentioned, in which all along its length are strong bent hooks, placed in a way that will hold one if it can but grapple with him, for that is very common and not like those mentioned, which the rather seem to be stragglers from the carboniferous period of geologists, when pachydermata wriggled unscathed among tangled masses worse than these. we employed about ten jolly young makondé to deal with these prehistoric plants in their own way, for they are accustomed to clearing spaces for gardens, and went at the work with a will, using tomahawks well adapted for the work. they whittled away right manfully, taking an axe when any trees had to be cut. their pay, arranged beforehand, was to be one yard of calico per day: this is not much, seeing we are still so near the sea-coast. climbers and young trees melted before them like a cloud before the sun! many more would have worked than we employed, but we used the precaution of taking the names of those engaged. the tall men became exhausted soonest, while the shorter men worked vigorously still--but a couple of days' hard work seemed to tell on the best of them. it is doubtful if any but meat-eating people can stand long-continued labour without exhaustion: the chinese may be an exception. when french navvies were first employed they could not do a tithe of the work of our english ones; but when the french were fed in the same style as the english, they performed equally well. here the makondé have rarely the chance of a good feed of meat: it is only when one of them is fortunate enough to spear a wild hog or an antelope that they know this luxury; if a fowl is eaten they get but a taste of it with their porridge. _ th april, ._--we now began to descend the northern slope down to the rovuma, and a glimpse could occasionally be had of the country; it seemed covered with great masses of dark green forest, but the undulations occasionally looked like hills, and here and there a sterculia had put on yellow foliage in anticipation of the coming winter. more frequently our vision was circumscribed to a few yards till our merry woodcutters made for us the pleasant scene of a long vista fit for camels to pass: as a whole, the jungle would have made the authors of the natty little hints to travellers smile at their own productions, good enough, perhaps, where one has an open country with trees and hills; by which to take bearings, estimate distances, see that one point is on the same latitude, another on the same longitude with such another, and all to be laid down fair and square with protractor and compass, but so long as we remained within the vegetation, that is fed by the moisture from the indian ocean, the steamy, smothering air, and dank, rank, luxuriant vegetation made me feel, like it, struggling for existence,--and no more capable of taking bearings than if i had been in a hogshead and observing through the bunghole! an old monyiñko headman presented a goat and asked if the sepoys wished to cut its throat: the johannees, being of a different sect of mahometans, wanted to cut it in some other way than their indian co-religionists: then ensued a fierce dispute as to who was of the right sort of moslem! it was interesting to see that not christians alone, but other nations feel keenly on religious subjects. i saw rocks of grey sandstone (like that which overlies coal) and the rovuma in the distance. didi is the name of a village whose headsman, chombokëa, is said to be a doctor; all the headmen pretend or are really doctors; however one, fundindomba, came after me for medicine for himself. _ th april, ._--to-day we succeeded in reaching the rovuma, where some very red cliffs appear on the opposite heights, and close by where it is marked on the map that the _pioneer_ turned back in . here we rested on sunday th. _ th april, ._--our course now lay westwards, along the side of that ragged outline of table-land, which we had formerly seen from the river as flanking both sides. there it appeared a range of hills shutting in rovuma, here we had spurs jutting out towards the river, and valleys retiring from a mile to three miles inland. sometimes we wended our way round them, sometimes rose over and descended their western sides, and then a great deal of wood-cutting was required. the path is not straight, but from one village to another. we came perpetually on gardens, and remarked that rice was sown among the other grain; there must be a good deal of moisture at other times to admit of this succeeding: at present the crops were suffering for want of rain. we could purchase plenty of rice for the sepoys, and well it was so, for the supply which was to last till we arrived at ngomano was finished on the th. an old doctor, with our food awaiting, presented me with two large bags of rice and his wife husked it for us. _ th april, ._--i had to leave the camels in the hands of the sepoys: i ordered them to bring as little luggage as possible, and the havildar assured me that two buffaloes were amply sufficient to carry all they would bring. i now find that they have more than full loads for two buffaloes, two mules, and two donkeys; but when these animals fall down under them, they assure me with so much positiveness that they are not overloaded, that i have to be silent, or only, as i have several times done before, express the opinion that they will kill these animals. this observation on my part leads them to hide their things in the packs of the camels, which also are over-burdened. i fear that my experiment with the tsetse will be vitiated, but no symptoms yet occur in any of the camels except weariness.[ ] the sun is very sharp; it scorches. nearly all the sepoys had fever, but it is easily cured; they never required to stop marching, and we cannot make over four or five miles a day, which movement aids in the cure. in all cases of fever removal from the spot of attack should be made: after the fever among the sepoys, the nassick boys took their turn along with the johannees. _ th april, ._--ben ali misled us away up to the north in spite of my protest, when we turned in that direction; he declared that was the proper path. we had much wood-cutting, and found that our course that day and next was to enable him to visit and return from one of his wives--a comely makondé woman! he brought her to call on me, and i had to be polite to the lady, though we lost a day by the zigzag. this is one way by which the arabs gain influence; a great many very light-coloured people are strewed among the makondé, but only one of these had the arab hair. on asking ali whether any attempts had been made by arabs to convert those with whom they enter into such intimate relationships, he replied that the makondé had no idea of a deity--no one could teach them, though makondé slaves when taken to the coast and elsewhere were made mahometans. since the slave-trade was introduced this tribe has much diminished in numbers, and one village makes war upon another and kidnaps, but no religious teaching has been attempted. the arabs come down to the native ways, and make no efforts to raise the natives to theirs; it is better that it is so, for the coast arab's manners and morals would be no improvement on the pagan african! _ th april, ._--we were led up over a hill again, and on to the level of the plateau (where the evaporation is greater than in the valley), and tasted water of an agreeable coldness for the first time this journey. the people, especially the women, are very rude, and the men very eager to be employed as woodcutters. very merry they are at it, and every now and then one raises a cheerful shout, in which all join. i suppose they are urged on by a desire to please their wives with a little clothing. the higher up the rovuma we ascend the people are more and more tattooed on the face, and on all parts of the body. the teeth are filed to points, and huge lip-rings are worn by the women; some few mabeha men from the south side of the river have lip-rings too. _ th april, ._--a johanna man allowed the camels to trespass and destroy a man's tobacco patch: the owner would not allow us after this to pass through his rice-field, in which the route lay. i examined the damage, and made the johanna man pay a yard of calico for it, which set matters all right. tsetse are biting the buffaloes again. elephants, hippopotami, and pigs are the only game here, but we see none: the tsetse feed on them. in the low meadow land, from one to three miles broad, which lies along both banks, we have brackish pools, and one, a large one, which we passed, called wrongwé, had much fish, and salt is got from it. _ st april, ._--after a great deal of cutting we reached the valley of mehambwé to spend sunday, all glad that it had come round again. here some men came to our camp from ndondé, who report that an invasion of mazitu had three months ago swept away all the food out of the country, and they are now obliged to send in every direction for provisions. when saluting, they catch each other's hands and say, "ai! ai!" but the general mode (introduced, probably by the arabs) is to take hold of the right hand, and say, "marhaba" (welcome). a wall-eyed ill-looking fellow, who helped to urge on the attack on our first visit in , and the man to whom i gave cloth to prevent a collision, came about us disguised in a jacket. i knew him well, but said nothing to him.[ ] _ rd april, ._--when we marched this morning we passed the spot where an animal had been burned in the fire, and on enquiry i found that it is the custom when a leopard is killed to take off the skin and consume the carcase thus, because the makondé do not eat it. the reason they gave for not eating flesh which is freely eaten by other tribes, is that the leopard devours men; this shows the opposite of an inclination to cannibalism. all the rocks we had seen showed that the plateau consists of grey sandstone, capped by a ferruginous sandy conglomerate. we now came to blocks of silicified wood lying on the surface; it is so like recent wood, that no one who has not handled it would conceive it to be stone and not wood: the outer surface preserves the grain or woody fibre, the inner is generally silica. buffaloes bitten by tsetse again show no bad effects from it: one mule is, however, dull and out of health; i thought that this might be the effect of the bite till i found that his back was so strained that he could not stoop to drink, and could only eat the tops of the grasses. an ox would have been ill in two days after the biting on the th. a carrier stole a shirt, and went off unsuspected; when the loss was ascertained, the man's companions tracked him with ben ali by night, got him in his hut, and then collected the headmen of the village, who fined him about four times the value of what had been stolen. they came back in the morning without seeming to think that they had done aught to be commended; this was the only case of theft we had noticed, and the treatment showed a natural sense of justice. _ th april, ._--we had showers occasionally, but at night all the men were under cover of screens. the fevers were speedily cured; no day was lost by sickness, but we could not march more than a few miles, owing to the slowness of the sepoys; they are a heavy drag on us, and of no possible use, except when acting as sentries at night. when in the way between kendany and rovuma, i observed a plant here, called _mandaré_, the root of which is in taste and appearance like a waxy potato; i saw it once before at the falls below the barotsé valley, in the middle of the continent; it had been brought there by an emigrant, who led out the water for irrigation, and it still maintained its place in the soil. would this not prove valuable in the soil of india? i find that it is not cultivated further up the country of the makondé, but i shall get ali to secure some for bombay. _ th april, ._--a serpent bit jack, our dog, above the eye, the upper eyelid swelled very much, but no other symptoms appeared, and next day all swelling was gone; the serpent was either harmless, or the quantity of poison injected very small. the pace of the camels is distressingly slow, and it suits the sepoys to make it still slower than natural by sitting down to smoke and eat. the grass is high and ground under it damp and steamy. _ th april, ._--on the th we reached narri, and resolved to wait the next day and buy food, as it is not so plentiful in front; the people are eager traders in meal, fowls, eggs, and honey; the women are very rude. yesterday i caught a sepoy, pando, belabouring a camel with a big stick as thick as any part of his arm, the path being narrow, it could not get out of his way; i shouted to him to desist; he did not know i was in sight, to-day the effect of the bad usage is seen in the animal being quite unable to move its leg: inflammation has set up in the hip-joint. i am afraid that several bruises which have festered on the camels, and were to me unaccountable, have been wilfully bestowed. this same pando and another left zanzibar drunk: he then stole a pair of socks from me, and has otherwise been perfectly useless, even a pimple on his leg was an excuse for doing nothing for many days. we had to leave this camel at narri under charge of the headman. _ th april, ._--the hills on the north now retire out of our sight. a gap in the southern plateau gives passage to a small river, which arises in a lakelet of some size, eight or ten miles inland: the river and lakelet are both called nangadi; the latter is so broad that men cannot be distinguished, even by the keen eyes of the natives on the other side: it is very deep, and abounds in large fish; the people who live there are mabiha. a few miles above this gap the southern highland falls away, and there are lakelets on marshes, also abounding in fish, an uninhabited space next succeeds, and then we have the matambwé country, which extends up to ngomano. the matambwé seem to be a branch of the makondé, and a very large one: their country extends a long way south, and is well stocked with elephants and gum-copal trees. they speak a language slightly different from that of the makondé, but they understand them. the matambwé women are, according to ali, very dark, but very comely, though they do wear the lip-ring. they carry their ivory, gum-copal, and slaves to ibo or wibo. _ th april, ._--we spend sunday, the th, on the banks of the rovuma, at a village called nachuchu, nearly opposite konayumba, the first of the matambwé, whose chief is called kimbembé. ali draws a very dark picture of the makondé. he says they know nothing of a deity, they pray to their mothers when in distress or dying; know nothing of a future state, nor have they any religion except a belief in medicine; and every headsman is a doctor. no arab has ever tried to convert them, but occasionally a slave taken to the coast has been circumcised in order to be clean; some of them pray, and say they know not the ordeal or muavi. the nassick boys failed me when i tried to communicate some knowledge through them. they say they do not understand the makondé language, though some told me that they came from ndondé's, which is the head-quarters of the makondé. ali says that the makondé blame witches for disease and death; when one of a village dies, the whole population departs, saying "that is a bad spot." they are said to have been notorious for fines, but an awe has come over them, and no complaints have been made, though our animals in passing the gardens have broken a good deal of corn. ali says they fear the english. this is an answer to my prayer for influence on the minds of the heathen. i regret that i cannot speak to them that good of his name which i ought. i went with the makondé to see a specimen of the gum-copal tree in the vicinity of this village. the leaves are in pairs, glossy green, with the veins a little raised on both face and back; the smaller branches diverge from the same point: the fruit, of which we saw the shells, seems to be a nut; some animal had in eating them cut them through. the bark of the tree is of a light ash colour; the gum was oozing from the bark at wounded places, and it drops on the ground from branches; it is thus that insects are probably imbedded in the gum-copal. the people dig in the vicinity of modern trees in the belief that the more ancient trees which dropped their gum before it became an article of commerce must have stood there. "in digging, none may be found on one day but god (mungu) may give it to us on the next." to this all the makondé present assented, and showed me the consciousness of his existence was present in their minds. the makondé get the gum in large quantities, and this attracts the coast arabs, who remain a long time in the country purchasing it. hernia humoralis abounds; it is ascribed to beer-drinking. _ th april, ._--many ulcers burst forth on the camels; some seem old dhow bruises. they come back from pasture, bleeding in a way that no rubbing against a tree would account for. i am sorry to suspect foul play: the buffaloes and mules are badly used, but i cannot be always near to prevent it. bhang[ ] is not smoked, but tobacco is: the people have no sheep or goats; only fowls, pigeons, and muscovy ducks are seen. honey is very cheap; a good large pot of about a gallon, with four fowls, was given for two yards of calico. buffaloes again bitten by tsetse, and by another fly exactly like the house-fly, but having a straight hard proboscis instead of a soft one; other large flies make the blood run. the tsetse does not disturb the buffaloes, but these others and the smaller flies do. the tsetse seem to like the camel best; from these they are gorged with blood--they do not seem to care for the mules and donkeys. [illustration: carved door, zanzibar.] footnotes: [ ] dhow is the name given to the coasting vessel of east africa and the indian ocean. [ ] the commander of h.m.s. _pioneer_ in . [ ] those who have read the accounts given by african travellers will remember that the bites inflicted by two or three of these small flies will visually lay the foundation of a sickness which destroys oxen, horses, and dogs in a few weeks. [ ] dr. livingstone was anxious to try camels and indian buffaloes in a tsetse country to see the effect upon them. [ ] this refers to an attack made upon the boats of the _pioneer_ when the doctor was exploring the river rovuma in . [ ] a species of hemp. chapter ii. effect of _pioneer's_ former visit. the poodle chitané. result of tsetse bites. death of camels and buffaloes. disaffection of followers. disputed right of ferry. mazitu raids. an old friend. severe privations. the river loendi. sepoys mutiny. dr. roscher. desolation. tattooing. ornamental teeth. singular custom. death of the nassick boy, richard. a sad reminiscence. _ st may, ._--we now came along through a country comparatively free of wood, and we could move on without perpetual cutting and clearing. it is beautiful to get a good glimpse out on the surrounding scenery, though it still seems nearly all covered with great masses of umbrageous foliage, mostly of a dark green colour, for nearly all of the individual trees possess dark glossy leaves like laurel. we passed a gigantic specimen of the kumbé, or gum-copal tree. kumba means to dig. changkumbé, or things dug, is the name of the gum; the arabs call it "sandarusé." did the people give the name kumbé to the tree after the value of the gum became known to them? the malolé, from the fine grained wood of which all the bows are made, had shed its fruit on the ground; it looks inviting to the eye--an oblong peach-looking thing, with a number of seeds inside, but it is eaten by maggots only. when we came to ntandé's village, we found it enclosed in a strong stockade, from a fear of attack by mabiha, who come across the river and steal their women when going to draw water: this is for the ibo market. they offered to pull down their stockade and let us in if we would remain over-night, but we declined. before reaching ntandé we passed the ruins of two villages; the owners were the attacking party when we ascended the rovuma in . i have still the old sail, with four bullet-holes through it, made by the shots which they fired after we had given cloth and got assurances of friendship. the father and son of this village were the two men seen by the second boat preparing to shoot; the fire of her crew struck the father on the chin and the son on the head. it may have been for the best that the english are thus known as people who can hit hard when unjustly attacked, as we on this occasion most certainly were: never was a murderous assault more unjustly made or less provoked. they had left their villages and gone up over the highlands away from the river to their ambush whilst their women came to look at us. _ nd may, ._--mountains again approach us, and we pass one which was noticed in our first ascent from its resemblance to a table mountain. it is or feet high, and called liparu: the plateau now becomes mountainous, giving forth a perennial stream which comes down from its western base and forms a lagoon on the meadow-land that flanks the rovuma. the trees which love these perpetual streams spread their roots all over the surface of the boggy banks, and make a firm surface, but at spots one may sink a yard deep. we had to fill up these deep ditches with branches and leaves, unload the animals, and lead them across. we spent the night on the banks of the liparu,[ ] and then proceeded on our way. _ rd may, ._--we rested in a makoa village, the head of which was an old woman. the makoa or makoané are known by a half-moon figure tattooed on their foreheads or elsewhere. our poodle dog chitané chased the dogs of this village with unrelenting fury, his fierce looks inspired terror among the wretched pariah dogs of a yellow and white colour, and those looks were entirely owing to its being difficult to distinguish at which end his head or tail lay. he enjoyed the chase of the yelping curs immensely, but if one of them had turned he would have bolted the other way. a motherly-looking woman came forward and offered me some meal; this was when we were in the act of departing: others had given food to the men and no return had been made. i told her to send it on by her husband, and i would purchase it, but it would have been better to have accepted it: some give merely out of kindly feeling and with no prospect of a return. many of the makoa men have their faces thickly tattooed in double, raised lines of about half an inch in length. after the incisions are made charcoal is rubbed in and the flesh pressed out, so that all the cuts are raised above the level of the surface. it gives them rather a hideous look, and a good deal of that fierceness which our kings and chiefs of old put on whilst having their portraits taken. _ th may, ._--the stream, embowered in perpetual shade and overspread with the roots of water-loving, broad-leaved trees, we found to be called nkonya. the spot of our encampment was an island formed by a branch of it parting and re-entering it again: the owner had used it for rice. the buffaloes were bitten again by tsetse on nd, and also to-day, from the bites of other flies (which look much more formidable than tsetse), blood of arterial colour flows down; this symptom i never saw before, but when we slaughtered an ox which had been tsetse bitten, we observed that the blood had the arterial hue. the cow has inflammation of one eye, and a swelling on the right lumbar portion of the pelvis: the grey buffalo has been sick, but this i attribute to unmerciful loading; for his back is hurt: the camels do not seem to feel the fly, though they get weaker from the horrid running sores upon them and hard work. there are no symptoms of tsetse in mules or donkeys, but one mule has had his shoulder sprained, and he cannot stoop to eat or drink. we saw the last of the flanking range on the north. the country in front is plain, with a few detached granitic peaks shot up. the makoa in large numbers live at the end of the range in a place called nyuchi. at nyamba, a village where we spent the night of the th, was a doctoress and rain-maker, who presented a large basket of soroko, or, as they call it in india, "mung," and a fowl. she is tall and well made, with fine limbs and feet, and was profusely tattooed all over; even her hips and buttocks had their elaborate markings: no shame is felt in exposing these parts. a good deal of salt is made by lixiviation of the soil and evaporating by fire. the head woman had a tame khanga tolé or tufted guinea-fowl, with bluish instead of white spots. in passing along westwards after leaving the end of the range, we came first of all on sandstone hardened by fire; then masses of granite, as if in that had been contained the igneous agency of partial metamorphosis; it had also lifted up the sandstone, so as to cause a dip to the east. then the syenite or granite seemed as if it had been melted, for it was all in striae, which striae, as they do elsewhere, run east and west. with the change in geological structure we get a different vegetation. instead of the laurel-leaved trees of various kinds, we have african ebonies, acacias, and mimosae: the grass is shorter and more sparse, and we can move along without wood-cutting. we were now opposite a hill on the south called simba, a lion, from its supposed resemblance to that animal. a large mabiha population live there, and make raids occasionally over to this side for slaves. _ th may, ._--tsetse again. the animals look drowsy. the cow's eye is dimmed; when punctured, the skin emits a stream of scarlet blood. the people hereabouts seem intelligent and respectful. at service a man began to talk, but when i said, "ku soma mlungu,"--"we wish to pray to god," he desisted. it would be interesting to know what the ideas of these men are, and to ascertain what they have gained in their communings with nature during the ages past. they do not give the idea of that boisterous wickedness and disregard of life which we read of in our own dark ages, but i have no one to translate, although i can understand much of what is said on common topics chiefly from knowing other dialects. _ th may, ._--a camel died during the night, and the grey buffalo is in convulsions this morning. the cruelty of these sepoys vitiates my experiment, and i quite expect many camels, one buffalo, and one mule to die yet; they sit down and smoke and eat, leaving the animals loaded in the sun. if i am not with them, it is a constant dawdling; they are evidently unwilling to exert themselves, they cannot carry their belts and bags, and their powers of eating and vomiting are astounding. the makondé villages are remarkably clean, but no sooner do we pass a night in one than the fellows make it filthy. the climate does give a sharp appetite, but these sepoys indulge it till relieved by vomiting and purging. first of all they breakfast, then an hour afterwards they are sitting eating the pocketfuls of corn maize they have stolen and brought for the purpose, whilst i have to go ahead, otherwise we may be misled into a zigzag course to see ali's friends; and if i remain behind to keep the sepoys on the move, it deprives me of all the pleasure of travelling. we have not averaged four miles a day in a straight line, yet the animals have often been kept in the sun for eight hours at a stretch. when we get up at a.m. we cannot get under weigh before o'clock. sepoys are a mistake. _ th may, ._--we are now opposite a mountain called nabungala, which resembles from the north-east an elephant lying down. another camel, a very good one, died on the way: its shiverings and convulsions are not at all like what we observed in horses and oxen killed by tsetse, but such may lie the cause, however. the only symptom pointing to the tsetse is the arterial-looking blood, but we never saw it ooze from the skin after the bite of the gad-fly as we do now. _ th may, ._--we arrived at a village called jpondé, or lipondé, which lies opposite a granitic hill on the other-side of the river (where we spent a night on our boat trip), called nakapuri; this is rather odd, for the words are not makondé but sichuana, and signify goat's horn, from the projections jutting out from the rest of the mass. i left the havildar, sepoys, and nassick boys here in order to make a forced march forward, where no food is to be had, and send either to the south or westwards for supplies, so that after they have rested the animals and themselves five days they may come. one mule is very ill; one buffalo drowsy and exhausted; one camel a mere skeleton from bad sores; and another has an enormous hole at the point of the pelvis, which sticks out at the side. i suspect that this was made maliciously, for he came from the field bleeding profusely; no tree would have perforated a round hole in this way. i take all the goods and leave only the sepoys' luggage, which is enough for all the animals now. _ th may, ._--i went on with the johanna men and twenty-four carriers, for it was a pleasure to get away from the sepoys and nassick boys; the two combined to overload the animals. i told them repeatedly that they would kill them, but no sooner had i adjusted the burdens and turned my back than they put on all their things. it was however such continual vexation to contend with the sneaking spirit, that i gave up annoying myself by seeing matters, though i felt certain that the animals would all be killed. we did at least eight miles pleasantly well, and slept at moedaa village. the rocks are still syenite. we passed a valley with the large thorny acacias of which canoes are often made, and a euphorbiaceous tree, with seed-vessels as large as mandarin oranges, with three seeds inside. we were now in a country which, in addition to the mazitu invasion, was suffering from one of those inexplicable droughts to which limited and sometimes large portions of this country are subject. it had not been nearly so severe on the opposite or south side, and thither too the mazitu had not penetrated. rushes, which plagued us nearer the coast, are not observed now; the grass is all crisp and yellow; many of the plants are dead, and leaves are fallen off the trees as if winter had begun. the ground is covered with open forest, with here and there thick jungle on the banks of the streams. all the rivulets we have passed are mere mountain torrents filled with sand, in which the people dig for water. we passed the spot where an arab called birkal was asked payment for leave to pass. after two and a half days' parley he fought, killed two makondé, and mortally wounded a headman, which settled the matter; no fresh demand has been made. ali's brother also resisted the same sort of demand, fought several times, or until three makondé and two of his people were killed; they then made peace, and no other exactions have been made. _ th may, ._--we now found a difficulty in getting our carriers along, on account of exhaustion from want of food. in going up a sand stream called nyédé, we saw that all moist spots had been planted with maize and beans, so the loss caused by the mazitu, who swept the land like a cloud of locusts, will not be attended by much actual starvation. we met a runaway woman: she was seized by ali, and it was plain that he expected a reward for his pains. he thought she was a slave, but a quarter of a mile off was the village she had left, and it being doubtful if she were a runaway at all, the would-be fugitive slave-capture turned out a failure. _ th may, ._--about ' e.n.e. of matawatawa, or nyamatololé, our former turning point. _ th may, ._--we halted at a village at matawatawa. a pleasant-looking lady, with her face profusely tattooed, came forward with a bunch of sweet reed, or _sorghum saceliaratum_, and laid it at my feet, saying, "i met you here before," pointing to the spot on the river where we turned. i remember her coming then, and that i asked the boat to wait while she went to bring us a basket of food, and i think it was given to chiko, and no return made. it is sheer kindliness that prompts them sometimes, though occasionally people do make presents with a view of getting a larger one in return: it is pleasant to find that it is not always so. she had a quiet, dignified manner, both in talking and walking, and i now gave her a small looking-glass, and she went and brought me her only fowl and a basket of cucumber-seeds, from which oil is made; from the amount of oily matter they contain thov are nutritious when roasted and eaten as nuts. she made an apology, saying they were hungry times at present. i gave her a cloth, and so parted with kanañgoné, or, as her name may be spelled, kanañoné. the carriers were very useless from hunger, and we could not buy anything for them; for the country is all dried up, and covered sparsely with mimosas and thorny acacias. _ th may, ._--i could not get the carriers on more than an hour and three-quarters: men tire very soon on empty stomachs. we had reached the village of hassané, opposite to a conical hill named chisulwé, which is on the south side of the river, and evidently of igneous origin. it is tree-covered, while the granite always shows lumps of naked rock. all about lie great patches of beautiful dolomite. it may have been formed by baking of the tufa, which in this country seems always to have been poured out with water after volcanic action. hassané's daughter was just lifting a pot of french beans, boiled in their pods, off the fire when we entered the village, these he presented to me, and when i invited him to partake, he replied that he was at home and would get something, while i was a stranger on a journey. he, like all the other headmen, is a reputed doctor, and his wife, a stout old lady, a doctoress; he had never married any wife but this one, and he had four children, all of whom lived with their parents. we employed one of his sons to go to the south side and purchase food, sending at the same time some carriers to buy for themselves. the siroko and rice bought by hassané's son we deposited with him for the party behind, when they should arrive. the amount of terror the mazitu inspire cannot be realized by us. they shake their shields and the people fly like stricken deer. i observed that a child would not go a few yards for necessary purposes unless grandmother stood in sight. matumora, as the arabs call the chief at ngomano, gave them a warm reception, and killed several of them: this probably induced them to retire. _ th and th may, ._--miserably short marches from hunger, and i sympathise with the poor fellows. those sent to buy food for themselves on the south bank were misled by a talkative fellow named chikungu, and went off north, where we knew nothing could be had. his object was to get paid for three days, while they only loitered here. i suppose hunger has taken the spirit out of them; but i told them that a day in which no work was done did not count: they admitted this. we pay about two feet of calico per day, and a fathom or six feet for three days' carriage. _ th may, ._--with very empty stomachs they came on a few miles and proposed to cross to the south side; as this involved crossing the luendi too, i at first objected, but in hopes that we might get food for them we consented, and were taken over in two very small canoes. i sent ali and musa meanwhile to the south to try and get some food. i got a little green sorghum for them and paid them off. these are the little troubles of travelling, and scarce worth mentioning. a granitic peak now appears about ' off, to the w.s.w. it is called chihoka. _ th may, ._--at our crossing place metamorphic rocks of a chocolate colour stood on edge; and in the country round we have patches of dolomite, sometimes as white as marble. the country is all dry: grass and leaves crisp and yellow. though so arid now, yet the great abundance of the dried stalks of a water-loving plant, a sort of herbaceous acacia, with green pea-shaped flowers, proves that at other times it is damp enough. the marks of people's feet floundering in slush, but now baked, show that the country can be sloppy. the headman of the village where we spent the night of th is a martyr to rheumatism. he asked for medicine, and when i gave some he asked me to give it to him out of my own hand. he presented me with a basket of siroko and of green sorghum as a fee, of which i was very glad, for my own party were suffering, and i had to share out the little portion of flour i had reserved to myself. _ th may, ._--coming on with what carriers we could find at the crossing place, we reached the confluence without seeing it; and matumora being about two miles up the loendi, we sent over to him for aid. he came over this morning early,--a tall, well-made man, with a somewhat severe expression of countenance, from a number of wrinkles on his forehead. he took us over the loendi, which is decidedly the parent stream of the rovuma, though that as it comes from the west still retains the name loendi from the south-west here, and is from to yards wide, while the rovuma above matawatawa is from to , full of islands, rocks, and sandbanks. the loendi has the same character. we can see the confluence from where we cross about ' to the north. both rivers are rapid, shoal, and sandy; small canoes are used on them, and the people pride themselves on their skilful management: in this the women seem in no way inferior to the men. in looking up the loendi we see a large granitic peak called nkanjé, some miles off, and beyond it the dim outline of distant highlands, in which seams of coal are exposed. pieces of the mineral are found in loendi's sands. matumora has a good character in the country, and many flee to him from oppression. he was very polite; sitting on the right bank till all the goods were carried over, then coming in the same canoe wifn me himself, he opened a fish basket in a weir and gave me the contents, and subsequently a little green sorghum. he literally has lost all his corn, for he was obliged to flee with his people to marumba, a rocky island in rovuma, about six miles above matawatawa. he says that both loendi and rovuma come out of lake nyassa; a boat could not ascend, however, because many waterfalls are in their course: it is strange if all this is a myth. matumora asked if the people through whose country i had come would preserve the peace i wished. he says he has been assailed on all sides by slave-hunters: he alone has never hunted for captives: if the people in front should attack me he would come and fight them: finally he had never seen a european before (dr. roscher travelled as an arab), nor could i learn where likumbu at ngomano lives; it was with him that roscher is said to have left his goods. the mazitu had women, children, oxen and goats with them. the whole tribe lives on plundering the other natives by means of the terror their shields inspire; had they gone further down the rovuma, no ox would have survived the tsetse. _ th may, ._--i paid ali to his entire satisfaction, and entrusted him with a despatch, "no. geographical," and then sent off four men south to buy food. here we are among matambwé. two of matumora's men act as guides. we are about ' south and by west of the confluence ngomano. lat. ° ' " s.; long. ° ' " e. abraham, one of the nassick boys, came up and said he had been sent by the sepoys, who declared they would come no further. it was with the utmost difficulty they had come so far, or that the havildar had forced them on, they would not obey him--would not get up in the mornings to march; lay in the paths, and gave their pouches and muskets to the natives to carry: they make themselves utterly useless. the black buffalo is dead; one camel ditto, and one mule left behind ill. were i not aware of the existence of the tsetse, i should say they died from sheer bad treatment and hard work. i sent a note to be read to the sepoys stating that i had seen their disobedience, unwillingness, and skulking, and as soon as i received the havildar's formal evidence, i would send them back. i regretted parting with the havildar only. a leopard came a little after dark while the moon was shining, and took away a little dog from among us; it is said to have taken off a person a few days ago. _ nd may, ._--the men returned with but little food in return for much cloth. matumora is very friendly, but he has nothing to give save a little green sorghum, and that he brings daily. a south wind blows strongly every afternoon. the rains ceased about the middle of may, and the temperature is lowered. a few heavy night showers closed the rainy season. _ rd-- th may, ._--i took some lunar observations. _ th may, ._--matumora is not ndondé. a chief to the south-west of this owns that name and belongs to the matumbwé tribe. _ th may, ._--i sent musa westwards to buy food, and he returned on the evening of th without success; he found an arab slave-dealer waiting in the path, who had bought up all the provisions. about p.m. we saw two men pass our door with two women in a chain; one man carried fire in front, the one behind, a musket. matumora admits that his people sell each other. _ th may, ._--the havildar and abraham came up. havildar says that all i said in my note was true, and when it was read to the sepoys they bewailed their folly, he adds that if they were all sent away disgraced, no one would be to blame but themselves. he brought them to hassané's, but they were useless, though they begged to be kept on: i may give them another trial, but at present they are a sad incumbrance. south-west of this the manganja begin; but if one went by them, there is a space beyond in the south-west without people. the country due west of this is described by all to be so mountainous and beset by mazitu, that there is no possibility of passing that way. i must therefore make my way to the middle of the lake, cross over, and then take up my line of . _ nd june, ._--the men sent to the matambwé south-east of this returned with a good supply of grain. the sepoys won't come; they say they cannot,--a mere excuse, v because they tried to prevail on the nassick boys to go slowly like them, and wear my patience out. they killed one camel with the butt ends of their muskets, beating it till it died. i thought of going down disarming them all, and taking five or six of the willing ones, but it is more trouble than profit, so i propose to start westwards on monday the th, or tuesday the th. my sepoys offered ali eight rupees to take them to the coast, thus it has been a regularly organized conspiracy. from the appearance of the cow-buffalo, i fear the tsetse is its chief enemy, but there is a place like a bayonet wound on its shoulder, and many of the wounds or bruises on the camels were so probed that i suspect the sepoys. many things african are possessed of as great vitality in their line as the african people. the white ant was imported accidentally into st. helena from the coast of guinea, and has committed such ravages in the town of st. james, that numerous people have been ruined, and the governor calls out for aid against them. in other so-called new countries a wave of english weeds follows the tide of english emigration, and so with insects; the european house-fly chases away the blue-bottle fly in new zealand. settlers have carried the house-fly in bottles and boxes for their new locations, but what european insect will follow us and extirpate the tsetse? the arabs have given the makondé bugs, but we have the house-fly wherever we go, the blue-bottle and another like the house-fly, but with a sharp proboscis; and several enormous gad-flies. here there is so much room for everything. in new zealand the norwegian rat is driven off by even the european mouse; not to mention the hanoverian rat of waterton, which is lord of the land. the maori say that "as the white man's rat has driven away the native rat, so the european fly drives away our own; and as the clover kills our fern, so will the maori disappear before the white man himself." the hog placed ashore by captain cook has now overrun one side of the island, and is such a nuisance that a large farmer of , acres has given sixpence per head for the destruction of some , , and without any sensible diminution; this would be no benefit here, for the wild hogs abound and do much damage, besides affording food for the tsetse: the brutes follow the ewes with young, and devour the poor lambs as soon as they make their appearance. _ rd june, ._--the cow-buffalo fell down foaming at the mouth, and expired. the meat looks fat and nice, and is relished by the people, a little glariness seemed to be present on the foreleg, and i sometimes think that, notwithstanding the dissimilarity of the symptoms observed in the camels and buffaloes now, and those we saw in oxen and horses, the evil may be the tsetse, after all, but they have been badly used, without a doubt. the calf has a cut half an inch deep, the camels have had large ulcers, and at last a peculiar smell, which portends death. i feel perplexed, and not at all certain as to the real causes of death. i asked matumora if the matambwé believed in god, he replied, that he did not know him, and i was not to ask the people among whom i was going if they prayed to him, because they would imagine that i wished them to be killed. i told him that we loved to speak about him, &c. he said, when they prayed they offered a little meal and then prayed, but did not know much about him. they have all great reverence for the deity, and the deliberate way in which they say "we don't know him" is to prevent speaking irreverently, as that may injure the country. the name is "mulungu": makochera afterwards said, that "he was not good, because he killed so many people." _ th june, ._--left ngomano. i was obliged to tell the nassick boys that they must either work or return, it was absurd to have them eating up our goods, and not even carrying their own things, and i would submit to it no more: five of them carry bales, and two the luggage of the rest. abraham and richard are behind. i gave them bales to carry, and promised them ten rupees per month, to begin on this date. abraham has worked hard all along, and his pay may be due from th april, the day we started from kindany. _ th june, ._--we slept at a village called lamba, on the banks of the rovuma, near a brawling torrent of yards, or perhaps, with many islands and rocks in it. the country is covered with open forest, with patches of cultivation everywhere, but all dried up at present and withered, partly from drought and partly from the cold of winter. we passed a village with good ripe sorghum cut down, and the heads or ears all laid neatly in a row, this is to get it dried in the sun, and not shaken out by the wind, by waving to and fro; besides it is also more easily watched from being plundered by birds. the sorghum occasionally does not yield seed, and is then the _sorghum saccharatum_, for the stalk contains abundance of sugar, and is much relished by the natives. now that so much has failed to yield seed, being indeed just in flower, the stalks are chewed as if sugar-cane, and the people are fat thereon; but the hungry time is in store when these stalles are all done. they make the best provision in their power against famine by planting beans and maize in moist spots. the common native pumpkin forms a bastard sort in the same way, but that is considered very inferior. _ th june, ._--great hills of granite are occasionally in sight towards the north, but the trees, though scraggy, close in the view. we left a village, called mekosi, and goon came to a slaving party by a sand stream. they said that they had bought two slaves, but they had run away from them, and asked us to remain with them; more civil than inviting. we came on to makochera, the principal headman in this quarter, and found him a merry laughing mortal, without any good looks to recommend his genial smile,--low forehead, covered with deep wrinkles; flat nose, somewhat of the assyrian shape; a big mouth and lean body. he complained of the machinga (a waiyau tribe north of him and the rovuma) stealing his people. lat. of village, ° ' " s. the river being about ' north, still shows that it makes a trend to the north after we pass ngomano. makochera has been an elephant hunter. few acknowledge as a reason for slaving that sowing and spinning cotton for clothing is painful. i waited some days for the nassick boys, who are behind, though we could not buy any food except at enormous prices and long distances off. _ th june, ._--the havildar and two sepoys came up with abraham, but richard, a nassick boy, is still behind from weakness. i sent three off to help him with the only cordials we could muster. the sepoys sometimes profess inability to come on, but it is unwillingness to encounter hardship: i must move on whether they come or not, for we cannot obtain food here. i sent the sepoys some cloth, and on the th proposed to start, but every particle of food had been devoured the night before, so we despatched two parties to scour the country round, and give any price rather than want. i could not prevail on makochera to give me a specimen of poetry; he was afraid, neither he nor his forefathers had ever seen an englishman. he thought that god was not good because he killed so many people. dr. roscher must have travelled as an arab if he came this way, for he was not known.[ ] _ th june, ._--we now left and marched through the same sort of forest, gradually ascending in altitude as we went west, then we came to huge masses of granite, or syenite, with flakes peeling off. they are covered with a plant with grassy-looking leaves and rough stalk which strips into portions similar to what are put round candles as ornaments. it makes these hills look light grey, with patches of black rock at the more perpendicular parts; the same at about ten miles off look dark blue. the ground is often hard and stony, but all covered over with grass and plants: looking down at it, the grass is in tufts, and like that on the kalahari desert. trees show uplands. one tree of which bark cloth is made, pterocarpus, is abundant. timber-trees appear here and there, but for the most part the growth is stunted, and few are higher than thirty feet. we spent the night by a hill of the usual rounded form, called njeñgo. the rovuma comes close by, but leaves us again to wind among similar great masses. lat. ° ' " s. _ th june, ._--a very heavy march through the same kind of country, no human habitation appearing; we passed a dead body--recently, it was said, starved to death. the large tract between makochera's and our next station at ngozo hill is without any perennial stream; water is found often by digging in the sand streams which we several times crossed; sometimes it was a trickling rill, but i suspect that at other seasons all is dry, and people are made dependent on the rovuma alone. the first evidence of our being near the pleasant haunts of man was a nice little woman drawing water at a well. i had become separated from the rest: on giving me water she knelt down, and, as country manners require, held it up to me with _both_ hands. i had been misled by one of the carriers, who got confused, though the rounded mass of ngozo was plainly visible from the heights we crossed east of it. an arab party bolted on hearing of our approach: they don't trust the english, and this conduct increases our importance among the natives. lat. ° ' " s. _ th june, ._--our carriers refuse to go further, because they say that they fear being captured here on their return. _ th june, ._--i paid off the carriers, and wait for a set from this. a respectable man, called makoloya, or impandé, visited me, and wished to ask some questions as to where i was going, and how long i should be away. he had heard from a man who came from ibo, or wibo, about the bible, a large book which was consulted. [illustration: tattoo of matambwé.] _ th june, ._--makoloya brought his wife and a little corn, and says that his father told him that there is a god, but nothing more. the marks on their foreheads and bodies are meant only to give beauty in the dance, they seem a sort of heraldic ornament, for they can at once tell by his tattoo to what tribe or portion of tribe a man belongs. the tattoo or tembo of the matambwé and upper makondé very much resembles the drawings of the old egyptians; wavy lines, such as the ancients made to signify water, trees and gardens enclosed in squares, seem to have been meant of old for the inhabitants who lived on the rovuma, and cultivated also, the son takes the tattoo of his father, and thus it has been perpetuated, though the meaning now appears lost. the makoa have the half or nearly full moon, but it is, they say, all for ornament. some blue stuff is rubbed into the cuts (i am told it is charcoal), and the ornament shows brightly in persons of light complexion, who by the bye are common. the makondé and matambwé file their front teeth to points; the machinga, a waiyan tribe, leave two points on the sides of the front teeth, and knock out one of the middle incisors above and below. [illustration: machinga and waiyan teeth.] _ th june, ._--i am now as much dependent on carriers as if i had never bought a beast of burden--but this is poor stuff to fill a journal with. we started off to metaba to see if the chief there would lend some men. the headman, kitwanga, went a long way to convoy us; then turned, saying he was going to get men for musa next day. we passed near the base of the rounded masses ngozo and mekanga, and think, from a near inspection, that they are over feet above the plain, possibly feet, and nearly bare, with only the peculiar grassy plant on some parts which are not too perpendicular. the people are said to have stores of grain on them, and on one the chief said there is water; he knows of no stone buildings of the olden time in the country. we passed many masses of ferruginous conglomerate, and i noticed that most of the gneiss dips westwards. the striae seem as if the rock had been partially molten: at times the strike is north and south, at others east and west; when we come to what may have been its surface, it is as if the striae had been stirred with a rod while soft. we slept at a point of the rovuma, above a cataract where a reach of comparatively still water, from to yards wide, allows a school of hippopotami to live: when the river becomes fordable in many places, as it is said to do in august and september, they must find it difficult to exist. _ th june, ._--another three hours' march brought us from the sleeping-place on the rovuma to metaba, the chief of which, kinazombé, is an elderly man, with a cunning and severe cast of countenance, and a nose assyrian in type; he has built a large reception house, in which a number of half-caste arabs have taken up their abode. a great many of the people have guns, and it is astonishing to see the number of slave-taming sticks abandoned along the road as the poor wretches gave in, and professed to have lost all hope of escape. many huts have been built by the arabs to screen themselves from the rain as they travelled. at kinazombé's the second crop of maize is ready, so the hunger will not be very much felt. _ th june, ._--we heard very sombre accounts of the country in front:--four or five days to mtarika, and then ten days through jungle to mataka's town: little food at mtarika's, but plenty with mataka, who is near the lake. the rovuma trends southerly after we leave ngozo, and masusa on that river is pointed out as south-west from metaba, so at ngozo the river may be said to have its furthest northing. masusa is reported to be five days, or at least fifty miles, from metaba. the route now becomes south-west. the cattle of africa are like the indian buffalo, only partially tamed; they never give their milk without the presence of the calf or its stuffed skin, the "fulchan." the women adjacent to mozambique partake a little of the wild animal's nature, for, like most members of the inferior races of animals, they refuse all intercourse with their husbands when enceinte and they continue this for about three years afterwards, or until the child is weaned, which usually happens about the third year. i was told, on most respectable authority, that many fine young native men marry one wife and live happily with her till this period; nothing will then induce her to continue to cohabit with him, and, as the separation is to continue for three years, the man is almost compelled to take up with another wife: this was mentioned to me as one of the great evils of society. the same absurdity prevails on the west coast, and there it is said that the men acquiesce from ideas of purity. it is curious that trade-rum should form so important an article of import on the west coast while it is almost unknown on the east coast, for the same people began the commerce in both instances. if we look north of cape delgado, we might imagine that the religious convictions of the arabs had something to do with the matter, but the portuguese south of cape delgado have no scruples in the matter, and would sell their grandfathers as well as the rum if they could make money by the transaction, they have even erected distilleries to furnish a vile spirit from the fruit of the cashew and other fruits and grain, but the trade does not succeed. they give their slaves also rewards of spirit, or "maata bicho" ("kill the creature," or "craving within"), and you may meet a man who, having had much intercourse with portuguese, may beg spirits, but the trade does not pay. the natives will drink it if furnished gratis. the indispensable "dash" of rum on the west coast in every political transaction with independent chiefs is, however, quite unknown. the moslems would certainly not abstain from trading in spirits were the trade profitable. they often asked for brandy from me in a sly way--as medicine; and when reminded that their religion forbade it, would say, "oh, but we can drink it in secret." it is something in the nature of the people quite inexplicable, that throughout the makondé country hernia humoralis prevails to a frightful extent; it is believed by the natives to be the result of beer drinking, so they cannot be considered as abstemious. _ th june, ._--finding that musa did not come up with the goods i left in his charge, and fearing that all was not right, we set off with all our hands who could carry, after service yesterday morning, and in six hours' hard tramp arrived here just in time, for a tribe of wanindi, or manindi, who are either ajawas (waiyau),[ ] or pretended mazitu, had tried to cross the rovuma from the north bank. they came as plunderers, and musa having received no assistance was now ready to defend the goods. a shot or two from the people of kitwanga made the wanindi desert after they had entered the water. six sepoys and simon had come up this length; reuben and mabruki reported richard to be dead. this poor boy was left with the others at lipondé, and i never saw him again. i observed him associating too much with the sepoys; and often felt inclined to reprove him, as their conversation is usually very bad, but i could not of my own knowledge say so. he came on with the others as far as hassané or pachassané: there he was too weak to come further, and as the sepoys were notoriously skulkers, i feared that poor richard was led away by them, for i knew that they had made many attempts to draw away the other nassick boys from their duty. when, however, abraham came up and reported richard left behind by the sepoys, i became alarmed, and sent off three boys with cordials to help him on: two days after abraham left he seems to have died, and i feel very sorry that i was not there to do what i could. i am told now that he never consented to the sepoy temptation: he said to abraham that he wished he were dead, he was so much troubled. the people where he died were not v$ry civil to simon. the sepoys had now made themselves such an utter nuisance that i felt that i must take the upper hand with them, so i called them up this morning, and asked if they knew the punishment they had incurred by disobeying orders, and attempting to tamper with the nassick boys to turn them back. i told them they not only remained in the way when ordered to march, but offered eight rupees to ali to lead them to the coast, and that the excuse of sickness was nought, for they had eaten heartily three meals a day while pretending illness. they had no excuse to offer, so i disrated the naik or corporal, and sentenced the others to carry loads; if they behave well, then they will get fatigue pay for doing fatigue duty, if ill, nothing but their pay. their limbs are becoming contracted from sheer idleness; while all the other men are well and getting stronger they alone are disreputably slovenly and useless-looking. their filthy habits are to be reformed, and if found at their habit of sitting down and sleeping for hours on the march, or without their muskets and pouches, they are to be flogged. i sent two of them back to bring up two comrades, left behind yesterday. all who have done work are comparatively strong. [we may venture a word in passing on the subject of native recruits, enlisted for service in africa, and who return thither after a long absence. all the nassick boys were native-born africans, and yet we see one of them succumb immediately. the truth is that natives; under these circumstances, are just as liable to the effects of malaria on landing as europeans, although it is not often that fever assumes a dangerous form in such cases. the natives of the interior have the greatest dread of the illnesses which they say are sure to be in store for them if they visit the coast.] _ th june, ._--i gave the sepoys light loads in order to inure them to exercise and strengthen them, and they carried willingly so long as the fright was on them, but when the fear of immediate punishment wore off they began their skulking again. one, perim, reduced his load of about lbs. of tea by throwing away the lead in which it was rolled, and afterwards about lbs. of the tea, thereby diminishing our stock to lbs. [dr. livingstone's short stay in england in - was mainly taken up with compiling an account of his travels on the zambesi and shiré: during this time his mother expired in scotland at a good old age. when he went back to africa he took with him, as part of his very scanty travelling equipment, a number of letters which he received from friends at different times in england, and he very often quoted them when he had an opportunity of sending letters home. we come to an entry at this time which shows that in these reminiscences he had not thus preserved an unmixed pleasure. he says:--] i lighted on a telegram to-day:--"your mother died at noon on the th june." this was in : it affected me not a little. footnotes: [ ] further on we found it called nkonya. [ ] it will be remembered that this german traveller was murdered near lake nyassa. the native chiefs denounced his assassins, and sent them to zanzibar, where they were executed.--ed. [ ] further westward amongst the manganja or nyassa people the waiyan tribe is called "ajawa," and we find livingstone always speaking of them as ajawas in his previous explorations on the river rovuma. (see 'the zambesi and its tributaries.')--ed. chapter iii. horrors of the slave-trader's track. system of cultivation. pottery. special exorcising. death of the last mule. rescue of chirikaloma's wife. brutalities of the slave-drivers. mtarika's. desperate march to mtaka's. meets arab caravans. dismay of slavers. dismissal of sepoys. mataka. the waiyan metropolis. great hospitality and good feeling. mataka restores stolen cattle. life with the chief. beauty of country and healthiness of climate. the waiyan people and their peculiarities. regrets at the abandonment of bishop mackenzie's plans. _ th june, ._--we passed a woman tied by the neck to a tree and dead, the people of the country explained that she had been unable to keep up with the other slaves in a gang, and her master had determined that she should not become the property of anyone else if she recovered after resting for a time. i may mention here that we saw others tied up in a similar manner, and one lying in the path shot or stabbed[ ], for she was in a pool of blood. the explanation we got invariably was that the arab who owned these victims was enraged at losing his money by the slaves becoming unable to march, and vented his spleen by murdering them; but i have nothing more than common report in support of attributing this enormity to the arabs. _ th june, ._--having returned to metaba, we were told by kinazombé, the chief, that no one had grain to sell but himself. he had plenty of powder and common cloth from the arabs, and our only chance with him was parting with our finer cloths and other things that took his fancy. he magnified the scarcity in front in order to induce us to buy all we could from him, but he gave me an ample meal of porridge and guinea-fowl before starting. _ st june, ._--we had difficulties about carriers, but on reaching an island in the rovuma, called chimiki, we found the people were makoa and more civil and willing to work than the waiyau: we sent men back to bring up the havildar to a very civil headman called chirikaloma. _ nd june, ._--a poor little boy with prolapsus ani was carried yesterday by his mother many a weary mile, lying over her right shoulder--the only position he could find ease in,--an infant at the breast occupied the left arm, and on her head were carried two baskets. the mother's love was seen in binding up the part when we halted, whilst the coarseness of low civilization was evinced in the laugh with which some black brutes looked at the sufferer. _ rd june, ._--the country is covered with forest, much more open than further east. we are now some feet above the sea. the people all cultivate maize near the rovuma, and on islands where moisture helps them, nearly all possess guns, and plenty of powder and fine beads,--red ones strung on the hair, and fine blue ones in rolls on the neck, fitted tightly like soldiers' stocks. the lip-ring is universal; teeth filed to points. _ th june, ._--immense quantities of wood are cut down, collected in heaps, and burned to manure the land, but this does not prevent the country having an appearance of forest. divine service at . a.m.; great numbers looking on. they have a clear idea of the supreme being, but do not pray to him.. cold south winds prevail; temp. °. one of the mules is very ill--it was left with the havildar when we went back to ngozo, and probably remained uncovered at night, for as soon as we saw it, illness was plainly visible. whenever an animal has been in their power the sepoys have abused it. it is difficult to feel charitably to fellows whose scheme seems to have been to detach the nassick boys from me first, then, when the animals were all killed, the johanna men, afterwards they could rule me as they liked, or go back and leave me to perish; but i shall try to feel as charitably as i can in spite of it all, for the mind has a strong tendency to brood over the ills of travel. i told the havildar when i came up to him at metaba what i had done, and that i was very much displeased with the sepoys for compassing my failure, if not death; an unkind word had never passed my lips to them: to this he could bear testimony. he thought that they would only be a plague and trouble to me, but he "would go on and die with me." stone boiling is unknown in these countries, but ovens are made in anthills. holes are dug in the ground for baking the heads of large game, as the zebra, feet of elephants, humps of rhinoceros, and the production of fire by drilling between the palms of the hands is universal. it is quite common to see the sticks so used attached to the clothing or bundles in travelling; they wet the blunt end of the upright stick with the tongue, and dip it in the sand to make some particles of silica adhere before inserting it in the horizontal piece. the wood of a certain wild fig-tree is esteemed as yielding fire readily. in wet weather they prefer to carry fire in the dried balls of elephants' dung which are met with--the male's being about eight inches in diameter and about a foot long: they also employ the stalk of a certain plant which grows on rocky places for the same purpose. we bought a senzé, or _aulacaudatus swindernianus_, which had been dried over a slow fire. this custom of drying fish, flesh, and fruits, on stages over slow fires, is practised very generally: the use of salt for preservation is unknown. besides stages for drying, the makondé use them about six feet high for sleeping on instead of the damp ground: a fire beneath helps to keep off the mosquitoes, and they are used by day as convenient resting-places and for observation. pottery seems to have been known to the africans from the remotest times, for fragments are found everywhere, even among the oldest fossil bones in the country. their pots for cooking, holding water and beer, are made by the women, and the form is preserved by the eye alone, for no sort of machine is ever used. a foundation or bottom is first laid, and a piece of bone or bamboo used to scrape the clay or to smooth over the pieces which are added to increase the roundness; the vessel is then left a night: the next morning a piece is added to the rim--as the air is dry several rounds may be added--and all is then carefully smoothed off; afterwards it is thoroughly sun-dried. a light fire of dried cow-dung, or corn-stalks, or straw, and grass with twigs, is made in a hole in the ground for the final baking. ornaments are made on these pots of black lead, or before being hardened by the sun they are ornamented for a couple or three inches near the rim, all the tracery being in imitation of plaited basket work. chirikaloma says that the surname of the makoa, to whom he belongs, is mirazi--others have the surname melola or malola--chimposola. all had the half-moon mark when in the south-east, but now they leave it off a good deal and adopt the waiyau marks, because of living in their country. they show no indications of being named after beasts and birds. mirazi was an ancestor; they eat all clean animals, but refuse the hyaena, leopard, or any beast that devours dead men.[ ] _ th june, ._--on leaving chirikaloma we came on to namalo, whose village that morning had been deserted, the people moving off in a body towards the matambwé country, where food is more abundant. a poor little girl was left in one of the huts from being too weak to walk, probably an orphan. the arab slave-traders flee from the path as soon as they hear of our approach. the rovuma is from to yards wide here. no food to be had for either love or money. near many of the villages we observe a wand bent and both ends inserted into the ground: a lot of medicine, usually the bark of trees, is buried beneath it. when sickness is in a village, the men proceed to the spot, wash themselves with the medicine and water, creep through beneath the bough, then bury the medicine and the evil influence together. this is also used to keep off evil spirits, wild beasts, and enemies. chirikaloma told us of a child in his tribe which was deformed from his birth. he had an abortive toe where his knee should have been; some said to his mother, "kill him;" but she replied, "how can i kill my son?" he grew up and had many fine sons and daughters, but none deformed like himself: this was told in connection with an answer to my question about the treatment of albinoes: he said they did not kill them, but they never grew to manhood. on inquiring if he had ever heard of cannibals, or people with tails, he replied, "yes, but we have always understood that these and other monstrosities are met with only among you sea-going people." the other monstrosities he referred to were those who are said to have eyes behind the head as well as in front: i have heard of them before, but then i was near angola, in the west. the rains are expected here when the pleiades appear in the east soon after sunset; they go by the same name here as further south--lemila or the "hoeings." in the route along the rovuma, we pass among people who are so well supplied with white calico by the slave-trade from kilwa, that it is quite a drug in the market: we cannot get food for it. if we held on westwards we should cross several rivers flowing into the rovuma from the southward, as the zandulo, the sanjenzé, the lochiringo, and then, in going round the north end of nyassa, we should pass among the nindi, who now inhabit the parts vacated by the mazitu, and imitate them in having shields and in marauding. an arab party went into their country, and got out again only by paying a whole bale of calico; it would not be wise in me to venture there at present, but if we return this way we may; meanwhile we shall push on to mataka, who is only a few days off from the middle of the lake, and has abundance of provisions. _ th june, ._--my last mule died. in coming along in the morning we were loudly accosted by a well-dressed woman who had just had a very heavy slave-taming stick put on her neck; she called in such an authoritative tone to us to witness the flagrant injustice of which she was the victim that all the men stood still and went to hear the case. she was a near relative of chirikaloma, and was going up the river to her husband, when the old man (at whose house she was now a prisoner) caught her, took her servant away from her, and kept her in the degraded state we saw. the withes with which she was bound were green and sappy. the old man said in justification that she was running away from chirikaloma, and he would be offended with him if he did not secure her. i asked the officious old gentleman in a friendly tone what he expected to receive from chirikaloma, and he said, "nothing." several slaver-looking fellows came about, and i felt sure that the woman had been seized in order to sell her to them, so i gave the captor a cloth to pay to chirikaloma if he were offended, and told him to say that i, feeling ashamed to see one of his relatives in a slave-stick, had released her, and would, take her on to her husband. she is evidently a lady among them, having many fine beads and some strung on elephant's hair: she has a good deal of spirit too, for on being liberated she went into the old man's house and took her basket and calabash. a virago of a wife shut the door and tried to prevent her, as well as to cut off the beads from her person, but she resisted like a good one, and my men thrust the door open and let her out, but minus her slave. the other wife--for old officious had two--joined her sister in a furious tirade of abuse, the elder holding her sides in regular fishwife fashion till i burst into a laugh, in which the younger wife joined. i explained to the different headmen in front of this village what i had done, and sent messages to chirikaloma explanatory of my friendly deed to his relative, so that no misconstruction should be put on my act. we passed a slave woman shot or stabbed through the body and lying on the path: a group of mon stood about a hundred yards off on one side, and another of women on the other side, looking on; they said an arab who passed early that morning had done it in anger at losing the price he had given for her, because she was unable to walk any longer. _ th june, ._--to-day we came upon a man dead from starvation, as he was very thin. one of our men wandered and found a number of slaves with slave-sticks on, abandoned by their master from want of food; they were too weak to be able to speak or say where they had come from; some were quite young. we crossed the tulosi, a stream coming from south, about twenty yards wide. at chenjewala's the people are usually much startled when i explain that the numbers of slaves we see dead on the road have been killed partly by those who sold them, for i tell them that if they sell their fellows, they are like the man who holds the victim while the arab performs the murder. chenjewala blamed machemba, a chief above him on the rovuma, for encouraging the slave-trade; i told him i had travelled so much among them that i knew all the excuses they could make, each headman blamed some one else. "it would be better if you kept your people and cultivated more largely," said i, "oh, machemba sends his men and robs our gardens after we have cultivated," was the reply. one man said that the arabs who come and tempt them with fine clothes are the cause of their selling: this was childish, so i told them they would very soon have none to sell: their country was becoming jungle, and all their people who did not die in the road would be making gardens for arabs at kilwa and elsewhere. _ th june, ._--when we got about an hour from chenjewala's we came to a party in the act of marauding; the owners of the gardens made off for the other side of the river, and waved to us to go against the people of machemba, but we stood on a knoll with all our goods on the ground, and waited to see how matters would turn out. two of the marauders came to us and said they had captured five people. i suppose they took us for arabs, as they addressed musa. they then took some green maize, and so did some of my people, believing that as all was going, they who were really starving might as well have a share. i went on a little way with the two marauders, and by the footprints thought the whole party might amount to four or five with guns; the gardens and huts were all deserted. a poor woman was sitting, cooking green maize, and one of the men ordered her to follow him. i said to him, "let her alone, she is dying." "yes," said he, "of hunger," and went'on without her. we passed village after village, and gardens all deserted! we were now between two contending parties. we slept at one garden; and as we were told by chenjewala's people to take what we liked, and my men had no food, we gleaned what congo beans, bean leaves, and sorghum stalks we could,--poor fare enough, but all we could get. _ th june, ._--we came onto machemba's brother, chimseia, who gave us food at once. the country is now covered with deeper soil, and many large acacia-trees grow in the rich loam: the holms too are large, and many islands afford convenient maize grounds. one of the nassiek lads came up and reported his bundle, containing yards of calico, had been stolen; he went aside, leaving it on the path (probably fell asleep), and it was gone when he came back. i cannot impress either on them or the sepoys that it is wrong to sleep on the march. akosakoné, whom we had liberated, now arrived at the residence of her husband, who was another brother of machemba. she behaved like a lady all through, sleeping at a fire apart from the men. the ladies of the different villages we passed condoled with her, and she related to them the indignity that had been done to her. besides this she did us many services: she bought food for us, because, having a good address, we saw that she could get double what any of our men could purchase for the same cloth; she spoke up for us when any injustice was attempted, and, when we were in want of carriers, volunteered to carry a bag of beads on her head. on arriving at machemba's brother, chimseia, she introduced me to him, and got him to be liberal to us in food on account of the service we had rendered to her. she took leave of us all with many expressions of thankfulness, and we were glad that we had not mistaken her position or lavished kindness on the undeserving. one johanna man was caught stealing maize, then another, after i had paid for the first. i sent a request to the chief not to make much of a grievance about it, as i was very much ashamed at my men stealing; he replied that he had liked me from the first, and i was not to fear, as whatever service he could do he would most willingly in order to save me pain and trouble. a sepoy now came up having given his musket to a man to carry, who therefore demanded payment. as it had become a regular nuisance for the sepoys to employ people to carry for them, telling them that i would pay, i demanded why he had promised in my name. "oh, it was but a little way he carried the musket," said he. chimseia warned us next morning, th june, against allowing any one to straggle or steal in front, for stabbing and plundering were the rule. the same sepoy who had employed a man to carry his musket now came forward, with his eyes fixed and shaking all over. this, i was to understand, meant extreme weakness; but i had accidentally noticed him walking quite smartly before this exhibition, so i ordered him to keep close to the donkey that carried the havildar's luggage, and on no account to remain behind the party. he told the havildar that he would sit down only for a little while; and, i suppose, fell asleep, for he came up to us in the evening as naked as a robin. i saw another person bound to a tree and dead--a sad sight to see, whoever was the perpetrator. so many slave-sticks lie along our path, that i suspect the people here-about make a practice of liberating what slaves they cian find abandoned on the march, to sell them again. a large quantity of maize is cultivated at chimsaka's, at whose place we this day arrived. we got a supply, but being among thieves, we thought it advisable to move on to the next place (mtarika's). when starting, we found that fork, kettle, pot, and shot-pouch had been taken. the thieves, i observed, kept up a succession of jokes with chuma and wikatani and when the latter was enjoying them, gaping to the sky, they were busy putting the things of which he had charge under their cloths! i spoke to the chief, and he got the three first articles back for me. a great deal if not all the lawlessness of this quarter is the result of the slave-trade, for the arabs buy whoever is brought to them and in a country covered with forest as this is, kidnapping can be prosecuted with the greatest ease; elsewhere the people are honest, and have a regard for justice. _ st july, ._--as we approach mtarika's place, the country becomes more mountainous and the land sloping for a mile down to the south bank of the rovuma supports a large population. some were making new gardens by cutting down trees and piling the branches for burning; others had stored tip large quantities of grain and were moving it to a new locality, but they were all so well supplied with calico (merikano) that they would not look at ours: the market was in fact glutted by slavers from (quiloa) kilwa. on asking why people were seen tied to trees to die as we had seen them, they gave the usual answer that the arabs tie them thus and leave them to perish, because they are vexed, when the slaves can walk no further, that they have lost their money by them. the path is almost strewed with slave-sticks, and though the people denied it, i suspect that they make a practice of following slave caravans and cutting off the sticks from those who fall out in the march, and thus stealing them. by selling them again they get the quantities of cloth we see. some asked for gaudy prints, of which we had none, because we knew that the general taste of the africans of the interior is for strength rather than show in what they buy. the rovuma here is about yards broad, and still keeps up its character of a rapid stream, with sandy banks and islands: the latter are generally occupied, as being defensible when the river is in flood. _ nd july, ._--we rested at mtarika's old place; and though we had to pay dearly with our best table-cloths[ ] for it, we got as much as made one meal a day. at the same dear rate we could give occasionally only two ears of maize to each man; and if the sepoys got their comrades' corn into their hands, they eat it without shame. we had to bear a vast amount of staring, for the people, who are waiyau, have a great deal of curiosity, and are occasionally rather rude. they have all heard of our wish to stop the slave-trade, and are rather taken aback when told that by selling they are part and part guilty of the mortality of which we had been unwilling spectators. some were dumbfounded when shown that in the eye of their maker they are parties to the destruction of human life which accompanies this traffic both by sea and land. if they did not sell, the arabs would not come to buy. chuma and wakatani render what is said very eloquently in chiyau, most of the people being of their tribe, with only a sprinkling of slaves. chimseia, chimsaka, mtarika, mtendé, makanjela, mataka, and all the chiefs and people in our route to the lake, are waiyau, or waiau.[ ] on the southern slope down to the river there are many oozing springs and damp spots where rice has been sown and reaped. the adjacent land has yielded large crops of sorghum, congo-beans, and pumpkins. successive crowds of people came to gaze. my appearance and acts often cause a burst of laughter; sudden standing up produces a flight of women and children. to prevent peeping into the hut which i occupy, and making the place quite dark, i do my writing in the verandah. chitané, the poodle dog, the buffalo-calf, and our only remaining donkey are greeted with the same amount of curiosity and laughter-exciting comment as myself. every evening a series of loud musket reports is heard from the different villages along the river; these are imitation evening guns. all copy the arabs in dress and chewing tobacco with "nora" lime, made from burnt river shells instead of betel-nut and lime. the women are stout, well-built persons, with thick arms and legs; their heads incline to the bullet shape; the lip-rings are small; the tattoo a mixture of makoa and waiyau. fine blue and black beads are in fashion, and so are arm-coils of thick brass wire. very nicely inlaid combs are worn in the hair; the inlaying is accomplished by means of a gum got from the root of an orchis called _nangazu_. _ rd july, ._--a short march brought us to mtarika's new place. the chief made his appearance only after he had ascertained all he could about us. the population is immense; they are making new gardens, and the land is laid out by straight lines about a foot broad, cut with the hoe; one goes miles without getting beyond the marked or surveyed fields. mtarika came at last; a big ugly man, with large mouth and receding forehead. he asked to see all our curiosities, as the watch, revolver, breech-loading rifle, sextant. i gave him a lecture on the evil of selling his people, and he wished me to tell all the other chiefs the same thing. they dislike the idea of guilt being attached to them for having sold many who have lost their lives on their way down to the sea-coast. we had a long visit from mtarika next day; he gave us meal, and meat of wild hog, with a salad made of bean-leaves. a wretched swaheli arab, ill with rheumatism, came for aid, and got a cloth. they all profess to me to be buying ivory only. _ th july, ._--we left for mtendé, who is the last chief before we enter on a good eight days' march to mataka's; we might have gone to kandulo's, who is near the rovuma, and more to the north, but all are so well supplied with everything by slave-traders that we have difficulty in getting provisions at all. mataka has plenty of all kinds of food. on the way we passed the burnt bones of a person avho was accused of having eaten human flesh; he had been poisoned, or, as they said, killed by poison (muave?), and then burned. his clothes were hung, up on trees by the wayside as a warning to others. the country was covered with scraggy forest, but so undulating that one could often see all around from the crest of the waves. great mountain masses appear in the south and south-west. it feels cold, and the sky is often overcast. _ th july, ._--i took lunars yesterday, after which mtendé invited us to eat at his house where he had provided a large mess of rice porridge and bean-leaves as a relish. he says that many arabs pass him and many of them die in their journeys. he knows no deaf or dumb person in the country. he says that he cuts the throats of all animals to be eaten, and does not touch lion or hyaena. _ th july, ._--we got men from mtendé to carry loads and show the way. he asked a cloth to ensure his people going to the journey's end and behaving properly; this is the only case of anything like tribute being demanded in this journey: i gave him a cloth worth s. d. upland vegetation prevails; trees are dotted here and there among bushes five feet high, and fine blue and yellow flowers are common. we pass over a succession of ridges and valleys as in londa; each valley has a running stream or trickling rill; garden willows are in full bloom, and also a species of sage with variegated leaves beneath the flowers. when the sepoy perim threw away the tea and the lead lining, i only reproved him and promised him punishment if he committed any other wilful offence, but now he and another skulked behind and gave their loads to a stranger to carry, with a promise to him that i would pay. we waited two hours for them; and as the havildar said that they would not obey him, i gave perim and the other some smart cuts with a cane, but i felt that i was degrading myself, and resolved not to do the punishment myself again. _ th july, ._--hard travelling through a depopulated country. the trees are about the size of hop-poles with abundance of tall grass; the soil is sometimes a little sandy, at other times that reddish, clayey sort which yields native grain so well. the rock seen uppermost is often a ferruginous conglomerate, lying on granite rocks. the gum-copal tree is here a mere bush, and no digging takes place for the gum: it is called mchenga, and yields gum when wounded, as also bark, cloth, and cordage when stripped. mountain masses are all around us; we sleep at linata mountain. _ th july, ._--the masuko fruit abounds: the name is the same here as in the batoka country; there are also rhododendrons of two species, but the flowers white. we slept in a wild spot, near mount leziro, with many lions roaring about us; one hoarse fellow serenaded us a long time, but did nothing more. game is said to be abundant, but we saw none, save an occasional diver springing away from the path. some streams ran to the north-west to the lismyando, which flows n. for the rovuma; others to the south-east for the loendi. _ th and th july, ._--nothing to interest but the same weary trudge: our food so scarce that we can only give a handful or half a pound of grain to each person per day. the masuko fruit is formed, but not ripe till rains begin; very few birds are seen or heard, though there is both food and water in the many grain-bearing grasses and running streams, which we cross at the junction of every two ridges. a dead body lay in a hut by the wayside; the poor thing had begun to make a garden by the stream, probably in hopes of living long enough (two months or so) on wild fruits to reap a crop of maize. _ th july, ._--a drizzling mist set in during the night and continued this morning, we set off in the dark, however, leaving our last food for the havildar and sepoys who had not yet come up. the streams are now of good size. an arab brandy bottle was lying broken in one village called msapa. we hurried on as fast as we could to the luatizé, our last stage before getting to mataka's; this stream is rapid, about forty yards wide, waist deep, with many podostemons on the bottom. the country gets more and more undulating and is covered with masses of green foliage, chiefly masuko trees, which have large hard leaves. there are hippopotami further down the river on its way to the loendi. a little rice which had been kept for me i divided, but some did not taste food. _ th july, ._--a good many stragglers behind, but we push on to get food and send it back to them. the soil all reddish clay, the roads baked hard by the sun, and the feet of many of us are weary and sore: a weary march and long, for it is perpetually up and down now. i counted fifteen running streams in one day: they are at the bottom of the valley which separates the ridges. we got to the brow of a ridge about an hour from mataka's first gardens, and all were so tired that we remained to sleep; but we first invited volunteers to go on and buy food, and bring it back early next morning: they had to be pressed to do this duty. _ th july, ._--as our volunteers did not come at a.m., i set off to see the cause, and after an hour of perpetual up and down march, as i descended the steep slope which overlooks the first gardens, i saw my friends start up at the apparition--they were comfortably cooking porridge for themselves! i sent men of mataka back with food to the stragglers behind and came on to his town. an arab, sef rupia or rubea, head of a large body of slaves, on his way to the coast, most kindly came forward and presented an ox, bag of flour, and some cooked meat, all of which were extremely welcome to half-famished men, or indeed under any circumstances. he had heard of our want of food and of a band of sepoys, and what could the english think of doing but putting an end to the slave-trade? had he seen our wretched escort, all fear of them would have vanished! he had a large safari or caravan under him. this body is usually divided into ten or twelve portions, and all are bound to obey the leader to á certain extent: in this case there were eleven parties, and the traders numbered about sixty or seventy, who were dark coast arabs. each underling had his men under him, and when i saw them they were busy making the pens of branches in which their slaves and they sleep. sef came on with me to mataka's, and introduced me in due form with discharges of gunpowder. i asked him to come back next morning, and presented three cloths with a request that he would assist the havildar and sepoys, if he met them, with food: this he generously did. we found mataka's town situated in an elevated valley surrounded by mountains; the houses numbered at least , and there were many villages around. the mountains were pleasantly green, and had many trees which the people were incessantly cutting down. they had but recently come here: they were besieged by mazitu at their former location west of this; after fighting four days they left unconquered, having beaten the enemy off. mataka kept us waiting some time in the verandah of his large square house, and then made his appearance, smiling with his good-natured face. he is about sixty years of age, dressed as an arab, and if we may judge from the laughter with which his remarks were always greeted, somewhat humorous. he had never seen any but arabs before. he gave me a square house to live in, indeed the most of the houses here are square, for the arabs are imitated in everything: they have introduced the english pea, and we were pleased to see large patches of it in full bearing, and ripe in moist hollows which had been selected for it. the numerous springs which come out at various parts are all made use of. those parts which are too wet are drained, whilst beds are regularly irrigated by water-courses and ridges: we had afterwards occasion to admire the very extensive draining which has been effected among the hills. cassava is cultivated on ridges along all the streets in the town, which give it a somewhat regular and neat appearance. peas and tobacco were the chief products raised by irrigation, but batatas and maize were often planted too: wheat would succeed if introduced. the altitude is about feet above the sea: the air at this time is cool, and many people have coughs. mataka soon sent a good mess of porridge and cooked meat (beef); he has plenty of cattle and sheep: and the next day he sent abundance of milk. we stand a good deal of staring unmoved, though it is often accompanied by remarks by no means complimentary; they think that they are not understood, and probably i do misunderstand sometimes. the waiyau jumble their words as i think, and mataka thought that i did not enunciate anything, but kept my tongue still when i spoke. town of matak, moembé. _ th july, ._--the safari under sef set off this morning for kilwa. sef says that about of the kilwa people died this year, so slaving as well as philanthropy is accompanied with loss of life: we saw about seven of their graves; the rest died on the road up. there are two roads from this to the lake, one to loséwa, which is west of this, and opposite kotakota; the other, to makatu, is further south: the first is five days through deserted country chiefly; but the other, seven, among people and plenty of provisions all the way. it struck me after sef had numbered up the losses that the kilwa people sustained by death in their endeavours to «nslave people, similar losses on the part of those who go to "proclaim liberty to the captives, the opening of the prison to them that are bound,"--to save and elevate, need not be made so very much of as they sometimes are. soon after our arrival we heard that a number of mataka's waiyau had, without his knowledge, gone to nyassa, and in a foray carried off cattle and people: when they came home with the spoil, mataka ordered all to be sent back whence they came. the chief came up to visit me soon after, and i told him that his decision was the best piece of news i had heard in the country: he was evidently pleased with my approbation, and, turning to his people, asked if they heard what i said. he repeated my remark, and said, "you silly fellows think me wrong in returning the captives, but all wise men will approve of it," and he then scolded them roundly. i was accidentally spectator of this party going back, for on going out of the town i saw a meat market opened, and people buying with maize and meal. on inquiring, i was told that the people and cattle there were the nyassas, and they had slaughtered an ox, in order to exchange meat for grain as provisions on the journey. the women and children numbered fifty-four, and about a dozen boys were engaged in milking the cows: the cattle were from twenty-five to thirty head. the change from hard and scanty fare caused illness in several of our party. i had tasted no animal food except what turtle-doves and guinea-fowls could be shot since we passed matawatawa,--true, a fowl was given by mtendé. the last march was remarkable for the scarcity of birds, so eight days were spent on porridge and rice without relish. i gave mataka a trinket, to be kept in remembrance of his having sent back the nyassa people: he replied that he would always act in a similar manner. as it was a spontaneous act, it was all the more valuable. the sepoys have become quite intolerable, and if i cannot get rid of them we shall all starve before we accomplish what we wish. they dawdle behind picking up wild fruits, and over our last march (which we accomplished on the morning of the eighth day) they took from fourteen to twenty-two days. retaining their brutal feelings to the last they killed the donkey which i lent to the havildar to carry his things, by striking it on the head when in boggy places into which they had senselessly driven it loaded; then the havildar came on (his men pretending they could go no further from weakness), and killed the young buffalo and eat it when they thought they could hatch up a plausible story. they said it had died, and tigers came and devoured it--they saw them. "did you see the stripes of the tiger?" said i. all declared that they saw the stripes distinctly. this gave us an idea of their truthfulness, as there is no striped tiger in all africa. all who resolved on skulking or other bad behaviour invariably took up with the sepoys; their talk seemed to suit evil-doers, and they were such a disreputable-looking lot that i was quite ashamed of them. the havildar had no authority, and all bore the sulky dogged look of people going where they were forced but hated to go. this hang-dog expression of countenance was so conspicuous that i many a time have heard the country people remark, "these are the slaves of the party." they have neither spirit nor pluck as compared with the africans, and if one saw a village he turned out of the way to beg in the most abject manner, or lay down and slept, the only excuse afterwards being, "my legs were sore." having allowed some of them to sleep at the fire in my house, they began a wholesale plunder of everything they could sell, as cartridges, cloths, and meat, so i had to eject them. one of them then threatened to shoot my interpreter simon if he got him in a quiet place away from the english power. as this threat had been uttered three times, and i suspect that something of the kind had prevented the havildar exerting his authority, i resolved to get rid of them by sending them back to the coast by the first trader. it is likely that some sympathizers will take their part, but i strove to make them useful. they had but poor and scanty fare in a part of the way, but all of us suffered alike. they made themselves thoroughly disliked by their foul talk and abuse, and if anything tended more than another to show me that theirs was a moral unfitness for travel, it was the briskness assumed when they knew they were going back to the coast. i felt inclined to force them on, but it would have been acting from revenge, and to pay them out, so i forbore. i gave mataka forty-eight yards of calico, and to the sepoys eighteen yards, and arranged that he should give them food till suleiman, a respectable trader, should arrive. he was expected every day, and we passed him near the town. if they chose to go and get their luggage, it was of course all safe for them behind. the havildar begged still to go on with me, and i consented, though he is a drag on the party, but he will count in any difficulty. abraham recognised his uncle among the crowds who came to see us. on making himself known he found that his mother and two sisters had been sold to the arabs after he had been enslaved. the uncle pressed him to remain, and mataka urged, and so did another uncle, but in vain. i added my voice, and could have given him goods to keep him afloat a good while, but he invariably replied, "how can i stop where i have no mother and no sister?" the affection seems to go to the maternal side. i suggested that he might come after he had married a wife, but i fear very much that unless some european would settle, none of these nassick boys will come to this country. it would be decidedly better if they were taught agriculture in the simplest form, as the indian. mataka would have liked to put his oxen to use, but abraham could not help him with that. he is a smith, or rather a nothing, for unless he could smelt iron he would be entirely without materials to work with. _ th- th july, ._--one day, calling at mataka's, i found as usual a large crowd of idlers, who always respond with a laugh to everything he utters as wit. he asked, if he went to bombay what ought he to take to secure some gold? i replied, "ivory," he rejoined, "would slaves not be a good speculation?" i replied that, "if he took slaves there for sale, they would put him in prison." the idea of the great mataka in "chokee" made him wince, and the laugh turned for once against him. he said that as all the people from the coast crowd to him, they ought to give him something handsome for being here to supply their wants. i replied, if he would fill the fine well-watered country we had passed over with people instead of sending them off to kilwa, he would confer a benefit on visitors, but we had been starved on the way to him; and i then told him what the english would do in road-making in a fine country like this. this led us to talk of railways, ships, ploughing with oxen--the last idea struck him most. i told him that i should have liked some of the nassick boys to remain and teach this and other things, but they might be afraid to venture lest they should be sold again. the men who listened never heard such decided protests against selling each other into slavery before! the idea of guilt probably floated but vaguely in their minds, but the loss of life we have witnessed (in the guilt of which the sellers as well as the buyers participate) comes home very forcibly to their minds. mataka has been an active hand in slave wars himself, though now he wishes to settle down in quiet. the waiyau generally are still the most active agents the slave-traders have. the caravan leaders from kilwa arrive at a waiyau village, show the goods they have brought, are treated liberally by the elders, and told to wait and enjoy themselves, slaves enough to purchase all will be procured: then a foray is made against the manganja, who have few or no guns. the waiyau who come against them are abundantly supplied with both by their coast guests. several of the low coast arabs, who differ in nothing from the waiyau, usually accompany the foray, and do business on their own account: this is the usual way in which a safari is furnished with slaves. makanjela, a waiyau chief about a third of the way from mtendé's to mataka, has lost the friendship of all his neighbours by kidnapping and selling their people; if any of mataka's people are found in the district between makanjela and moembé, they are considered fair game and sold. makanjela's people cannot piss mataka to go to the manganja, so they do what they can by kidnapping and plundering all who fall into their hands. when i employed two of mataka's people to go back on the th with food to the havildar and sepoys, they went a little way and relieved some, but would not venture as far as the luatizé, for fear of losing their liberty by makanjela's people. i could not get the people of the country to go back; nor could i ask the nassick boys, who had been threatened by the sepoys with assassination,--and it was the same with the johanna men, because, though mahometans, the sepoys had called them caffirs, &c., and they all declared, "we are ready to do anything for you, but we will do nothing for these hindis." i sent back a sepoy, giving him provisions; he sat down in the first village, ate all the food, and returned. an immense tract of country lies uninhabited. to the north-east of moembé we have at least fifty miles of as fine land as can be seen anywhere, still bearing all the marks of having once supported a prodigious iron-smelting and grain-growing population. the clay pipes which are put on the nozzles of their bellows and inserted into the furnace are met with everywhere--often vitrified. then the ridges on which they planted maize, beans, cassava, and sorghum, and which they find necessary to drain off the too abundant moisture of the rains, still remain unlevelled to attest the industry of the former inhabitants; the soil being clayey, resists for a long time the influence of the weather. these ridges are very regular, for in crossing the old fields, as the path often compels us to do, one foot treads regularly on the ridge, and the other in the hollow, for a considerable distance. pieces of broken pots, with their rims ornamented with very good imitations of basket-work, attest that the lady potters of old followed the example given them by their still more ancient mothers,--their designs are rude, but better than we can make them without referring to the original. [illustration: imitation of basket-work in pottery.] no want of water has here acted to drive the people away, as has been the case further south. it is a perpetual succession of ridge and valley, with a running stream or oozing bog, where ridge is separated from ridge: the ridges become steeper and narrower as we approach mataka's. i counted fifteen running burns of from one to ten yards wide in one day's march of about six hours; being in a hilly or rather mountainous region, they flow rapidly and have plenty of water-power. in july any mere torrent ceases to flow, but these were brawling burns with water too cold ( °) for us to bathe in whose pores were all open by the relaxing regions nearer the coast. the sound, so un-african, of gushing water dashing over rocks was quite familiar to our ears. this district, which rises up west of mataka's to feet above the sea, catches a great deal of the moisture brought up by the easterly winds. many of the trees are covered with lichens. while here we had cold southerly breezes, and a sky so overcast every day after a.m., that we could take no astronomical observations: even the latitude was too poor to be much depended on. ° ' s. may have been a few miles from this. the cattle, rather a small breed, black and white in patches, and brown, with humps, give milk which is duly prized by these waiyau. the sheep are the large-tailed variety, and generally of a black colour. fowls and pigeons are the only other domestic animals we see, if we except the wretched village dogs which our-poodle had immense delight in chasing. the waiyau are far from a handsome race, but they are not the prognathous beings one sees on the west coast either. their heads are of a round shape; compact foreheads, but not particularly receding; the alae nasi are flattened out; lips full, and with the women a small lip-ring just turns them up to give additional thickness. their style of beauty is exactly that which was in fashion when the stone deities were made in the caves of elephanta and kenora near bombay. À favourite mode of dressing the hair into little knobs, which was in fashion there, is more common in some tribes than in this. the mouths of the women would not be so hideous with a small lip-ring if they did not file their teeth to points, but they seem strong and able for the work which falls to their lot. the men are large, strong-boned fellows, and capable of enduring great fatigue, they undergo a rite which once distinguished the jews about the age of puberty, and take a new name on the occasion; this was not introduced by the arabs, whose advent is a recent event, and they speak of the time before they were inundated with european manufactures in exchange for slaves, as quite within their memory. young mataka gave me a dish of peas, and usually brought something every time he made a visit, he seems a nice boy, and his father, in speaking of learning to read, said he and his companions could learn, but he himself was too old. the soil seems very fertile, for the sweet potatoes become very large, and we bought two loads of them for three cubits and two needles; they quite exceeded cwt. the maize becomes very large too; one cob had seeds. the abundance of water, the richness of soil, the available labour for building square houses, the coolness of the climate, make this nearly as desirable a residence as magomero; but, alas! instead of three weeks' easy sail up the zambesi and shiré, we have spent four weary months in getting here: i shall never cease bitterly to lament the abandonment of the magomero mission. moaning seems a favourite way of spending the time with some sick folk. for the sake of the warmth, i allowed a nassick boy to sleep in my house; he and i had the same complaint, dysentery, and i was certainly worse than he, but did not moan, while he played at it as often as he was awake. i told him that people moaned only when too ill to be sensible of what they were doing; the groaning ceased, though he became worse. three sepoys played at groaning very vigorously outside my door; they had nothing the matter with them, except perhaps fatigue, which we all felt alike; as these fellows prevented my sleeping, i told them quite civilly that, if so ill that they required to groan, they had better move off a little way, as i could not sleep; they preferred the verandah, and at once forbore. the abundance of grain and other food is accompanied by great numbers of rats or large mice, which play all manner of pranks by night; white ants have always to be guarded against likewise. anyone who would find an antidote to drive them away would confer a blessing; the natural check is the driver ant, which when it visits a house is a great pest for a time, but it clears the others out. footnotes: [ ] there is a double purpose in these murders; the terror inspired in the minds of the survivors spurs them on to endure the hardships of the march: the portuese drivers are quite alive to the merits of this stimulus.--ed. [ ] a tribal distinction turns on the customs prevailing with respect to animal food, _e.g._ one tribe will eat the elephant, the next looks on such flesh as unclean, and so with other meat. the neighbouring manganja gladly eat the leopard and hyaena.--ed. [ ] a coloured cloth manufactured expressly for barter in east africa. [ ] this is pronounced "y-yow."--ed. chapter iv. geology and description of the waiyau land. leaves mataka's. the nyumbo plant. native iron-foundry. blacksmiths. makes for the lake nyassa. delight at seeing the lake once more. the manganja or nyassa tribe. arab slave crossing. unable to procure passage across. the kungu fly. fear of the english amongst slavers. lake shore. blue ink. chitané changes colour. the nsaka fish. makalaosé drinks beer. the sanjika fish. london antiquities. lake rivers. mukaté's. lake pamalombé. mponda's. a slave gang. wikatani discovers his relatives and remains. _ th july, ._--we proposed to start to-day, but mataka said that he was not ready yet: the flour had to be ground, and he had given us no meat. he had sent plenty of cooked food almost every day. he asked if we would slaughter the ox he would give here, or take it on; we preferred to kill it at once. he came on the th with a good lot of flour for us, and men to guide us to nyassa, telling us that this was moembé, and his district extended all the way to the lake: he would not send us to loséwa, as that place had lately been plundered and burned. in general the chiefs have shown an anxiety to promote our safety. the country is a mass of mountains. on leaving mataka's we ascended considerably, and about the end of the first day's march, near magola's village, the barometer showed our greatest altitude, about feet above the sea. there were villages of these mountaineers everywhere, for the most part of houses or more each. the springs were made the most use of that they knew; the damp spots drained, and the water given a free channel for use in irrigation further down: most of these springs showed the presence of iron by the oxide oozing out. a great many patches of peas are seen in full bearing and flower. the trees are small, except in the hollows: there is plenty of grass and flowers near streams and on the heights. the mountain-tops may rise or feet above their flanks, along which we wind, going perpetually up and down the steep ridges of which the country is but a succession. looking at the geology of the district, the plateaux on each side of the rovuma are masses of grey sandstone, capped with masses of ferruginous conglomerate; apparently an aqueous deposit. when we ascend the rovuma about sixty miles, a great many pieces and blocks of silicified wood appear on the surface of the soil at the bottom of the slope up the plateaux. this in africa is a sure indication of the presence of coal beneath, but it was not observed cropping out; the plateaux are cut up in various directions by wadys well supplied with grass and trees on deep and somewhat sandy soil: but at the confluence of the loendi highlands they appear in the far distance. in the sands of the loendi pieces of coal are quite common.[ ] before reaching the confluence of the rovuma and loendi, or say about ninety miles from the sea, the plateau is succeeded by a more level country, having detached granitic masses shooting up some or feet. the sandstone of the plateau has at first been hardened, then quite metamorphosed into a chocolate-coloured schist. as at chilolé hill, we have igneous rocks, apparently trap, capped with masses of beautiful white dolomite. we still ascend in altitude as we go westwards, and come upon long tracts of gneiss with hornblende. the gneiss is often striated, all the striae looking one way--sometimes north and south, and at other times east and west. these rocks look as if a stratified rock had been nearly melted, and the strata fused together by the heat. from these striated rocks have shot up great rounded masses of granite or syenite, whose smooth sides and crowns contain scarcely any trees, and are probably from to feet above the sea. the elevated plains among these mountain masses show great patches of ferruginous conglomerate, which, when broken, look like yellow haematite with madrepore holes in it: this has made the soil of a red colour. on the watershed we have still the rounded granitic hills jutting above the plains (if such they may be called) which are all ups and downs, and furrowed with innumerable running rills, the sources of the rovuma and loendi. the highest rock observed with mica schist was at an altitude of feet. the same uneven country prevails as we proceed from the watershed about forty miles down to the lake, and a great deal of quartz in small fragments renders travelling-very difficult. near the lake, and along its eastern shore, we have mica schist and gneiss foliated, with a great deal of hornblende; but the most remarkable feature of it is that the rocks are all tilted on edge, or slightly inclined to the lake. the active agent in effecting this is not visible. it looks as if a sudden rent had been made, so as to form the lake, and tilt all these rocks nearly over. on the east side of the lower part of the lake we have two ranges of mountains, evidently granitic: the nearer one covered with small trees and lower than the other; the other jagged and bare, or of the granitic forms. but in all this country no fossil-yielding rock was visible except the grey sandstone referred to at the beginning of this note. the rocks are chiefly the old crystalline forms. one fine straight tall tree in the hollows seemed a species of fig: its fruit was just forming, but it was too high for me to ascertain its species. the natives don't eat the fruit, but they eat the large grubs which come out of it. the leaves were fifteen inches long by five broad: they call it unguengo. _ th july, ._--at magola's village. although we are now rid of the sepoys, we cannot yet congratulate ourselves on being rid of the lazy habits of lying down in the path which they introduced. a strong scud comes up from the south bringing much moisture with it: it blows so hard above, this may be a storm on the coast. temperature in mornings °. _ th july, ._--a short march brought us to pezimba's village, which consists of houses and huts. it is placed very nicely on a knoll between two burns, which, as usual, are made use of for irrigating peas in winter time. the headman said that if we left now we had a good piece of jungle before us, and would sleep twice in it before reaching mbanga. we therefore remained. an arab party, hearing of our approach, took a circuitous route among the mountains to avoid coming in contact with us. in travelling to pezimba's we had commenced our western descent to the lake, for we were now lower than magola's by feet. we crossed many rivulets and the lochesi, a good-sized stream. the watershed parts some streams for loendi and some for rovuma. there is now a decided scantiness of trees. many of the hill-tops are covered with grass or another plant; there is pleasure now in seeing them bare. ferns, rhododendrons, and a foliaged tree, which looks in the distance like silver-fir, are met with. the mandaré root is here called nyumbo, when cooked it has a slight degree of bitterness with it which cultivation may remove. mica schist crowned some of the heights on the watershed, then gneiss, and now, as we descend further, we have igneous rocks of more recent eruption, porphyry and gneiss, with hornblende. a good deal of ferruginous conglomerate, with holes in it, covers many spots; when broken, it looks like yellow haematite, with black linings to the holes: this is probably the ore used in former times by the smiths, of whose existence we now find still more evidence than further east. _ st july, ._--i had presented pezimba with a cloth, so he cooked for us handsomely last night, and this morning desired us to wait a little as he had not yet sufficient meal made to present: we waited and got a generous present. it was decidedly milder here than at mataka's, and we had a clear sky. in our morning's march we passed the last of the population, and went on through a fine well-watered fruitful country, to sleep near a mountain called mtéwiré, by a stream called msapo. a very large arab slave-party was close by our encampment, and i wished to speak to them; but as soon as they knew of our being near they set off in a pathless course across country, and were six days in the wilderness.[ ] _ st august, ._--we saw the encampment of another arab party. it consisted of ten pens, each of which, from the number of fires it contained, may have held from eighty to a hundred slaves. the people of the country magnified the numbers, saying that they would reach from this to mataka's; but from all i can learn, i think that from to slaves is the commoner gang. this second party went across country very early this morning. we saw the fire-sticks which the slaves had borne with them. the fear they feel is altogether the effect of the english name, for we have done nothing to cause their alarm. _ nd august, ._--there was something very cheering to me in the sight at our encampment of yellow grass and trees dotted over it, as in the bechuana country. the birds were singing merrily too, inspired by the cold, which was °, and by the vicinity of some population. gum-copal trees and bushes grow here as well as all over the country; but gum is never dug for, probably because the trees were never large enough to yield the fossil gum. marks of smiths are very abundant and some furnaces are still standing. much cultivation must formerly have been where now all is jungle. we arrived at mbanga, a village embowered in trees, chiefly of the euphorbia, so common in the manganja country further south. kandulo, the headman, had gone to drink beer at another village, but sent orders to give a hut and to cook for us. we remained next day. took lunars. we had now passed through, at the narrowest part, the hundred miles of depopulated country, of which about seventy are on the n.e. of mataka. the native accounts differ as to the cause. some say slave wars, and assert that the makoa from the vicinity of mozambique played an important part in them; others say famine; others that the people have moved to and beyond nyassa.[ ] certain it is, from the potsherds strewed over the country, and the still remaining ridges on which beans, sorghum, maize, and cassava, were planted, that the departed population was prodigious. the waiyau, who are now in the country, came from the other side of the rovuma, and they probably supplanted the manganja, an operation which we see going on at the present day. _ th august, ._--an hour and a half brought us to miulé, a village on the same level with mbanga; and the chief pressing us to stay, on the plea of our sleeping two nights in the jungle, instead of one if we left early next morning, we consented. i asked him what had become of the very large iron-smelting population of this region; he said many had died of famine, others had fled to the west of nyassa: the famine is the usual effect of slave wars, and much death is thereby caused--probably much more than by the journey to the coast. he had never heard any tradition of stone hatchets having been used, nor of stone spear-heads or arrowheads of that material, nor had he heard of any being turned up by the women in hoeing. the makondé, as we saw, use wooden spears where iron is scarce. i saw wooden hoes used for tilling the soil in the bechuana and bataka countries, but never stone ones. in i saw a bushwoman in the cape colony with a round stone and a hole through it; on being asked she showed me how it was used by inserting the top of a digging-stick into it, and digging a root. the stone was to give the stick weight. [illustration.] the stones still used as anvils and sledge-hammers by many of the african smiths, when considered from their point of view, show sounder sense than if they were burdened with the great weights we use. they are unacquainted with the process of case-hardening, which, applied to certain parts of our anvils, gives them their usefulness, and an anvil of their soft iron would not do so well as a hard stone. it is true a small light one might be made, but let any one see how the hammers of their iron bevel over and round in the faces with a little work, and he will perceive that only a wild freak would induce any sensible native smith to make a mass equal to a sledge-hammer, and burden himself with a weight for what can be better performed by a stone. if people are settled, as on the coast, then they gladly use any mass of cast iron they may find, but never where, as in the interior, they have no certainty of remaining any length of time in one spot. _ th august, ._--we left miulé, and commenced our march towards lake nyassa, and slept at the last of the streams that flow to the loendi. in mataka's vicinity, n.e., there is a perfect brush of streams flowing to that river: one forms a lake in its course, and the sources of the rovuma lie in the same region. after leaving mataka's we crossed a good-sized one flowing to loendi, and, the day after leaving pezimba's, another going to the chiringa or lochiringa, which is a tributary of the rovuma. _ th august, ._--we passed two cairns this morning at the beginning of the very sensible descent to the lake. they are very common in all this southern africa in the passes of the mountains, and are meant to mark divisions of countries, perhaps burial-places, but the waiyau who accompanied us thought that they were merely heaps of stone collected by some one making a garden. the cairns were placed just about the spot where the blue waters of nyassa first came fairly into view. we now came upon a stream, the misinjé, flowing into the lake, and we crossed it five times; it was about twenty yards wide, and thigh deep. we made but short stages when we got on the lower plateau, for the people had great abundance of food, and gave large presents of it if we rested. one man gave four fowls, three large baskets of maize, pumpkins, eland's fat--a fine male, as seen by his horns,--and pressed us to stay, that he might see our curiosities as well as others. he said that at one day's distance south of him all sorts of animals, as buffaloes, elands, elephants, hippopotami, and antelopes, could be shot. _ th august, ._--we came to the lake at the confluence of the misinjé, and felt grateful to that hand which had protected us thus far on our journey. it was as if i had come back to an old home i never expected again to see; and pleasant to bathe in the delicious waters again, hear the roar of the sea, and dash in the rollers. temp. ° at a.m., while the air was °. i feel quite exhilarated. the headman here, mokalaosé, is a real manganja, and he and all his people exhibit the greater darkness of colour consequent on being in a warm moist climate; he is very friendly, and presented millet, porridge, cassava, and hippopotamus meat boiled and asked if i liked milk, as he had some of mataka's cattle here. his people bring sanjika the best lake fish, for sale; they are dried on stages over slow fires, and lose their fine flavour by it, but they are much prized inland. i bought fifty for a fathom of calico; when fresh, they taste exactly like the best herrings, _i.e._ as we think, but voyagers' and travellers' appetites are often so whetted as to be incapable of giving a true verdict in matters of taste. [it is necessary to explain that livingstone knew of an arab settlement on the western shore of the lake, and that he hoped to induce the chief man jumbé to give him a passage to the other side.] _ th august, ._--i sent seyed majid's letter up to jumbé, but the messenger met some coast arabs at the loangwa, which may be seven miles from this, and they came back with him, haggling a deal about the fare, and then went off, saying that they would bring the dhow here for us. finding that they did not come, i sent musa, who brought back word that they had taken the dhow away over to jumbé at kotakota, or, as they pronounce it, ngotagota. very few of the coast arabs can read; in words they are very polite, but truthfulness seems very little regarded. i am resting myself and people--working up journal, lunars, and altitudes--but will either move south or go to the arabs towards the north soon. mokalaosé's fears of the waiyau will make him welcome jumbé here, and then the arab will some day have an opportunity of scattering his people as he has done those at kotakota. he has made loséwa too hot for himself. when the people there were carried off by mataka's people, jumbé seized their stores of grain, and now has no post to which he can go there. the loangwa arabs give an awful account of jumbé's murders and selling the people, but one cannot take it all in; at the mildest it must have been bad. this is all they ever do; they cannot form a state or independent kingdom: slavery and the slave-trade are insuperable obstacles to any permanence inland; slaves can escape so easily, all therefore that the arabs do is to collect as much money as they can by hook and by crook, and then leave the country. we notice a bird called namtambwé, which sings very nicely with a strong voice after dark here at the misinjé confluence. _ th august, ._--two headmen came down country from villages where we slept, bringing us food, and asking how we are treated; they advise our going south to mukaté's, where the lake is narrow. _ th- th august, ._--map making; but my energies were sorely taxed by the lazy sepoys, and i was usually quite tired out at night. some men have come down from mataka's, and report the arrival of an englishman with cattle for me, "he has two eyes behind as well as two in front:" this is enough of news for awhile! mokalaosé has his little afflictions, and he tells me of them. a wife ran away, i asked how many he had; he told me twenty in all: i then thought he had nineteen too many. he answered with the usual reason, "but who would cook for strangers if i had but one?" we saw clouds of "kungu" gnats on the lake; they are not eaten here. an ungenerous traveller coming here with my statement in his hand, and finding the people denying all knowledge of how to catch and cook them, might say that i had been romancing in saying i had seen them made into cakes in the northern part of the lake; when asking here about them, a stranger said, "they know how to use them in the north; we do not." mokalaosé thinks that the arabs are afraid that i may take their dhows from them and go up to the north. he and the other headmen think that the best way will be to go to mukaté's in the south. all the arabs flee from me, the english name being in their minds inseparably connected with recapturing slavers: they cannot conceive that i have any other object in view; they cannot read seyed majid's letter. _ st august, ._--started for the loangwa, on the east side of the lake; hilly all the way, about seven miles. this river may be twenty yards wide near its confluence; the misinjé is double that: each has accumulated a promontory of deposit and enters the lake near its apex. we got a house from a waiyau man on a bank about forty feet above the level of nyassa, but i could not sleep for the manoeuvres of a crowd of the minute ants which infested it. they chirrup distinctly; they would not allow the men to sleep either, though all were pretty tired by the rough road up. _ nd august, ._--we removed to the south side of the loangwa, where there are none of these little pests. _ rd august, ._--proposed to the waiyau headman to send a canoe over to call jumbé, as i did not believe in the assertions of the half-caste arab here that he had sent for his. all the waiyau had helped me, and why not he? he was pleased with this, but advised waiting till a man sent to loséwa should return. _ th august, ._--a leopard took a dog out of a house next to ours; he had bitten a man before, but not mortally. _ th august, ._--news come that the two dhows have come over to loséwa (loséfa). the mazitu had chased jumbé up the hills: had they said, on to an island, i might have believed them. _ th august, ._--the fear which the english have inspired in the arab slave-traders is rather inconvenient. all flee from me as if i had the plague, and i cannot in consequence transmit letters to the coast, or get across the lake. they seem to think that if i get into a dhow i will be sure to burn it. as the two dhows on the lake are used for nothing else but the slave-trade, their owners have no hope of my allowing them to escape, so after we have listened to various lies as excuses, we resolve to go southwards, and cross at the point of departure of the shiré from the lake. i took lunars several times on both sides of the moon, and have written a despatch for lord clarendon, besides a number of private letters. _ rd september, ._--went down to confluence of the misinjé and came to many of the eatable insect "kungu,"--they are caught by a quick motion of the hand holding a basket. we got a cake of these same insects further down; they make a buzz like a swarm of bees, and are probably the perfect state of some lake insect. i observed two beaches of the lake: one about fifteen feet above the present high-water mark, and the other about forty above that; but between the two the process of disintegration, which results from the sudden cold and heat in these regions, has gone on so much that seldom is a well-rounded smoothed one seen; the lower beach is very well marked. the strike of large masses of foliated gneiss is parallel with the major axis of the lake, and all are tilted on edge. some are a little inclined to the lake, as if dipping to it westwards, but others are as much inclined the opposite way, or twisted. i made very good blue ink from the juice of a berry, the fruit of a creeper, which is the colour of port wine when expressed. a little ferri carb. ammon., added to this is all that is required. the poodle dog chitané is rapidly changing the colour of its hair. all the parts corresponding to the ribs and neck are rapidly becoming red; the majority of country dogs are of this colour. the manganja, or wa-nyassa, are an aboriginal race; they have great masses of hair, and but little, if any, of the prognathous in the profile. their bodies and limbs are very well made, and the countenance of the men is often very pleasant. the women are very plain and lumpy, but exceedingly industrious in their gardens from early morning till about a.m., then from p.m. till dark, or pounding corn and grinding it: the men make twine or nets by day, and are at their fisheries in the evenings and nights. they build the huts, the women plaster them. a black fish, the nsaka, makes a hole, with raised edges, which, with the depth from which they are taken, is from fifteen to eighteen inches, and from two to three feet broad. it is called by the natives their house. the pair live in it for some time, or until the female becomes large for spawning; this operation over, the house is left. i gave mokalaosé some pumpkin seed and peas. he took me into his house, and presented a quantity of beer. i drank a little, and seeing me desist from taking more, he asked if i wished a servant-girl to "_pata mimba_." not knowing what was meant, i offered the girl the calabash of beer, and told her to drink, but this was not the intention. he asked if i did not wish more; and then took the vessel, and as he drank the girl performed the operation on himself. placing herself in front, she put both hands round his waist below the short ribs, and pressing gradually drew them round to his belly in front. he took several prolonged draughts, and at each she repeated the operation, as if to make the liquor go equally over the stomach. our topers don't seem to have discovered the need for this. _ th september, ._--our march is along the shore to ngombo promontory, which approaches so near to senga or tsenga opposite, as to narrow the lake to some sixteen or eighteen miles. it is a low sandy point, the edge fringed on the north-west and part of the south with a belt of papyrus and reeds; the central parts wooded. part of the south side has high sandy dunes, blown up by the south wind, which strikes it at right angles there. one was blowing as we marched along the southern side eastwards, and was very tiresome. we reached panthunda's village by a brook called lilolé. another we crossed before coming to it is named libesa: these brooks form the favourite spawning grounds of the sanjika and mpasa, two of the best fishes of the lake. the sanjika is very like our herring in shape and taste and size; the mpasa larger every way: both live on green herbage formed at the bottom of the lake and rivers. _ th september, ._--chirumba's village being on the south side of a long lagoon, we preferred sleeping on the mainland, though they offered their cranky canoes to ferry us over. this lagoon is called pansangwa. _ th september, ._--in coming along the southern side of ngombo promontory we look eastwards, but when we leave it we turn southwards, having a double range of lofty mountains on our left. these are granitic in form, the nearer range being generally the lowest, and covered with scraggy trees; the second, or more easterly, is some feet above the sea, bare and rugged, with jagged peaks shooting high into the air. this is probably the newest range. the oldest people have felt no earthquake, but some say that they have heard of such things from their elders. we passed very many sites of old villages, which are easily known by the tree euphorbia planted round an umbelliferous one, and the sacred fig. one species here throws out strong buttresses in the manner of some mangroves instead of sending down twiners which take root, as is usually the ease with the tropical fig. these, with millstones--stones for holding the pots in cooking--and upraised clay benches, which have been turned into brick by fire in the destruction of the huts, show what were once the "pleasant haunts of men." no stone implements ever appear. if they existed they could not escape notice, since the eyes in walking are almost always directed to the ground to avoid stumbling on stones or stumps. in some parts of the world stone implements are so common they seem to have been often made and discarded as soon as formed, possibly by getting better tools; if, indeed, the manufacture is not as modern as that found by mr. waller. passing some navvies in the city who were digging for the foundation of a house, he observed a very antique-looking vase, wet from the clay, standing on the bank. he gave ten shillings for it, and subsequently, by the aid of a scrubbing brush and some water, detected the hieroglyphics "copeland late spode" on the bottom of it! here the destruction is quite recent, and has been brought about by some who entertained us very hospitably on the misinjé, before we came to the confluence. the woman chief, ulenjelenjé, or njelenjé, bore a part in it for the supply of arab caravans. it was the work of the masininga, a waiyau tribe, of which her people form a part. they almost depopulated the broad fertile tract, of some three or four miles, between the mountain range and the lake, along which our course lay. it was wearisome to see the skulls and bones scattered about everywhere; one would fain not notice them, but they are so striking as one trudges along the sultry path, that it cannot be avoided. _ th september, ._--we spent sunday at kandango's village. the men killed a hippopotamus when it was sleeping on the shore; a full-grown female, feet inches from the snout to the insertion of the tail, and feet inches high at the withers. the bottom here and all along southwards now is muddy. many of the _siluris glanis_ are caught equal in length to an eleven or a twelve-pound salmon, but a great portion is head; slowly roasted on a stick stuck in the ground before the fire they seemed to me much more savoury than i ever tasted them before. with the mud we have many shells: north of ngombo scarcely one can be seen, and there it is sandy or rocky. _ th september, ._--in marching southwards we came close to the range (the lake lies immediately on the other side of it), but we could not note the bays which it forms; we crossed two mountain torrents from sixty to eighty yards broad, and now only ankle deep. in flood these bring down enormous trees, which are much battered and bruised among the rocks in their course; they spread over the plain, too, and would render travelling here in the rains impracticable. after spending the night at a very civil headman's chefu, we crossed the lotendé, another of these torrents: each very lofty mass in the range seemed to give rise to one. nothing of interest occurred as we trudged along. a very poor headman, pamawawa, presented a roll of salt instead of food: this was grateful to us, as we have been without that luxury some time. _ th september, ._--we crossed the rivulet nguena, and then went on to another with a large village by it, it is called pantoza pangone. the headman had been suffering from sore eyes for four months, and pressed me to stop and give him medicine, which i did. _ th september, ._--we crossed a strong brook called nkoré. my object in mentioning the brooks which were flowing at this time, and near the end of the dry season, is to give an idea of the sources of supply of evaporation. the men enumerate the following, north of the misinjé. those which are greater are marked thus +, and the lesser ones -. . misinjé + has canoes. . loangwa - . leséfa - . lelula - . nchamanjé - . musumba + . fubwé + . chia - . kisanga + . bweka - . chifumero + has canoes. . loangwa - . mkoho - . mangwelo - at n. end of lake. including the above there are twenty or twenty-four perennial brooks and torrents which give a good supply of water in the dry season; in the wet season they are supplemented by a number of burns, which, though flowing now, have their mouths blocked up with bars of sand, and yield nothing except by percolation; the lake rises at least four feet perpendicularly in the wet season, and has enough during the year from these perennial brooks to supply the shiré's continual flow. [it will be remembered that the beautiful river shiré carries off the waters of lake nyassa and joins the zambesi near mount morambala, about ninety miles from the sea. it is by this water-way that livingstone always hoped to find an easy access to central africa. the only obstacles that exist are, first, the foolish policy of the portuguese with regard to customs' duties at the mouth of the zambesi; and secondly, a succession of cataracts on the shiré, which impede navigation for seventy miles. the first hindrance may give way under more liberal views than those which prevail at present at the court of lisbon, and then the remaining difficulty--accepted as a fact--will be solved by the establishment of a boat service both above and below the cataracts. had livingstone survived he would have been cheered by hearing that already several schemes are afoot to plant missions in the vicinity of lake nyassa, and we may with confidence look to the revival of the very enterprise which he presently so bitterly deplores as a thing of the past, for bishop steere has fully determined to re-occupy the district in which fell his predecessor, bishop mackenzie, and others attached to the universities mission.] in the course of this day's march we were pushed close to the lake by mount gomé, and, being now within three miles of the end of the lake, we could see the whole plainly. there we first saw the shiré emerge, and there also we first gazed on the broad waters of nyassa. many hopes have been disappointed here. far down on the right bank of the zambesi lies the dust of her whose death changed all my future prospects; and now, instead of a check being given to the slave-trade by lawful commerce on the lake, slave-dhows prosper! an arab slave-party fled on hearing of us yesterday. it is impossible not to regret the loss of good bishop mackenzie, who sleeps far down the shiré, and with him all hope of the gospel being introduced into central africa. the silly abandonment of all the advantages of the shiré route by the bishop's successor i shall ever bitterly deplore, but all will come right some day, though i may not live to participate in the joy, or even see the commencement of better times. in the evening we reached the village of cherekalongwa on the brook pamchololo, and were very jovially received by the headman with beer. he says that mukaté,[ ] kabinga, and mponda alone supply the slave-traders now by raids on the manganja, but they go s.w. to the maravi, who, impoverished by a mazitu raid, sell each other as well. _ th, september, ._--at cherekalongwa's (who has a skin disease, believed by him to have been derived from eating fresh-water turtles), we were requested to remain one day in order that he might see us. he had heard much about us; had been down the shiré, and as far as mosambique, but never had an englishman in his town before. as the heat is great we were glad of the rest and beer, with which he very freely supplied us. i saw the skin of a phenembe, a species of lizard which devours chickens; here it is named salka. it had been flayed by a cut up the back--body, inches; across belly, inches. after nearly giving up the search for dr. roscher's point of reaching the lake--because no one, either arab or native, had the least idea of either nusseewa or makawa, the name given to the place--i discovered it in lesséfa, the accentuated _é_ being sounded as our _e_ in _set_. this word would puzzle a german philologist, as being the origin of nussewa, but the waiyau pronounce it loséwa, the arabs lusséwa, and roscher's servant transformed the _l_ and _é_ into _n_ and _ee_, hence nusseewa. in confirmation of this rivulet leséfa, which is opposite kotakota, or, as the arabs pronounce it, nkotakota, the chief is mangkaka (makawa), or as there is a confusion of names as to chief it may be mataka, whose town and district is called moembé, the town pamoembe = mamemba. i rest content with kingomango so far verifying the place at which he arrived two months after we had discovered lake nyassa. he deserved all the credit due to finding the way thither, but he travelled as an arab, and no one suspected him to be anything else. our visits have been known far and wide, and great curiosity excited; but dr. roscher merits the praise only of preserving his _incognito_ at a distance from kilwa: his is almost the only case known of successfully assuming the arab guise--burckhardt is the exception. when mr. palgrave came to muscat, or a town in oman where our political agent col. desborough was stationed, he was introduced to that functionary by an interpreter as hajee ali, &c. col. desborough replied, "you are no hajee ali, nor anything else but gifford palgrave, with whom i was schoolfellow at the charter house." col. desborough said he knew him at once, from a peculiar way of holding his head, and palgrave begged him not to disclose his real character to his interpreter, on whom, and some others, he had been imposing. i was told this by mr. dawes, a lieutenant in the indian navy, who accompanied colonel pelly in his visit to the nejed, riad, &c, and took observations for him. _tañgaré_ is the name of a rather handsome bean, which possesses intoxicating qualities. to extract these it is boiled, then peeled, and new water supplied: after a second and third boiling it is pounded, and the meal taken to the river and the water allowed to percolate through it several times. twice cooking still leaves the intoxicating quality; but if eaten then it does not cause death: it is curious that the natives do not use it expressly to produce intoxication. when planted near a tree it grows all over it, and yields abundantly: the skin of the pod is velvety, like our broad beans. another bean, with a pretty white mark on it, grows freely, and is easily cooked, and good: it is here called _gwingwiza_. _ th september, ._--we were now a short distance south of the lake, and might have gone west to mosauka's (called by some pasauka's) to cross the shiré there, but i thought that my visit to mukaté's, a waiyau chief still further south, might do good. he, mponda, and kabinga, are the only three chiefs who still carry on raids against the manganja at the instigation of the coast arabs, and they are now sending periodical marauding parties to the maravi (here named malola) to supply the kilwa slave-traders. we marched three hours southwards, then up the hills of the range which flanks all the lower part of the lake. the altitude of the town is about feet above the lake. the population near the chief is large, and all the heights as far as the eye can reach are crowned with villages. the second range lies a few miles off, and is covered with trees as well as the first, the nearest high mass is mañgoché. the people live amidst plenty. all the chiefs visited by the arabs have good substantial square houses built for their accommodation. mukaté never saw a european before, and everything about us is an immense curiosity to him and to his people. we had long visits from him. he tries to extract a laugh out of every remark. he is darker than the generality of waiyau, with a full beard trained on the chin, as all the people hereabouts have--arab fashion. the courts of his women cover a large space, our house being on one side of them. i tried to go out that way, but wandered, so the ladies sent a servant to conduct me out in the direction i wished to go, and we found egress by passing through some huts with two doors in them. _ th september, ._--at mukaté's. the prayer book does not give ignorant persons any idea of an unseen being addressed, it looks more like reading or speaking to the book: kneeling and praying with eyes shut is better than, our usual way of holding divine service. we had a long discussion about the slave-trade. the arabs have told the chief that our object in capturing slavers is to get them into our own possession, and make them of our own religion. the evils which we have seen--the skulls, the ruined villages, the numbers who perish on the way to the coast and on the sea, the wholesale murders committed by the waiyau to build up arab villages elsewhere--these things mukaté often tried to turn off with a laugh, but our remarks are safely lodged in many hearts. next day, as we went along, our guide spontaneously delivered their substance to the different villages along our route. before we reached him, a headman, in convoying me a mile or two, whispered to me, "speak to mukaté to give his forays up." it is but little we can do, but we lodge a protest in the heart against a vile system, and time may ripen it. their great argument is, "what could we do without arab cloth?" my answer is, "do what you did before the arabs came into the country." at the present rate of destruction of population, the whole country will soon be a desert. an earthquake happened here last year, that is about the end of it or beginning of this (the crater on the grand. comoro island smoked for three months about that time); it shook all the houses and everything, but they observed no other effects.[ ] no hot springs are known here. _ th september, ._--we marched down from mukaté's and to about the middle of the lakelet pamalombé. mukaté had no people with canoes near the usual crossing place, and he sent a messenger to see that we were fairly served. here we got the manganja headmen to confess that an earthquake had happened; all the others we have inquired of have denied it; why, i cannot conceive. the old men said that they had felt earthquakes twice, once near sunset and the next time at night--they shook everything, and were accompanied with noise, and all the fowls cackled; there was no effect on the lake observed. they profess ignorance of any tradition of the water having stood higher. their traditions say that they came originally from the west, or west north-west, which they call "maravi;" and that their forefathers taught them to make nets and kill fish. they have no trace of any teaching by a higher instructor; no carvings or writings on the rocks; and they never heard of a book until we came among them. their forefathers never told them that after or at death they went to god, but they had heard it said of such a one who died, "god took him." _ th september, ._--we embarked the whole party in eight canoes, and went up the lake to the point of junction between it and the prolongation of nyassa above it, called massangano ("meetings"), which took us two hours. a fishing party there fled on seeing us, though we shouted that we were a travelling party (or "olendo "). mukaté's people here left us, and i walked up to the village of the fugitives with one attendant only. their suspicions were so thoroughly aroused that they would do nothing. the headman (pima) was said to be absent; they could not lend us a hut, but desired us to go on to mponda's. we put up a shed for ourselves, and next morning, though we pressed them for a guide, no one would come. from pima's village we had a fine view of pamalombé and the range of hills on its western edge, the range which flanks the lower part of nyassa,--on part of which mukaté lives,--the gap of low land south of it behind which shirwa lake lies, and chikala and zomba nearly due south from us. people say hippopotami come from lake shirwa into lake nyassa. there is a great deal of vegetation in pamalombé, gigantic rushes, duckweed, and great quantities of aquatic plants on the bottom; one slimy translucent plant is washed ashore in abundance. fish become very fat on these plants; one called "kadiakola" i eat much of; it has a good mass of flesh on it. it is probable that the people of lake tanganyika and nyassa, and those on the rivers shiré and zambesi, are all of one stock, for the dialects vary very little.[ ] i took observations on this point. an arab slave-party, hearing of us, decamped. _ th september, ._--when we had proceeded a mile this morning we came to or people making salt on a plain impregnated with it. they lixiviate the soil and boil the water, which has filtered through a bunch of grass in a hole in the bottom of a pot, till all is evaporated and a mass of salt left. we held along the plain till we came to mponda's, a large village, with a stream running past. the plain at the village is very fertile, and has many large trees on it. the cattle of mponda are like fatted madagascar beasts, and the hump seems as if it would weigh lbs.[ ] the size of body is so enormous that their legs, as remarked by our men, seemed very small. mponda is a blustering sort of person, but immensely interested in everything european. he says that he would like to go with me. "would not care though he were away ten years." i say that he may die in the journey.--"he will die here as well as there, but he will see all the wonderful doings of our country." he knew me, having come to the boat, to take a look _incognito_ when we were here formerly. we found an arab slave-party here, and went to look at the slaves; seeing this; mponda was alarmed lest we should proceed to violence in his town, but i said to him that we went to look only. eighty-five slaves were in a pen formed of dura stalks _(holcus sorghum_). the majority were boys of about eight or ten years of age; others were grown men and women. nearly all were in the taming-stick; a few of the younger ones were in thongs, the thong passing round the neck of each. several pots were on the fires cooking dura and beans. a crowd went with us, expecting a scene, but i sat down, and asked a few questions about the journey, in front. the slave-party consisted of five or six half-caste coast arabs, who said that they came from zanzibar; but the crowd made such a noise that we could not hear ourselves speak. i asked if they had any objections to my looking at the slaves, the owners pointed out the different slaves, and said that after feeding them, and accounting for the losses in the way to the coast, they made little by the trip. i suspect that the gain is made by those who ship them to the ports of arabia, for at zanzibar most of the younger slaves we saw went at about seven dollars a head. i said to them it was a bad business altogether. they presented fowls to me in the evening. _ th september, ._--the chief begged so hard that i would stay another day and give medicine to a sick child, that i consented. he promised plenty of food, and, as an earnest of his sincerity, sent an immense pot of beer in the evening. the child had been benefited by the medicine given yesterday. he offered more food than we chose to take. the agricultural class does not seem to be a servile one: all cultivate, and the work is esteemed. the chief was out at his garden when we arrived, and no disgrace is attached to the field labourer. the slaves very likely do the chief part of the work, but all engage in it, and are proud of their skill. here a great deal of grain is raised, though nearly all the people are waiyau or machinga. this is remarkable, as they have till lately been marauding and moving from place to place. the manganja possessed the large breed of humped cattle which fell into the hands of the waiyau, and knew how to milk them. their present owners never milk them, and they have dwindled into a few instead of the thousands of former times.[ ] a lion killed a woman early yesterday morning, and ate most of her undisturbed. it is getting very hot; the ground to the feet of the men "burns like fire" after noon, so we are now obliged to make short marches, and early in the morning chiefly. wikatani--bishop mackenzie's favourite boy--met a brother here, and he finds that he has an elder brother and a sister at kabinga's. the father who sold him into slavery is dead. he wishes to stop with his relatives, and it will be well if he does. though he has not much to say, what he does advance against the slave-trade will have its weight, and it will all be in the way of preparation for better times and more light. the elder brother was sent for, but had not arrived when it was necessary for us to leave mponda's on the rivulet ntemangokwé. i therefore gave wikatani some cloth, a flint gun instead of the percussion one he carried, some flints, paper to write upon, and commended him to mponda's care till his relatives arrived. he has lately shown a good deal of levity, and perhaps it is best that he should have a touch of what the world is in reality. [in a letter written about this time dr. livingstone, in speaking of wikatani, says, "he met with a brother, and found that he had two brothers and one or two sisters living down at the western shore of lake pamelombé under kabinga. he thought that his relatives would not again sell him. i had asked him if he wished to remain, and he at once said yes, so i did not attempt to dissuade him: his excessive levity will perhaps be cooled by marriage. i think he may do good by telling some of what he has seen and heard. i asked him if he would obey an order from his chief to hunt the manganja, and he said, 'no.' i hope he won't. in the event of any mission coming into the country of mataka, he will go there. i gave him paper to write to you,[ ] and, commending him to the chiefs, bade the poor boy farewell. i was sorry to part with him, but the arabs tell the waiyau chiefs that our object in liberating slaves is to make them our own and turn them to our religion. i had declared to them, through wikatani as interpreter, that they never became our slaves, and were at liberty to go back to their relatives if they liked; and now it was impossible to object to wikatani going without stultifying my own statements." it is only necessary to repeat that wikatani and chuma had been liberated from the slavers by dr. livingstone and bishop mackenzie in ; they were mere children when set free. we must not forget to record the fact that when mr. young reached maponda, two years afterwards, to ascertain whether the doctor really had been murdered, as musa declared, he was most hospitably received by the chief, who had by this time a great appreciation of everything english.] the lines of tattoo of the different tribes serve for ornaments, and are resorted to most by the women; it is a sort of heraldry closely resembling the highland tartans. [illustration: manganja and machinga women (from a drawing by the late dr. meller).] footnotes: [ ] coal was shown to a group of natives when first the _pioneer_ ascended the river shiré. members of numerous tribes were present, and all recognised it at once as makala or coal.--ed. [ ] dr. livingstone heard this subsequently when at casembe's. [ ] the greater part were driven down into the manganja country by war and famine combined, and eventually filled the slave gangs of the portuguese, whose agents went from tette and senna to procure them.--ed. [ ] pronounced mkata by the waiyau.--ed. [ ] earthquakes are by no means uncommon. a slight shock was felt in at magomero; on asking the natives if they knew the cause of it, they replied that on one occasion, after a very severe earthquake which shook boulders off the mountains, all the wise men of the country assembled to talk about it and came to the following conclusion, that a star had fallen from heaven into the sea, and that the bubbling caused the whole earth to rock; they said the effect was the same as that caused by throwing, a red-hot stone into a pot of water.--ed. [ ] the waiyau language differs very much from the nyassa, and is exceedingly difficult to master: it holds good from the coast to nyassa, but to the west of the lake the nyassa tongue is spoken over a vast tract.--ed. [ ] we shall see that more to the north the hump entirely disappears. [ ] it is very singular to witness the disgust with which the idea of drinking milk is received by most of these tribes when we remember that the caffre nations on the south, and again, tribes more to the north, subsist principally on it. a lad will undergo punishment rather than milk a goat. eggs are likewise steadily eschewed.--ed. [ ] to myself.--ed. chapter v. crosses cape maclear. the havildar demoralised. the discomfited chief. beaches marenga's town. the earth-sponge. description of marenga's town. rumours of mazitu. musa and the johanna men desert. beaches kimsusa's. his delight at seeing the doctor once more. the fat ram. kimsusa relates his experience of livingstone's advice. chuma finds relatives. kimsusa solves the transport difficulty nobly. another old fishing acquaintance. description of the people and country on the west of the lake. the kanthundas. kauma. iron-smelting. an african sir colin campbell. milandos. _ st september, ._--we marched westwards, making across the base of cape maclear. two men employed as guides and carriers, went along grumbling that their dignity was so outraged by working--"only fancy waiyau carrying like slaves!!" they went but a short distance, and took advantage of my being in front to lay down the loads, one of which consisted of the havildar's bed and cooking things; here they opened the other bundle and paid themselves--the gallant havildar sitting and looking on. he has never been of the smallest use, and lately has pretended to mysterious pains in his feet; no swelling or other symptom accompanied this complaint. on coming to pima's village he ate a whole fowl and some fish for supper, slept soundly till daybreak, then on awaking commenced a furious groaning--"feet were so bad." i told him that people usually moaned when insensible, but he had kept quiet till he awaked; he sulked at this, and remained all day, though i sent a man to carry his kit for him, and when he came up he had changed the seat of his complaint from his feet to any part of his abdomen. he gave off his gun-belt and pouch to the carrier. this was a blind to me, for i examined and found that he had already been stealing and selling his ammunition: this is all preparatory to returning to the coast with some slave-trader. nothing can exceed the ease and grace with which sepoys can glide from a swagger into the most abject begging of food from the villagers. he has remained behind. _ nd september, ._--the hills we crossed were about feet above nyassa, generally covered with trees; no people were seen. we slept by the brook sikoché. rocks of hardened sandstone rested on mica schist, which had an efflorescence of alum on it, above this was dolomite; the hills often capped with it and oak-spar, giving a snowy appearance. we had a waiyau party with us--six handsomely-attired women carried huge pots of beer for their husbands, who very liberally invited us to partake. after seven hours' hard travelling we came to the village, where we spend sunday by the torrent usangazi, and near a remarkable mountain, namasi. the chief, a one-eyed man, was rather coy--coming _incognito_ to visit us; and, as i suspected that he was present, i asked if the chief were an old woman, afraid to look at and welcome a stranger? all burst into a laugh, and looked at him, when he felt forced to join in it, and asked what sort of food we liked best. chuma put this clear enough by saying, "he eats everything eaten by the waiyau." this tribe, or rather the machinga, now supersede the manganja. we passed one village of the latter near this, a sad, tumble-down affair, while the waiyau villages are very neat, with handsome straw or reed fences all around their huts. _ th september, ._--we went only - / miles to the village of marenga, a very large one, situated at the eastern edge of the bottom of the heel of the lake. the chief is ill of a loathsome disease derived direct from the arabs. raised patches of scab of circular form disfigure the face and neck as well as other parts. his brother begged me to see him and administer some remedy for the same complaint. he is at a village a little way off, and though sent for, was too ill to come or to be carried. the tribe is of babisa origin. many of these people had gone to the coast as traders, and returning with arms and ammunition joined the waiyau in their forays on the manganja, and eventually set themselves up as an independent tribe. the women do not wear the lip-ring, though the majority of them are waiyau. they cultivate largely, and have plenty to eat. they have cattle, but do not milk them. the bogs, or earthen sponges,[ ] of this country occupy a most important part in its physical geography, and probably explain the annual inundations of most of the rivers. wherever a plain sloping towards a narrow opening in hills or higher ground exists, there we have the conditions requisite for the formation of an african sponge. the vegetation, not being of a heathy or peat-forming kind, falls down, rots, and then forms rich black loam. in many cases a mass of this loam, two or three feet thick, rests on a bed of pure river sand, which is revealed by crabs and other aquatic animals bringing it to the surface. at present, in the dry season, the black loam is cracked in all directions, and the cracks are often as much as three inches wide, and very deep. the whole surface has now fallen down, and rests on the sand, but when the rains come, the first supply is nearly all absorbed in the sand. the black loam forms soft slush, and floats on the sand. the narrow opening prevents it from moving off in a landslip, but an oozing spring rises at that spot. all the pools in the lower portion of this spring-course are filled by the first rains, which happen south of the equator when the sun goes vertically over any spot. the second, or greater rains, happen in his course north again, when all the bogs and river-courses being wet, the supply runs off, and forms the inundation: this was certainly the case as observed on the zambesi and shiré, and, taking the different times for the sun's passage north of the equator, it explains the inundation of the nile. _ th september, ._--marenga's town on the west shore of lake nyassa is very large, and his people collected in great numbers to gaze at the stranger. the chief's brother asked a few questions, and i took the occasion to be a good one for telling him something about the bible and the future state. the men said that their fathers had never told them aught about the soul, but they thought that the whole man rotted and came to nothing. what i said was very nicely put by a volunteer spokesman, who seemed to have a gift that way, for all listened most attentively, and especially when told that our father in heaven loved all, and heard prayers addressed to him. marenga came dressed in a red-figured silk shawl, and attended by about ten court beauties, who spread a mat for him, then a cloth above, and sat down as if to support him. he asked me to examine his case inside a hut. he exhibited his loathsome skin disease, and being blacker than his wives, the blotches with which he was covered made him appear very ugly. he thought that the disease was in the country before arabs came. another new disease acquired from them was the small-pox. _ th september, ._--an arab passed us yesterday, his slaves going by another route across the base of cape maclear. he told musa that all the country in front was full of mazitu; that forty-four arabs and their followers had been killed by them at kasungu, and he only escaped. musa and all the johanna men now declared that they would go no farther. musa said, "no good country that; i want to go back to johanna to see my father and mother and son." i took him to marenga, and asked the chief about the mazitu. he explained that the disturbance was caused by the manganja finding that jumbé brought arabs and ammunition into the country every year, and they resented it in consequence; they would not allow more to come, because they were the sufferers, and their nation was getting destroyed. i explained to musa that we should avoid the mazitu: marenga added, "there are no mazitu near where you are going;" but musa's eyes _stood out_ with terror, and he said, "i no can believe that man." but i inquired, "how can you believe the arab so easily?" musa answered, "i ask him to tell me true, and he say true, true," &c. when we started, all the johanna men walked off, leaving the goods on the ground. they have been such inveterate thieves that i am not sorry to get rid of them; for though my party is now inconveniently small, i could not trust them with flints in their guns, nor allow them to remain behind, for their object was invariably to plunder their loads. [here then we have livingstone's account of the origin of that well-told story, which at first seemed too true. how mr. edward young, r.n., declared it to be false, and subsequently proved it untrue, is already well known. this officer's quick voyage to lake nyassa reflected the greatest credit on him, and all hearts were filled with joy when he returned and reported the tale of livingstone's murder to be merely an invention of musa and his comrades.] i ought to mention that the stealing by the johanna men was not the effect of hunger; it attained its height when we had plenty. if one remained behind, we knew his object in delaying was stealing. he gave what he filched to the others, and musa shared the dainties they bought with the stolen property. when spoken to he would say, "i every day tell johanna men no steal doctor's things." as he came away and left them in the march, i insisted out his bringing up all his men; this he did not relish, and the amount stolen was not small. one stole fifteen pounds of fine powder, another seven, another left six table-cloths out of about twenty-four; another called out to a man to bring a fish, and he would buy it with beads, the beads being stolen, and musa knew it all and connived at it; but it was terror that drove him away at last. with our goods in canoes we went round the bottom of the heel of nyassa, slept among reeds, and next morning ( th) landed at msangwa, which is nearly opposite kimsusa's, or katosa's, as the makololo called him. a man had been taken off by a crocodile last night; he had been drinking beer, and went down to the water to cool himself, where he lay down, and the brute seized him. the water was very muddy, being stirred up by an east wind, which lashed the waves into our canoes, and wetted our things. the loud wail of the women is very painful to hear; it sounds so dolefully. _ th, september, ._--we reached kinisusa's, below mount mulundini, of kirk's range.[ ] the chief was absent, but he was sent for immediately: his town has much increased since i saw it last. _ th september, ._--another arab passed last night, with the tale that his slaves had all been taken from him by the mazitu. it is more respectable to be robbed by them than by the manganja, who are much despised and counted nobodies. i propose to go west of this among the maravi until quite away beyond the disturbances, whether of mazitu or manganja. _ th september, ._--we enjoy our sunday here. we have-abundance of food from kimsusa's wife. the chief wished me to go alone and enjoy his drinking bout, and then we could return to this place together; but this was not to my taste. _ st october, ._--kimsusa, or mehusa, came this morning, and seemed very glad again to see his old friend. he sent off at once to bring an enormous ram, which had either killed or seriously injured a man. the animal came tied to a pole to keep him off the man who held it, while a lot more carried him. he was prodigiously fat;[ ] this is a true african way of showing love--plenty of fat and beer. accordingly the chief brought a huge basket of "pombe," the native beer, and another of "nsima," or porridge, and a pot of cooked meat; to these were added a large basket of maize. so much food had been brought to us, that we had at last to explain that we could not carry it. [the doctor states a fact in the next few lines which shows that the africans readily profit by advice which appeals to their common sense, and we make this observation in full knowledge of similar instances.] kimsusa says that they felt earthquakes at the place mponda now occupies, but none where he is now. he confirms the tradition that the manganja came from the west or w.n.w. he speaks more rationally about the deity than some have done, and adds, that it was by following the advice which i gave him the last time i saw him, and not selling his people, that his village is now three times its former size. he has another village besides, and he was desirous that i should see that too; that was the reason he invited me to come, but the people would come and visit me. _ nd october, ._--kimsusa made his appearance early with a huge basket of beer, inches high and inches in diameter. he served it out for a time, taking deep draughts himself, becoming extremely loquacious in consequence. he took us to a dense thicket behind his town, among numbers of lofty trees, many of which i have seen nowhere else; that under which we sat bears a fruit in clusters, which is eatable, and called "_mbedwa_." a space had been cleared, and we were taken to this shady spot as the one in which business of importance and secrecy is transacted. another enormous basket of beer was brought here by his wives, but there was little need for it, for kimsusa talked incessantly, and no business was done. _ rd october, ._--the chief came early, and sober. i rallied him on his previous loquacity, and said one ought to find time in the morning if business was to be done: he took it in good part, and one of his wives joined in bantering him. she is _the_ wife and the mother of the sons in whom he delights, and who will succeed him. i proposed to him to send men with me to the babisa country, and i would pay them there, where they could buy ivory for him with the pay, and, bringing it back, he would be able to purchase clothing without selling his people. he says that his people would not bring the pay or anything else back. when he sends to purchase ivory he gives the price to arabs or babisa, and they buy for him and conduct his business honestly; but his people, the manganja, cannot be trusted: this shows a remarkable state of distrust, and, from previous information, it is probably true. a party of the arab khambuiri's people went up lately to the maravi country above this, and immediately west of kirk's range, to purchase slaves: but they were attacked by the maravi, and dispersed with slaughter: this makes kimsusa's people afraid to venture there. they had some quarrel with the maravi also of their own, and no intercourse now took place. a path further south was followed by mponda lately, and great damage done, so it would not be wise to go on his footsteps. kimsusa said he would give me carriers to go up to the maravi, but he wished to be prepaid: to this i agreed, but even then he could not prevail on anyone to go. he then sent for an old mobisa man, who has a village under him, and acknowledges kimsusa's power. he says that he fears that, should he force his manganja to go, they would leave us on the road, or run away on the first appearance of danger; but this mobisa man would be going to his own country, and would stick by us. meanwhile the chief overstocks us with beer and other food. _ th october, ._--the mobisa man sent for came, but was so ignorant of his own country, not knowing the names of the chief babisa town or any of the rivers, that i declined his guidance. he would only have been a clog on us; and anything about the places in front of us we could ascertain at the villages where we touch by inquiry as well as he could. a woman turned up here, and persuaded chuma that she was his aunt. he wanted to give her at once a fathom of calico and beads, and wished me to cut his pay down for the purpose. i persuaded him to be content with a few beads for her. he gave her his spoon and some other valuables, fully persuaded that she was a relative, though he was interrogated first as to his father's name, and tribe, &c., before she declared herself. it shows a most forgiving disposition on the part of these boys to make presents to those who, if genuine relations, actually sold them. but those who have been caught young, know nothing of the evils of slavery, and do not believe in its ills. chuma, for instance, believes now that he was caught and sold by the manganja, and not by his own waiyau, though it was just in the opposite way that he became a slave, and he asserted and believes that no waiyau ever sold his own child. when reminded that wikatani was sold by his own father, he denied it; then that the father of chimwala, another boy, sold him, his mother, and sister, he replied, "these are machinga." this is another tribe of waiyau; but this showed that he was determined to justify his countrymen at any rate. i mention this matter, because though the oxford and cambridge mission have an advantage in the instruction of boys taken quite young from slavers, yet these same boys forget the evils to which they were exposed and from which they were rescued, and it is even likely that they will, like chuma, deny that any benefit was conferred upon them by their deliverance. this was not stated broadly by chuma, but his tone led one to believe that he was quite ready to return to the former state. _ th october, ._--the chief came early with an immense basket of beer, as usual. we were ready to start: he did not relish this; but i told him it was clear that his people set very light by his authority. he declared that he would force them or go himself, with his wives as carriers. this dawdling and guzzling had a bad effect on my remaining people. simon, a nassick lad, for instance, overheard two words which he understood; these were "mazitu" and "lipululu," or desert; and from these he conjured up a picture of mazitu rushing out upon us from the jungle, and killing all without giving us time to say a word! to this he added scraps of distorted information: khambuiri was a very bad chief in front, &c., all showing egregious cowardice; yet he came to give me advice. on asking what he knew (as he could not speak the language), he replied that he heard the above two words, and that chuma could not translate them, but he had caught them, and came to warn me. the chief asked me to stay over to-day, and he would go with his wives to-morrow; i was his friend, and he would not see me in difficulties without doing his utmost. he says that there is no danger of our not finding people for carrying loads. it is probable that khambuiri's people went as marauders, and were beaten off in consequence. _ th october, ._--we marched about seven miles to the north to a village opposite the pass tapiri, and on a rivulet, godedza. it was very hot. kimsusa behaves like a king: his strapping wives came to carry loads, and shame his people. many of the young men turned out and took the loads, but it was evident that they feared retaliation if they ventured up the pass. one wife carried beer, another meal; and as soon as we arrived, cooking commenced: porridge and roasted goat's flesh made a decent meal. a preparation of meal called "toku" is very refreshing and brings out all the sugary matter in the grain: he gave me some in the way, and, seeing i liked it, a calabash full was prepared for me in the evening. kimsusa delights in showing me to his people as his friend. if i could have used his pombe, or beer, it would have put some fat on my bones, but it requires a strong digestion; many of the chiefs and their wives live on it almost entirely. a little flesh is necessary to relieve the acidity it causes; and they keep all flesh very carefully, no matter how high it may become: drying it on a stage over a fire prevents entire putridity. _ th october, ._--i heard hooping-cough[ ] in the village. we found our visitors so disagreeable that i was glad to march; they were waiyau, and very impudent, demanding gun or game medicine to enable them to shoot well: they came into the hut uninvited, and would take no denial. it is probable that the arabs drive a trade in gun medicine: it is inserted in cuts made above the thumb, and on the forearm. their superciliousness shows that they feel themselves to be the dominant race. the manganja trust to their old bows and arrows; they are much more civil than ajawa or waiyau. [the difference between these two great races is here well worthy of the further notice which livingstone no doubt would have given it. as a rule, the manganja are extremely clever in all the savage arts and manufactures. their looms turn out a strong serviceable cotton cloth; their iron weapons and implements show a taste for design which is not reached by the neighbouring tribes, and in all matters that relate to husbandry they excel: but in dash and courage they are deficient. the waiyau, on the contrary, have round apple-shaped heads, as distinguished from the long well-shaped heads of the poor manganja; they are jocular and merry, given to travelling, and bold in war--these are qualities which serve them well as they are driven from pillar to post through slave wars and internal dissension, but they have not the brains of the manganja, nor the talent to make their mark in any direction where brains are wanted.] a manganja man, who formerly presented us with the whole haul of his net, came and gave me four fowls: some really delight in showing kindness. when we came near the bottom of the pass tapiri, kimsusa's men became loud against his venturing further; he listened, then burst away from them: he listened again, then did the same; and as he had now got men for us, i thought it better to let him go. in three hours and a quarter we had made a clear ascent of feet above the lake. the first persons we met were two men and a boy, who were out hunting with a dog and basket-trap. this is laid down in the run of some small animal; the dog chases it, and it goes into the basket which is made of split bamboo, and has prongs looking inwards, which prevent its egress: mouse traps are made in the same fashion. i suspected that the younger of the men had other game in view, and meant, if fit opportunity offered, to insert an arrow in a waiyau, who was taking away his wife as a slave. he told me before we had gained the top of the ascent that some waiyau came to a village, separated from his by a small valley, picked a quarrel with the inhabitants, and then went and took the wife and child of a poorer countryman to pay these pretended offences. _ th october, ._--at the first village we found that the people up here and those down below were mutually afraid of each other. kimsusa came to the bottom of the range, his last act being the offer of a pot of beer, and a calabash of toku, which latter was accepted. i paid his wives for carrying our things: they had done well, and after we gained the village where we slept, sang and clapped their hands vigorously till one o'clock in the morning, when i advised them to go to sleep. the men he at last provided were very faithful and easily satisfied. here we found the headman, kawa, of mpalapala, quite as hospitable. in addition to providing a supper, it is the custom to give breakfast before starting. resting on the th to make up for the loss of rest on sunday; we marched on tuesday (the th), but were soon brought to a stand by gombwa, whose village, tamiala, stands on another ridge. gombwa, a laughing, good-natured man, said that he had sent for all his people to see me; and i ought to sleep, to enable them to look on one the like of whom had never come their way before. intending to go on, i explained some of my objects in coming through the country, advising the people to refrain from selling each other, as it ends in war and depopulation. he was cunning, and said, "well, you must sleep here, and all my people will come and hear those words of peace." i explained that i had employed carriers, who expected to be paid though i had gone but a small part of a day; he replied, "but they will go home and come again to-morrow, and it will count but one day:" i was thus constrained to remain. _ th october, ._--both barometer and boiling-point showed an altitude of upwards of feet above the sea. this is the hottest month, but the air is delightfully clear, and delicious. the country is very fine, lying in long slopes, with mountains rising all around, from to feet above this upland. they are mostly jagged and rough (not rounded like those near to mataka's): the long slopes are nearly denuded of trees, and the patches of cultivation are so large and often squarish in form, that but little imagination is requisite to transform the whole into the cultivated fields of england; but no hedgerows exist. the trees are in clumps on the tops of the ridges, or at the villages, or at the places of sepulture. just now the young leaves are out, but are not yet green. in some lights they look brown, but with transmitted light, or when one is near them, crimson prevails. a yellowish-green is met sometimes in the young leaves, and brown, pink, and orange-red. the soil is rich, but the grass is only excessively rank in spots; in general it is short. a kind of trenching of the ground is resorted to; they hoe deep, and draw it well to themselves: this exposes the other earth to the hoe. the soil is burned too: the grass and weeds are placed in flat heaps, and soil placed over them: the burning is slow, and most of the products of combustion are retained to fatten the field; in this way the people raise large crops. men and women and children engage in field labour, but at present many of the men are engaged in spinning buazé[ ] and cotton. the former is made into a coarse sacking-looking stuff, immensely strong, which seems to be worn by the women alone; the men are clad in uncomfortable goatskins. no wild animals seem to be in the country, and indeed the population is so large they would have very unsettled times of it. at every turning we meet people, or see their villages; all armed with bows and arrows. the bows are unusually long: i measured one made of bamboo, and found that along the bowstring it measured six feet four inches. many carry large knives of fine iron; and indeed the metal is abundant. young men and women wear the hair long, a mass of small ringlets comes down and rests on the shoulders, giving them the appearance of the ancient egyptians. one side is often cultivated, and the mass hangs jauntily on that side; some few have a solid cap of it. not many women wear the lip-ring: the example of the waiyau has prevailed so far; but some of the young women have raised lines crossing each other on the arms, which must have cost great pain: they have also small cuts, covering in some cases the whole body. the maravi or manganja here may be said to be in their primitive state. we find them very liberal with their food: we give a cloth to the headman of the village where we pass the night, and he gives a goat, or at least cooked fowls and porridge, at night and morning. [illustration: tattoo on women.] we were invited by gombwa in the afternoon to speak the same words to his people that we used to himself in the morning. he nudged a boy to respond, which is considered polite, though he did it only with a rough hem! at the end of each sentence. as for our general discourse we mention our relationship to our father: his love to all his children--the guilt of selling any of his children--the consequence; _e.g._ it begets war, for they don't like to sell their own, and steal from other villagers, who retaliate. arabs and waiyau invited into the country by their selling, foster feuds, and war and depopulation ensue. we mention the bible--future state--prayer: advise union, that they should unite as one family to expel enemies, who came first as slave-traders, and ended by leaving the country a wilderness. in reference to union, we showed that they ought to have seen justice done to the man who lost his wife and child at their very doors; but this want of cohesion is the bane of the manganja. if the evil does not affect themselves they don't care whom it injures; and gombwa confirmed this, by saying that when he routed khambuiri's people, the villagers west of him fled instead of coming to his aid. we hear that many of the manganja up here are fugitives from nyassa. _ th october, ._--kawa and his people were with us early this morning, and we started from tamiala with them. the weather is lovely, and the scenery, though at present tinged with yellow from the grass, might be called glorious. the bright sun and delicious air are quite exhilarating. we passed a fine flowing rivulet, called levizé, going into the lake, and many smaller runnels of delicious cold water. on resting by a dark sepulchral grove, a tree attracted the attention, as nowhere else seen: it is called bokonto, and said to bear eatable fruit. many fine flowers were just bursting into full blossom. after about four hours' march we put up at chitimba, the village of kañgomba, and were introduced by kawa, who came all the way for the purpose. _ th october, ._--a very cold morning, with a great bank of black clouds in the east, whence the wind came. therm. °; in hut °. the huts are built very well. the roof, with the lower part plastered, is formed so as not to admit a ray of light, and the only visible mode of ingress for it is by the door. this case shows that winter is cold: on proposing to start, breakfast was not ready: then a plan was formed to keep me another day at a village close by, belonging to one kulu, a man of kauma, to whom we go next. it was effectual, and here we are detained another day. a curiously cut-out stool is in my hut, made by the mkwisa, who are south-west of this: it is of one block, but hollowed out, and all the spaces indicated are hollow too: about - / feet long by - / foot high. [illustration: curiously cut-out stool of one block of wood hollowed out.] _ th october, ._--we march westerly, with a good deal of southing. kulu gave us a goat, and cooked liberally for us all. he set off with us as if to go to kauma's in our company, but after we had gone a couple of miles he slipped behind, and ran away. some are naturally mean, and some naturally noble: the mean cannot help showing their nature, nor can the noble; but the noble-hearted must enjoy life most. kulu got a cloth, and he gave us at least its value; but he thought he had got more than he gave, and so by running away that he had done us nicely, without troubling himself to go and introduce us to kauma. i usually request a headman of a village to go with us. they give a good report of us, if for no other reason than for their own credit, because no one likes to be thought giving his countenance to people other than respectable, and it costs little. we came close to the foot of several squarish mountains, having perpendicular sides. one, called "ulazo pa malungo," is used by the people, whose villages cluster round its base as a storehouse for grain. large granaries stand on its top, containing food to be used in case of war. a large cow is kept up there, which is supposed capable of knowing and letting the owners know when war is coming.[ ] there is a path up, but it was not visible to us. the people are all kanthunda, or climbers, not maravi. kimsusa said that he was the only maravi chief, but this i took to be an ebullition of beer bragging: the natives up here, however, confirm this, and assert that they are not maravi, who are known by having markings down the side of the face. we spent the night at a kanthunda village on the western side of a mountain called phunzé (the _h_ being an aspirate only). many villages are planted round its base, but in front, that is, westwards, we have plains, and there the villages are as numerous: mostly they are within half a mile of each other, and few are a mile from other hamlets. each village has a clump of trees around it: this is partly for shade and partly for privacy from motives of decency. the heat of the sun causes the effluvia to exhale quickly, so they are seldom offensive. the rest of the country, where not cultivated, is covered with grass, the seed-stalks about knee deep. it is gently undulating, lying in low waves, stretching n.e. and s.w. the space between each wave is usually occupied by a boggy spot or watercourse, which in some cases is filled with pools with trickling rills between. all the people are engaged at present in making mounds six or eight feet square, and from two to three feet high. the sods in places not before hoed are separated from the soil beneath and collected into flattened heaps, the grass undermost; when dried, fire is applied and slow combustion goes on, most of the products of the burning being retained in the ground, much of the soil is incinerated. the final preparation is effected by the men digging up the subsoil round the mound, passing each hoeful into the left hand, where it pulverizes, and is then thrown on to the heap. it is thus virgin soil on the top of the ashes and burned ground of the original heap, very clear of weeds. at present many mounds have beans and maize about four inches high. holes, a foot in diameter and a few inches deep, are made irregularly over the surface of the mound, and about eight or ten grains put into each: these are watered by hand and calabash, and kept growing till the rains set in, when a very early crop is secured. _ th october, ._--after leaving phunzé, we crossed the leviñgé, a rivulet which flows northwards, and then into lake nyassa; the lines of gentle undulation tend in that direction. some hills appear on the plains, but after the mountains which we have left behind they are mere mounds. we are over feet above the sea, and the air is delicious; but we often pass spots covered with a plant which grows in marshy places, and its heavy smell always puts me in mind that at other seasons this may not be so pleasant a residence. the fact of even maize being planted on mounds where the ground is naturally quite dry, tells a tale of abundant humidity of climate. kauma, a fine tall man, with a bald head and pleasant manners, told us that some of his people had lately returned from the chibisa or babisa country, whither they had gone to buy ivory, and they would give me information about the path. he took a fancy to one of the boys' blankets; offering a native cloth, much larger, in exchange, and even a sheep to boot; but the owner being unwilling to part with his covering, kauma told me that he had not sent for his babisa travellers on account of my boy refusing to deal with him. a little childish this, but otherwise he was very hospitable; he gave me a fine goat, which, unfortunately, my people left behind. the chief said that no arabs ever came his way, nor portuguese native traders. when advising them to avoid the first attempts to begin the slave-trade, as it would inevitably lead to war and depopulation, kauma replied that the chiefs had resolved to unite against the waiyau of mpondé should he come again on a foray up to the highlands; but they are like a rope of sand, there is no cohesion among them, and each village is nearly independent of every other: they mutually distrust each other. _ th october, ._--spent sunday here. kauma says that his people are partly kanthunda and partly chipéta. the first are the mountaineers, the second dwellers on the plains. the chipéta have many lines of marking: they are all only divisions of the great manganja tribe, and their dialects differ very slightly from that spoken by the same people on the shiré. the population is very great and very ceremonious. when we meet anyone he turns aside and sits down: we clap the hand on the chest and say, "re peta--re peta," that is, "we pass," or "let us pass:" this is responded to at once by a clapping of the hands together. when a person is called at a distance he gives two loud claps of assent; or if he rises from near a superior he does, the same thing, which is a sort of leave-taking. we have to ask who are the principal chiefs in the direction which we wish to take, and decide accordingly. zomba was pointed out as a chief on a range of hills on our west: beyond him lies undi m'senga. i had to take this route, as my people have a very vivid idea of the danger of going northwards towards the mazitu. we made more southing than we wished. one day beyond zomba and w.s.w. is the part called chindando, where the portuguese formerly went for gold. they don't seem to have felt it worth while to come here, as neither ivory nor gold could be obtained if they did. the country is too full of people to allow any wild animals elbow-room: even the smaller animals are hunted down by means of nets and dogs. we rested at pachoma; the headman offering a goat and beer, but i declined, and went on to molomba. here kauma's carriers turned because a woman had died that morning as we left the village. they asserted that had she died before we started not a man would have left: this shows a reverence for death, for the woman was no relative of any of them. the headman of molomba was very poor but very liberal, cooking for us and presenting a goat: another headman from a neighbouring village, a laughing, good-natured old man, named chikala, brought beer and a fowl in the morning. i asked him to go on with us to mironga, it being important, as above-mentioned, to have the like of his kind in our company, and he consented. we saw mount ngala in the distance, like a large sugar-loaf shot up in the air: in our former route to kasungu we passed north of it. _ th october, ._--crossed the rivulet chikuyo going n. for the lake, and mironga being but one-and-a-half hour off, we went on to chipanga: this is the proper name of what on the zambesi is corrupted into shupanga. the headman, a miserable hemp-consuming[ ] leper, fled from us. we were offered a miserable hut, which we refused, chikala meanwhile went through the whole village seeking a better, which we ultimately found: it was not in this chief to be generous, though chikala did what he could in trying to indoctrinate him: when i gave him a present he immediately proposed to _sell_ a goat! we get on pretty well however. zomha is in a range of hills to our west, called zala nyama. the portuguese, in going to casembe, went still further west than this. passing on we came to a smithy, and watched the founder at work drawing off slag from the bottom of his furnace. he broke through the hardened slag by striking it with an iron instrument inserted in the end of a pole, when the material flowed out of the small hole left for the purpose in the bottom of the furnace. the ore (probably the black oxide) was like sand, and was put in at the top of the furnace, mixed with charcoal. only one bellows was at work, formed out of a goatskin, and the blast was very poor. many of these furnaces, or their remains, are met with on knolls; those at work have a peculiarly tall hut built over them. on the eastern edge of a valley lying north and south, with the diampwé stream flowing along it, and the dzala nyama range on the western side, are two villages screened by fine specimens of the _ficus indica_. one of these is owned by the headman theresa, and there we spent the night. we made very short marches, for the sun is very powerful, and the soil baked hard, is sore on the feet: no want of water, however, is felt, for we come to supplies every mile or two. the people look very poor, having few or no beads; the ornaments being lines and cuttings on the skin. they trust more to buazé than cotton. i noticed but two cotton patches. the women are decidedly plain; but monopolize all the buazé cloth. theresa was excessively liberal, and having informed us that zomba lived some distance up the range and was not the principal man in these parts, we, to avoid climbing the hills, turned away to the north, in the direction of the paramount chief, chisumpi, whom we found to be only traditionally great. _ th october, ._--in passing along we came to a village embowered in fine trees; the headman is kaveta, a really fine specimen of the kanthunda, tall, well-made, with a fine forehead and assyrian nose. he proposed to us to remain over night with him, and i unluckily declined. convoying us out a mile, we parted with this gentleman, and then came to a smith's village, where the same invitation was given and refused. a sort of infatuation drove us on, and after a long hot march we found the great chisumpi, the facsimile in black of sir colin campbell; his nose, mouth, and the numerous wrinkles on his face were identical with those of the great general, but here all resemblance ceased. two men had preceded us to give information, and when i followed i saw that his village was one of squalid misery, the only fine things about being the lofty trees in which it lay. chisumpi begged me to sleep at a village about half a mile behind: his son was browbeating him on some domestic affair, and the older man implored me to go. next morning he came early to that village, and arranged for our departure, offering nothing, and apparently not wishing to see us at all. i suspect that though paramount chief, he is weak-minded, and has lost thereby all his influence, but in the people's eyes he is still a great one. several of my men exhibiting symptoms of distress, i inquired for a village in which we could rest saturday and sunday, and at a distance from chisumpi. a headman volunteered to lead us to one west of this. in passing the sepulchral grove of chisumpi our guide remarked, "chisumpi's forefathers sleep there." this was the first time i have heard the word "sleep" applied to death in these parts. the trees in these groves, and around many of the villages, are very large, and show what the country would become if depopulated. we crossed the diampwé or adiampwé, from five to fifteen yards wide, and well supplied with water even now. it rises near the ndomo mountains, and flows northwards into the lintipé and lake. we found chitokola's village, called paritala, a pleasant one on the east side of the adiampwé valley. many elephants and other animals feed in the valley, and we saw the bechuana hopo[ ] again after many years. the ambarré, otherwise nyumbo plant, has a pea-shaped, or rather papilionaceous flower, with a fine scent. it seems to grow quite wild; its flowers are yellow. chaola is the poison used by the maravi for their arrows, it is said to cause mortification. one of the wonders usually told of us in this upland region is that we sleep without fire. the boys' blankets suffice for warmth during the night, when the thermometer sinks to °- °, but no one else has covering sufficient; some huts in process of building here show that a thick coating of plaster is put on outside the roof before the grass thatch is applied; not a chink is left for the admission of air. ohitikola was absent from paritala when we arrived on some _milando_ or other. these _milandos_ are the business of their lives. they are like petty lawsuits; if one trespasses on his neighbour's rights in any way it is a _milando_, and the headmen of all the villages about are called on to settle it. women are a fruitful source of _milando_. a few ears of indian corn had been taken by a person, and chitikola had been called a full day's journey off to settle this _milando_. he administered _muavé_[ ] and the person vomited, therefore innocence was clearly established! he came in the evening of the st footsore and tired, and at once gave us some beer. this perpetual reference to food and drink is natural, inasmuch as it is the most important point in our intercourse. while the chief was absent we got nothing; the queen even begged a little meat for her child, who was recovering from an attack of small-pox. there being no shops we had to sit still without food. i took observations for longitude, and whiled away the time by calculating the lunars. next day the chief gave us a goat cooked whole and plenty of porridge: i noticed that he too had the assyrian type of face. footnotes: [ ] dr. livingstone's description of the "sponge" will stand the reader in good stead when he comes to the constant mention of these obstructions in the later travels towards the north.--ed. [ ] so named when dr. livingstone, dr. kirk, and mr. charles livingstone, discovered lake nyassa together. [ ] the sheep are of the black-haired variety: their tails grow to an enormous size. a rain which came from nunkajowa, a waiyau chief, on a former occasion, was found to have a tail weighing lbs.; but for the journey, and two or three days short commons, an extra or lbs. of fat «would have been on it.--ed. [ ] this complaint has not been reported as an african disease before; it probably clings to the higher levels.--ed. [ ] a fine fibre derived from the shoots of a shrub (_securidaca longipedunculata_). [ ] several superstitions of this nature seem to point to a remnant of the old heathen ritual, and the worship of gods in mountain groves. [ ] hemp = bangé is smoked throughout central africa, and if used in excess produces partial imbecility.--ed. [ ] the hopo is a funnel-shaped fence which encloses a considerable tract of country: a "drive" is organised, and animals of all descriptions are urged on till they become jammed together in the neck of the hopo, where they are speared to death or else destroyed in a number of pitfalls placed there for the purpose. [ ] the ordeal poison. chapter vi. progress northwards. an african forest. destruction by mazitu. native salutations. a disagreeable chief. on the watershed between the lake and the loangwa river. extensive iron-workings. an old nimrod. the bua eiver. lovely scenery. difficulties of transport. chilobé. an african pythoness. enlists two waiyou bearers. ill. the chitella bean. rains set in. arrives at the loangwa. we started with chitikola as our guide on the nd of october, and he led us away westwards across the lilongwé river, then turned north till we came to a village called mashumba, the headman of which was the only chief who begged anything except medicine, and he got less than we were in the habit of giving in consequence: we give a cloth usually, and clothing being very scarce this is considered munificent.[ ] we had the zalanyama range on our left, and our course was generally north, but we had to go in the direction of the villages which were on friendly terms with our guides, and sometimes we went but a little way, as they studied to make the days as short as possible. the headman of the last village, chitoku, was with us, and he took us to a village of smiths, four furnaces and one smithy being at work. we crossed the chiniambo, a strong river coming from zalanyama and flowing into the mirongwé, which again goes into lintipé. the country near the hills becomes covered with forest, the trees are chiefly masuko mochenga (the gum-copal tree), the bark-cloth tree and rhododendrons. the heath known at the cape as _rhinoster bosch_ occurs frequently, and occasionally we have thorny acacias. the grass is short, but there is plenty of it. _ th october, ._--our guide, mpanda, led us through the forest by what he meant to be a short cut to chimuna's. we came on a herd of about fifteen elephants, and many trees laid down by these animals: they seem to relish the roots of some kinds, and spend a good deal of time digging them up; they chew woody roots and branches as thick as the handle of a spade. many buffaloes feed here, and we viewed a herd of elands; they kept out of bow-shot only: a herd of the baama or hartebeest stood at paces, and one was shot. while all were rejoicing over the meat we got news, from the inhabitants of a large village in full flight, that the mazitu were out on a foray. while roasting and eating meat i went forward with mpanda to get men from chimuna to carry the rest, but was soon recalled. another crowd were also in full retreat; the people were running straight to the zalanyama range regardless of their feet, making a path for themselves through the forest; they had escaped from the mazitu that morning; "they saw them!" mpanda's people wished to leave and go to look after their own village, but we persuaded them, on pain of a _milando_, to take us to the nearest village, that was at the bottom of zalanyama proper, and we took the spoor of the fugitives. the hard grass with stalks nearly as thick as quills must have hurt their feet sorely, but what of that in comparison with dear life! we meant to take our stand on the hill and defend our property in case of the mazitu coming near; and we should, in the event of being successful, be a defence to the fugitives who crowded up its rocky sides, but next morning we heard that the enemy had gone to the south. had we gone forward, as we intended, to search for men to carry the meat we should have met the marauders, for the men of the second party of villagers had remained behind guarding their village till the mazitu arrived, and they told us what a near escape i had had from walking into their power. _ th october, ._--came along northwards to chimuna's town, a large one of chipéta with many villages around. our path led through the forest, and as we emerged into the open strath in which the villages lie, we saw the large anthills, each the size of the end of a one-storied cottage, covered with men on guard watching for the mazitu. a long line of villagers were just arriving from the south, and we could see at some low hills in that direction the smoke arising from the burning settlements. none but men were present, the women and the chief were at the mountain called pambé; all were fully armed with their long bows, some flat in the bow, others round, and it was common to have the quiver on the back, and a bunch of feathers stuck in the hair like those in our lancers' shakos. but they remained not to fight, but to watch their homes and stores of grain from robbers amongst their own people in case no mazitu came! they gave a good hut, and sent off at once to let the chief at pambé know of our arrival. we heard the cocks crowing up there in the mountain as we passed in the morning. chimuna came in the evening, and begged me to remain a day in his village, pamaloa, as he was the greatest chief the chipéta had. i told him all wished the same thing, and if i listened to each chief we should never get on, and the rains were near, but we had to stay over with him. _ th october, ._--all the people came down to-day from pambé, and crowded to see the strangers. they know very little beyond their own affairs, though these require a good deal of knowledge, and we should be sorely put about if, without their skill, we had to maintain an existence here. their furnaces are rather bottle shaped, and about seven feet high by three broad. one toothless patriarch had heard of books and umbrellas, but had never seen either. the oldest inhabitant had never travelled far from the spot in which he was born, yet he has a good knowledge of soils and agriculture, hut-building, basket-making, pottery, and the manufacture of bark-cloth and skins for clothing, as also making of nets, traps, and cordage. chimuna had a most ungainly countenance, yet did well enough: he was very thankful for a blister on his loins to ease rheumatic pains, and presented a huge basket of porridge before starting, with a fowl, and asked me to fire a gun that the mazitu might hear and know that armed men were here. they all say that these marauders flee from fire-arms, so i think that they are not zulus at all, though adopting some of their ways. in going on to mapuio's we passed several large villages, each surrounded by the usual euphorbia hedge, and having large trees for shade. we are on & level, or rather gently amdulating country, rather bare of trees. at the junctions of these earthen waves we have always an oozing bog, this often occurs in the slope down the trough of this terrestrial sea; bushes are common, and of the kind which were cut down as trees. yellow haematite is very abundant, but the other rocks scarcely appear in the distance; we have mountains both on the east and west. on arriving at mapuio's village, he was, as often happens, invisible, but he sent us a calabash of fresh-made beer, which is very refreshing, gave us a hut, and promised to cook for us in the evening. we have to employ five or six carriers, and they rule the length of the day's march. those from chimuna's village growled at the cubit of calico with which we paid them, but a few beads pleased them perfectly, and we parted good friends. it is not likely i shall ever see them again, but i always like to please them, because it is right to consider their desires. is that not what is meant in "blessed is he that considereth the poor"? there is a great deal of good in these poor people. in cases of _milando_ they rely on the most distant relations and connections to plead their cause, and seldom are they disappointed, though time at certain seasons, as for instance at present, is felt by all to be precious. every man appears with hoe or axe on shoulder, and the people often only sit down as we pass and gaze at us till we are out of sight. [illustration: women's teeth hollowed.] many of the men have large slits in the lobe of the ear, and they have their distinctive tribal tattoo. the women indulge in this painful luxury more than the men, probably because they have very few ornaments. the two central front teeth are hollowed at the cutting edge. many have quite the grecian facial angle. mapuio has thin legs and quite a european face. delicate features and limbs are common, and the spur-heel is as scarce as among europeans; small feet and hands are the rule. clapping the hands in various ways is the polite way of saying "allow me," "i beg pardon," "permit me to pass," "thanks," it is resorted to in respectful introduction and leave-taking, and also is equivalent to "hear hear." when inferiors are called they respond by two brisk claps of the hands, meaning "i am coming." they are very punctilious amongst each other. a large ivory bracelet marks the headman of a village; there is nothing else to show differences of rank. _ th october, ._--we spent sunday at mapuio's and had a long talk with him; his country is in a poor state from the continual incursions of the mazitu, who are wholly unchecked. _ th october, ._--we marched westwards to makosa's village, and could not go further, as the next stage is long and through an ill-peopled country. the morning was lovely, the whole country bathed in bright sunlight, and not a breath of air disturbed the smoke as it slowly curled up from the heaps of burning weeds, which the native agriculturist wisely destroys. the people generally were busy hoeing in the cool of the day. one old man in a village where we rested had trained the little hair he had left into a tail, which, well plastered with fat, he had bent on itself and laid flat on his crown; another was carefully paring a stick for stirring the porridge, and others were enjoying the cool shade of the wild fig-trees which are always planted at villages. it is a sacred tree all over africa and india, and the tender roots which drop down towards the ground are used as medicine--a universal remedy. can it be a tradition of its being like the tree of life, which archbishop whately conjectures may have been used in paradise to render man immortal? one kind of fig-tree is often seen hacked all over to get the sap, which is used as bird-lime; bark-cloth is made of it too. i like to see the men weaving or spinning, or reclining under these glorious canopies, as much as i love to see our more civilized people lolling on their sofas or ottomans. the first rain--a thunder shower--fell in the afternoon, air in shade before it °; wet bulb °. at noon the soil in the sun was °, perhaps more, but i was afraid of bursting the thermometer, as it was graduated only a few degrees above that. this rain happened at the same time that the sun was directly overhead on his way south; it was but a quarter of an inch, but its effect was to deprive us of all chance of getting the five carriers we needed, all were off to their gardens to commit the precious seed to the soil. we got three, but no one else would come, so we have to remain here over to-day ( th october). _ th october, ._--the black traders come from tette to this country to buy slaves, and as a consequence here we come to bugs again, which we left when we passed the arab slave-traders' beat. _ st october, ._--we proceed westwards, and a little south through a country covered with forest trees, thickly planted, but small, generally of bark-cloth and gum-copal trees, masukos, rhododendrons, and a few acacias. at one place we saw ten wild hogs in a group, but no other animal, though marks of elephants, buffaloes, and other animals having been about in the wet season were very abundant. the first few miles were rather more scant of water than usual, but we came to the leué, a fine little stream with plenty of water sand from to yards wide; it is said by the people to flow away westwards into the loangwa. _ st november ._--in the evening we made the chigumokiré, a nice rivulet, where we slept, and the next morning we proceeded to kangené, whose village is situated on a mass of mountains, and to reach which we made more southing than we wished. our appearance on the ascent of the hill caused alarm, and we were desired to wait till our spokesman had explained the unusual phenomenon of a white man. this kept us waiting in the hot sun among heated rocks, and the chief, being a great ugly public-house-keeper looking person, excused his incivility by saying that his brother had been killed by the mazitu, and he was afraid that we were of the same tribe. on asking if mazitu wore clothes like us he told some untruths, and, what has been an unusual thing, began to beg powder and other things. i told him how other chiefs had treated us, which made him ashamed. he represented the country in front to the n.w. to be quite impassable from want of food: the mazitu had stripped it of all provisions, and the people were living on what wild fruits they could pick up. _ nd november, ._--kangené is very disagreeable naturally, and as we have to employ five men as carriers, we are in his power. we can scarcely enter into the feelings of those who are harried by marauders. like scotland in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries harassed by highland celts on one side and by english marchmen on the other, and thus kept in the rearward of civilisation, these people have rest neither for many days nor for few. when they fill their garners they can seldom reckon on eating the grain, for the mazitu come when the harvest is over and catch as many able-bodied young persons as they can to carry away the corn. thus it was in scotland so far as security for life and property was concerned; but the scotch were apt pupils of more fortunate nations. to change of country they were as indifferent as the romans of the olden times; they were always welcome in france, either as pilgrims, scholars, merchants, or soldiers; but the african is different. if let alone the african's mode of life is rather enjoyable; he loves agriculture, and land is to be had anywhere. he knows nothing of other countries, but he has imbibed the idea of property in man. this kangené told me that he would like to give me a slave to look after my goats: i believe he would rather give a slave than a goat! we were detained by the illness of simon for four days. when he recovered we proposed to the headman to start with five of his men, and he agreed to let us have them; but having called them together such an enormous demand was made for wages, and in advance, that on the th of november we took seven loads forward through a level uninhabited country generally covered with small trees, slept there, and on the morning of the th, after leaving two men at our depôt, came back, and took the remaining five loads. kangené was disagreeable to the last. he asked where we had gone, and, having described the turning point as near the hill chimbimbé, he complimented us on going so far, and then sent an offer of three men; but i preferred not to have those who would have been spies unless he could give five and take on all the loads. he said that he would find the number, and after detaining us some hours brought two, one of whom, primed with beer, babbled out that he was afraid of being killed by us in front. i asked whom we had killed behind, and moved off. the headman is very childish, does women's work--cooking and pounding; and in all cases of that kind the people take after their leader. the chiefs have scarcely any power unless they are men of energy; they have to court the people rather than be courted. we came much further back on our way from mapuio's than we liked; in fact, our course is like that of a vessel baffled with foul winds: this is mainly owing to being obliged to avoid places stripped of provisions or suffering this spoliation. the people, too, can give no information about others at a distance from their own abodes. even the smiths, who are a most plodding set of workers, are as ignorant as the others: they supply the surrounding villages with hoes and knives, and, combining agriculture with handicraft, pass through life. an intelligent smith came as our guide from chimbimbé hill on the th, and did not know a range of mountains about twenty miles off: "it was too far off for him to know the name." _ th november, ._--the country over which we actually travel is level and elevated, but there are mountains all about, which when put on the map make it appear to be a mountainous region. we are on the watershed, apparently between the loangwa of zumbo on the west, and the lake on the east. the leué or leuia is said by the people to flow into the loangwa. the chigumokiré coming from the north in front, eastward of irongwé (the same mountains on which kangené skulks out of sight of mazitu), flows into the leué, and north of that we have the mando, a little stream, flowing into the bua. the rivulets on the west flow in deep defiles, and the elevation on which we travel makes it certain that no water can come from the lower lands on the west. it seems that the portuguese in travelling to casembe did not inquire of the people where the streams they crossed went, for they are often wrongly put, and indicate the direction only in which they appeared to be flowing at their crossing places. the natives have a good idea generally of the rivers into which the streams flow, though they are very deficient in information as to the condition of the people that live on their banks. some of the portuguese questions must have been asked through slaves, who would show no hesitation in answering. maxinga, or machinga, means "mountains" only; once or twice it is put down saxa de maxinga, or machinga, or mcanga, which translated from the native tongue means "rocks of mountains, or mountains of rocks." _ th november, ._--we found the people on the mando to be chawa or ajawa, but not of the waiyau race: they are manganja, and this is a village of smiths. we got five men readily to go back and bring up our loads; and the sound of the hammer is constant, showing a great deal of industry. they combine agriculture, and hunting with nets, with their handicraft. a herd of buffaloes came near the village, and i went and shot one, thus procuring a supply of meat for the whole party and villagers too. the hammer which we hear from dawn till sunset is a large stone, bound with the strong inner bark of a tree, and loops left which form handles. two pieces of bark form the tongs, and a big stone sunk into the ground the anvil. they make several hoes in a day, and the metal is very good; it is all from yellow haematite, which abounds all over this part of the country; the bellows consist of two goatskins with sticks at the open ends, which are opened and shut at every blast. [illustration: forging hoes.] _ th november, ._--a lion came last night and gave a growl or two on finding he could not get our meat: a man had lent us a hunting net to protect it and us from intruders of this sort. the people kept up a shouting for hours afterwards, in order to keep him away by the human voice. we might have gone on, but i had a galled heel from new shoes. wild figs are rather nice when quite ripe. _ th november, ._--we marched northwards round the end of chisia hill, and remained for the night at a blacksmith's, or rather founder's village; the two occupations of founder and smith are always united, and boys taught to be smiths in europe or india would find themselves useless if unable to smelt the ore. a good portion of the trees of the country have been cut down for charcoal, and those which now spring up are small; certain fruit trees alone are left. the long slopes on the undulating country, clothed with fresh foliage, look very beautiful. the young trees alternate with patches of yellow grass not yet burned; the hills are covered with a thick mantle of small green trees with, as usual, large ones at intervals. the people at kalumbi, on the mando (where we spent four days), had once a stockade of wild fig _(ficus indica)_ and euphorbia round their village, which has a running rill on each side of it; but the trees which enabled them to withstand a siege by mazitu fell before elephants and buffaloes during a temporary absence of the villagers; the remains of the stockade are all around it yet. lions sometimes enter huts by breaking through the roof: elephants certainly do, for we saw a roof destroyed by one; the only chance for the inmates is to drive a spear into the belly of the beast while so engaged. a man came and reported the mazitu to be at chanyandula's village, where we are going. the headman advised remaining at his village till we saw whether they came this way or went by another path. the women were sent away, but the men went on with their employments; two proceeded with the building of a furnace on an anthill, where they are almost always placed, and they keep a look-out while working. we have the protection of an all-embracing providence, and trust that he, whose care of his people «xceeds all that our utmost self-love can attain, will shield us and make our way prosperous. _ th november, ._--an elephant came near enough last night to scream at us, but passed on, warned, perhaps, by the shouting of the villagers not to meddle with man. no mazitu having come, we marched on and crossed the bua, eight yards wide and knee deep. it rises in the northern hills a little beyond kanyindula's village, winds round his mountains, and away to the east. the scenery among the mountains is very lovely: they are covered with a close mantle of green, with here and there red and light-coloured patches, showing where grass has been burned off recently and the red clay soil is exposed; the lighter portions are unburned grass or rocks. large trees are here more numerous, and give an agreeable change of contour to the valleys and ridges of the hills; the boughs of many still retain a tinge of red from young leaves. we came to the bua again before reaching kanyenjé, as kanyindula's place is called. the iron trade must have been carried on for an immense time in the country, for one cannot go a quarter of a mile without meeting pieces of slag and broken pots, calcined pipes, and fragments of the furnaces, which are converted by the fire into brick. it is curious that the large stone sledge-hammers now in use are not called by the name stone-hammers, but by a distinct word, "kama:" nyundo is one made of iron. when we arrived at kanyenjé, kanyindula was out collecting charcoal. he sent a party of men to ask if we should remain next day: an old, unintellectual-looking man was among the number sent, who had twenty-seven rings of elephant's skin on his arm, all killed by himself by the spear alone: he had given up fighting elephants since the mazitu came, whom we heard had passed away to the south-east of this place, taking all the crops of last year, and the chief alone has food. he gave us some, which was very acceptable, as we got none at the two villages south of this. kanyindula came himself in the evening, an active, stern-looking man, but we got on very well with him. the people say that they were taught to smelt iron by chisumpi, which is the name of mulungu (god), and that they came from lake nyassa originally; if so, they are greatly inferior to the manganja on the lake in pottery, for the fragments, as well as modern whole vessels, are very coarse; the ornamentation is omitted or merely dots. they never heard of aërolites, but know hail. i notice here that the tree mfu, or mö, having sweet-scented leaves, yields an edible plum in clusters. bua-bwa is another edible fruit-tree with palmated leaves. mbéu is a climbing, arboraceous plant, and yields a very pleasant fruit, which tastes like gooseberries: its seeds are very minute. _ th and th november, ._--rain fell heavily yesterday afternoon, and was very threatening to-day; we remain to sew a calico tent. _ th november, ._--kanyindula came with three carriers this morning instead of five, and joined them in demanding prepayment: it was natural for him to side with them, as they have more power than he has, in fact, the chiefs in these parts all court their people, and he could feel more interest in them than in an entire stranger whom he might never see again: however, we came on without his people, leaving two to guard the loads. about four miles up the valley we came to a village named kanyenjeré mponda, at the fountain-eye of the bua, and thence sent men back for the loads, while we had the shelter of good huts during a heavy thunder-shower, and made us willing to remain all night. the valley is lovely in the extreme. the mountains on each side are gently rounded, and, as usual, covered over with tree foliage, except where the red soil is exposed by recent grass-burnings. quartz rocks jut out, and much drift of that material has been carried down by the gullies into the bottom. these gullies being in compact clay, the water has but little power of erosion, so they are worn deep but narrow. some fragments of titaniferous iron ore, with haematite changed by heat, and magnetic, lay in the gully, which had worn itself a channel on the north side of the village. the bua, like most african streams whose sources i have seen, rises in an oozing boggy spot. another stream, the tembwé, rises near the same spot, and flows n.w. into, the loangwa. we saw shuaré palms in its bed. _ st november, ._--we left bua fountain, lat. ° ' south, and made a short march to mokatoba, a stockaded village, where the people refused to admit us till the headman, came. they have a little food here, and sold us some. we have been on rather short commons for some time, and this made our detention agreeable. we rose a little in altitude after leaving this morning, then, though in the same valley, made a little descent towards the n.n.w. high winds came driving over the eastern range, which is called mchinjé, and bring large masses of clouds, which are the rain-givers. they seem to come from the south-east. the scenery of the valley is lovely and rich in the extreme. all the foliage is fresh washed and clean; young herbage is bursting through the ground; the air is deliciously cool, and the birds are singing joyfully: one, called mzié, is a good songster, with a loud melodious voice. large game abounds, but we do not meet with it. we are making our way slowly to the north, where food is said to be abundant. i divided about lbs. of powder among the people of my following to shoot with, and buy goats or other food as we could. this reduces our extra loads to three--four just now, simon being sick again. he rubbed goat's-fat on a blistered surface, and caused an eruption of pimples. _mem._--the people assent by lifting up the head instead of nodding it down as we do; deaf mutes are said to do the same. _ nd november, ._--leaving mokatoba village, and proceeding down the valley, which on the north is shut up apparently by a mountain called kokwé, we crossed the kasamba, about two miles from mokatoba, and yet found it, though so near its source, four yards wide, and knee deep. its source is about a mile above mokatoba, in the same valley, with the bua and tembwé. we were told that elephants were near, and we saw where they had been an hour before; but after seeking about could not find them. an old man, in the deep defile between kokwé and yasika mountains, pointed to the latter, and said, "elephants! why, there they are. elephants, or tusks, walking on foot are never absent;" but though we were eager for flesh, we could not give him credit, and went down the defile which gives rise to the sandili river: where we crossed it in the defile, it was a mere rill, having large trees along its banks, yet it is said to go to the loangwa of zumbo, n.w. or n.n.w. we were now in fact upon the slope which inclines to that river, and made a rapid descent in altitude. we reached silubi's village, on the base of a rocky detached hill. no food to be had; all taken by mazitu, so silubi gave me some masuko fruit instead. they find that they can keep the mazitu off by going up a rocky eminence, and hurling stones and arrows down on the invaders: they can defend themselves also by stockades, and these are becoming very general. on leaving silubi's village, we went to a range of hills, and after passing through found that we had a comparatively level country on the north: it would be called a well-wooded country if we looked at it only from a distance. it is formed into long ridges, all green and wooded; but clumps of large trees, where villages have been, or are still situated, show that the sylvan foliage around and over the whole country is that of mere hop-poles. the whole of this upland region might be called woody, if we bear in mind that where the population is dense, and has been long undisturbed, the trees are cut down to the size of low bush. large districts are kept to about the size of hop-poles, growing on pollards three or four feet from the ground, by charcoal burners, who, in all instances, are smiths too. on reaching zeoré's village, on the lokuzhwa, we found it stockaded, and stagnant pools round three sides of it. the mazitu had come, pillaged all the surrounding villages, looked at this, and then went away; so the people had food to sell. they here call themselves echéwa, and have a different marking from the atumboka. the men have the hair dressed as if a number of the hairs of elephants' tails were stuck around the head: the women wear a small lip-ring, and a straw or piece of stick in the lower lip, which dangles down about level with the lower edge of the chin: their clothing in front is very scanty. the men know nothing of distant places, the manganja being a very stay-at-home people. the stockades are crowded with huts, and the children have but small room to play in the narrow spaces between. _ th november, ._--sunday at zeoré's. the villagers thought we prayed for rain, which was much needed. the cracks in the soil have not yet come together by the «welling of soil produced by moisture. i disabused their minds about rain-making prayers, and found the headman intelligent. i did not intend to notice the lokuzhwa, it is such a contemptible little rill, and not at present running; but in going to our next point, mpandé's village, we go along its valley, and cross it several times, as it makes for the loangwa in the north. the valley is of rich dark red loam, and so many lilies of the amaryllis kind have established themselves as completely to mask the colour of the soil. they form a covering of pure white where the land has been cleared by the hoe. as we go along this valley to the loangwa, we descend in altitude. it is said to rise at "nombé rumé," as we formerly heard. _ th november, ._--zeoré's people would not carry without prepayment, so we left our extra loads as usual and went on, sending men back for them: these, however, did not come till th, and then two of my men got fever. i groan in spirit, and do not know how to make our gear into nine loads only. it is the knowledge that we shall be detained, some two or three months during the heavy rains that makes me cleave to it as means of support. advantage has been taken by the people, of spots where the lokuzhwa goes round three parts of a circle, to erect their stockaded villages. this is the case here, and the water, being stagnant, engenders disease. the country abounds in a fine light blue flowering perennial pea, which the people make use of as a relish. at present the blossoms only are collected and boiled. on inquiring the name, _chilóbé_, the men asked me if we had none in our country. on replying in the negative, they looked with pity on us: "what a wretched, country not to have chilóbé." it is on the highlands above; we never saw it elsewhere! another species of pea _(chilobé weza)_, with reddish flowers, is eaten in the same way; but it has spread but little in comparison. it is worth remarking that porridge of maize or sorghum is never offered without some pulse, beans, or bean leaves, or flowers, they seem to feel the need of it, or of pulse, which is richer in flesh-formers than the porridge. last night a loud clapping of hands by the men was followed by several half-suppressed screams by a woman. they were quite _eldritch_, as if she could not get them out. then succeeded a lot of utterances as if she were in ecstasy, to which a man responded, "moio, moio." the utterances, so far as i could catch, were in five-syllable snatches--abrupt and laboured. i wonder if this "bubbling or boiling over" has been preserved as the form in which the true prophets of old gave forth their "burdens"? one sentence, frequently repeated towards the close of the effusion, was "_linyama uta_," "flesh of the bow," showing that the pythoness loved venison killed by the bow. the people applauded, and attended, hoping, i suppose, that rain would follow her efforts. next day she was duly honoured by drumming and dancing.[ ] prevalent beliefs seem to be persistent in certain tribes. that strange idea of property in man that permits him to be sold to another is among the arabs, manganja, makoa, waiyau, but not among kaffirs or zulus, and bechuanas. if we exclude the arabs, two families of africans alone are slavers on the east side of the continent. _ th november, ._--we march to chilunda's or embora's, still on the lokuzhwa, now a sand-stream about twenty yards wide, with pools in its bed; its course is pretty much north or n.n.w. we are now near the loangwa country, covered with a dense dwarf forest, and the people collected in stockades. this village is on a tongue of land (between lokuzhwa and another sluggish rivulet), chosen for its strength. it is close to a hill named chipemba, and there are ranges of hills both east and west in the distance. embora came to visit us soon after we arrived--a tall man with a yankee face. he was very much tickled when asked if he were a motumboka. after indulging in laughter at the idea of being one of such a small tribe of manganja, he said proudly, "that he belonged to the echéwa, who inhabited all the country to which i was going." they are generally smiths; a mass of iron had just been brought in to him from some outlying furnaces. it is made into hoes, which are sold for native cloths down the loangwa. _ rd december, ._--march through a hilly country covered with dwarf forest to kandé's village, still on the lokuzhwa. we made some westing. the village was surrounded by a dense hedge of bamboo and a species of bushy fig that loves edges of water-bearing streams: it is not found where the moisture is not perennial. kandé is a fine tall smith; i asked him if he knew his antecedents; he said he had been bought by babisa at chipéta, and left at chilunda's, and therefore belonged to no one. two waiyau now volunteered to go on with us, and as they declared their masters were killed by the mazitu, and kandé seemed to confirm them, we let them join. in general, runaway slaves are bad characters, but these two seem good men, and we want them to fill up our complement: another volunteer we employ as goatherd. a continuous tap-tapping in the villages shows that bark cloth is being made. the bark, on being removed from the-tree, is steeped in water, or in a black muddy hole, till the outer of the two inner barks can be separated, then commences the tapping with a mallet to separate and soften the fibres. the head of this is often of ebony, with the face cut into small furrows, which, without breaking, separate and soften the fibres. [illustration.] _ th december, ._--marched westwards, over a hilly, dwarf forest-covered country: as we advanced, trees increased in size, but no people inhabited it; we spent a miserable night at katétté, wetted by a heavy thunder-shower, which lasted a good while. morning _( th december_) muggy, clouded all over, and rolling thunder in distance. went three hours with, for a wonder, no water, but made westing chiefly, and got on to the lokuzhwa again: all the people are collected on it. _ th december, ._--too ill to march. _ th december, ._--went on, and passed mesumbé's village, also protected by bamboos, and came to the hill mparawé, with a village perched on its northern base and well up its sides. the babisa have begun to imitate the mazitu by attacking and plundering manganja villages. muasi's brother was so attacked, and now is here and eager to attack in return. in various villages we have observed miniature huts, about two feet high, very neatly thatched and plastered, here we noticed them in dozens. on inquiring, we were told that when a child or relative dies one is made, and when any pleasant food is cooked or beer brewed, a little is placed in the tiny hut for the departed soul, which is believed to enjoy it. the lokuzhwa is here some fifty yards wide, and running. numerous large pitholes in the fine-grained schist in its bed show that much water has flowed in it. _ th december, ._--a kind of bean called "chitetta" is eaten here, it is an old acquaintance in the bechuana country, where it is called "mositsané," and is a mere plant; here it becomes a tree, from fifteen to twenty feet high. the root is used for tanning; the bean is pounded, and then put into a sieve of bark cloth to extract, by repeated washings, the excessively astringent matter it contains. where the people have plenty of water, as here, it is used copiously in various processes, among bechuanas it is scarce, and its many uses unknown: the pod becomes from fifteen to eighteen inches long, and an inch in diameter. _ th december, ._--a poor child, whose mother had died, was unprovided for; no one not a relative will nurse another's child. it called out piteously for its mother by name, and the women (like the servants in the case of the poet cowper when a child), said, "she is coming." i gave it a piece of bread, but it was too far gone, and is dead to-day. an alarm of mazitu sent all the villagers up the sides of mparawé this morning. the affair was a chase of a hyaena, but everything is mazitu! the babisa came here, but were surrounded and nearly all cut off. muasi was so eager to be off with a party to return the attack on the mazitu, that, when deputed by the headman to give us a guide, he got the man to turn at the first village, so we had to go on without guides, and made about due north. _ th december, ._--we are now detained in the forest, at a place called chondé forest, by set-in rains. it rains every day, and generally in the afternoon; but the country is not wetted till the "set-in" rains commence; the cracks in the soil then fill up and everything rushes up with astonishing rapidity; the grass is quite crisp and soft. after the fine-grained schist, we came on granite with large flakes of talc in it. this forest is of good-sized trees, many of them mopané. the birds now make much melody and noise--all intent on building. _ th december, ._--across an undulating forest country north we got a man to show us the way, if a pathless forest can so be called. we used a game-path as long as it ran north, but left it when it deviated, and rested under a baobab-tree with a marabou's nest--a bundle of sticks on a branch; the young ones uttered a hard chuck, chuck, when the old ones flew over them. a sun-bird, with bright scarlet throat and breast, had its nest on another branch, it was formed like the weaver's nest, but without a tube. i observed the dam picking out insects from the bark and leaves of the baobab, keeping on the wing the while: it would thus appear to be insectivorous as well as a honey-bibber. much spoor of elands, zebras, gnus, kamas, pallahs, buffaloes, reed-bucks, with tsetse, their parasites. _ th december, ._--reached the tokosusi, which is said to rise at nombé rumé, about twenty yards wide and knee deep, swollen by the rains: it had left a cake of black tenacious mud on its banks. here i got a pallah antelope, and a very strange flower called "katendé," which was a whorl of seventy-two flowers sprung from a flat, round root; but it cannot be described. our guide would have crossed the tokosusi, which was running north-west to join the loangwa, and then gone to that river; but always when we have any difficulty the "lazies" exhibit themselves. we had no grain; and three remained behind spending four hours at what we did in an hour and a quarter. our guide became tired and turned, not before securing another; but he would not go over the loangwa; no one likes to go out of his own country: he would go westwards to maranda's, and nowhere else. a "set-in" rain came on after dark, and we went on through slush, the trees sending down heavier drops than the showers as we neared the loangwa; we forded several deep gullies, all flowing north or north-west into it. the paths were running with water, and when we emerged from the large mopané forest, we came on the plain of excessively adhesive mud, on which maranda's stronghold stands on the left bank of loangwa, here a good-sized river. the people were all afraid of us, and we were mortified to find that food is scarce. the mazitu have been here three times, and the fear they have inspired, though they were successfully repelled, has prevented agricultural operations from being carried on. _mem._--a flake of reed is often used in surgical operations among the natives, as being sharper than their knives. footnotes: [ ] a cloth means two yards of unbleached calico. [ ] chuma remembers part of the words of her song to be as follows:-- kowé! kowé! n'andambwi, m'vula léru, korolé ko okwé, waie, ona, kordi, mvula! he cannot translate it as it is pure manganja, but with the exception of the first line--which relates to a little song-bird with a beautiful note, it is a mere reiteration "rain will surely come to-day."--ed. chapter vii. crosses the loangwa. distressing march. the king-hunter. great hunger. christmas feast necessarily postponed. loss of goats. honey-hunters. a meal at last. the babisa. the mazitu again. chitembo's. end of . the new year. the northern brim of the great loangwa valley. accident to chronometers. meal gives out. escape from a cobra capella. pushes for the chambezé. death of chitané. great pinch for food. disastrous loss of medicine chest. bead currency. babisa. the chambezé. beaches chitapangwa's town. meets arab traders from zanzibar. sends off letters. chitapangwa and his people. complications. _ th december, ._--we could get no food at any price on th, so we crossed the loangwa, and judged it to be from seventy to a hundred yards wide: it is deep at present, and it must always be so, for some atumboka submitted to the mazitu, and ferried them over and back again. the river is said to rise in the north; it has alluvial banks with large forest trees along them, bottom sandy, and great sandbanks are in it like the zambesi. no guide would come, so we went on without one. the "lazies" of the party seized the opportunity of remaining behind--wandering, as they said, though all the cross paths were marked.[ ] this evening we secured the latitude ° ' " s., which would make our crossing place about ° ' s. clouds prevented observations, as they usually do in the rainy season. _ december, ._--we went on through a bushy country without paths, and struck the pamazi, a river of sixty yards wide, in steep banks and in flood, and held on as well as we could through a very difficult country, the river forcing us north-west: i heard hippopotami in it. game is abundant but wild; we shot two poku antelopes[ ] here, called "tsébulas," which drew a hunter to us, who consented for meat and pay to show us a ford. he said that the pamazi rises in a range of mountains we can now see (in general we could see no high ground during our marches for the last fortnight), we forded it, thigh deep on one side and breast deep on the other. we made only about three miles of northing, and found the people on the left bank uncivil: they would not lend a hut, so we soon put up a tent of waterproof cloth and branches. _ th december, ._--as the men grumbled at their feet being pierced by thorns in the trackless portions we had passed i was anxious to get a guide, but the only one we could secure would go to molenga's only; so i submitted, though this led us east instead of north. when we arrived we were asked what we wanted, seeing we brought neither slaves nor ivory: i replied it was much against our will that we came; but the guide had declared that this was the only way to casembe's, our next stage. to get rid of us they gave a guide, and we set forward northwards. the mopané forest is perfectly level, and after rains the water stands in pools; but during most of the year it is dry. the trees here were very large, and planted some twenty or thirty yards apart: as there are no branches on their lower parts animals see very far. i shot a gnu, but wandered in coming back to the party, and did not find them till it was getting dark. many parts of the plain are thrown up into heaps, of about the size of one's cap (probably by crabs), which now, being hard, are difficult to walk over; under the trees it is perfectly smooth. the mopané-tree furnishes the iron wood of the portuguese pao ferro: it is pretty to travel in and look at the bright sunshine of early morning; but the leaves hang perpendicularly as the sun rises high, and afford little or no shade through the day,[ ] so as the land is clayey, it becomes hard-baked thereby. we observed that the people had placed corn-granaries at different parts of this forest, and had been careful to leave no track to them--a provision in case of further visits of mazitu. king-hunters[ ] abound, and make the air resound with their stridulous notes, which commence with a sharp, shrill cheep, and then follows a succession of notes, which resembles a pea in a whistle. another bird is particularly conspicuous at present by its chattering activity, its nest consists of a bundle of fine seed-stalks of grass hung at the end of a branch, the free ends being left untrimmed, and no attempt at concealment made. many other birds are now active, and so many new notes are heard, that it is probable this is a richer ornithological region than the zambesi. guinea-fowl and francolins are in abundance, and so indeed are all the other kinds of game, as zebras, pallahs, gnus. _ th december, ._--i got a fine male kudu. we have no grain, and live on meat alone, but i am better off than the men, inasmuch as i get a little goat's-milk besides. the kudu stood five feet six inches high; horns, three feet on the straight. _ th december, ._--reached casembe,[ ] a miserable hamlet of a few huts. the people here are very suspicious, and will do nothing but with a haggle for prepayment; we could get no grain, nor even native herbs, though we rested a day to try. after a short march we came to the nyamazi, another considerable rivulet coming from the north to fall into the loangwa. it has the same character, of steep alluvial banks, as pamazi, and about the same width, but much shallower; loin deep, though somewhat swollen; from fifty to sixty yards wide. we came to some low hills, of coarse sandstone, and on crossing these we could see, by looking back, that for many days we had been travelling over a perfectly level valley, clothed with a mantle of forest. the barometers had shown no difference of level from about feet above the sea. we began our descent into this great valley when we left the source of the bua; and now these low hills, called ngalé or ngaloa, though only feet or so above the level we had left, showed that we had come to the shore of an ancient lake, which probably was let off when the rent of kebra-basa on the zambesi was made, for we found immense banks of well-rounded shingle above--or, rather, they may be called mounds of shingle--all of hard silicious schist with a few pieces of fossil-wood among them. the gullies reveal a stratum of this well-rounded shingle, lying on a soft greenish sandstone, which again lies on the coarse sandstone first observed. this formation is identical with that observed formerly below the victoria falls. we have the mountains still on our north and north-west (the so-called mountains of bisa, or babisa), and from them the nyamazi flows, while pamazi comes round the end, or what appears to be the end, of the higher portion. _( nd december, .)_ shot a bush-buck; and slept on the left bank of nyamazi. _ rd december, ._--hunger sent us on; for a meat diet is far from satisfying: we all felt very weak on it, and soon tired on a march, but to-day we hurried on to kavimba, who successfully beat off the mazitu. it is very hot, and between three and four hours is a good day's march. on sitting down to rest before entering the village we were observed, and all the force of the village issued to kill us as mazitu, but when we stood up the mistake was readily perceived, and the arrows were placed again in their quivers. in the hut four mazitu shields show that they did not get it all their own way; they are miserable imitations of zulu shields, made of eland and water-buck's hides, and ill sewn. a very small return present was made by kavimba, and nothing could be bought except at exorbitant prices. we remained all day on the th haggling and trying to get some grain. he took a fancy to a shirt, and left it to his wife to bargain for. she got the length of cursing and swearing, and we bore it, but could get only a small price for it. we resolved to hold our christmas some other day, and in a better place. the women seem ill-regulated here--kavimba's brother had words with his spouse, and at the end of every burst of vociferation on both sides called out, "bring the muavi! bring the muavi!" or ordeal. _christmas-day, ._--no one being willing to guide us to moerwa's, i hinted to kavimba that should we see a rhinoceros i would kill it. he came himself, and led us on where he expected to find these animals, but we saw only their footsteps. we lost our four goats somewhere--stolen or strayed in the pathless forest, we do not know which, but the loss i felt very keenly, for whatever kind of food we had, a little milk made all right, and i felt strong and well, but coarse food hard of digestion without it was very trying. we spent the th in searching for them, but all in vain. kavimba had a boy carrying two huge elephant spears, with these he attacks that large animal single-handed. we parted from him, as i thought, good friends, but a man who volunteered to act as guide saw him in the forest afterwards, and was counselled by him to leave us as we should not pay him. this hovering near us after we parted makes me suspect kavimba of taking the goats, but i am not certain. the loss affected me more than i could have imagined. a little indigestible porridge, of scarcely any taste, is now my fare, and it makes me dream of better. _ th december, ._--our guide asked for his cloth to wear on the way, as it was wet and raining, and his bark cloth was a miserable covering. i consented, and he bolted on the first opportunity; the forest being so dense he was soon out of reach of pursuit: he had been advised to this by kavimba, and nothing else need have been expected. we then followed the track of a travelling party of babisa, but the grass springs up over the paths, and it was soon lost: the rain had fallen early in these parts, and the grass was all in seed. in the afternoon we came to the hills in the north where nyamazi rises, and went up the bed of a rivulet for some time, and then ascended out of the valley. at the bottom of the ascent and in the rivulet the shingle stratum was sometimes fifty feet thick, then as we ascended we met mica schist tilted on edge, then grey gneiss, and last an igneous trap among quartz rocks, with a great deal of bright mica and talc in them. on resting near the top of the first ascent two honey hunters came to us. they were using the honey-guide as an aid, the bird came to us as they arrived, waited quietly during the half-hour they smoked and chatted, and then went on with them.[ ] the tsetse flies, which were very numerous at the bottom, came up the ascent with us, but as we increased our altitude by another thousand feet they gradually dropped off and left us: only one remained in the evening, and he seemed out of spirits. near sunset we encamped by water on the cool height, and made our shelters with boughs of leafy trees; mine was rendered perfect by dr. stenhouse's invaluable patent cloth, which is very superior to mackintosh: indeed the india-rubber cloth is not to be named in the same day with it. _ th december, ._--three men, going to hunt bees, came to us as we were starting and assured us that moerwa's was near. the first party had told us the same thing, and so often have we gone long distances as "_pafupi_" (near), when in reality they were "_patari_" (far), that we begin to think _pafupi_ means "i wish you to go there," and _patari_ the reverse. in this case _near_ meant an hour and three-quarters from our sleeping-place to moerwa's! when we look back from the height to which we have ascended we see a great plain clothed with dark green forest except at the line of yellowish grass, where probably the loangwa flows. on the east and south-east this plain is bounded at the extreme range of our vision by a wall of dim blue mountains forty or fifty miles off. the loangwa is said to rise in the chibalé country due north of this malambwé (in which district moerwa's village is situated), and to flow s.e., then round to where we found it. moerwa came to visit me in my hut, a rather stupid man, though he has a well-shaped and well-developed forehead, and tried the usual little arts of getting us to buy all we need here though the prices are exorbitant. "no people in front, great hunger there." "we must buy food here and carry it to support us." on asking the names of the next headman he would not inform me, till i told him to try and speak like a man; he then told us that the first lobemba chief was motuna, and the next chafunga. we have nothing, as we saw no animals in our way hither, and hunger is ill to bear. by giving moerwa a good large cloth he was induced to cook a mess of maëre or millet and elephant's stomach; it was so good to get a full meal that i could have given him another cloth, and the more so as it was accompanied by a message that he would cook more next day and in larger quantity. on inquiring next evening he said "the man had told lies," he had cooked nothing more: he was prone to lie himself, and was a rather bad specimen of a chief. the babisa have round bullet heads, snub noses, often high cheek-bones, an upward slant of the eyes, and look as if they had a lot of bushman blood in them, and a good many would pass for bushmen or hottentots. both babisa and waiyau may have a mixture of the race, which would account for their roving habits. the women have the fashion of exposing the upper part of the buttocks by letting a very stiff cloth fall down behind. their teeth are filed to points, they wear no lip-ring, and the hair is parted so as to lie in a net at the back part of the head. the mode of salutation among the men is to lie down nearly on the back, clapping the hands, and making a rather inelegant half-kissing sound with the lips. _ th december, ._--we remain a day at malambwé, but get nothing save a little maëre,[ ] which grates in the teeth and in the stomach. to prevent the mazitu starving them they cultivate small round patches placed at wide intervals in the forest, with which the country is covered. the spot, some ten yards or a little more in diameter, is manured with ashes and planted with this millet and pumpkins, in order that should mazitu come they may be unable to carry off the pumpkins, or gather the millet, the seed of which is very small. they have no more valour than the other africans, but more craft, and are much given to falsehood. they will not answer common questions except by misstatements, but this may arise in our case from our being in disfavour, because we will not sell all our goods to them for ivory. _ th december, ._--marched for chitemba's, because it is said he has not fled from the mazitu, and therefore has food to spare. while resting, moerwa, with all his force of men, women, and dogs, came up, on his way to hunt elephants. the men were furnished with big spears, and their dogs are used to engage the animal's attention while they spear it; the women cook the meat and make huts, and a smith goes with them to mend any spear that may be broken. we pass over level plateaux on which the roads are wisely placed, and do not feel that we are travelling in a mountainous region. it is all covered with dense forest, which in many cases is pollarded, from being cut for bark cloth or for hunting purposes. masuko fruit abounds. from the cisalpinae and gum-copal trees bark cloth is made. we now come to large masses of haematite, which is often ferruginous: there is conglomerate too, many quartz pebbles being intermixed. it seems as if when the lakes existed in the lower lands, the higher levels gave forth great quantities of water from chalybeate fountains, which deposited this iron ore. grey granite or quartz with talc in it or gneiss lie under the haematite. the forest resounds with singing birds, intent on nidification. francolins abound, but are wild. "whip-poor-wills," and another bird, which has a more laboured treble note and voice--"oh, oh, oh!" gay flowers blush unseen, but the people have a good idea of what is eatable and what not. i looked at a woman's basket of leaves which she had collected for supper, and it contained eight or ten kinds, with mushrooms and orchidaceous flowers. we have a succession of showers to-day, from n.e. and e.n.e. we are uncertain when we shall come to a village, as the babisa will not tell us where they are situated. in the evening we encamped beside a little rill, and made our shelters, but we had so little to eat that i dreamed the night long of dinners i had eaten, and might have been eating. i shall make this beautiful land better known, which is an essential part of the process by which it will become the "pleasant haunts of men." it is impossible to describe its rich luxuriance, but most of it is running to waste through the slave-trade and internal wars. _ st december, ._--when we started this morning after rain, all the trees and grass dripping, a lion roared, but we did not see him. a woman had come a long way and built a neat miniature hut in the burnt-out ruins of her mother's house: the food-offering she placed in it, and the act of filial piety, no doubt comforted this poor mourner's heart! we arrived at chitembo's village and found it deserted. the babisa dismantle their huts and carry off the thatch to their gardens, where they live till harvest is over. this fallowing of the framework destroys many insects, but we observed that wherever babisa and arab slavers go they leave the breed of the domestic bug: it would be well if that were all the ill they did! chitembo was working in his garden when we arrived, but soon came, and gave us the choice of all the standing huts: he is an old man, much more frank and truthful than our last headman, and says that chitapanga is paramount chief of all the abemba. three or four women whom we saw performing a rain dance at moerwa's were here doing the same; their faces smeared with meal, and axes in their hands, imitating as well as they could the male voice. i got some maëre or millet here and a fowl. we now end . it has not been so fruitful or useful as i intended. will try to do better in , and be better--more gentle and loving; and may the almighty, to whom i commit my way, bring my desires to pass, and prosper me! let all the sins of ' be blotted out for jesus' sake. * * * * * _ st january, ._--may he who was full of grace and truth impress his character on mine. grace--eagerness to show favour; truth--truthfulness, sincerity, honour--for his mercy's sake. we remain to-day at mbulukuta-chitembo's district, by the boys' desire, because it is new year's day, and also because we can get some food. _ nd and rd january, ._--remain on account of a threatened _set-in_ rain. bought a senzé _(aulocaudatus swindernianus)_, a rat-looking animal; but i was glad to get anything in the shape of meat. _ th january, ._--it is a _set-in_ rain. the boiling-point thermometer shows an altitude of feet above the sea. barometer, feet ditto. we get a little maëre here, and prefer it to being drenched and our goods spoiled. we have neither sugar nor salt, so there are no soluble goods; but cloth and gunpowder get damaged easily. it is hard fare and scanty; i feel always hungry, and am constantly dreaming of better food when i should be sleeping. savoury viands of former times come vividly up before the imagination, even in my waking hours; this is rather odd as i am not a dreamer; indeed i scarcely ever dream but when i am going to be ill or actually so.[ ] we are on the northern brim (or north-western rather) of the great loangwa valley we lately crossed: the rain coming from the east strikes it, and is deposited both above and below, while much of the valley itself is not yet well wetted. here all the grasses have run up to seed, and yet they are not more than two feet or so in the seed-stalks. the pasturage is very fine. the people employ these continuous or _set-in_ rains for hunting the elephant, which gets bogged, and sinks in from fifteen to eighteen inches in soft mud, then even he, the strong one, feels it difficult to escape.[ ] _ th january, ._--still storm-stayed. we shall be off as soon as we get a fair day and these heavy rains cease. _ th january, ._--after service two men came and said that they were going to lobemba, and would guide us to motuna's village; another came a day or two ago, but he had such a villainous look we all shrank from him. these men's faces pleased us, but they did not turn out all we expected, for they guided us away westwards without a path: it was a drizzling rain, and this made us averse to striking off in the forest without them. no inhabitants now except at wide intervals, and no animals either. in the afternoon we came to a deep ravine full of gigantic timber trees and bamboos, with the mavoché river at the bottom. the dampness had caused the growth of lichens all over the trees, and the steep descent was so slippery that two boys fell, and he who carried the chronometers, twice: this was a misfortune, as it altered the rates, as was seen by the first comparison of them together in the evening. no food at motuna's village, yet the headman tried to extort two fathoms of calico on the ground that he was owner of the country: we offered to go out of his village and make our own sheds on "god's land," that is, where it is uncultivated, rather than have any words about it: he then begged us to stay. a very high mountain called chikokwé appeared w.s.w. from this village; the people who live on it are called matumba; this part is named lokumbi, but whatever the name, all the people are babisa, the dependants of the babemba, reduced by their own slaving habits to a miserable jungly state. they feed much on wild fruits, roots, and leaves; and yet are generally plump. they use a wooden hoe for sowing their maëre, it is a sort of v-shaped implement, made from a branch with another springing out of it, about an inch in diameter at the sharp point, and with it they claw the soil after scattering the seed; about a dozen young men were so employed in the usual small patches as we passed in the morning. the country now exhibits the extreme of leafiness and the undulations are masses of green leaves; as far as the eye can reach with distinctness it rests on a mantle of that hue, and beyond the scene becomes dark blue. near at hand many gay flowers peep out. here and there the scarlet martagón (_lilium chalcedonicum_), bright blue or yellow gingers; red, orange, yellow, and pure white orchids; pale lobelias, &c.; but they do not mar the general greenness. as we ascended higher on the plateau, grasses, which have pink and reddish brown seed-vessels imparted distinct shades of their colours to the lawns, and were grateful to the eye. we turned aside early in our march to avoid being wetted by rains, and took shelter in some old babisa sheds; these, when the party is a slaving one, are built so as to form a circle, with but one opening: a ridge pole, or rather a succession of ridge poles, form one long shed all round, with no partitions in the roof-shaped hut. on the _ th of january_ we ascended a hardened sandstone range. two men who accompanied our guide called out every now and then to attract the attention of the honey-guide, but none appeared. a water-buck had been killed and eaten at one spot, the ground showing marks of a severe struggle, but no game was to be seen. buffaloes and elephants come here at certain seasons; at present they have migrated elsewhere. the valleys are very beautiful: the oozes are covered with a species of short wiry grass, which gives the valleys the appearance of well-kept gentlemen's parks; but they are full of water to overflowing--immense sponges in fact;--and one has to watch carefully in crossing them to avoid plunging into deep water-holes, made by the feet of elephants or buffaloes. in the ooze generally the water comes half-way up the shoe, and we go plash, plash, plash, in the lawn-like glade. there are no people here now in these lovely wild valleys; but to-day we came to mounds made of old for planting grain, and slag from iron furnaces. the guide was rather offended because he did not get meat and meal, though he is accustomed to leaves at home, and we had none to give except by wanting ourselves: he found a mess without much labour in the forest. my stock of meal came to an end to-day, but simon gave me some of his. it is not the unpleasantness of eating unpalatable food that teases one, but we are never satisfied; i could brace myself to dispose of a very unsavoury mess, and think no more about it; but this maëre engenders a craving which plagues day and night incessantly. _ th january, ._--we crossed the muasi, flowing strongly to the east to the loangwa river. in the afternoon an excessively heavy thunderstorm wetted us all to the skin before any shelter could be made. two of our men wandered, and other two remained behind lost, as our track was washed out by the rains. the country is a succession of enormous waves, all covered with jungle, and no traces of paths; we were in a hollow, and our firing was not heard till this morning, when we ascended a height and were answered. i am thankful that up one was lost, for a man might wander a long time before reaching a village. simon gave me a little more of his meal this morning, and went without himself: i took my belt up three holes to relieve hunger. we got some wretched wild fruit like that called "jambos" in india, and at midday reached the village of chafunga. famine here too, but some men had killed an elephant and came to sell the dried meat: it was high, and so were their prices; but we are obliged to give our best from this craving hunger. _ th january, ._--sitting down this morning near a tree my head was just one yard off a good-sized cobra, coiled up in the sprouts at its root, but it was benumbed with cold: a very pretty little puff-adder lay in the path, also benumbed; it is seldom that any harm is done by these reptiles here, although it is different in india. we bought up all the food we could get; but it did not suffice for the marches we expect to make to get to the chambezé, where food is said to be abundant, we were therefore again obliged to travel on sunday. we had prayers before starting; but i always feel that i am not doing fight, it lessens the sense of obligation in the minds of my companions; but i have no choice. we went along a rivulet till it ended in a small lake, mapampa or chimbwé, about five miles long, and one and a half broad. it had hippopotami, and the poku fed on its banks. _ th january, ._--we had to cross the chimbwé at its eastern end, where it is fully a mile wide. the guide refused to show another and narrower ford up the stream, which emptied into it from the east; and i, being the first to cross, neglected to give orders about the poor little dog, chitané. the water was waist deep, the bottom soft peaty stuff with deep holes in it, and the northern side infested by leeches. the boys were--like myself--all too much engaged with preserving their balance to think of the spirited little beast, and he must have swam till he sunk. he was so useful in keeping all the country curs off our huts; none dare to approach and steal, and he never stole himself. he shared the staring of the people with his master, then in the march he took charge of the whole party, running to the front, and again to the rear, to see that all was right. he was becoming yellowish-red in colour; and, poor thing, perished in what the boys all call chitané's water. _ th january, ._--march through the mountains, which are of beautiful white and pink dolomite, scantily covered with upland trees and vegetation. the rain, as usual, made us halt early, and wild fruits helped to induce us to stay. in one place we lighted on a party of people living on masuko fruit, and making mats of the shuaré[ ] palm petioles. we have hard lines ourselves; nothing but a little maëre porridge and dampers. we roast a little grain, and boil it, to make believe it is coffee. the guide, a maundering fellow, turned because he was not fed better than at home, and because he knew that but for his obstinacy we should not have lost the dog. it is needless to repeat that it is all forest on the northern slopes of the mountains--open glade and miles of forest; ground at present all sloppy; oozes full and overflowing--feet constantly wet. rivulets rush strongly with _clear_ water, though they are in flood: we can guess which are perennial and which mere torrents that dry up; they flow northwards and westwards to the chambezé. _ th january, ._--detained in an old babisa slaving encampment by set-in rain till noon, then set off in the midst of it. came to hills of dolomite, but all the rocks were covered with white lichens (ash-coloured). the path took us thence along a ridge, which separates the lotiri, running westwards, and the lobo, going northwards, and we came at length to the lobo, travelling along its banks till we reached the village called lisunga, which was about five yards broad, and very deep, in flood, with clear water, as indeed are all the rivulets now; they can only be crossed by felling a tree on the bant and letting it fall across. they do not abrade their banks--vegetation protects them. i observed that the brown ibis, a noisy bird, took care to restrain his loud, harsh voice when driven from the tree in which his nest was placed, and when about a quarter of a mile off, then commenced his loud "ha-ha-ha!" _ th january, ._--the headman of lisunga, chaokila, took our present, and gave nothing in return. a deputy from chitapangwa came afterwards and demanded a larger present, as he was the greater man, and said that if we gave him two fathoms of calico, he would order all the people to bring plenty of food, not here only, but all the way to the paramount chief of lobemba, chitapangwa. i proposed that he should begin by ordering chaokila to give us some in return for our present. this led, as chaokila told us, to the cloth being delivered to the deputy, and we saw that all the starvelings south of the chambezé were poor dependants on the babemba, or rather their slaves, who cultivate little, and then only in the rounded patches above mentioned, so as to prevent their conquerors from taking away more than a small share. the subjects are babisa--a miserable lying lot of serfs. this tribe is engaged in the slave-trade, and the evil effects are seen in their depopulated country and utter distrust of every one. _ th january, ._--raining most of the day. worked out the longitude of the mountain-station said to be mpini, but it will be better to name it chitané's, as i could not get the name from our maundering guide; he probably did not know it. lat, ° ' " s.; long. ° ' " e. altitude above sea (barometer) feet; altitude above sea (boiling-point) feet. ---- diff. .[ ] nothing but famine and famine prices, the people living on mushrooms and leaves. of mushrooms we observed that they choose five or six kinds, and rejected ten sorts. one species becomes as large as the crown of a man's hat; it is pure white, with a blush of brown in the middle of the crown, and is very good roasted; it is named "motenta;" another, mofeta; rd, boséfwé; th, nakabausa; th, chisimbé, lobulated, green outside, and pink and fleshy inside; as a relish to others: some experience must have been requisite to enable them to distinguish the good from the noxious, of which they reject ten sorts. we get some elephants' meat from the people, but high is no name for its condition. it is very bitter, but we used it as a relish to the maëre porridge: none of the animal is wasted; skin and all is cut up and sold, not one of us would touch it with the hand if we had aught else, for the gravy in which we dip our porridge is like an aqueous solution of aloes, but it prevents the heartburn, which maëre causes when taken alone. i take mushrooms boiled instead; but the meat is never refused when we can purchase it, as it seems to ease the feeling of fatigue which jungle-fruit and fare engenders. the appetite in this country is always very keen, and makes hunger worse to bear: the want of salt, probably, makes the gnawing sensation worse. * * * * * [we now come to a disaster which cannot be exaggerated in importance when we witness its after effects month by month on dr. livingstone. there can be little doubt that the severity of his subsequent illnesses mainly turned upon it, and it is hardly too much to believe that his constitution from this time was steadily sapped by the effects of fever-poison which he was powerless to counteract, owing to the want of quinine. in his allusion to bishop mackenzie's death, we have only a further confirmation of the one rule in all such cases which must be followed, or the traveller in africa goes--not with his life in his hand, but in some luckless box, put in the charge of careless servants. bishop mackenzie had all his drugs destroyed by the upsetting of a canoe, in which was his case of medicines, and in a moment everything was soaked and spoilt. it cannot be too strongly urged on explorers that they should divide their more important medicines in such a way that a _total loss_ shall become well-nigh impossible. three or four tin canisters containing some calomel, dover's powder, colocynth, and, above all, a supply of quinine, can be distributed in different packages, and then, if a mishap occurs similar to that which livingstone relates, the disaster is not beyond remedy.] * * * * * _ th january, ._--a guide refused, so we marched without one. the two waiyau, who joined us at kandé's village, now deserted. they had been very faithful all the way, and took our part in every case. knowing the language well, they were extremely useful, and no one thought that they would desert, for they were free men--their masters had been killed by the mazitu--and this circumstance, and their uniform good conduct, made us trust them more than we should have done any others who had been slaves. but they left us in the forest, and heavy rain came on, which obliterated every vestige of their footsteps. to make the loss the more galling, they took what we could least spare--the medicine-box, which they would only throw away as soon as they came to examine their booty. one of these deserters exchanged his load that morning with a boy called baraka, who had charge of the medicine-box, because he was so careful. this was done, because with the medicine-chest were packed five large cloths and all baraka's clothing and beads, of which he was very careful. the waiyau also offered to carry this burden a stage to help baraka, while he gave his own load, in which there was no cloth, in exchange. the forest was so dense and high, there was no chance of getting a glimpse of the fugitives, who took all the dishes, a large box of powder, the flour we had purchased dearly to help us as far as the chambezé, the tools, two guns, and a cartridge-pouch; but the medicine-chest was the sorest loss of all! i felt as if i had now received the sentence of death, like poor bishop mackenzie. all the other goods i had divided in case of loss or desertion, but had never dreamed of losing the precious quinine and other remedies; other losses and annoyances i felt as just parts of that undercurrent of vexations which is not wanting in even the smoothest life, and certainly not worthy of being moaned over in the experience of an explorer anxious to benefit a country and people--but this loss i feel most keenly. everything of this kind happens by the permission of one who watches over us with most tender care; and this may turn out for the best by taking away a source of suspicion among more superstitious, charm-dreading people further north. i meant it as a source of benefit to my party and to the heathen. we returned to lisunga, and got two men off to go back to chafunga's village, and intercept the deserters if they went there; but it is likely that, having our supply of flour, they will give our route a wide berth and escape altogether. it is difficult to say from the heart, "thy will be done;" but i shall try. these waiyau had few advantages: sold into slavery in early life, they were in the worst possible school for learning to be honest and honourable, they behaved well for a long time; but, having had hard and scanty fare in lobisa, wet and misery in passing through dripping forests, hungry nights and fatiguing days, their patience must have been worn out, and they had no sentiments of honour, or at least none so strong as we ought to have; they gave way to the temptation which their good conduct had led us to put in their way. some we have come across in this journey seemed born essentially mean and base--a great misfortune to them and all who have to deal with them, but they cannot be so blamable as those who have no natural tendency to meanness, and whose education has taught them to abhor it. true; yet this loss of the medicine-box gnaws at the heart terribly. _ st and nd january, ._--remained at lisunga--raining nearly all day; and we bought all the maëre the chief would sell. we were now forced to go on and made for the next village to buy food. want of food and rain are our chief difficulties now, more rain falls here on this northern slope of the upland than elsewhere; clouds come up from the north and pour down their treasures in heavy thunder-showers, which deluge the whole country south of the edge of the plateau: the rain-clouds come from the west chiefly. _ rd january, ._--a march of five and three-quarter hours brought us yesterday to a village, chibanda's stockade, where "no food" was the case, as usual. we crossed a good-sized rivulet, the mapampa (probably ten yards wide), dashing along to the east; all the rest of the way was in dark forest. i sent off the boys to the village of muasi to buy food, if successful, to-morrow we march for the chambezé, on the other side of which all the reports agree in the statement that there plenty of food is to be had. we all feel weak and easily tired, and an incessant hunger teases us, so it is no wonder if so large a space of this paper is occupied by stomach affairs. it has not been merely want of nice dishes, but real biting hunger and faintness. _ th january, ._--four hours through unbroken, dark forest brought us to the movushi, which here is a sluggish stream, winding through and filling a marshy valley a mile wide. it comes from south-east, and falls into the chambezé, about ' north of our encampment. the village of moaba is on the east side of the marshy valley of the movuhi, and very difficult to be approached, as the water is chin-deep in several spots. i decided to make sheds on the west side, and send over for food, which, thanks to the providence which watches over us, we found at last in a good supply of maëre and some ground-nuts; but through, all this upland region the trees yielding bark-cloth, or _nyanda_, are so abundant, that the people are all well-clothed with it, and care but little for our cloth. red and pink beads are in fashion, and fortunately we have red. * * * * * [we may here add a few particulars concerning beads, which form such an important item of currency all through africa. with a few exceptions they are all manufactured in venice. the greatest care must be exercised, or the traveller--ignorant of the prevailing fashion in the country he is about to explore--finds himself with an accumulation of beads of no more value than tokens would be if tendered in this country for coin of the realm. thanks to the kindness of messrs. levin & co., the bead merchants, of bevis marks, e.c., we have been able to get some idea of the more valuable beads, through a selection made by susi and chuma in their warehouse. the waiyou prefer exceedingly small beads, the size of mustard-seed, and of various colours, but they must be opaque: amongst them dull white chalk varieties, called "catchokolo," are valuable, besides black and pink, named, respectively, "bububu" and "sekundereché" = the "dregs of pombe." one red bead, of various sizes, which has a white centre, is always valuable in every part of africa. it is called "sami-sami" by the suahélé, "chitakaraka" by the waiyou, "mangazi," = "blood," by the nyassa, and was found popular even amongst the manyuema, under the name of "maso-kantussi", "bird's eyes." whilst speaking of this distant tribe, it is interesting to observe that one peculiar long bead, recognised as common in the manyuema land, is only sent to the west coast of africa, and _never_ to the east. on chuma pointing to it as a sort found at the extreme limit explored by livingstone, it was at once seen that he must have touched that part of africa which begins to be within the reach of the traders in the portuguese settlements. "machua kanga" = "guinea fowl's eyes," is another popular variety; and the "moiompio" = "new heart," a large pale blue bead, is a favourite amongst the wabisa; but by far the most valuable of all is a small white oblong bead, which, when strung, looks like the joints of the cane root, from which it takes its name, "salani" = cane. susi says that lb. weight of these beads would buy a tusk of ivory, at the south end of tanganyika, so big that a strong man could not carry it more than two hours.] * * * * * _ th january, ._--remain and get our maëre ground into flour. moaba has cattle, sheep, and goats. the other side of the chambezé has everything in still greater abundance; so we may recover our lost flesh. there are buffaloes in this quarter, but we have not got a glimpse of any. if game was to be had, i should have hunted; but the hopo way of hunting prevails, and we pass miles of hedges by which many animals must have perished. in passing-through the forests it is surprising to see none but old footsteps of the game; but the hopo destruction accounts for its absence. when the hedges are burned, then the manured space is planted with pumpkins and calabashes. i observed at chibanda's a few green mushrooms, which, on being peeled, showed a pink, fleshy inside; they are called "chisimba;" and only one or two are put into the mortar, in which the women pound the other kinds, to give relish, it was said, to the mass: i could not ascertain what properties chisimba had when taken alone; but mushroom diet, in our experience, is good only for producing dreams of the roast beef of bygone days. the saliva runs from the mouth in these dreams, and the pillow is wet with it in the mornings. these babisa are full of suspicion; everything has to be paid for accordingly in advance, and we found that giving a present to a chief is only putting it in his power to cheat us out of a supper. they give nothing to each other for nothing, and if this is enlargement of mind produced by commerce, commend me to the untrading african! fish now appear in the rivulets. higher altitudes have only small things, not worth catching. an owl makes the woods resound by night and early morning with his cries, which consist of a loud, double-initial note, and then a succession of lower descending notes. another new bird, or at least new to me, makes the forests ring. when the vultures see us making our sheds, they conclude that we have killed some animal; but after watching awhile, and seeing no meat, they depart. this is suggestive of what other things prove, that it is only by sight they are guided.[ ] with respect to the native head-dresses the colouring-matter, "nkola," which seems to be camwood, is placed as an ornament on the head, and some is put on the bark-cloth to give it a pleasant appearance. the tree, when cut, is burned to bring out the strong colour, and then, when it is developed, the wood is powdered. the gum-copal trees now pour out gum where wounded, and i have seen masses of it fallen on the ground. _ th january, ._--went northwards along the movushi, near to its confluence with chambezé, and then took lodging in a deserted temporary village. in the evening i shot a poku, or tsébula, full-grown male. it measured from snout to insertion of tail, feet inches; tail, foot; height at withers, feet; circumference of chest, feet; face to insertion of horns, - / inches; horns measured on curve, inches. twelve rings on horns, and one had a ridge behind, / inch broad, / inch high, and tapering up the horn; probably accidental. colour: reddish-yellow, dark points in front of foot and on the ears, belly nearly white. the shell went through from behind the shoulder to the spleen, and burst on the other side, yet he ran yards. i felt very thankful to the giver of all good for this meat. _ th january, ._--a set-in rain all the morning, but having meat we were comfortable in the old huts. in changing my dress this morning i was frightened at my own emaciation. _ th january, ._--- we went five miles along the movushi and the chambezé to a crossing-place said to avoid three rivers on the other side, which require canoes just now, and have none. our lat. ° ' s. the chambezé was flooded with clear water, but the lines of bushy trees, which showed its real banks, were not more than forty yards apart, it showed its usual character of abundant animal life in its waters and on its banks, as it wended its way westwards. the canoe-man was excessively suspicious; when prepayment was acceded to, he asked a piece more, and although he was promised full payment as soon as we were all safely across he kept the last man on the south side as a hostage for this bit of calico: he then ran away. they must cheat each other sadly. went northwards, wading across two miles of flooded flats on to which the _clarias capensis_, a species of siluris, comes to forage out of the river. we had the likindazi, a sedgy stream, with hippopotami, on our right. slept in forest without seeing anyone. then next day we met with a party who had come from their village to look for us. we were now in lobemba, but these villagers had nothing but hopes of plenty at chitapangwa's. this village had half a mile of ooze and sludgy marsh in front of it, and a stockade as usual. we observed that the people had great fear of animals at night, and shut the gates carefully, of even temporary villages. when at molemba (chitapangwa's village) afterwards, two men were killed by a lion, and great fear of crocodiles was expressed by our canoe-man at the chambezé, when one washed in the margin of that river. there was evidence of abundance of game, elephants, and buffaloes, but we saw none. _ th january, ._--when near our next stage end we were shown where lightning had struck; it ran down a gum-copal tree without damaging it, then ten yards horizontally, and dividing there into two streams it went up an anthill; the withered grass showed its course very plainly, and next day ( st), on the banks of the mabula, we saw a dry tree which had been struck; large splinters had been riven off and thrown a distance of sixty yards in one direction and thirty yards in another: only a stump was left, and patches of withered grass where it had gone horizontally. _ th january, ._--northwards through almost trackless dripping forests and across oozing bogs. _ st january, ._--through forest, but gardens of larger size than in lobisa now appear. a man offered a thick bar of copper for sale, a foot by three inches. the hard-leafed acacia and mohempi abound. the valleys, with the oozes, have a species of grass, having pink seed-stalks and yellow seeds: this is very pretty. at midday we came to the lopiri, the rivulet which waters chitapanga's stockade, and soon after found that his village has a triple stockade, the inner being defended also by a deep broad ditch and hedge of a solanaceous thorny shrub. it is about yards broad and long. the huts not planted very closely. the rivulets were all making for the chambezé. they contain no fish, except very small ones--probably fry. on the other, or western side of the ridge, near which "malemba" is situated, fish abound worth catching. [illustration: chitapangwa] chitapangwa, or motoka, as he is also called, sent to inquire if we wanted an audience. "we must take something in our hands the first time we came before so great a man." being tired from marching, i replied, "not till the evening," and sent notice at p.m. of my coming. we passed through the inner stockade, and then on to an enormous hut, where sat chitapangwa, with three drummers and ten or more men, with two rattles in their hands. the drummers beat furiously, and the rattlers kept time to the drums, two of them advancing and receding in a stooping posture, with rattles near the ground, as if doing the chief obeisance, but still keeping time with the others. i declined to sit on the ground, and an enormous tusk was brought for me. the chief saluted courteously. he has a fat jolly face, and legs loaded with brass and copper leglets. i mentioned our losses by the desertion of the waiyau, but his power is merely nominal, and he could do nothing. after talking awhile he came along with us to a group of cows, and pointed out one. "that is yours," said he. the tusk on which i sat was sent after me too as being mine, because i had sat upon it. he put on my cloth as token of acceptance, and sent two large baskets of sorghum to the hut afterwards, and then sent for one of the boys to pump him after dark. [illustration: chitapangwa's wives.] _ st february, ._--we found a small party of black arab slave-traders here from bagamoio on the coast, and as the chief had behaved handsomely as i thought, i went this morning and gave him one of our best cloths; but when we were about to kill the cow, a man interfered and pointed out a smaller one. i asked if this was by the orders of the chief. the chief said that the man had lied, but i declined to take any cow at all if he did not give it willingly. the slavers, the headman of whom was magaru mafupi, came and said that they were going off on the nd; (_ nd february, _) but by payment i got them to remain a day, and was all day employed in writing despatches. _ rd february, ._--magaru mafupi left this morning with a packet of letters, for which he is to get rs. at zanzibar.[ ] they came by a much shorter route than we followed, in fact, nearly due west or south-west; but not a soul would tell us of this way of coming into the country when we were at zanzibar. bagamoio is only six hours north of kurdary harbour. it is possible that the people of zanzibar did not know of it themselves, as this is the first time they have come so far. the route is full of villages and people who have plenty of goats, and very cheap. they number fifteen stations, or sultans, as they call the chiefs, and will be at bagamoio in two months:-- . chasa; . lombé; . ucheré; . nyamiro; . zonda; . zambi; . lioti; . méreré; . kirangabana; . nkongozi; . sombogo; . suré; . lomolasenga; . kapass; , chanzé. they are then in the country adjacent to bagamoio. some of these places are two or three days apart from each other. they came to three large rivers: . wembo; . luaha; . luvo; but i had not time to make further inquiries. they had one of speke's companions to tanganyika with them, named janjé, or janja, who could imitate a trumpet by blowing into the palm of his hand. i ordered another supply of cloth and beads, and i sent for a small quantity of coffee, sugar, candles, french preserved meats, a cheese in tin, six bottles of port-wine, quinine, calomel, and resin of jalap, to be sent to ujiji. i proposed to go a little way east with this route to buy goats, but chitapangwa got very angry, saying, i came only to show my things, and would buy nothing: he then altered his tone, and requested me to take the cow first presented and eat it, and as we were all much in need i took it. we were to give only what we liked in addition; but this was a snare, and when i gave two more cloths he sent them back, and demanded a blanket. the boys alone have blankets; so i told him these were not slaves, and i could not take from them what i had once given. though it is disagreeable to be thus victimized, it is the first time we have tasted fat for six weeks and more. _ th february, ._--chitapangwa came with his wife to see the instruments which i explained to them as well as i could, and the books, as well as the book of books, and to my statements he made intelligent remarks. the boys are sorely afraid of him. when abraham does not like to say what i state, he says to me "i don't know the proper word;" but when i speak without him, he soon finds them. he and simon thought that talking in a cringing manner was the way to win him over, so i let them try it with a man he sent to communicate with us, and the result was this fellow wanted to open their bundles, pulled them about, and kept them awake most of the night. abraham came at night: "sir, what shall i do? they won't let me sleep." "you have had your own way," i replied, "and must abide by it." he brought them over to me in the morning, but i soon dismissed both him and them. _ th february, ._--i sent to the chief either to come to me or say avhen i should come to him and talk; the answer i got was that he would come when shaved, but he afterwards sent a man to hear what i had to advance--this i declined, and when the rain ceased i went myself. on coming into his hut i stated that i had given him four times the value of his cow, but if he thought otherwise, let us take the four cloths to his brother moamba, and if he said that i had not given enough, i would buy a cow and send it back. this he did not relish at all. "oh, great englishman! why should we refer a dispute to an inferior. i am the great chief of all this country. ingleze mokolu, you are sorry that you have to give so much for the ox you have eaten. you would not take a smaller, and therefore i gratified your heart by giving the larger; and why should not you gratify my heart by giving cloth sufficient to cover me, and please me?" i said that my cloths would cover him, and his biggest wife too all over, he laughed at this, but still held out; and as we have meat, and he sent maize and calabashes, i went away. he turns round now, and puts the blame of greediness on me. i cannot enter into his ideas, or see his point of view; cannot, in fact, enter into his ignorance, his prejudices, or delusions, so it is impossible to pronounce a true judgment. one who has no humour cannot understand one who has: this is an equivalent case. rain and clouds so constantly, i could not get our latitude till last night, ° ' " s. on th got lunars. long. ° ' " e. altitude above sea, feet, by boiling-point and barometer. _ th february, ._--the chief demands one of my boxes and a blanket; i explain that one day's rain would spoil the contents, and the boys who have blankets, not being slaves, i cannot take from them what i have given. i am told that he declares that he will take us back to the loangwa; make war and involve us in it, deprive us of food, &c.: this succeeds in terrifying the boys. he thinks that we have some self-interest to secure in passing through the country, and therefore he has a right to a share in the gain. when told it was for a public benefit, he pulled down the underlid of the right eye.[ ] he believes we shall profit by our journey, though he knows not in what way. it is possibly only a coincidence, but no sooner do we meet with one who accompanied speke and burton to tanganyika, than the system of mulcting commences. i have no doubt but that janjé told this man how his former employers paid down whatever was demanded of them. _ th february, ._--i had service in the open air, many looking on, and spoke afterwards to the chief, but he believes nothing save what speke and burton's man has told him. he gave us a present of corn and ground-nuts, and says he did not order the people not to sell grain to us. we must stop and eat green maize. he came after evening service, and i explained a little to him, and showed him woodcuts in the 'bible dictionary,' which he readily understood. _ th february, ._--the chief sent us a basket of hippopotamus flesh from the chambezé, and a large one of green maize. he says the three cloths i offered are still mine: all he wants is a box and blanket; if not a blanket, a box must be given, a tin one. he keeps out of my way, by going to the gardens every morning. he is good-natured, and our intercourse is a laughing one; but the boys betray their terrors in their tone of voice, and render my words powerless. the black and white, and the brownish-grey water wagtails are remarkably tame. they come about the huts and even into them, and no one ever disturbs them. they build their nests about the huts. in the bechuana country, a fine is imposed on any man whose boys kill one, but why, no one can tell me. the boys with me aver that they are not killed, because the meat is not eaten! or because they are so tame!! _ th february, ._--i gave one of the boxes at last, chitapangwa offering a heavy arab wooden one to preserve our things, which i declined to take, as i parted with our own partly to lighten a load. abraham unwittingly told me that he had not given me the chiefs statement in full when he pressed me to take his cow. it was, "take and eat the one you like, and give me a blanket." abraham said "he has no blanket." then he said to me, "take it and eat it, and give him any pretty thing you like." i was thus led to mistake the chief, and he, believing that he had said explicitly he wanted a blanket for it, naturally held out. it is difficult to get these lads to say what one wants uttered: either with enormous self-conceit, they give different, and, as they think, better statements, suppress them altogether, or return false answers: this is the great and crowning difficulty of my intercourse. i got ready to go, but the chief was very angry, and came with all his force, exclaiming that i wanted to leave against his will and power, though he wished to adjust matters, and send me away nicely. he does not believe that we have no blankets. it is hard to be kept waiting here, but all may be for the best: it has always turned out so, and i trust in him on whom i can cast all my cares. the lord look on this and help me. though i have these nine boys, i feel quite alone. i gave the chief some seeds, peas, and beans, for which he seemed thankful, and returned little presents of food and beer frequently. the beer of maëre is stuffed full of the growing grain as it begins to sprout, it is as thick as porridge, very strong and bitter, and goes to the head, requiring a strong digestion to overcome it. _february, ._--i showed the chief one of the boys' blankets, which he is willing to part with for two of our cloths, each of which is larger than it, but he declines to receive it, because we have new ones. i invited him, since he disbelieved my assertions, to look in our bales, and if he saw none, to pay us a fine for the insult: he consented in a laughing way to give us an ox. all our personal intercourse has been of the good-natured sort. it is the communications to the boys, by three men who are our protectors, or rather spies, that is disagreeable; i won't let them bring those fellows near me. _ th february, ._--he came early in the morning, and i showed that i had no blanket, and he took the old one, and said that the affair was ended. a long misunderstanding would have been avoided, had abraham told me fully what the chief said at first. _ th february, ._--the chief offered me a cow for à piece of red serge, and after a deal of talk and chitapangwa swearing that no demand would be made after the bargain was concluded, i gave the serge, a cloth, and a few beads for a good fat cow. the serge was two fathoms, a portion of that which miss coutts gave me when leaving england in . the chief is not so bad, as the boys are so cowardly. they assume a chirping, piping tone of voice in speaking to him, and do not say what at last has to be said, because in their cringing souls they believe they know what should be said better than i do. it does not strike them in the least that i have grown grey amongst these people; and it is immense conceit in mere boys to equal themselves to me. the difficulty is greater, because when i do ask their opinions i only receive the reply, "it is as you please, sir." very likely some men of character may arise and lead them; but such as i have would do little to civilise. _ th february, ._--too ill with rheumatic-fever to have service; this is the first attack of it i ever had--and no medicine! but i trust in the lord, who healeth his people. _ th february, ._--this cow we divided at once. the last one we cooked, and divided a full, hearty meal to all every evening. the boom--booming of water dashing against or over the rocks is heard at a good distance from most of the burns in this upland region; hence it is never quite still. the rocks here are argillaceous schist, red and white. _(keel, scotticé.)_ _ th february, ._--chitapangwa begged me to stay another day, that one of the boys might mend his blanket; it has been worn every night since april, and i, being weak and giddy, consented. a glorious day of bright sunlight after a night's rain. we scarcely ever have a twenty-four hours without rain, and never half that period without thunder. the camwood (?) is here called molombwa, and grows very abundantly. the people take the bark, boil, and grind it fine: it is then a splendid blood-red, and they use it extensively as an ornament, sprinkling it on the bark-cloth, or smearing it on the head. it is in large balls, and is now called mkola. the tree has pinnated, alternate lanceolate, leaves, and attains a height of or feet, with a diameter of or inches finely and closely veined above, more widely beneath. i am informed by abraham that the nyumbo (numbo or mumbo) is easily propagated by cuttings, or by cuttings of the roots. a bunch of the stalks is preserved in the soil for planting next year, and small pieces are cut off, and take root easily; it has a pea-shaped flower, but we never saw the seed. it is very much better here than i have seen it elsewhere; and james says that in his country it is quite white and better still; what i have seen is of a greenish tinge after it is boiled. [amongst the articles brought to the coast the men took care not to lose a number of seeds which they found in dr. livingstone's boxes after his death. these have been placed in the hands of the authorities at kew, and we may hope that in some instances they have maintained vitality. it is a great pity that there is such a lack of enterprise in the various european settlements on the east coast of africa. were it otherwise a large trade in valuable woods and other products would assuredly spring up. ebony and lignum vitae abound; dr. livingstone used hardly any other fuel when he navigated the _pioneer_, and no wood was found to make such "good steam." india-rubber may be had for the collecting, and we see that even the natives know some of the dye-woods, besides which the palm-oil tree is found, indigo is a weed everywhere, and coffee is indigenous.] footnotes: [ ] in coming to cross roads it is the custom of the leader to "mark" all side paths and wrong turnings by making a scratch across them with his spear, or by breaking a branch and laying it across: in this way those who follow are able to avoid straying off the proper road.--ed. [ ] heleotragus vardonii. [ ] the tamarind does the same thing in the heat of the day. [ ] a species of kingfisher, which stands flapping its wings and attempting to sing in a ridiculous manner. it never was better described than by one observer who, after watching it through its performance, said it was "a toy-shoppy bird."--ed. [ ] not the great chief near lake moero of the same name. [ ] this extraordinary bird flies from tree to tree in front of the hunter, chirrupping loudly, and will not be content till he arrives at the spot where the bees'-nest is; it then waits quietly till the honey is taken, and feeds on the broken morsels of comb which fall to its share. [ ] eleusine coracana. [ ] it may not be altogether without interest to state that livingstone could fall asleep when he wished at the very shortest notice. a mat, and a shady tree under which to spread it, would at any time afford him a refreshing sleep, and this faculty no doubt contributed much to his great powers of endurance.--ed. [ ] when the elephant becomes confused by the yelping pack of dogs with which he is surrounded, the hunter stealthily approaches behind, and with one blow of a sharp axe hamstrings the huge beast.--ed. [ ] raphia. [ ] top of mountain (barometer) feat. [ ] the experience of all african sportsmen tends towards the same conclusion. vultures probably have their beats high overhead in the sky, too far to be seen by the eye. from this altitude they can watch a vast tract of country, and whenever the disturbed movements of game are observed they draw together, and for the first time are seen wheeling, about at a great height over the spot. so soon as an animal is killed, every tree is filled with them, but the hunter has only to cover the meat with boughs or reeds and the vultures are entirely at a loss--hidden, from view it is hidden altogether: the idea that they are attracted by their keen sense of smell is altogether erroneous,--ed. [ ] these letters reached england safely. [ ] it seems almost too ridiculous to believe that we have here the exact equivalent of the schoolboy's demonstrative "do you see any green in my eye?" nevertheless it looks wonderfully like it!--ed. chapter viii. chitapangwa's parting oath. course laid for lake tanganyika. moamba's village. another watershed. the babemba tribe. ill with fever. threatening attitude of chibué's people. continued illness. reaches cliffs overhanging lake liemba. extreme beauty of the scene. dangerous fit of insensibility. leaves the lake. pernambuco cotton. rumours of war between arabs and nsama. reaches chitimba's village. presents sultan's letter to principal arab harnees. the war in itawa. geography of the arabs. ivory traders and slave-dealers. appeal to the koran. gleans intelligence of the wasongo to the eastward, and their chief, meréré. harnees sets out against nsama. tedious sojourn. departure for ponda. native cupping. _ th february, ._--i told the chief before starting that my heart was sore, because he was not sending me away so cordially as i liked. he at once ordered men to start with us, and gave me a brass knife with ivory sheath, which he had long worn, as a memorial. he explained that we ought to go north as, if we made easting, we should ultimately be obliged to turn west, and all our cloth would be expended ere we reached the lake tanganyika; he took a piece of clay off the ground and rubbed it on his tongue as an oath that what he said was true, and came along with us to see that all was right; and so we parted. we soon ascended the plateau, which encloses with its edge the village and stream of molemba. wild pigs are abundant, and there are marks of former cultivation. a short march brought us to an ooze, surrounded by hedges, game-traps, and pitfalls, where, as we are stiff and weak, we spend the night. rocks abound of the same dolomite kind as on the ridge further south, between the loangwa and chambezé, covered, like them, with lichens, orchids, euphorbias, and upland vegetation, hard-leaved acacias, rhododendrons, masukos. the gum-copal tree, when perforated by a grub, exudes from branches no thicker than one's arm, masses of soft, gluey-looking gum, brownish yellow, and light grey, as much as would fill a soup-plate. it seems to yield this gum only in the rainy season, and now all the trees are full of sap and gum. _ st february, ._--a night with loud and near thunder, and much heavy rain, which came through the boys' sheds. roads all plashy or running with water, oozes full, and rivulets overflowing; rocks of dolomite jutting out here and there. i noticed growing here a spikenard-looking shrub, six feet high, and a foot in diameter. the path led us west against my will. i found one going north; but the boys pretended that they did not see my mark, and went west, evidently afraid of incurring moamba's displeasure by passing him. i found them in an old hut, and made the best of it by saying nothing. they said that they had wandered; that was, they had never left the west-going path. _ nd february, ._--we came to a perennial rivulet running north, the merungu. here we met moamba's people, but declined going to his village, as huts are disagreeable; they often have vermin, and one is exposed to the gaze of a crowd through a very small doorway. the people in their curiosity often make the place dark, and the impudent ones offer characteristic remarks, then raise a laugh, and run away. we encamped on the meningu's right bank in forest, sending word to moamba that we meant to do so. he sent a deputation, first of all his young men, to bring us; then old men, and lastly he came himself with about sixty followers. i explained that i had become sick by living in a little hut at molemba; that i was better in the open air; that huts contained vermin; and that i did not mean to remain any while here, but go on our way. he pressed us to come to his village, and gave us a goat and kid, with a huge calabashful of beer. i promised to go over and visit him next day; and went accordingly. _ rd february, ._--moamba's village was a mile off, and on the left bank of the merengé, a larger stream than the merungu flowing north and having its banks and oozes covered with fine, tall, straight, evergreen trees. the village is surrounded with a stockade, and a dry ditch some fifteen or twenty feet wide, and as many deep. i had a long talk with moamba, a big, stout, public-house-looking person, with a slight outward cast in his left eye, but intelligent and hearty. i presented him with a cloth; and he gave me as much maëre meal as a man could carry, with a large basket of ground-nuts. he wished us to come to the merengé, if not into his village, that he might see and talk with me: i also showed him some pictures in smith's 'bible dictionary,' which he readily understood, and i spoke to him about the bible. he asked me "to come next day and tell him about prayer to god," this was a natural desire after being told that we prayed. he was very anxious to know why we were going to tanganyika; for what we came; what we should buy there; and if i had any relations there. he then showed me some fine large tusks, eight feet six in length. "what do you wish to buy, if not slaves or ivory?" i replied, that the only thing i had seen worth buying was a fine fat chief like him, as a specimen, and a woman feeding him, as he had, with beer. he was tickled at this; and said that when we reached our country, i must put fine clothes on him. this led us to speak of our climate, and the production of wool. _ th february, ._--i went over after service, but late, as the rain threatened to be heavy. a case was in process of hearing, and one old man spoke an hour on end, the chief listening all the while with the gravity of a judge. he then delivered his decision in about five minutes, the successful litigant going off lullilooing. each person, before addressing him, turns his back to him and lies down on the ground, clapping the hands: this is the common mode of salutation. another form here in lobemba is to rattle the arrows or an arrow on the bow, which all carry. we had a little talk with the chief; but it was late before the cause was heard through. he asked us to come and spend one night near him on the merenga, and then go on, so we came over in the morning to the vicinity of his village. a great deal of copper-wire is here made, the wire-drawers using for one part of the process a seven-inch cable. they make very fine wire, and it is used chiefly as leglets and anklets; the chief's wives being laden with them, and obliged to walk in a stately style from the weight: the copper comes from katanga. _ th february, ._--the chief wishes to buy a cloth with two goats, but his men do not bring them up quickly. simon, one of the boys, is ill of fever, and this induces me to remain, though moving from one place to another is the only remedy we have in our power. with the chief's men we did not get on well, but with himself all was easy. his men demanded prepayment for canoes to cross the river loömbé; but in the way that he put it, the request was not unreasonable, as he gave a man to smooth our way, and get canoes, or whatever else was needed, all the way to chibué's. i gave a cloth when he put it thus, and he presented a goat, a spear ornamented with copper-wire, abundance of meal, and beer, and numbo; so we parted good friends, as his presents were worth the cloth. holding a north-westerly course we met with the chikosho flowing west, and thence came to the likombé by a high ridge called losauswa, which runs a long way westward. it is probably a watershed between streams going to the chambezé and those that go to the northern rivers. we have the locopa, loömbé, nikéléngé, then lofubu or lovu; the last goes north into liembe, but accounts are very confused. the chambezé rises in the mambivé country, which is north-east of moamba, but near to it. the forest through which we passed was dense, but scrubby; trees unhealthy and no drainage except through oozes. on the keel which forms a clay soil the rain runs off, and the trees attain a large size. the roads are not soured by the slow process of the ooze drainage. at present all the slopes having loamy or sandy soil are oozes, and full to overflowing; a long time is required for them to discharge their contents. the country generally may be called one covered with forest. _ th march, ._--we came after a short march to a village on the molilanga, flowing east into the loömbé, here we meet with bananas for the first time, called, as in lunda, nkondé. a few trophies from mazitu are hung up: chitapangwa had twenty-four skulls ornamenting his stockade. the babemba are decidedly more warlike than any of the tribes south of them: their villages are stockaded, and have deep dry ditches round them, so it is likely that mochimbé will be effectually checked, and forced to turn his energies to something else than to marauding. our man from moamba here refused to go further, and we were put on the wrong track by the headman wading through three marshes, each at least half a mile broad. the people of the first village we came to shut their gates on us, then came running after us; but we declined to enter their village: it is a way of showing their independence. we made our sheds on a height in spite of their protests. they said that the gates were shut by the boys; but when i pointed out the boy who had done it, he said that he had been ordered to do it by the chief. if we had gone in now we should have been looked on as having come under considerable obligations. _ th march, ._--we went on to a village on the loömbé, where the people showed an opposite disposition, for not a soul was in it--all were out at their farms. when the good wife of the place came she gave us all huts, which saved us from a pelting shower. the boys herding the goats did not stir as we passed down the sides of the lovely valley. the loömbé looks a sluggish stream from a distance. the herdsman said we were welcome, and he would show the crossing next day, he also cooked some food for us. guided by our host, we went along the loömbé westwards till we reached the bridge (rather a rickety affair), which, when the water is low may be used as a weir. the loömbé main stream is feet wide, feet deep, with at least feet of flood beyond it. the water was knee deep on the bridge, but clear; the flooded part beyond was waist deep and the water flowing fast. all the people are now transplanting tobacco from the spaces under the eaves of the huts into the fields. it seems unable to bear the greater heat of summer: they plant also a kind of liranda, proper for the cold weather. we thought that we were conferring a boon in giving peas, but we found them generally propagated all over the country already, and in the cold time too. we went along the diola river to an old hut and made a fire; thence across country to another river, called loendawé, feet wide, and feet deep. _ th march, ._--i have been ill of fever ever since we left moamba's; every step i take jars in the chest, and i am very weak; i can scarcely keep up the march, though formerly i was always first, and had to hold in my pace not to leave the people altogether. i have a constant singing in the ears, and can scarcely hear the loud tick of the chronometers. the appetite is good, but we have no proper food, chiefly maëre meal or beans, or mapemba or ground-nuts, rarely a fowl. the country is full of hopo-hedges, but the animals are harassed, and we never see them. _ th march, ._.--detained by a set-in rain. marks on masses of dolomite elicited the information that a party of londa smiths came once to this smelting ground and erected their works here. we saw an old iron furnace, and masses of haematite, which seems to have been the ore universally used. _ th march, ._--rain held us back for some time, but we soon reached chibué, a stockaded village. like them all, it is situated by a stream, with a dense clump of trees on the waterside of some species of mangrove. they attain large size, have soft wood, and succulent leaves; the roots intertwine in the mud, and one has to watch that he does not step where no roots exist, otherwise he sinks up to the thigh. in a village the people feel that we are on their property, and crowd upon us inconveniently; but outside, where we usually erect our sheds, no such feeling exists, we are each on a level, and they don't take liberties. the balungu are marked by three or four little knobs on the temples, and the lobes of the ears are distended by a piece of wood, which is ornamented with beads; bands of beads go across the forehead and hold up the hair. chibué's village is at the source of the lokwéna, which goes n. and n.e.; a long range of low hills is on our n.e., which are the mambwé, or part of them. the chambezé rises in them, but further south. here the lokwéna, round whose source we came on starting this morning to avoid wet feet, and all others north and west of this, go to the lofu or lobu, and into liemba lake. those from the hills on our right go east into the loanzu and so into the lake. _ th march, ._--we now are making for kasonso, the chief of the lake, and a very large country all around it, passing the lochenjé, five yards wide, and knee deep, then to the chañumba. all flow very rapidly just now and are flooded with clean water. everyone carries an axe, as if constantly warring with the forest. my long-continued fever ill disposes me to enjoy the beautiful landscape. we are evidently on the ridge, but people have not a clear conception of where the rivers run. _ th march, ._--a party of young men came out of the village near which we had encamped to force us to pay something for not going into their village. "the son of a great chief ought to be acknowledged," &c. they had their bows and arrows with them, and all ready for action. i told them we had remained near them because they said we could not reach kasonso that day. their headman had given us nothing. after talking a while, and threatening to do a deal to-morrow, they left, and through an almighty providence nothing was attempted. we moved on n.w. in forest, with long green tree-covered slopes on our right, and came to a village of kasonso in a very lovely valley. great green valleys were now scooped out, and many, as the kakanza, run into the lovu. _ th march, ._--the same features of country prevailed, indeed it was impossible to count the streams flowing n.w. we found kasonso situated at the confluence of two streams; he shook hands a long while, and seems a frank sort of man. a shower of rain set the driver ants on the move, and about two hours after we had turned in we were overwhelmed by them. they are called kalandu or nkalanda. to describe this attack is utterly impossible. i wakened covered with them: my hair was full of them. one by one they cut into the flesh, and the more they are disturbed, the more vicious are their bites; they become quite insolent. i went outside the hut, but there they swarmed everywhere; they covered the legs, biting furiously; it is only when they are tired that they leave off. one good trait of the balungu up here is, they retire when they see food brought to anyone, neither babisa nor makoa had this sense of delicacy: the babemba are equally polite. we have descended considerably into the broad valley of the lake, and it feels warmer than on the heights. cloth here is more valuable, inasmuch as bark-cloth is scarce. the skins of goats and wild animals are used, and the kilt is very diminutive among the women. _ nd march, ._--cross loéla, thirty feet wide and one deep, and meet with tsetse fly, though we have seen none since we left chitapangwa's. kasonso gave us a grand reception, and we saw men present from tanganyika; i saw cassava here, but not in plenty. _ th march, ._--set-in rain and chuma fell ill. there are cotton bushes of very large size here of the south american kind. after sleeping in various villages and crossing numerous streams, we came to mombo's village, near the ridge overlooking the lake. _ st march, and st april, ._--i was too ill to march through. i offered to go on the st, but kasonso's son, who was with us, objected. we went up a low ridge of hills at its lowest part, and soon after passing the summit the blue water loomed through the trees. i was detained, but soon heard the boys firing their muskets on reaching the edge of the ridge, which allowed of an undisturbed view. this is the south-eastern end of liemba, or, as it is sometimes called, tanganyika.[ ] we had to descend at least feet before we got to the level of the lake. it seems about eighteen or twenty miles broad, and we could see about thirty miles up to the north. four considerable rivers flow into the space before us. the nearly perpendicular ridge of about feet extends with breaks all around, and there, embosomed in tree-covered rocks, reposes the lake peacefully in the huge cup-shaped cavity. i never saw anything so still and peaceful as it lies all the morning. about noon a gentle breeze springs up, and causes the waves to assume a bluish tinge. several rocky islands rise in the eastern end, which are inhabited by fishermen, who capture abundance of fine large fish, of which they enumerate about twenty-four species. in the north it seems to narrow into a gateway, but the people are miserably deficient in geographical knowledge, and can tell us nothing about it. they suspect us, and we cannot get information, or indeed much of anything else. i feel deeply thankful at having got so far. i am excessively weak--cannot walk without tottering, and have constant singing in the head, but the highest will lead me further. lat. of the spot we touched at first, nd april, . lat. ° ' " s., long. ° '; but i only worked out (and my head is out of order) one set of observations. height above level of the sea over feet, by boiling-point thermometers and barometer. the people won't let me sound the lake. after being a fortnight at this lake it still appears one of surpassing loveliness. its peacefulness is remarkable, though at times it is said to be lashed up by storms. it lies in a deep basin whose sides are nearly perpendicular, but covered well with trees; the rocks which appear are bright red argillaceous schist; the trees at present all green: down some of these rocks come beautiful cascades, and buffaloes, elephants, and antelopes wander and graze on the more level spots, while lions roar by night. the level place below is not two miles from the perpendicular. the village (pambété), at which we first touched the lake, is surrounded by palm-oil trees--not the stunted ones of lake nyassa, but the real west coast palm-oil tree,[ ] requiring two men to carry a bunch of the ripe fruit. in the morning and evening huge crocodiles may be observed quietly making their way to their feeding grounds; hippopotami snort by night and at early morning. after i had been a few days here i had a fit of insensibility, which shows the power of fever without medicine. i found myself floundering outside my hut and unable to get in; i tried to lift myself from my back by laying hold of two posts at the entrance, but when i got nearly upright i let them go, and fell back heavily on my head on a box. the boys had seen the wretched state i was in, and hung a blanket at the entrance of the hut, that no stranger might see my helplessness; some hours elapsed before i could recognize where i was. as for these balungu, as they are called, they have a fear of us, they do not understand our objects, and they keep aloof. they promise everything and do nothing; but for my excessive weakness we should go on, but we wait for a recovery of strength. as people they are greatly reduced in numbers by the mazitu, who carried off very large numbers of the women, boys, girls, and children. they train or like to see the young men arrayed as mazitu, but it would be more profitable if they kept them to agriculture. they are all excessively polite. the clapping of hands on meeting is something excessive, and then the string of salutations that accompany it would please the most fastidious frenchman. it implies real politeness, for in marching with them they always remove branches out of the path, and indicate stones or stumps in it carefully to a stranger, yet we cannot prevail on them to lend carriers to examine the lake or to sell goats, of which, however, they have very few, and all on one island. the lake discharges its water north-westward or rather nor-north-westwards. we observe weeds going in that direction, and as the lonzua, the kowé, the kapata, the luazé, the kalambwé, flow into it near the east end, and the lovu or lofubu, or lofu, from the south-west near the end it must find an exit for so much water. all these rivers rise in or near the mambwé country, in lat. ° s., where, too, the chambezé rises. liemba is said to remain of about the same size as we go north-west, but this we shall see for ourselves. elephants come all about us. one was breaking trees close by. i fired into his ear without effect: i am too weak to hold the gun steadily. _ th april, ._--we begin our return march from liemba. slept at a village on the lake, and went on next day to pambété, where we first touched it. i notice that here the people pound tobacco-leaves in a mortar after they have undergone partial fermentation by lying in the sun, then they put the mass in the sun to dry for use. the reason why no palm-oil trees grow further east than pambété is said to be the stony soil there, and this seems a valid one, for it loves rich loamy meadows. _ st may, ._--we intended to go north-west to see whether this lake narrows or not, for all assert that it maintains its breadth such as we see it beyond pemba as far as they know it; but when about to start the headman and his wife came and protested so solemnly that by going n.w. we should walk into the hands of a party of mazitu there, that we deferred our departure. it was not with a full persuasion of the truth of the statement that i consented, but we afterwards saw good evidence that it was true, and that we were saved from being plundered. these marauders have changed their tactics, for they demand so many people, and so many cloths, and then leave. they made it known that their next scene of mulcting would be mombo's village, and there they took twelve people--four slaves, and many cloths, then went south to the hills they inhabit. a strict watch was kept on their movements by our headman and his men. they trust to fleeing into a thicket on the west of the village should the mazitu come. i have been informed on good authority that kasonso was on his way to us when news arrived that his young son had died. he had sent on beer and provisions for us, but the mazitu intervening they were consumed. the mazitu having left we departed and slept half-way up the ridge. i had another fit of insensibility last night: the muscles of the back lose all power,[ ] and there is constant singing in the ears, and inability to do the simplest sum. cross the aeezé (which makes the waterfall) fifteen yards wide and knee deep. the streams like this are almost innumerable. mombo's village. it is distressingly difficult to elicit accurate information about the lake and rivers, because the people do not think accurately. mombo declared that two arabs came when we were below, and inquired for us, but he denied our presence, thinking thereby to save us trouble and harm. the cotton cultivated is of the pernambuco species, and the bushes are seven or eight feet high. much cloth was made in these parts before the mazitu raids began, it was striped black and white, and many shawls are seen in the country yet. it is curious that this species of cotton should be found only in the middle of this country. in going westwards on the upland the country is level and covered with scraggy forest as usual, long lines of low hills or rather ridges of denudation run. n. and s. on our east. this is called moami country, full of elephants, but few are killed. they do much damage, eating the sorghum in the gardens unmolested. _ th may, ._--a short march to-day brought us to a village on the same moami, and to avoid a sunday in the forest we remained. the elephants had come into the village and gone all about it, and to prevent their opening the corn safes the people had bedaubed them with elephant's droppings. when a cow would not give milk, save to its calf, a like device was used at kolobeng; the cow's droppings were smeared on the teats, and the calf was too much disgusted to suck: the cow then ran till she was distressed by the milk fever and was willing to be relieved by the herdsman. _ th and th may, ._--news that the arabs had been fighting with nsama came, but this made us rather anxious to get northward along liemba, and we made for mokambola's village near the edge of the precipice which overhangs the lake. many shuaré raphia palms grow in the river which flows past it. as we began our descent we saw the lofu coming from the west and entering liemba. a projection of liemba comes to meet it, and then it is said to go away to the north or north-west as far as my informants knew. some pointed due north, others north-west, so probably its true course amounts to n.n.w. we came to a village about ' w. of the confluence, whose headman was affable and generous. the village has a meadow some four miles wide on the land side, in which buffaloes disport themselves, but they are very wild, and hide in the gigantic grasses. sorghum, ground-nuts, and voandzeia grow luxuriantly. the lofu is a quarter of a mile wide, but higher up three hundred yards. the valley was always clouded over at night so i could not get an observation except early in the morning when the cold had dissipated the clouds. we remained here because two were lame, and all tired by the descent of upwards of feet, and the headman sent for fish for us. he dissuaded us strongly from attempting to go down the liemba, as the son of nsania (kapoma) was killing all who came that way in revenge for what the arabs had done to his father's people, and he might take us for arabs. a suaheli arab came in the evening and partly confirmed the statements of the headman of karambo; i resolved therefore to go back to chitimba's in the south, where the chief portion of the arabs are assembled, and hear from them more certainly. the last we heard of liemba was that at a great way north-west, it is dammed up by rocks, and where it surmounts these there is a great waterfall. it does not, it is said, diminish in size so far, but by bearings protracted it is two miles wide. _ th may, ._--return to mokambola's village, and leave for chitimba's. baraka stopped behind at the village, and james ran away to him, leaving his bundle, containing three chronometers, in the path: i sent back for them, and james came up in the evening; he had no complaint, and no excuse to make. the two think it will be easy to return to their own country by begging, though they could not point it out to me when we were much nearer to where it is supposed to be. _ th may, ._--where we were brought to a standstill was miserably cold ( °), so we had prayers and went on s. and s.w. to the village of chisáka. _ th may, ._--chitimba's village was near in the same direction; here we found a large party of arabs, mostly black suahelis. they occupied an important portion of the stockaded village, and when i came in, politely showed me to a shed where they are in the habit of meeting. after explaining whence i had come, i showed them the sultan's letter. harnees presented a goat, two fowls, and a quantity of flour. it was difficult to get to the bottom of the nsama affair, but according to their version that chief sent an invitation to them, and when they arrived called for his people, who came in crowds--as he said to view the strangers. i suspect that the arabs became afraid of the crowds and began to fire; several were killed on both sides, and nsama fled, leaving his visitors in possession of the stockaded village and all it contained. others say that there was a dispute about an elephant, and that nsama's people were the aggressors. at any rate it is now all confusion; those who remain at nsama's village help themselves to food in the surrounding villages and burn them, while chitimba has sent for the party who are quartered here to come to him. an hour or two after we arrived a body of men came from kasonso, with the intention of proceeding into the country of nsama, and if possible catching nsama, "he having broken public law by attacking people who brought merchandise into the country." this new expedition makes the arabs resolve to go and do what they can to injure their enemy. it will just be a plundering foray--each catching what he can, whether animal or human, and retiring when it is no longer safe to plunder! this throws the barrier of a broad country between me and lake "moero" in the west, but i trust in providence a way will be opened. i think now of going southwards and then westwards, thus making a long détour round the disturbed district. the name of the principal arab is hamees wodim tagh, the other is syde bin alie bin mansure: they are connected with one of the most influential native mercantile houses in zanzibar. hamees has been particularly kind to me in presenting food, beads, cloth, and getting information. thami bin snaelim is the arab to whom my goods are directed at ujiji. _ th may, ._--at chitimba's we are waiting to see what events turn up to throw light on our western route. some of the arabs and kasonso's men went off to-day: they will bring information perhaps as to nsama's haunts, and then we shall move south and thence west. wrote to sir thomas maclear, giving the position of liemba and to dr. seward, in case other letters miscarry. the hot season is beginning now. this corresponds to july further south. three goats were killed by a leopard close to the village in open day. _ th may, ._--information came that nsama begged pardon of the. arabs, and would pay all that they had lost. he did not know of his people stealing from them: we shall hear in a day or two whether the matter is to be patched up or not. while some believe his statements, others say, "nsama's words of peace are simply to gain time to make another stockade:" in the mean time kasonso's people will ravage all his country on this eastern side. hamees is very anxious that i should remain a few days longer, till kasonso's son, kampamba, comes with _certain_ information, and then he will see to our passing safely to chiwéré's village from kasonso's. all have confidence in this last-named chief as an upright man. _ st june, ._--another party of marauders went off this morning to plunder nsama's country to the west of the confluence of the lofu as a punishment for a breach of public law. the men employed are not very willing to go, but when they taste the pleasure of plunder they will relish it more! the watershed begins to have a northern slope about moamba's, lat. ° ' s., but the streams are very tortuous, and the people have very confused ideas as to where they run. the lokhopa, for instance, was asserted by all the men at moamba's to flow into lokholu, and then into a river going to liemba, but a young wife of moamba, who seemed very intelligent, maintained that lokhopa and lokholu went to the chambezé; i therefore put it down thus. the streams which feed the chambezé and the liemba overlap each other, and it would require a more extensive survey than i can give to disentangle them. north of moamba, on the merengé, the slope begins to liemba. the lofu rises in chibué's country, and with its tributaries we have long ridges of denudation, each some or feet high, and covered with green trees. the valleys of denudation enclosed by these hill ranges guide the streams towards liemba or the four rivers which flow into it. the country gradually becomes lower, warmer, and tsetse and mosquitoes appear; so at last we come to the remarkable cup-shaped cavity in which liemba reposes. several streams fall down the nearly perpendicular cliffs, and form beautiful cascades. the lines of denudation are continued, one range rising behind another as far as the eye can reach to the north and east of liemba, and probably the slope continues away down to tanganyika. the watershed extends westwards to beyond casembe, and the luapula, or chambezé, rises in the same parallels of latitude as does the lofu and the lonzna. the arabs inform me that between this and the sea, about miles distant, lies the country of the wasango--called: usango--a fair people, like portuguese, and very friendly to strangers. the wasango possess plenty of cattle: their chief is called meréré.[ ] they count this twenty-five days, while the distance thence to the sea at bagamoio is one month and twenty-five days--say miles. uchéré is very far off northwards, but a man told me that he went to a salt-manufactory in that direction in eight days from kasonso's. meréré goes frequently on marauding expeditions for cattle, and is instigated thereto by his mother. what we understand by primeval forest is but seldom seen in the interior here, though the country cannot be described otherwise than as generally covered with interminable forests. insects kill or dwarf some trees, and men maim others for the sake of the bark-cloth; elephants break down a great number, and it is only here and there that gigantic specimens are seen: they may be expected in shut-in valleys among mountains, but on the whole the trees are scraggy, and the varieties not great. the different sorts of birds which sing among the branches seem to me to exceed those of the zambesi region, but i do not shoot them: the number of new notes i hear astonishes me. the country in which we now are is called by the arabs and natives ulungu, that farther north-west is named marunga. hamees is on friendly terms with the mazitu (watuta) in the east, who do not plunder. the chief sent a man to kasonso lately, and he having received a present went away highly pleased. hamees is certainly very anxious to secure my safety. some men came from the n.e. to inquire about the disturbance here and they recommend that i should go with them, and then up the east side of the lake to ujiji; but that would ruin my plan of discovering moero and afterwards following the watershed, so as to be certain that this is either the watershed of the congo or kile. he was not well pleased when i preferred to go south and then westwards, as it looks like rejecting his counsel; but he said if i waited till his people came, then we should be able to speak with more certainty. on inquiring if any large mountains exist in this country, i was told that moufipa, or fipa, opposite the lower end of the lake, is largest--one can see tanganyika from it. it probably gives rise to the nkalambwé river and the luazé. there is nothing interesting in a heathen town. all are busy in preparing food or clothing, mats or baskets, whilst the women are cleaning or grinding their corn, which involves much hard labour. they first dry this in the sun, then put it into a mortar, and afterwards with a flat basket clean off the husks and the dust, and grind it between two stones, the next thing is to bring wood and water to cook it. the chief here was aroused the other day, and threatened to burn his own house and all his property because the people stole from it, but he did not proceed so far: it was probably a way of letting the arab dependants know that he was aroused. some of the people who went to fight attacked a large village, and killed several men; but in shooting in a bushy place they killed one of their own party and wounded another. on inquiring of an arab who had sailed on tanganyika which way the water flowed, he replied to the south! the wagtails build in the thatch of the huts; they are busy, and men and other animals are active in the same way. i am rather perplexed how to proceed. some arabs seem determined to go westwards as soon as they can make it up with nsama, whilst others distrust him. one man will send his people to pick up what ivory they can, but he himself will retire to the usango country. nsama is expected to-day or to-morrow. it would be such a saving of time and fatigue for us to go due west rather than south, and then west, but i feel great hesitation as to setting out on the circuitous route. several arabs came from the liemba side yesterday; one had sailed on tanganyika, and described the winds there as very baffling, but no one of them has a clear idea of the lake. they described the lower part as a "sea," and thought it different from tanganyika. close observation of the natives of ulungu makes me believe them to be extremely polite. the mode of salutation among relatives is to place the hands round each other's chests kneeling, they then clap their hands close to the ground. some more abject individuals kiss the soil before a chief; the generality kneel only, with the fore-arms close to the ground, and the head bowed down to them, saying, "o ajadla chiusa, mari a bwino." the usanga say, "ajé senga." the clapping of hands to superiors, and even equals, is in some villages a perpetually recurring sound. aged persons are usually saluted: how this extreme deference to each other could have arisen, i cannot conceive; it does not seem to be fear of each other that elicits it. even the chiefs inspire no fear, and those cruel old platitudes about governing savages by fear seem unknown, yet governed they certainly are, and upon the whole very well. the people were not very willing to go to punish nsama's breach of public law, yet, on the decision of the chiefs, they went, and came back, one with a wooden stool, another with a mat, a third with a calabash of ground-nuts or some dried meat, a hoe, or a bow--poor, poor pay for a fortnight's hard work hunting fugitives and burning villages. _ th june, ._--news came to-day that an arab party in the south-west, in lunda, lost about forty people by the small-pox ("ndué"), and that the people there, having heard of the disturbance with nsama, fled from the arabs, and would sell neither ivory nor food: this looks like another obstacle to our progress thither. _ th- th june, ._--hamees went to meet the party from the south-west, probably to avoid bringing the small-pox here. they remain at about two hours' distance. hamees reports that though the strangers had lost a great many people by small-pox, they had brought good news of certain arabs still further west: one, seide ben umale, or salem, lived at a village near casembe, ten days distant, and another, juma merikano, or katata katanga, at another village further north, and seide ben habib was at phueto, which is nearer tanganyika. this party comprises the whole force of hamees, and he now declares that he will go to nsama and make the matter up, as he thinks that he is afraid to come here, and so he will make the first approach to friendship. on pondering over the whole subject, i see that, tiresome as it is to wait, it is better to do so than go south and then west, for if i should go i shall miss seeing moero, which is said to be three days from nsama's present abode. his people go there for salt, and i could not come to it from the south without being known to them, and perhaps considered to be an arab. hamees remarked that it was the arab way first to smooth the path before entering upon it; sending men and presents first, thereby ascertaining the disposition of the inhabitants. he advises patience, and is in hopes of making a peace with nsama. that his hopes are not unreasonable, he mentioned that when the disturbance began, nsama sent men with two tusks to the village whence he had just been expelled, offering thereby to make the matter up, but the arabs, suspecting treachery, fired upon the carriers and killed them, then ten goats and one tusk were sent with the same object, and met with a repulse; hamees thinks that had he been there himself the whole matter would have been settled amicably. all complain of cold here. the situation is elevated, and we are behind a clump of trees on the rivulet chiloa, which keeps the sun off us in the mornings. this cold induces the people to make big fires in their huts, and frequently their dwellings are burned. minimum temperature is as low as °; sometimes °. _ th june, ._--the arabs are all busy reading their koran, or kurán, and in praying for direction; to-morrow they will call a meeting to deliberate as to what steps they will take in the nsama affair. hamees, it seems, is highly thought of by that chief, who says, "let him come, and all will be right." hamees proposes to go with but a few people. these zanzibar men are very different from the slavers of the waiyau country. _ th june, ._--the people, though called, did not assemble, but they will come to-morrow. young wagtails nearly full-fledged took wing, leaving one in the nest; from not being molested by the people they took no precautions, and ran out of the nest on the approach of the old ones, making a loud chirping. the old ones tried to induce the last one to come out too, by flying to the nest, and then making a sally forth, turning round immediately to see if he followed: he took a few days longer. it was decided at the meeting that hamees, with a few people only, should go to nsama on the first day after the appearance of the new moon (they are very particular on this point); the present month having been an unhappy one they will try the next. _ th june, ._--a wedding took place among the arabs to-day. about a hundred blank cartridges were fired off, and a procession of males, dressed in their best, marched through the village. they sang with all their might, though with but little music in the strain. women sprinkled grain on their heads as wishes for plenty.[ ] nsama is said to be waiting for the arabs in his new stockade. it is impossible to ascertain exactly who is to blame in this matter, for i hear one side only; but the fact of the chiefs in this part of the country turning out so readily to punish his breach of public law, and no remonstrance coming from him, makes me suspect that nsama is the guilty party. if he had been innocent he certainly would have sent to ask the bulungu, or bäulungu, why they had attacked his people without cause. [here is an entry concerning the tribe living far to the east.] the wasongo seem much like zulus; they go naked, and have prodigious numbers of cattle, which occupy the same huts with their owners. oxen two shukahs each; plenty of milk. meréré is very liberal with his cattle, and gives every one an ox: there is no rice, but maize and maëre. hamees left the people to cultivate rice. meréré had plenty of ivory when the arabs came first, but now has none. _ st july, ._--new moon to-day. they are very particular as to the time of offering up prayers, and in making charms. one to-night was at p.m. exactly. a number of cabalistic figures were drawn by halfani, and it is believed that by these nsama's whereabouts may be ascertained; they are probably remains of the secret arts which prevailed among arabs before mahomet appeared. these suaheli arabs appear to have come down the coast before that prophet was born. _ rd july, ._--kasonso's people are expected. all the captives that were taken are to be returned, and a quantity of cloth given to nsama in addition: so far all seems right. the new moon will appear to-night. the arabs count from one appearance to the next, not, as we do, from its conjunction with the sun to the next. _ th july, ._--katawanya came from near liemba to join the peacemakers. he and his party arrived at liemba after we did; he sent his people all round to seek ivory; they don't care for anything but ivory, and cannot understand why i don't do the same. _ th july, ._--an earthquake happened at . p.m., accompanied with a hollow rumbling sound; it made me feel as if afloat, but it lasted only a few seconds. the boys came running to ask me what it was. nowhere could it be safer; the huts will not fall, and there are no high rocks near. barometer . . temperature ° '. heavy cumuli hanging about; no rain afterwards. _ th july, ._--hamees started this morning with about followers dressed in all their finery, and he declares that his sole object is peace. kasonso, mombo, chitimba send their people, and go themselves to lend all their influence in favour of peace. syde stops here. before starting syde put some incense on hot coals, and all the leaders of the party joined in a short prayer; they seem earnest and sincere in their incantations, according to their knowledge and belief. i wished to go too, but hamees objected, as not being quite sure whether nsama would be friendly, and he would not like anything to befall me when with him. _ th july, ._--kasonso found an excuse for not going himself. two men, arabs it was said, came to chibué's and were there killed, and kasonso must go to see about it. the people who go carry food with them, evidently not intending to live by plunder this time. while the peacemakers are gone i am employing time in reading smith's 'bible dictionary,' and calculating different positions which have stood over in travelling. i don't succeed well in the bäulungu dialect. the owners of huts lent to strangers have a great deal of toil in consequence; they have to clean them after the visitors have withdrawn; then, in addition to this, to clean themselves, all soiled by the dust left by the lodgers; their bodies and clothes have to be cleansed afterwards--they add food too in all cases of acquaintanceship, and then we have to remember the labour of preparing that food. my remaining here enables me to observe that both men and women are in almost constant employment. the men are making mats, or weaving, or spinning; no one could witness their assiduity in their little affairs and conclude that they were a lazy people. the only idle time i observe here is in the mornings about seven o'clock, when all come and sit to catch the first rays of the sun as he comes over our clump of trees, but even that time is often taken as an opportunity for stringing beads. i hear that some of nsama's people crossed the lovu at karambo to plunder, in retaliation for what they have suffered, and the people there were afraid to fish, lest they should be caught by them at a distance from their stockades. the bäulungu men are in general tall and well formed, they use bows over six feet in length, and but little bent. the facial angle is as good in most cases as in europeans, and they have certainly as little of the "lark-heel" as whites. one or two of the under front teeth are generally knocked out in women, and also in men. _ th july, ._--syde added to his other presents some more beads: all have been very kind, which i attribute in a great measure to seyed majid's letter. hamees crossed the lovu to-day at a fordable spot. the people on the other side refused to go with a message to nsama, so hamees had to go and compel them by destroying their stockade. a second village acted in the same way, though told that it was only peace that was sought of nsama: this stockade suffered the same fate, and then the people went to nsama, and he showed no reluctance to have intercourse. he gave abundance of food, pombe, and bananas; the country being extremely fertile. nsama also came and ratified the peace by drinking blood with several of the underlings of hamees. he is said to be an enormously bloated old man, who cannot move unless carried, and women are constantly in attendance pouring pombe into him. he gave hamees ten tusks, and promised him twenty more, and also to endeavour to make his people return what goods they plundered from the arabs, and he is to send his people over here to call us after the new moon appears. it is tiresome beyond measure to wait so long, but i hope to see moero for this exercise of patience, and i could not have visited it had hamees not succeeded in making peace. _ th july, ._--a lion roared very angrily at the village last night, he was probably following the buffaloes that sometimes come here to drink at night: they are all very shy, and so is all the game, from fear of arrows. a curious disease has attacked my left eyelid and surrounding parts: a slight degree of itchiness is followed by great swelling of the part. it must be a sort of lichen; exposure to the sun seems to cure it, and this leads me to take long walks therein. this is about ° ' e. long.; lat. ° ' " s. _ th july, ._--a fire broke out at a.m., and there being no wind the straw roofs were cleared off in front of it on our side of the village. the granaries were easily unroofed, as the roof is not attached to the walls, and the arabs tried to clear a space on their side, but were unable, and then moved all their ivory and goods outside the stockade; their side of the village was all consumed, and three goats perished in the flames. chitimba has left us from a fear of his life, he says; it is probable that he means this flight to be used as an excuse to nsama after we are gone. "and i, too, was obliged to flee from my village to save my life! what could i do?" this is to be his argument, i suspect. a good many slaves came from the two villages that were destroyed: on inquiry i was told that these would be returned when nsama gave the ivory promised. when nsama was told that an englishman wished to go past him to moero, he replied, "bring him, and i shall send men to take him thither." hamees is building a "tembé," or house, with a flat roof, and walls plastered over with mud, to keep his ivory from fire while he is absent. we expect that nsama will send for us a few days after the nd august, when the new moon appears; if they do not come soon hamees will send men to nsama without waiting for his messengers. _ th july, ._--prayers, with the litany.[ ] slavery is a great evil wherever i have seen it. a poor old woman and child are among the captives, the boy about three years old seems a mother's pet. his feet are sore from walking in the sun. he was offered for two fathoms, and his mother for one fathom; he understood it all, and cried bitterly, clinging to his mother. she had, of course, no power to help him; they were separated at karungu afterwards. [the above is an episode of every-day occurrence in the wake of the slave-dealer. "two fathoms," mentioned as the price of the boy's life--the more valuable of the two, means four yards of unbleached calico, which is a universal article of barter throughout the greater part of africa: the mother was bought for two yards. the reader must not think that there are no lower prices; in the famines which succeed the slave-dealer's raids, boys and girls are at times to be purchased by the dealer for a few handfuls of maize.] _ th july, ._--went / hours west to village of ponda, where a head arab, called by the natives tipo tipo, lives; his name is hamid bin mahamed bin juma borajib. he presented a goat, a piece of white calico, and four big bunches of beads, also a bag of holcus sorghum, and apologised because it was so little. he had lost much by nsama; and received two arrow wounds there; they had only twenty guns at the time, but some were in the stockade, and though the people of nsama were very numerous they beat them off, and they fled carrying the bloated carcase of nsama with them. some reported that boxes were found in the village, which belonged to parties who had perished before, but syde assured me that this was a mistake. moero is three days distant, and as nsama's people go thither to collect salt on its banks, it would have been impossible for me to visit it from the south without being seen, and probably suffering loss. the people seem to have no family names. a man takes the name of his mother, or should his father die he may assume that. marriage is forbidden to the first, second, and third degrees: they call first and second cousins brothers and sisters. a woman, after cupping her child's temples for sore eyes, threw the blood over the roof of her hut as a charm. [in the above process a goat's horn is used with a small hole in the pointed end. the base is applied to the part from which the blood is to be withdrawn, and the operator, with a small piece of chewed india-rubber in his mouth, exhausts the air, and at the proper moment plasters the small hole up with his tongue. when the cupping-horn is removed, some cuts are made with a small knife, and it is again applied. as a rough appliance, it is a very good one, and in great repute everywhere.] footnotes: [ ] it subsequently proved to be the southern extremity of this great lake. [ ] elais, sp.(?). [ ] this is a common symptom--men will suddenly lose all power in the lower extremities, and remain helpless where they fall.--ed. [ ] the men heard in that he had been killed. [ ] this comes near to the custom of throwing rice after the bride and bridegroom in england.--ed. [ ] in his journal the doctor writes "s," and occasionally "service," whenever a sunday entry occurs. we may add that at all times during his travels the services of the church of england were resorted to by him.--ed. chapter ix. peace negotiations with nsama. geographical gleanings. curious spider. reach the river lofu. arrives at nsama's. hamees marries the daughter of nsama. flight of the bride. conflagration in arab quarters. anxious to visit lake moero. arab burial. serious illness. continues journey. slave-traders on the march. reaches moero. description of the lake. information concerning the chambezé and luapula. hears of lake bemba. visits spot of dr. lacerda's death. casembe apprised of livingstone's approach. meets mohamad bogharib. lakelet mofwé. arrives at casembe's town. _ st august, ._--hamees sends off men to trade at chiweré's. _zikwé_ is the name for locust here. nsigé or zigé and pansi the suaheli names. a perforated stone had been placed on one of the poles which form the gateway into this stockade, it is oblong, seven or eight inches long by four broad, and bevelled off on one side and the diameter of the hole in the middle is about an inch and a half: it shows evidence of the boring process in rings. it is of hard porphyry and of a pinkish hue, and resembles somewhat a weight for a digging stick i saw in in the hands of a bushwoman: i saw one at a gateway near kasonso's. the people know nothing of its use except as a charm to keep away evil from the village. _ nd august, ._--chronometer a. stopped to-day without any apparent cause except the earthquake. it is probably malaria which causes that constant singing in the ears ever since my illness at lake liemba. _ rd august, ._--we expect a message from nsama every day, the new moon having appeared on the first of this month, and he was to send after its appearance. _ th august, ._--men came yesterday with the message that hamees must wait a little longer, as nsama had not yet got all the ivory and the goods which were stolen: they remained over yesterday. the headman, katala, says that lunda is eight days from nsama or moero, and in going we cross a large river called movue, which flows into luapula; another river called mokobwa comes from the south-east into moero. itawa is the name of nsama's country and people. a day distant from nsama's place there is a hot fountain called "paka pezhia," and around it the earth shakes at times: it is possible that the earthquake we felt here may be connected with this same centre of motion. _ th august, ._--the weather is becoming milder. an increase of cold was caused by the wind coming from the south. we have good accounts of the wasongo from all the arabs, their houses built for cattle are flat-roofed and enormously large; one, they say, is a quarter of a mile long. meréré the chief has his dwelling-house within it: milk, butter, cheese, are in enormous quantities; the tribe, too, is very large. i fear that they may be spoiled by the arab underlings. _ th august, ._--some of my people went down to karambo and were detained by the chief, who said "i won't let you english go away and leave me in trouble with these arabs." a slave had been given in charge to a man here and escaped, the arabs hereupon went to karambo and demanded payment from the chief there; he offered clothing, but they refused it, and would have a man; he then offered a man, but this man having two children they demanded all three. they bully as much as they please by their fire-arms. after being spoken to by my people the arabs came away. the chief begged that i would come and visit him once more, for only one day, but it is impossible, for we expect to move directly. i sent the information to hamees, who replied that they had got a clue to the man who was wiling away their slaves from them. my people saw others of the low squad which always accompanies the better-informed arabs bullying the people of another village, and taking fowls and food without payment. slavery makes a bad neighbourhood! hamees is on friendly terms with a tribe of mazitu who say that they have given up killing people. they lifted a great many cattle, but have very few now; some of them came with him to show the way to kasonso's. slaves are sold here in the same open way that the business is carried on in zanzibar slave-market. a man goes about calling out the price he wants for the slave, who walks behind him; if a woman, she is taken into a hut to be examined in a state of nudity. some of the arabs believe that meteoric stones are thrown at satan for his wickedness. they believe that cannon were taken up kilimanjaro by the first arabs who came into the country, and there they lie. they deny that van der decken did more than go round a portion of the base of the mountain; he could not get on the mass of the mountain: all his donkeys and some of his men died by the cold. hamees seems to be cooley's great geographical oracle! the information one can cull from the arabs respecting the country on the north-west is very indefinite. they magnify the difficulties in the way by tales of the cannibal tribes, where anyone dying is bought and no one ever buried, but this does not agree with the fact, which also is asserted, that the cannibals have plenty of sheep and goats. the rua is about ten days west of tanganyika, and five days beyond it a lake or river ten miles broad is reached; it is said to be called logarawá. all the water flows northwards, but no reliance can be placed on the statements. kiombo is said to be chief of rua country. another man asserts that tanganyika flows northwards and forms a large water beyond uganda, but no dependence can be placed on the statements of these half arabs; they pay no attention to anything but ivory and food. _ th august, ._--nsama requested the arabs to give back his son who was captured; some difficulty was made about this by his captor, but hamees succeeded in getting him and about nine others, and they are sent off to-day. we wait only for the people, who are scattered about the country. hamees presented cakes, flour, a fowl and leg of goat, with a piece of eland meat: this animal goes by the same name here as at kolobeng--"pofu."[ ] a fig-tree here has large knobs on the bark, like some species of acacia; and another looks like the malolo of the zambesi magnified. a yellow wood gives an odour like incense when burned. a large spider makes a nest inside the huts. it consists of a piece of pure white paper, an inch and a half broad, stuck flat on the wall; under this some forty or fifty eggs are placed, and then a quarter of an inch of thinner paper is put round it, apparently to fasten the first firmly. when making the paper the spider moves itself over the surface in wavy lines; she then sits on it with her eight legs spread over all for three weeks continuously, catching and eating any insects, as cockroaches, that come near her nest. after three weeks she leaves it to hunt for food, but always returns at night: the natives do not molest it. a small ant masters the common fly by seizing a wing or leg, and holding on till the fly is tired out; at first the fly can move about on the wing without inconvenience, but it is at last obliged to succumb to an enemy very much smaller than itself. a species of touraco, new to me, has a broad yellow mask on the upper part of the bill and forehead; the topknot is purple, the wings the same as in other species, but the red is roseate. the yellow of the mask plates is conspicuous at a distance. a large callosity forms on the shoulders of the regular unyamwesi porters, from the heavy weights laid on them. i have noticed them an inch and a half thick along the top of the shoulders. an old man was pointed out to me who had once carried five frasilahs (= lbs.) of ivory from his own country to the coast. _ th august, ._--we marched to-day from chitimba's village after three months and ten days' delay. on reaching ponda, - / hours distant, we found tipo tipo, or hamidi bin mohamad, gone on, and so we followed him. passed a fine stream flowing s.w. to the lofu. tipo tipo gave me a fine fat goat. _ st august, ._--pass along a fine undulating district, with much country covered with forest, but many open glades, and fine large trees along the water-courses. we were on the northern slope of the watershed, and could see far. crossed two fine rivulets. the oozes still full and flowing. _ st september, ._--we had to march in the afternoon on account of a dry patch existing in the direct way. we slept without water, though by diverging a few miles to the north we should have crossed many streams, but this is the best path for the whole year. baraka went back to tipo tipo's village, thus putting his intention of begging among the arab slaves into operation. he has only one complaint, and that is dislike to work. he tried perseveringly to get others to run away with him; lost the medicine-box, six table-cloths, and all our tools by giving his load off to a country lad while he went to collect mushrooms: he will probably return to zanzibar, and be a slave to the arab slaves after being a perpetual nuisance to us for upwards of a year. _ nd september, ._--when we reached the ford of the lofu, we found that we were at least a thousand feet below chitimba's. the last six hours of our march were without water, but when near to chungu's village at the ford we came to fine flowing rivulets, some ten feet or so broad. here we could see westwards and northwards the long lines of hills of denudation in nsama's country, which till lately was densely peopled. nsama is of the babemba family. kasonso, chitimba, kiwé, urongwé, are equals and of one family, urungai. chungu is a pleasant person, and liberal according to his means. large game is very abundant through all this country. the lofu at the ford was feet, the water flowing briskly over hardened sandstone flag, and from thigh to waist deep; elsewhere it is a little narrower, but not passable except by canoes. _ th and th september, ._--went seven hours west of the lofu to a village called hara, one of those burned by hamees because the people would not take a peaceful message to nsama. this country is called itawa, and hara is one of the districts. we waited at hara to see if nsama wished us any nearer to himself. he is very much afraid of the arabs, and well he may be, for he was until lately supposed to be invincible. he fell before twenty muskets, and this has caused a panic throughout the country. the land is full of food, though the people have nearly all fled. the ground-nuts are growing again for want of reapers; and people living at free-quarters make no impression on the food. _ th september, ._--went three hours west of hara, and came to nsama's new stockade, built close by the old one burned by tipo tipo, as hamidi bin mohamed was named by nsama.[ ] i sent a message to nsama, and received an invitation to come and visit him, but bring no guns. a large crowd of his people went with us, and before we came to the inner stockade they felt my clothes to see that no fire-arms were concealed about my person. when we reached nsama, we found a very old man, with a good head and face and a large abdomen, showing that he was addicted to pombe: his people have to carry him. i gave him a cloth, and asked for guides to moero, which he readily granted, and asked leave to feel my clothes and hair. i advised him to try and live at peace, but his people were all so much beyond the control of himself and headmen, that at last, after scolding them, he told me that he would send for me by night, and then we could converse, but this seems to have gone out of his head. he sent me a goat, flour, and pombe, and next day we returned to hara. nsama's people have generally small, well-chiseled features, and many are really handsome, and have nothing of the west coast negro about them, but they file their teeth to sharp points, and greatly disfigure their mouths. the only difference between them and europeans is the colour. many of the men have very finely-formed heads, and so have the women; and the fashion of wearing the hair sets off their foreheads to advantage. the forehead is shaved off to the crown, the space narrowing as it goes up; then the back hair, is arranged into knobs of about ten rows. _ th september, ._--some people of ujiji have come to nsama's to buy ivory with beads, but, finding that the arabs have forestalled them in the market, they intend to return in their dhow, or rather canoe, which is manned by about fifty hands. my goods are reported safe, and the meat of the buffaloes which died in the way is there, and sun-dried. i sent a box, containing papers, books, and some clothes, to ujiji. _ th september, ._--i remained at hara, for i was ill, and hamees had no confidence in nsama, because he promised his daughter to wife by way of cementing the peace, but had not given her. nsama also told hamees to stay at hara, and he would send him ivory for sale, but none came, nor do people come here to sell provisions, as they do elsewhere; so hamees will return to chitimba's, to guard his people and property there, and send on syde hamidi and his servants to lopéré, kabuiré, and moero, to buy ivory. he advised me to go with them, as he has no confidence in nsama; and hamidi thought that this was the plan to be preferred: it would be slower, as they would purchase ivory on the road, but safer to pass his country altogether than trust myself in his power. the entire population of the country has received a shock from the conquest of nsama, and their views of the comparative values of bows and arrows and guns have undergone a great change. nsama was the napoleon of these countries; no one could stand before him, hence the defeat of the invincible nsama has caused a great panic. the arabs say that they lost about fifty men in all: nsama must have lost at least an equal number. the people seem intelligent, and will no doubt act on the experience so dearly bought. in the midst of the doubts of hamees a daughter of nsama came this afternoon to be a wife and cementer of the peace! she came riding "pickaback" on a man's shoulders; a nice, modest, good-looking young woman, her hair rubbed all over with _nkola_, a red pigment, made from the camwood, and much used as an ornament. she was accompanied by about a dozen young and old female attendants, each carrying a small basket with some provisions, as cassava, ground-nuts, &c. the arabs were all dressed in their finery, and the slaves, in fantastic dresses, flourished swords, fired guns, and yelled. when she was brought to hamees' hut she descended, and with her maids went into the hut. she and her attendants had all small, neat features. i had been sitting with hamees, and now rose up and went away; as i passed him, he spoke thus to himself: "hamees wadim tagh! see to what you have brought yourself!!" _ th september, ._--a guide had come from nsama to take us to the countries beyond his territory. hamees set off this morning with his new wife to his father-in-law, but was soon met by two messengers, who said that he was not to come yet. we now sent for all the people who were out to go west or north-west without reference to nsama. _ th- th september, ._--hamidi went to nsama to try and get guides, but he would not let him come into his stockade unless he came up to it without either gun or sword. hamidi would not go in on these conditions, but nsama promised guides, and they came after a visit by hamees to nsama, which he paid without telling any of us: he is evidently ashamed of his father-in-law. those arabs who despair of ivory invest their remaining beads and cloth in slaves. _ th september, ._--i had resolved to go to nsama's, and thence to moero to-day, but hamees sent to say that men had come, and we were all to go with them on the nd. nsama was so vacillating that i had no doubt but this was best. hamees' wife, seeing the preparations that were made for starting, thought that her father was to be attacked, so she, her attendants, and the guides decamped by night. hamees went again to nsama and got other guides to enable us to go off at once. _ nd september, ._--we went north for a couple of hours, then descended into the same valley as that in which i found nsama. this valley is on the slope of the watershed, and lies east and west: a ridge of dark-red sandstone, covered with trees, forms its side on the south. other ridges like this make the slope have the form of a stair with huge steps: the descent is gradually lost as we insensibly climb up the next ridge. the first plain between the steps is at times swampy, and the paths are covered with the impressions of human feet, which, being hardened by the sun, make walking on their uneven surface very difficult. mosquitoes again; we had lost them during our long stay on the higher lands behind us. _ rd september, ._--a fire had broken out the night after we left hara, and the wind being strong, it got the upper hand, and swept away at once the whole of the temporary village of dry straw huts: hamees lost all his beads, guns, powder, and cloth, except one bale. the news came this morning, and prayers were at once offered for him with incense; some goods will also be sent, as a little incense was. the prayer-book was held in the smoke of the incense while the responses were made. these arabs seem to be very religious in their way: the prayers were chiefly to harasji, some relative of mohamad. _ th september, ._--roused at a.m. to be told that the next stage had no water, and we should be oppressed with the midday heat if we went now. we were to go at p.m. hamidi's wife being ill yesterday put a stop to our march on that afternoon. after the first hour we descended from the ridge to which we had ascended, we had then a wall of tree-covered rocks on our left of more than a thousand feet in altitude; after flanking it for a while we went up, and then along it northwards till it vanished in forest. slept without a fresh supply of water. _ th september, ._--off at . a.m., through the same well-grown forest we have passed and came to a village stockade, where the gates were shut, and the men all outside, in fear of the arabs; we then descended from the ridge on which it stood, about a thousand feet, into an immense plain, with a large river in the distance, some ten miles off. _ th september, ._--two and a half hours brought us to the large river we saw yesterday; it is more than a mile wide and full of papyrus and other aquatic plants and very difficult to ford, as the papyrus roots are hard to the bare feet, and we often plunged into holes up to the waist. a loose mass floated in the middle of our path; one could sometimes get on along this while it bent and heaved under the weight, but through it he would plunge and find great difficulty to get out: the water under this was very cold from evaporation; it took an hour and a half to cross it. it is called chiséra, and winds away to the west to fall into the kalongosi and moero. many animals, as elephants, tahetsis, zebras, and buffaloes, graze on the long sloping banks of about a quarter of a mile down, while the ranges of hills we crossed as mere ridges now appear behind us in the south. _ th september, ._--the people are numerous and friendly. one elephant was killed, and we remained to take the ivory from the dead beast; buffaloes and zebras were also killed. it was so cloudy that no observations could be taken to determine our position, but chiséra rises in lopéré. further west it is free of papyrus, and canoes are required to cross it. _ th september, ._--two hours north brought us to the kamosenga, a river eight yards wide, of clear water which ran strongly among aquatic plants. hippopotami, buffalo, and zebra abound. this goes into the chiséra eastwards; country flat and covered with dense tangled bush. cassias and another tree of the pea family are now in flower, and perfume the air. other two hours took us round a large bend of this river. _ th september, ._.--we crossed the kamosenga or another, and reach karungu's. the kamosenga divides lopéré from itawa, the latter being nsama's country; lopéré is north-west of it. _ st october, ._--karungu was very much afraid of us; he kept every one out of his stockade at first, but during the time the arabs sent forward to try and conciliate other chiefs he gradually became more friendly. he had little ivory to sell, and of those who had, mtété or mtéma seemed inclined to treat the messengers roughly. men were also sent to nsama asking him to try and induce mtéma and chikongo to be friendly and sell ivory and provisions, but he replied that these chiefs were not men under him, and if they thought themselves strong enough to contend against guns he had nothing to say to them. other chiefs threatened to run away as soon as they saw the arabs approaching. these were assured that we meant to pass through the country alone, and if they gave us guides to show us how, we should avoid the villages altogether, and proceed to the countries where ivory was to be bought; however, the panic was too great, no one would agree to our overtures, and at last when we did proceed a chief on the river choma fulfilled his threat and left us three empty villages. there were no people to sell though the granaries were crammed, and it was impossible to prevent the slaves from stealing. _ rd- th october, ._--when chikongo heard tipo tipo's message about buying ivory he said, "and when did tipo tipo place ivory in my country that he comes seeking it?" yet he sent a tusk and said "that is all i have, and he is not to come here." their hostile actions are caused principally by fear. "if nsama could not stand before the malongwana or traders, how can we face them?" i wished to go on to moero, but all declare that our ten guns would put all the villages to flight: they are terror-struck. first rains of this season on the th. _ th october, ._--i had a long conversation with syde, who thinks that the sun rises and sets because the koran says so, and he sees it. he asserts that jesus foretold the coming of mohamad; and that it was not jesus who suffered on the cross but a substitute, it being unlikely that a true prophet would be put to death so ignominiously. he does not understand how we can be glad that our saviour died for our sins. _ th october, ._--an elephant killed by tipo tipo's men. it is always clouded over, and often not a breath of air stirring. _ th october, ._--a great many of the women of this district and of lopéré have the swelled thyroid gland called _goitre_ or derbyshire neck; men, too, appeared with it, and they in addition have hydrocele of large size. an arab who had been long ill at chitimba's died yesterday, and was buried in the evening. no women were allowed to come near. a long silent prayer was uttered over the corpse when it was laid beside the grave, and then a cloth was held over as men in it deposited the remains beneath sticks placed slanting on the side of the bottom of the grave; this keeps the earth from coming directly into contact with the body. a feast was made by the friends of the departed, and portions sent to all who had attended the funeral: i got a good share. _ th october, ._--the last we hear of nsama is that he will not interfere with chikongo. two wives beat drums and he dances to them; he is evidently in his dotage. we hear of many arabs to the west of us. _ th october, ._--very ill; i am always so when i have no work--sore bones--much headache; then lost power over the muscles of the back, as at liemba; no appetite and much thirst. the fever uninfluenced by medicine. _ st october, ._--syde sent his men to build a new hut in a better situation. i hope it may be a healthful one for me. _ nd october, ._--the final message from chikongo was a discouraging one--no ivory. the arabs, however, go west with me as far as chisawé's, who, being accustomed to arabs from tanganyika, will give me men to take me on to moero: the arabs will then return, and we shall move on. _ rd october, ._--tipo tipo gave karungu some cloth, and this chief is "looking for something" to give him in return; this detains us one day more. when a slave wishes to change his master he goes to one whom he likes better and breaks a spear or a bow in his presence--the transference is irrevocable. this curious custom prevails on the zambesi, and also among the wanyamwesi; if the old master wishes to recover his slave the new one may refuse to part with him except when he gets his full price: a case of this kind happened here yesterday. _ th october, ._--authority was found in the koran for staying one day more here. this was very trying; but the fact was our guide from hara hither had enticed a young slave girl to run away, and he had given her in charge to one of his countrymen, who turned round and tried to secure her for himself, and gave information about the other enticing her away. nothing can be more tedious than the arab way of travelling. _ th october, ._--we went s.w. for five hours through an undulating, well-wooded, well-peopled country, and quantities of large game. several trees give out when burned very fine scents; others do it when cut. euphorbia is abundant. we slept by a torrent which had been filled with muddy water by late rains. it thunders every afternoon, and rains somewhere as regularly as it thunders, but these are but partial rains; they do not cool the earth; nor fill the cracks made in the dry season. _ th october, ._--off early in a fine drizzling rain, which continued for two hours, and came on to a plain about three miles broad, full of large game. these plains are swamps at times, and they are flanked by ridges of denudation some or feet above them, and covered with trees. the ridges are generally hardened sandstone, marked with madrepores, and masses of brown haematite. it is very hot, and we become very tired. there is no system in the arab marches. the first day was five hours, this - / hours; had it been reversed--short marches during the first days and longer afterwards--the muscles would have become inured to the exertion. a long line of heights on our south points to the valley of nsama. _ th october, ._--five hours brought us to the choma river and the villages of chifupa, but, as already mentioned, the chief and people had fled, and no persuasion could prevail on them to come and sell us food. we showed a few who ventured to come among us what we were willing to give for flour, but they said, "yes, we will call the women and they will sell." none came. rested all day on the banks of the choma, which is a muddy stream coming from the north and going to the south-west to join the chiséra. it has worn itself a deep bed in the mud of its banks, and is twenty yards wide and in some spots waist deep, at other parts it is unfordable, it contains plenty of fish, and hippopotami and crocodiles abound. i bought a few ground-nuts at an exorbitant price, the men evidently not seeing that it would have been better to part with more at a lower price than run off and leave all to be eaten by the slaves. _ th october, ._--two ugly images were found in huts built for them: they represent in a poor way the people of the country, and are used in rain-making and curing the sick ceremonies; this is the nearest approach to idol worship i have seen in the country.[ ] _ st october, ._--we marched over a long line of hills on our west, and in five and a half hours came to some villages where the people sold us food willingly, and behaved altogether in a friendly way. we were met by a herd of buffaloes, but syde seized my gun from the boy who carried it, and when the animals came close past me i was powerless, and not at all pleased with the want of good sense shown by my usually polite arab friend. _note_.--the choma is said by mohamad bin saleh to go into tanganyika (??). it goes to kalongosi. _ st november, ._--we came along between ranges of hills considerably higher than those we have passed in itawa or nsama's country, and thickly covered with trees, some in full foliage, and some putting forth fresh red leaves; the hills are about or feet above the valleys. this is not a district of running rills: we crossed three sluggish streamlets knee deep. buffaloes are very numerous. the ratel covers the buffalo droppings with earth in order to secure the scavenger beetles which bury themselves therein, thus he prevents them from rolling a portion away as usual. we built our sheds on a hillside. our course was west and - / hours. _ nd november, ._--still in the same direction, and in an open valley remarkable for the numbers of a small euphorbia, which we smashed at every step. crossed a small but strong rivulet, the lipandé, going south-west to moero, then, an hour afterwards, crossed it again, now twenty yards wide and knee deep. after descending from the tree-covered hill which divides lipandé from luao, we crossed the latter to sleep on its western bank. the hills are granite now, and a range on our left, from to feet high, goes on all the way to moero. these valleys along which we travel are beautiful. green is the prevailing colour; but the clumps of trees assume a great variety of forms, and often remind one of english park scenery. the long line of slaves and carriers, brought up by their arab employers, adds life to the scene, they are in three bodies, and number in all. each party has a guide with a flag, and when that is planted all that company stops till it is lifted, and a drum is beaten, and a kudu's horn sounded. one party is headed by about a dozen leaders, dressed with fantastic head-gear of feathers and beads, red cloth on the bodies, and skins cut into strips and twisted: they take their places in line, the drum beats, the horn sounds harshly, and all fall in. these sounds seem to awaken a sort of _esprit de corps_ in those who have once been slaves. my attendants now jumped up, and would scarcely allow me time to dress when they heard the-sounds of their childhood, and all day they were among the foremost. one said to me "that his feet were rotten with marching," and this though told that they were not called on to race along like slaves. the africans cannot stand sneers. when any mishap occurs in the march (as when a branch tilts a load off a man's shoulder) all who see it set up a yell of derision; if anything is accidentally spilled, or if one is tired and sits down, the same yell greets him, and all are excited thereby to exert themselves. they hasten on with their loads, and hurry with the sheds they build, the masters only bringing up the rear, and helping anyone who may be sick. the distances travelled were quite as much as the masters or we could bear. had frequent halts been made--as, for instance, a half or a quarter of an hour at the end of every hour or two--but little distress would have been felt; but five hours at a stretch is more than men can bear in a hot climate. the female slaves held on bravely; nearly all carried loads on their heads, the head, or lady of the party, who is also the wife of the arab, was the only exception. she had a fine white shawl, with ornaments of gold and silver on her head. these ladies had a jaunty walk, and never gave in on the longest march; many pounds' weight of fine copper leglets above the ankles seemed only to help the sway of their walk: as soon as they arrive at the sleeping-place they begin to cook, and in this art they show a good deal of expertness, making savoury dishes for their masters out of wild fruits and other not very likely materials. _ rd november, ._--the ranges of hills retire as we advance; the soil is very rich. at two villages the people did not want us, so we went on and encamped near a third, kabwakwa, where a son of mohamad bin saleh, with a number of wanyamwesi, lives. the chief of this part is muabo, but we did not see him: the people brought plenty of food for us to buy. the youth's father is at casembe's. the country-people were very much given to falsehood--every place inquired for was near--ivory abundant--provisions of all sorts cheap and plenty. our headmen trusted to these statements of this young man rather, and he led them to desist going further. rua country was a month distant, he said, and but little ivory there. it is but three days off. (we saw it after three days.) "no ivory at casembe's or here in buiré, or kabuiré." he was right as to casembe. letters, however, came from hamees, with news of a depressing nature. chitimba is dead, and so is mambwé. chitimba's people are fighting for the chieftainship: great hunger prevails there now, the arabs having bought up all the food. moriri, a chief dispossessed of his country by nsama, wished hamees to restore his possessions, but hamees said that he had made peace, and would not interfere. this unfavourable news from a part where the chief results of their trading were deposited, made syde and tipo tipo decide to remain in buiré only ten or twenty days, send out people to buy what ivory they could find, and then, retire. as syde and tipo tipo were sending men to casembe for ivory, i resolved to go thither first, instead of shaping my course for ujiji. very many cases of goitre in men and women here: i see no reason for it. this is only feet above the sea. _ th november, ._--start for moero, convoyed by all the arabs for some distance: they have been extremely kind. we draw near to the mountain-range on our left, called kakoma, and sleep at one of kaputa's villages, our course now being nearly south. _ th november, ._--villages are very thickly studded over the valley formed by kakoma range, and another at a greater distance on our right; or yards is a common distance between these villages, which, like those in londa, or lunda, are all shaded with trees of a species of _ficus indica_. one belongs to puta, and this puta, the paramount chief, sent to say that if we slept there, and gave him a cloth, he would send men to conduct us next day, and ferry us across: i was willing to remain, but his people would not lend a hut, so we came on to the lake, and no ferry. probably he thought that we were going across the lualaba into rua. lake moero seems of goodly size, and is flanked by ranges of mountains on the east and west. its banks are of coarse sand, and slope gradually down to the water: outside these banks stands a thick belt of tropical vegetation, in which fishermen build their huts. the country called rua lies on the west, and is seen as a lofty range of dark mountains: another range of less height, but more broken, stands along the eastern shore, and in it lies the path to casembe. we slept in a fisherman's hut on the north shore. they brought a large fish, called "mondé," for sale; it has a slimy skin, and no scales, a large head, with tentaculae like the siluridie, and large eyes: the great gums in its mouth have a brush-like surface, like a whale's in miniature: it is said to eat small fish. a bony spine rises on its back (i suppose for defence), which is - / inches long, and as thick as a quill. they are very retentive of life. the northern shore has a fine sweep like an unbent bow, and round the western end flows the water that makes the river lualaba, which, before it enters moero, is the luapula, and that again (if the most intelligent reports speak true) is the chambezé before it enters lake bemba, or bangweolo. we came along the north shore till we reached the eastern flanking range, then ascended and turned south, the people very suspicious, shutting their gates as we drew near. we were alone, and only nine persons in all, but they must have had reason for fear. one headman refused us admission, then sent after us, saying that the man who had refused admission was not the chief: he had come from a distance, and had just arrived. it being better to appear friendly than otherwise, we went back, and were well entertained. provisions were given when we went away. flies abound, and are very troublesome; they seem to be attracted by the great numbers of fish caught. the people here are babemba, but beyond the river kalongosi they are all balunda. a trade in salt is carried on from different salt springs and salt mud to lunda and elsewhere. we meet parties of salt-traders daily, and they return our salutations very cordially, rubbing earth on the arms. we find our path lies between two ranges of mountains, one flanking the eastern shore, the other about three miles more inland, and parallel to it: these are covered thickly with trees, and are of loosely-coherent granite: many villages are in the space enclosed by these ranges, but all insecure. _ th november, ._.--we came to the kalongosi, or, as the arabs and portuguese pronounce it, karungwesi, about yards wide, and flowing fast over stones. it is deep enough, even now when the rainy season is not commenced, to requite canoes. it is said to rise in kumbi, or afar, a country to the south-east of our ford. fish in great numbers are caught when ascending to spawn: they are secured by weirs, nets, hooks. large strong baskets are placed in the rapids, and filled with stones, when the water rises these baskets are standing-places for the fishermen to angle or throw their nets. having crossed the kalongosi we were now in lunda, or londa. _ th november, ._--we saw that the kalongosi went north till it met a large meadow on the shores of moero, and, turning westwards, it entered there. the fishermen gave us the names of species of fish in the lake; they said that they never cease ascending the kalongosi, though at times they are more abundant than at others: they are as follows. mondé; mota; lasa; kasibé; molobé; lopembé; motoya; chipansa; mpifu; manda; mpala; moombo; mfeu; mendé; seusé; kadia nkololo; etiaka; nkomo; lifisha; sambamkaka; ntondo; sampa; bongwé; mabanga; kisé; kuanya; nkosu; palé; mosungu; litembwa; mecheberé; koninchia; sipa; lomembé; molenga; mirongé; nfindo; pende. _ th november, ._--being doubtful as to whether we were in the right path, i sent to a village to inquire. the headman, evidently one of a former casembe school, came to us full of wrath. "what right had we to come that way, seeing the usual path was to our left?" he mouthed some sentences in the pompous lunda style, but would not show us the path; so we left him, and after going through a forest of large trees, - / hours south, took advantage of some huts on the kifurwa river, built by bark-cloth cutters. _ th november, ._--heavy rains, but we went on, and found a village, kifurwa, surrounded by cassava fields, and next day crossed the muatozé, yards wide, and running strongly towards moero, knee deep. the river kabukwa, seven yards wide, and also knee deep, going to swell the muatozé. we now crossed a brook, chirongo, one yard wide and one deep; but our march was all through well-grown forest, chiefly gum-copal trees and bark-cloth trees. the gum-copal oozes out in abundance after or during the rains, from holes a quarter of an inch in diameter, made by an insect: it falls, and in time sinks into the soil, a supply for future generations. the small well-rounded features of the people of nsama's country are common here, as we observe in the salt-traders and villages; indeed, this is the home of the negro, and the features such as we see in pictures of ancient egyptians, as first pointed out by mr. winwood reade. we sleep by the river mandapala, yards wide, and knee deep. _ th november, ._--we rest by the kabusi, a sluggish narrow rivulet. it runs into the chungu, a quarter of a mile off. the chungu is broad, but choked with trees and aquatic plants: sapotas, eschinomenas, papyrus, &c. the free stream is yards wide, and waist deep. we had to wade about yards, thigh and waist deep, to get to the free stream. on this, the chungu, dr. lacerda died; it is joined by the mandapala, and flows a united stream into moero. the statements of the people are confused, but the following is what i have gleaned from many. there were some ujiji people with the casembe of the time. the portuguese and ujijians began to fight, but casembe said to them and the portuguese, "you are all my guests, why should you fight and kill each other?" he then gave lacerda ten slaves, and men to live with him and work at building huts, bringing firewood, water, &c. he made similar presents to the ujijians, which quieted them. lacerda was but ten days at chungu when he died. the place of his death was about ° ', and not ° ' as in mr. arrowsmith's map. the feud arose from one of lacerda's people killing an ujijian at the water: this would certainly be a barrier to their movements. palm-oil trees are common west of the chungu, but none appeared east of it. the oil is eaten by the people, and is very nice and sweet. this is remarkable, as the altitude above the sea is feet. allah is a very common exclamation among all the people west of nsama. by advice of a guide whom we picked up at kifurwa, we sent four fathoms of calico to apprise casembe of our coming: the arabs usually send ten fathoms; in our case it was a very superfluous notice, for casembe is said to have been telegraphed to by runners at every stage of our progress after crossing the kalongosi. we remain by the chungu till casembe sends one of his counsellors to guide us to his town. it has been so perpetually clouded over that we have been unable to make out our progress, and the dense forest prevented us seeing moero as we wished: rain and thunder perpetually, though the rain seldom fell where we were. i saw pure white-headed swallows _(psalidoprocne albiceps)_ skimming the surface of the chungu as we crossed it. the soil is very rich. casembe's ground-nuts are the largest i have seen, and so is the cassava. i got over a pint of palm oil for a cubit of calico. a fine young man, whose father had been the casembe before this one, came to see us; he is in the background now, otherwise he would have conducted us to the village: a son or heir does not succeed to the chieftainship here. _ st november, ._--the river lundé was five miles from chungu. it is six yards wide where we crossed it, but larger further down; springs were oozing out of its bed: we then entered on a broad plain, covered with bush, the trees being all cleared off in building a village. when one casembe dies, the man who succeeds him invariably removes and builds his pembwé, or court, at another place: when dr. lacerda died, the casembe moved to near the north end of the mofwé. there have been seven casembes in all. the word means a _general_. the plain extending from the lundé to the town of casembe is level, and studded pretty thickly with red anthills, from to feet high. casembe has made a broad path from his town to the lundé, about a mile-and-a-half long, and as broad as a carriage-path. the chief's residence is enclosed in a wall of reeds, or feet high, and yards square, the gateway is ornamented with about sixty human skulls; a shed stands in the middle of the road before we come to the gate, with a cannon dressed in gaudy cloths. a number of noisy fellows stopped our party, and demanded tribute for the cannon; i burst through them, and the rest followed without giving anything: they were afraid of the english. the town is on the east bank of the lakelet mofwé, and one mile from its northern end. mohamad bin saleh now met us, his men firing guns of welcome; he conducted us to his shed of reception, and then gave us a hut till we could build one of our own. mohamad is a fine portly black arab, with a pleasant smile, and pure white beard, and has been more than ten years in these parts, and lived with four casembes: he has considerable influence here, and also on tanganyika. an arab trader, mohamad bogharib, who arrived seven days before us with an immense number of slaves, presented a meal of vermicelli, oil, and honey, also cassava meal cooked, so as to resemble a sweet meat (i had not tasted honey or sugar since we left lake nyassa, in september ): they had coffee too. neither goats, sheep, nor cattle thrive here, so the people are confined to fowls and fish. cassava is very extensively cultivated, indeed, so generally is this plant grown, that it is impossible to know which is town and which is country: every hut has a plantation around it, in which is grown cassava, holcus sorghum, maize, beans, nuts. mohamad gives the same account of the river luapula and lake bemba that jumbé did, but he adds, that the chambezé, where we crossed it, _is_ the luapula before it enters bemba or bangweolo: on coming out of that lake it turns round and comes away to the north, as luapula, and, without touching the mofwé, goes into moero; then, emerging thence at the north-west end it becomes lualaba, goes into rua, forms a lake there, and afterwards goes into another lake beyond tanganyika. the lakelet mofwé fills during the rains and spreads westward, much beyond its banks. elephants wandering in its mud flats when covered are annually killed in numbers: if it were connected with the lake moero the flood would run off. many of casembe's people appear with the ears cropped and hands lopped off: the present chief has been often guilty of this barbarity. one man has just come to us without ears or hands: he tries to excite our pity making a chirruping noise, by striking his cheeks with the stumps of his hands. a dwarf also, one zofu, with backbone broken, comes about us: he talks with an air of authority, and is present at all public occurrences: the people seem to bear with him. he is a stranger from a tribe in the north, and works in his garden very briskly: his height is feet inches. footnotes: [ ] chéfu amongst the manganja. any animal possessing strength, has the terminal "fu" or "vu;" thus njobvu, an elephant; m'vu, the hippopotamus.--ed. [ ] the natives are quick to detect a peculiarity in a man, and give him a name accordingly: the conquerors of a country try to forestall them by selecting one for themselves. susi states that when tipo tipo stood over the spoil taken from nsama, he gathered it closer together and said, "now i am tipo tipo," that is, "the gatherer together of wealth." kumba kumba, of whom we shall hear much, took his name from the number of captives he gathered in his train under similar circumstances; it might be translated, "the collector of people."--ed. [ ] it is on the west coast alone that idols are really worshipped in africa.--ed. chapter x. grand reception of the traveller. casenibe and his wife. long stay in the town. goes to explore moero. despatch to lord clarendon, with notes on recent travels. illness at the end of . further exploration of lake moero. flooded plains. the river luao. visits kabwawata. joy of arabs at mohamad bin saleh's freedom. again ill with fever. stories of underground dwellings. _ th november, ._--we were called to be presented to casembe in a grand reception. the present casembe has a heavy uninteresting countenance, without beard or whiskers, and somewhat of the chinese type, and his eyes have an outward squint. he smiled but once during the day, and that was pleasant enough, though the cropped ears and lopped hands, with human skulls at the gate, made me indisposed to look on anything with favour. his principal wife came with her attendants, after he had departed, to look at the englishman (moenge-résé). she was a fine, tall, good-featured lady, with two spears in her hand; the principal men who had come around made way for her, and called on me to salute: i did so; but she, being forty yards off, i involuntarily beckoned her to come nearer: this upset the gravity of all her attendants; all burst into a laugh, and ran off. casembe's smile was elicited by the dwarf making some uncouth antics before him. his executioner also came forward to look: he had a broad lunda sword on his arm, and a curious scizzor-like instrument at his neck for cropping ears. on saying to him that his was nasty work, he smiled, and so did many who were not sure of their ears a moment: many men of respectability show that at some former time they have been thus punished. casembe sent us another large basket of fire-dried fish in addition to that sent us at chungu, two baskets of flour, one of dried cassava, and a pot of pombe or beer. mohamad, who was accustomed to much more liberal casembes, thinks this one very stingy, having neither generosity nor good sense; but as we cannot consume all he gives, we do not complain. _ th november, ._--casembe's chief wife passes frequently to her plantation, carried by six, or more commonly by twelve men in a sort of palanquin: she has european features, but light-brown complexion. a number of men run before her, brandishing swords and battle-axes, and one beats a hollow instrument, giving warning to passengers to clear the way: she has two enormous pipes ready filled for smoking. she is very attentive to her agriculture; cassava is the chief product; sweet potatoes, maize, sorghum, pennisetum, millet, ground-nuts, cotton. the people seem more savage than any i have yet seen: they strike each other barbarously from mere wantonness, but they are civil enough to me. mohamad bin saleh proposes to go to ujiji next month. he waited when he heard of our coming, in order that we might go together: he has a very low opinion of the present chief. the area which has served for building the chief town at different times is about ten miles in diameter. mofwé is a shallow piece of water about two miles broad, four or less long, full of sedgy islands, the abodes of waterfowl, but some are solid enough to be cultivated. the bottom is mud, though sandy at the east shore: it has no communication with the luapula. _( th november, ._) the lundé, chungu, and mandapala are said to join and flow into moero. fish are in great abundance (perch). on the west side there is a grove of palm-oil palms, and beyond west rises a long range of mountains of the rua country or miles off. _ st december, ._--an old man named pérémbé is the owner of the land on which casembe has built. they always keep up the traditional ownership. munongo is a brother of pérémbé, and he owns the country east of the kalongosi: if any one wished to cultivate land he would apply to these aboriginal chiefs for it. i asked a man from casembe to guide me to south end of moero, but he advised me not to go as it was so marshy. the lundé forms a marsh on one side, and the luapula lets water percolate through sand and mud, and so does the robukwé, which makes the path often knee deep. he said he would send men to conduct me to moero, a little further down, and added that we had got very little to eat from him, and he wanted to give more. moero's south end is about ° ' s. old pérémbé is a sensible man: mohamad thinks him years old. he is always on the side of liberality and fairness; he says that the first casembe was attracted to mofwé by the abundance of fish in it. he has the idea of all men being derived from a single pair. _ th december, ._--it is very cloudy here; no observations can be made, as it clouds over every afternoon and night. _( th and th december, ._) cleared off last night, but intermittent fever prevented my going out. _ th december, ._--set-in rains. a number of fine young girls who live in casembe's compound came and shook hands in their way, which is to cross the right over to your left, and clasp them; then give a few claps with both hands, and repeat the crossed clasp: they want to tell their children that they have seen me. _ th december, ._--to-day i announced to casembe our intention of going away. two traders got the same return present from him that i did, namely, one goat and some fish, meal and cassava. i am always ill when not working; i spend my time writing letters, to be ready when we come to ujiji. _( th december, ._) we have been here a month, and i cannot get more than two lunars: i got altitudes of the meridian of stars north and south soon after we came, but not lunars. casembe sent a big basket of fire-dried fish, two pots of beer, and a basket of cassava, and says we may go when we choose. _ th december, ._--on going to say good-bye to casembe, he tried to be gracious, said that we had eaten but little of his food; yet he allowed us to go. he sent for a man to escort us; and on the _ nd december, ._ we went to lundé river, crossed it, and went on to sleep at the chungu, close by the place where casembe's court stood when dr. lacerda came, for the town was moved further west as soon as the doctor died. there are many palm-oil palms about, but no tradition exists of their introduction. _ rd december, ._--we crossed the chungu. rain from above, and cold and wet to the waist below, as i do not lift my shirt, because the white skin makes all stare. i saw black monkeys at this spot. the chungu is joined by the kaleusi and the mandapala before it enters moero. casembe said that the lundé ran into mofwé; others denied this, and said that it formed a marsh with numbers of pools in long grass; but it may ooze into mofwé thus. casembe sent three men to guide me to moero. _ th december, ._--drizzly rain, and we are in a miserable spot by the kabusi, in a bed of brakens four feet high. the guides won't stir in this weather. i gave beads to buy what could be got for christmas. _ th december, ._--drizzly showers every now and then; soil, black mud. about ten men came as guides and as a convoy of honour to mohamad. _ th december, ._--in two hours we crossed mandapala, now waist deep. this part was well stocked with people five years ago, but casembe's severity in cropping ears and other mutilations, selling the children for slight offences, &c., made them all flee to neighbouring tribes; and now, if he sent all over the country, he could not collect a thousand men. [livingstone refers (on the th dec.) to some writings he was engaged upon, and we find one of them here in his journal which takes the form of a despatch to lord clarendon, with a note attached to the effect that it was not copied or sent, as he had no paper for the purpose. it affords an epitomised description of his late travels, and the stay at casembe, and is inserted here in the place of many notes written daily, but which only repeat the same events and observations in a less readable form. it is especially valuable at this stage of his journal, because it treats on the whole geography of the district between lakes nyassa and moero, with a broad handling which is impossible in the mere jottings of a diary.] town of casembe, _ th december, ._. lat. ° ' " south; long. ° east. the right honourable the earl of clarendon. my lord,--the first opportunity i had of sending a letter to the coast occurred in february last, when i was at a village called molemba (lat. ° ' s.; long. ° ' e.), in the country named lobemba. lobisa, lobemba, ulungu and itawa-lunda are the names by which the districts of an elevated region between the parallels ° and ° south, and meridians °- ° long. east, are known. the altitude of this upland is from to feet above the level of the sea. it is generally covered with forest, well watered by numerous rivulets, and comparatively cold. the soil is very rich, and yields abundantly wherever cultivated. this is the watershed between the loangwa, a tributary of the zambesi, and several rivers which flow towards the north. of the latter, the most remarkable is the chambezé, for it assists in the formation of three lakes, and changes its name three times in the five or six hundred miles of its course. on leaving lobemba we entered ulungu, and, as we proceeded northwards, perceived by the barometers and the courses of numerous rivulets, that a decided slope lay in that direction. a friendly old ulungu chief, named kasonso, on hearing that i wished to visit lake liemba, which lies in his country, gave his son with a large escort to guide me thither; and on the nd april last we reached the brim of the deep cup-like cavity in which the lake reposes. the descent is feet, and still the surface of the water is upwards of feet above the level of the sea. the sides of the hollow are very steep, and sometimes the rocks run the whole feet sheer down to the water. nowhere is there three miles of level land from the foot of the cliffs to the shore, but top, sides, and bottom are covered with well-grown wood and grass, except where the bare rocks protrude. the scenery is extremely beautiful. the "aeasy," a stream of yards broad and thigh deep, came down alongside our precipitous path, and formed cascades by leaping feet at a time. these, with the bright red of the clay schists among the greenwood-trees, made the dullest of my attendants pause and remark with wonder. antelopes, buffaloes, and elephants abound on the steep slopes; and hippopotami, crocodiles, and fish swarm in the water. gnus are here unknown, and these animals may live to old age if not beguiled into pitfalls. the elephants sometimes eat the crops of the natives, and flap their big ears just outside the village stockades. one got out of our way on to a comparatively level spot, and then stood and roared at us. elsewhere they make clear off at sight of man. the first village we came to on the banks of the lake had a grove of palm-oil and other trees around it. this palm tree was not the dwarf species seen on lake nyassa. a cluster of the fruit passed the door of my hut which required two men to carry it. the fruit seemed quite as large as those on the west coast. most of the natives live on two islands, where they cultivate the soil, rear goats, and catch fish. the lake is not large, from to miles broad, and from to long. it is the receptacle of four considerable streams, and sends out an arm two miles broad to the n.n.w., it is said to tanganyika, and it may be a branch of that lake. one of the streams, the lonzua, drives a smooth body of water into the lake fifty yards broad and ten fathoms deep, bearing on its surface duckweed and grassy islands. i could see the mouths of other streams, but got near enough to measure the lofu only; and at a ford fifty miles from the confluence it was yards wide and waist deep in the dry season. we remained six weeks on the shores of the lake, trying to pick up some flesh and strength. a party of arabs came into ulungu after us in search of ivory, and hearing that an englishman had preceded them, naturally inquired where i was. but our friends, the bäulungu, suspecting that mischief was meant, stoutly denied that they had ever seen anything of the sort; and then became very urgent that i should go on to one of the inhabited islands for safety. i regret that i suspected them of intending to make me a prisoner there, which they could easily have done by removing the canoes; but when the villagers who deceived the arabs told me afterwards with an air of triumph how nicely they had managed, i saw that they had only been anxious for my safety. on three occasions the same friendly disposition was shown; and when we went round the west side of the lake in order to examine the arm or branch above referred to, the headman at the confluence of the lofu protested so strongly against my going--the arabs had been fighting, and i might be mistaken for an arab, and killed--that i felt half-inclined to believe him. two arab slaves entered the village the same afternoon in search of ivory, and confirmed all he had said. we now altered our course, intending to go south about the district disturbed by the arabs. when we had gone miles we heard that the head-quarters of the arabs were miles further. they had found ivory very cheap, and pushed on to the west, till attacked by a chief named, nsama, whom they beat in his own stockade. they were now at a loss which way to turn. on reaching chitimba's village (lat. ° ' " s.; long. ° ' e.), i found them about in all; and, on presenting a letter i had from the sultan of zanzibar, was immediately supplied with provisions, beads, and cloth. they approved of my plan of passing to the south of nsama's country, but advised waiting till the effects of punishment, which the bäulungu had resolved to inflict on nsama for breach of public law, were known. it had always been understood that whoever brought goods into the country was to be protected; and two hours after my arrival at chitimba's, the son of kasonso, our guide, marched in with his contingent. it was anticipated that nsama might flee; if to the north, he would leave me a free passage through his country; if to the south, i might be saved from walking into his hands. but it turned out that nsama was anxious for peace. he had sent two men with elephants' tusks to begin a negotiation; but treachery was suspected, and they were shot down. another effort was made with ten goats, and repulsed. this was much to the regret of the head arabs. it was fortunate for me that the arab goods were not all sold, for lake moero lay in nsama's country, and without peace no ivory could be bought, nor could i reach the lake. the peace-making between the people and arabs was, however, a tedious process, occupying three and a half months--drinking each other's blood. this, as i saw it west of this in , is not more horrible than the thirtieth dilution of deadly night-shade or strychnine is in homoeopathy. i thought that had i been an arab i could easily swallow that, but not the next means of cementing the peace--marrying a black wife. nsama's daughter was the bride, and she turned out very pretty. she came riding pickaback on a man's shoulders: this is the most dignified conveyance that chiefs and their families can command. she had ten maids with her, each carrying a basket of provisions, and all having the same beautiful features as herself. she was taken by the principal arab, but soon showed that she preferred her father to her husband, for seeing preparations made to send off to purchase ivory, she suspected that her father was to be attacked, and made her escape. i then, visited nsama, and, as he objected to many people coming near him, took only three of my eight attendants. his people were very much afraid of fire-arms, and felt all my clothing to see if i had any concealed on my person. nsama is an old man, with head and face like those sculptured on the assyrian monuments. he has been a great conqueror in his time, and with bows and arrows was invincible. he is said to have destroyed many native traders from tanganyika, but twenty arab guns made him flee from his own stockade, and caused a great sensation in the country. he was much taken with my hair and woollen clothing; but his people, heedless of his scolding, so pressed upon us that we could not converse, and, after promising to send for me to talk during the night, our interview ended. he promised guides to moero, and sent us more provisions than we could carry; but showed so much distrust, that after all we went without his assistance. nsama's people are particularly handsome. many of the men have as beautiful heads as one could find in an assembly of europeans. all have very fine forms, with small hands and feet. none of the west-coast ugliness, from which most of our ideas of the negroes are derived, is here to be seen. no prognathous jaws nor lark-heels offended the sight. my observations deepened the impression first obtained from the remarks of winwood reade, that the typical negro is seen in the ancient egyptian, and not in the ungainly forms; which grow up in the unhealthy swamps of the west coast. indeed it is probable that this upland forest region is the true home of the negro. the women excited the admiration of the arabs. they have fine, small, well-formed features: their great defect is one of fashion, which does not extend to the next tribe; they file their teeth to points, the hussies, and that makes their smile like that of the crocodile. nsama's country is called itawa, and his principal town is in lat. ° ' s., and long. ° ' e. from the large population he had under him, itawa is in many parts well cleared of trees for cultivation, and it is lower than ulungu, being generally about feet above the sea. long lines of tree-covered hills raised some or feet above these valleys of denudation, prevent the scenery from being monotonous. large game is abundant. elephants, buffaloes, and zebras grazed in large numbers on the long sloping, banks of a river called chiséra, a mile and a half broad. in going north we crossed this river, or rather marsh, which is full of papyrus plants and reeds. our ford was an elephant's path; and the roots of the papyrus, though a carpet to these animals, were sharp and sore to feet usually protected by shoes, and often made us shrink and flounder into holes chest deep. the chiséra forms a larger marsh west of this, and it gives off its water to the kalongosi, a feeder of lake moero. the arabs sent out men in all directions to purchase ivory; but their victory over nsama had created a panic among the tribes which no verbal assurances could allay. if nsama had been routed by twenty arab guns no one could stand before them but casembe; and casembe had issued strict orders to his people not to allow the arabs who fought nsama to enter his country. they did not attempt to force their way, but after sending friendly messages and presents to different chiefs, when these were not cordially received, turned off in some other direction, and at last, despairing of more ivory, turned homewards. from first to last they were extremely kind to me, and showed all due respect to the sultan's letter. i am glad that i was witness to their mode of trading in ivory and slaves. it formed a complete contrast to the atrocious dealings of the kilwa traders, who are supposed to be, but are not, the subjects of the same sultan. if one wished to depict the slave-trade in its most attractive, or rather least objectionable, form, he would accompany these gentlemen subjects of the sultan of zanzibar. if he would describe the land traffic in its most disgusting phases he would follow the kilwa traders along the road to nyassa, or the portuguese half-castes from tette to the river shiré. keeping to the north of nsama altogether, and moving westwards, our small party reached the north end of moero on the th november last. there the lake is a goodly piece of water twelve or more miles broad, and flanked on the east and west by ranges of lofty tree-covered mountains. the range on the west is the highest, and is part of the country called rua-moero; it gives off a river at its north-west end called lualaba, and receives the river kalongosi (pronounced by the arabs karungwesi) on the east near its middle, and the rivers luapula and rovukwé at its southern extremity. the point of most interest in lake moero is that it forms one of a chain of lakes, connected by a river some miles in length. first of all the chambezé rises in the country of mambwé, n.e. of molemba. it then flows south-west and west till it reaches lat. ° s., and long. ° e., where it forms lake bemba or bangweolo, emerging thence it assumes the new name luapula, and comes down here to fall into moero. on going out of this lake it is known by the name lualaba, as it flows n.w. in rua to form another lake with many islands called urengé or ulengé. beyond this, information is not positive as to whether it enters tanganyika or another lake beyond that. when i crossed the chambezé, the similarity of names led me to imagine that this was a branch of the zambesi. the natives said, "no. this goes south-west, and forms a very large water there." but i had become prepossessed with the idea that lake liemba was that bemba of which i had heard in , and we had been so starved in the south that i gladly set my face north. the river-like prolongation of liemba might go to moero, and where i could not follow the arm of liemba. then i worked my way to this lake. since coming to casembe's the testimony of natives and arabs has been so united and consistent, that i am but ten days from lake bemba, or bangweolo, that i cannot doubt its accuracy. i am so tired of exploration without a word from home or anywhere else for two years, that i must go to ujiji on tanganyika for letters before doing anything else. the banks and country adjacent to lake bangweolo are reported to be now very muddy and very unhealthy. i have no medicine. the inhabitants suffer greatly from swelled thyroid gland or derbyshire neck and elephantiasis, and this is the rainy season and very unsafe for me. when at the lower end of moero we were so near casembe that it was thought well to ascertain the length of the lake, and see casembe too. we came up between the double range that flanks the east of the lake; but mountains and plains are so covered with well-grown forest that we could seldom see it. we reached casembe's town on the th november. it stands near the north end of the lakelet mofwé; this is from one to three miles broad, and some six or seven long: it is full of sedgy islands, and abounds in fish. the country is quite level, but fifteen or twenty miles west of mofwé we see a long range of the mountains of rua. between this range and mofwé the luapula flows past into moero, the lake called moero okata = the great moero, being about fifty miles long. the town of casembe covers a mile square of cassava plantations, the huts being dotted over that space. some have square enclosures of reeds, but no attempt has been made at arrangement: it might be called a rural village rather than a town. no estimate could be formed by counting the huts, they were so irregularly planted, and hidden by cassava; but my impression from other collections of huts was that the population was under a thousand souls. the court or compound of casembe--some would call it a palace--is a square enclosure of yards by yards. it is surrounded by a hedge of high reeds. inside, where casembe honoured me with a grand reception, stands a gigantic hut for casembe, and a score of small huts for domestics. the queen's hut stands behind that of the chief, with a number of small huts also. most of the enclosed space is covered with a plantation of cassava, _curcus purgaris_, and cotton. casembe sat before his hut on a equate seat placed on lion and leopard skins. he was clothed in a coarse blue and white manchester print edged with red baize, and arranged in large folds so as to look like a crinoline put on wrong side foremost. his arms, legs and head were covered with sleeves, leggings and cap made of various coloured beads in neat patterns: a crown of yellow feathers surmounted his cap. each of his headmen came forward, shaded by a huge, ill-made umbrella, and followed by his dependants, made obeisance to casembe, and sat down on his right and left: various bands of musicians did the same. when called upon i rose and bowed, and an old counsellor, with his ears cropped, gave the chief as full an account as he had been able to gather during our stay of the english in general, and my antecedents in particular. my having passed through lunda to the west of casembe, and visited chiefs of whom he scarcely knew anything, excited most attention. he then assured me that i was welcome to his country, to go where i liked, and do what i chose. we then went (two boys carrying his train behind him) to an inner apartment, where the articles of my present were exhibited in detail. he had examined them privately before, and we knew that he was satisfied. they consisted of eight yards of orange-coloured serge, a large striped tablecloth; another large cloth made at manchester in imitation of west coast native manufacture, which never fails to excite the admiration of arabs and natives, and a large richly gilded comb for the back hair, such as ladies wore fifty years ago: this was given to me by a friend at liverpool, and as casembe and nsama's people cultivate the hair into large knobs behind, i was sure that this article would tickle the fancy. casembe expressed himself pleased, and again bade me welcome. i had another interview, and tried to dissuade him from selling his people as slaves. he listened awhile, then broke off into a tirade on the greatness of his country, his power and dominion, which mohamad bin saleh, who has been here for ten years, turned into ridicule, and made the audience laugh by telling how other lunda chiefs had given me oxen and sheep, while casembe had only a poor little goat and some fish to bestow. he insisted also that there were but two sovereigns in the world, the sultan of zanzibar and victoria. when we went on a third occasion to bid casembe farewell, he was much less distant, and gave me the impression that i could soon become friends with him; but he has an ungainly look, and an outward squint in each eye. a number of human skulls adorned the entrance to his courtyard; and great numbers of his principal men having their ears cropped, and some with their hands lopped off, showed his barbarous way of making his ministers attentive and honest. i could not avoid indulging a prejudice against him. the portuguese visited casembe long ago; but as each new casembe builds a new town, it is not easy to fix on the exact spot to which strangers came. the last seven casembes have had their towns within seven miles of the present one. dr. lacerda, governor of tette, on the zambesi, was the only visitor of scientific attainments, and he died at the rivulet called chungu, three or four miles from this. the spot is called nshinda, or inchinda, which the portuguese wrote lucenda or ucenda. the latitude given is nearly fifty miles wrong, but the natives say that he lived only ten days after his arrival, and if, as is probable, his mind was clouded with fever when he last observed, those who have experienced what that is will readily excuse any mistake he may have made. his object was to accomplish a much-desired project of the portuguese to have an overland communication between their eastern and western possessions. this was never made by any of the portuguese nation; but two black traders succeeded partially with a part of the distance, crossing once from cassangé, in angola, to tette on the zambesi, and returning with a letter from the governor of mosambique. it is remarkable that this journey, which was less by a thousand miles than from sea to sea and back again, should have for ever quenched all white portuguese aspirations for an overland route. the different casembes visited by the portuguese seem to have varied much in character and otherwise. pereira, the first visitor, said (i quote from memory) that casembe had , trained soldiers, watered his streets daily, and sacrificed twenty human victims every day. i could hear nothing of human sacrifices now, and it is questionable if the present casembe could bring a thousand stragglers into the field. when he usurped power five years ago, his country was densely peopled; but he was so severe in his punishments--cropping the ears, lopping off the hands, and other mutilations, selling the children for very slight offences, that his subjects gradually dispersed themselves in the neighbouring countries beyond his power. this is the common mode by which tyranny is cured in parts like these, where fugitives are never returned. the present casembe is very poor. when he had people who killed elephants he was too stingy to share the profits of the sale of the ivory with his subordinates. the elephant hunters have either left him or neglect hunting, so he has now no tusks to sell to the arab traders who come from tanganyika. major monteiro, the third portuguese who visited casembe, appears to have been badly treated by this man's predecessor, and no other of his nation has ventured so far since. they do not lose much by remaining away, for a little ivory and slaves are all that casembe ever can have to sell. about a month to the west of this the people of katanga smelt copper-ore (malachite) into large bars shaped like the capital letter i. they may be met with of from lbs. to lbs., weight all over the country, and the inhabitants draw the copper into wire for armlets and leglets. gold is also found at katanga, and specimens were lately sent to the sultan of zanzibar. as we come down from the watershed towards tanganyika we enter an area of the earth's surface still disturbed by internal igneous action. a hot fountain in the country of nsama is often used to boil cassava and maize. earthquakes are by no means rare. we experienced the shock of one while at chitimba's village, and they extend as far as casembe's. i felt as if afloat, and as huts would not fall there was no sense of danger; some of them that happened at night set the fowls a cackling. the most remarkable effect of this one was that it changed the rates of the chronometers; no rain fell after it. no one had access to the chronometers but myself, and, as i never heard of this effect before, i may mention that one which lost with great regularity . sec. daily, lost sec.; another; whose rate since leaving the coast was sec., lost sec.; and a third, which gained sec. daily, stopped altogether. some of nsama's people ascribed the earthquakes to the hot fountain, because it showed unusual commotion on these occasions; another hot fountain exists near tanganyika than nsama's, and we passed one on the shores of moero. we could not understand why the natives called moero much larger than tanganyika till we saw both. the greater lake lies in a comparatively narrow trough, with highland on each side, which is always visible; but when we look at moero, to the south of the mountains of rua on the west, we have nothing but an apparently boundless sea horizon. the luapula and rovukwé form a marsh at the southern extremity, and casembe dissuaded me from entering it, but sent a man to guide me to different points of moero further down. from the heights at which the southern portions were seen, it must be from forty to sixty miles broad. from the south end of the mountains of rua ( ° ' south lat.) it is thirty-three miles broad. no native ever attempts to cross it even there. its fisheries are of great value to the inhabitants, and the produce is carried to great distances. among the vegetable products of this region, that which interested me most was a sort of potato. it does not belong to the solanaceous, but to the papilionaceous or pea family, and its flowers have a delightful fragrance. it is easily propagated by small cuttings of the root or stalk. the tuber is oblong, like our kidney potato, and when boiled tastes exactly like our common potato. when unripe it has a slight degree of bitterness, and it is believed to be wholesome; a piece of the root eaten raw is a good remedy in nausea. it is met with on the uplands alone, and seems incapable of bearing much heat, though i kept some of the roots without earth in a box, which was carried in the sun almost daily for six months, without destroying their vegetative power. it is remarkable that in all the central regions of africa visited, the cotton is that known as the pernambuco variety. it has a long strong staple, seeds clustered together, and adherent to each other. the bushes eight or ten feet high have woody stems, and the people make strong striped black and white shawls of the cotton. it was pleasant to meet the palm-oil palm (_elais guineaensis_) at casembe's, which is over feet above the level of the sea. the oil is sold cheap, but no tradition exists of its introduction into the country. i send no sketch of the country, because i have not yet passed over a sufficient surface to give a connected view of the whole watershed of this region, and i regret that i cannot recommend any of the published maps i have seen as giving even a tolerable idea of the country. one bold constructor of maps has tacked on miles to the north-west end of lake nyassa, a feat which no traveller has ever ventured to imitate. another has placed a river in the same quarter running or feet up hill, and named it the "new zambesi," because i suppose the old zambesi runs down hill. i have walked over both these mental abortions, and did not know that i was walking on water till i saw them in the maps. [the despatch breaks off at this point. the year concludes with health impaired. as time goes on we shall see how ominous the conviction was which made him dread the swamps of bangweolo.] _ - st december, ._--we came on to the rivulet chirongo, and then to the kabukwa, where i was taken ill. heavy rains kept the convoy back. i have had nothing but coarsely-ground sorghum meal for some time back, and am weak; i used to be the first in the line of march, and am now the last; mohamad presented a meal of finely-ground porridge and a fowl, and i immediately felt the difference, though i was not grumbling at my coarse dishes. it is well that i did not go to bangweolo lake, for it is now very unhealthy to the natives, and i fear that without medicine continual wettings by fording rivulets might have knocked me up altogether. as i have mentioned, the people suffer greatly from swelled thyroid gland or derbyshire neck and elephantiasis scroti. _ st january, ._--almighty father, forgive the sins of the past year for thy son's sake. help me to be more profitable during this year. if i am to die this year prepare me for it. * * * * * i bought five hoes at two or three yards of calico each: they are - / inches by - / inches; many are made in casembe's country, and this is the last place we can find them: when we come into buiré we can purchase a good goat for one; one of my goats died and the other dried up. i long for others, for milk is the most strengthening food i can get. my guide to moero came to-day, and i visited the lake several times, so as to get a good idea of its size. the first fifteen miles in the north are from twelve or more to thirty-three miles broad. the great mass of the rua mountains confines it. thus in a clear day a lower range is seen continued from the high point of the first mass away to the west south-west, this ends, and sea horizon is alone visible away to the south and west; from the height we viewed it at, the width must be over forty, perhaps sixty miles. a large island, called kirwa,[ ] is situated between the mandapala and kabukwa rivers, but nearest to the other shore. the natives never attempt to cross any part of the lake south of this kirwa. land could not be seen with a good glass on the clearest day we had. i can understand why the natives pronounced moero to be larger than tanganyika: in the last named they see the land always on both sides; it is like a vast trough flanked with highlands, but at moero nothing but sea horizon can be seen when one looks south-west of the rua mountains. at the kalongosi meadow one of mohamad's men shot a buffalo, and he gave me a leg of the good beefy flesh. our course was slow, caused partly by rains, and partly by waiting for the convoy. the people at kalongosi were afraid to ferry us or any of his people in the convoy out of casembe's country; but at last we gave a good fee, and their scruples yielded: they were influenced also by seeing other villagers ready to undertake the job; the latter nearly fought over us on seeing that their neighbours got all the fare. we then came along the lake, and close to its shores. the moisture caused a profusion of gingers, ferns, and tropical forest: buffaloes, zebras and elephants are numerous, and the villagers at chukosi's, where we slept, warned us against lions and leopards. _ th january, ._--sunday at karembwé's village. the mountains east of him are called makunga. we went yesterday to the shore, and by protraction rua point was distant thirty-three miles. karembwé sent for us, to have an audience; he is a large man with a gruff voice, but liked by his people and by strangers. i gave him a cloth, and he gave me a goat. the enthusiasm with which i held on to visit moero had communicated itself to tipo tipo and syde bin alle, for they followed me up to this place to see the lake, and remained five days while we were at casembe's. other arabs, or rather suahelis, must have seen it, but never mentioned it as anything worth looking at; and it was only when all hope of ivory was gone that these two headmen found time to come. there is a large population here. _ th january, ._--heavy rains. karembé mentioned a natural curiosity as likely to interest me: a little rivulet, chipamba, goes some distance underground, but is uninteresting. next day we crossed the vuna, a strong torrent, which, has a hot fountain close by the ford, in which maize and cassava may be boiled. a large one in nsama's country is used in the same way, maize and cassava being tied to a string and thrown in to be cooked: some natives believe that earthquakes are connected with its violent ebullitions. we crossed the katétté, another strong torrent, before reaching the north end of moero, where we slept in some travellers' huts. leaving the lake, and going north, we soon got on to a plain flooded by the luao. we had to wade through very adhesive black mud, generally ankle deep, and having many holes in it much deeper: we had four hours of this, and then came to the ford of the luao itself. we waded up a branch of it waist deep for at least a quarter of a mile, then crossed a narrow part by means of a rude bridge of branches and trees, of about forty yards width. the luao, in spreading over the plains, confers benefits on the inhabitants, though i could not help concluding it imparts disease too, for the black mud in places smells horribly. great numbers of siluridae, chiefly _clarias capensis_, often three feet in length, spread over the flooded portions of the country, eating the young of other fishes, and insects, lizards, and worms, killed by the waters. the people make weirs for them, and as the waters retire kill large numbers, which they use as a relish to their farinaceous food. _ th january, ._--after sleeping near the luao we went on towards the village, in which mohamad's son lives. it is on the kakoma eiver, and is called kabwabwata, the village of mubao. in many of the villages the people shut their stockades as soon as we appear, and stand bows and arrows in hand till we have passed: the reason seems to be that the slaves when out of sight of their masters carry things with a high hand, demanding food and other things as if they had power and authority. one slave stole two tobacco pipes yesterday in passing through a village; the villagers complained to me when i came up, and i waited till mohamad came and told him; we then went forward, the men keeping close to me till we got the slave and the pipes. they stole cassava as we went along, but this could scarcely be prevented. they laid hold of a plant an inch-and-a-half thick, and tore it out of the soft soil with its five or six roots as large as our largest carrots, stowed the roots away in their loads, and went on eating them; but the stalk thrown among those still growing shows the theft. the raw roots are agreeable and nutritious. no great harm is done by this, for the gardens are so large, but it inspires distrust in the inhabitants, and makes it dangerous for arabs to travel not fully manned and armed. on reaching the village kabwabwata a great demonstration was made by mohamad's arab dependants and wanyamwesi: the women had their faces all smeared with pipeclay, and lullilooed with all their might. when we came among the huts, they cast handfuls of soil on their heads, while the men fired off their guns as fast as they could load them. those connected with mohamad ran and kissed his hands, and fired, till the sound of shouting, lullilooing, clapping of hands, and shooting was deafening: mohamad was quite overcome by this demonstration, and it was long before he could still them. on the way to this village from the south we observed an extensive breadth of land, under ground-nuts which are made into oil: a large jar of this is sold for a hoe. the ground-nuts were now in flower, and green maize ready to be eaten. people all busy planting, transplanting, or weeding; they plant cassava on mounds prepared for it, on which they have sown beans, sorghum, maize, pumpkins: these ripen, and leave the cassava a free soil. the sorghum or dura is sown thickly, and when about a foot high--if the owner has been able to prepare the soil elsewhere--it is transplanted, a portion of the leaves being cut off to prevent too great evaporation and the death of the plant. _ th january, ._--the wanyamwesi and people of garaganza say that we have thirteen days' march from this to the tanganyika lake. it is often muddy, and many rivulets are to be crossed. mohamad is naturally anxious to stay a little while with his son, for it is a wet season, and the mud is disagreeable to travel over: it is said to be worse near ujiji: he cooks small delicacies for me with the little he has, and tries to make me comfortable. vinegar is made from bananas, and oil from ground-nuts. i am anxious to be off, but chiefly to get news. i find that many unyamwesi people are waiting here, on account of the great quantity of rainwater in front: it would be difficult, they say, to get canoes on tanganyika, as the waves are now large. _ th january, ._--two of mohamad bogharib's people came from casembe's to trade here, and a body of syde bin habib's people also from garaganza, near kazé, they report the flooded lands on this side of lake tanganyika as waist and chest deep. bin habib, being at katanga, will not stir till the rains are over, and i fear we are storm-stayed till then too. the feeders of the marungu are not fordable just now, and no canoes are to be had. _ th and th january, ._--i am ill with fever, as i always am when stationary. _ th january, ._--better, and thankful to him of the greatest name. we must remain; it is a dry spot, and favourable for ground-nuts. _hooping-cough_ here. _ th january, ._--the earth cooled by the rain last night sets all to transplanting dura or sorghum; they cut the leaves till only about eighteen inches of them are left, but it grows all the better for the change of place. mohamad believes that tanganyika flows through rusizi to lohindé. (chuambo.) seyd seyd is said to have been the first arab sultan who traded, and seyed majid follows the example of his father, and has many arab traders in his employment. he lately sent eight buffaloes to mtéza, king of uganda, son of sunna, by way of increasing his trade, but if is not likely that he will give up the lucrative trade in ivory and slaves. susi bought a hoe with a little gunpowder, then a cylinder of dura, three feet long by two feet in diameter, for the hoe: it is at least one hundredweight. stone underground houses are reported in rua, but whether natural or artificial mohamad could not say. if a present is made to the rua chiefs they never obstruct passengers. chikosi, at whose village we passed a night, near kalongosi, and chiputa are both dead. the mofwé fills during the greater rains, and spreads over a large district; elephants then wander in its marshes, and are killed easily by people in canoes: this happens every year, and mohamad bogharib waits now for this ivory. _ th to st february, ._--on inquiring of men who lave seen the underground houses in rua, i find that they are very extensive, ranging along mountain sides for twenty miles, and in one part a rivulet flows inside. in some cases the doorways are level with the country adjacent: in others, ladders are used to climb up to them; inside they are said to be very large, and not the work of men, but of god. the people have plenty of fowls, and they too obtain shelter in these troglodyte habitations. _ rd february, ._--i was visited by an important chief called chapé, who said that he wanted to make friends with the english. he, chisapi, sama, muabo, karembwé, are of one tribe or family, the oanza: he did not beg anything, and promised to send me a goat. footnotes: [ ] kirwa and its various corruptions, such as shirwa, chirua, and kiroa, perpetually recur in africa, and would almost seem to stand for "the island."--ed. chapter xi. riot in the camp. mohamad's account of his long imprisonment. superstitions about children's teeth. concerning dreams. news of lake chowambé. life of the arab slavers. the katanga gold supply. muabo. ascent of the rua mountains. syde bin habib. birthday th march, . hostility of mpwéto. contemplates visiting lake bemba. nile sources. men desert. the shores of moero. visits fungafunga. beturn to casembe's. obstructiveness of "cropped-ears." accounts of pereira and dr. lacerda. major monteiro. the line of casembe's. casembe explains the connection of the lakes and the luapula. queen moäri. arab sacrifice. kapika gets rid of his wife. _ th february, ._--some slaves who came with mohamad bogharib's agent, abused my men this morning, as bringing unclean meat into the village to sell, though it had been killed by a man of the wanyamwesi. they called out, "kaffir, kaffir!" and susi, roused by this, launched forth with a stick; the others joined in the row, and the offenders were beat off, but they went and collected all their number and renewed the assault. one threw a heavy block of wood and struck simon on the head, making him quite insensible and convulsed for some time. he has three wounds on the head, which may prove serious. this is the first outburst of mohamadan bigotry we have met, and by those who know so little of the creed that it is questionable if one of them can repeat the formula: "la illaha illa lahu mohamad rasulela salla lahu, a leihi oa salama." simon recovered, but gallahs are in general not strong. _ th february, ._--mohamad called on me this morning to apologise for the outrage of yesterday, but no one was to blame except the slaves, and i wanted no punishment inflicted if they were cautioned for the future. it seems, plain that if they do not wish to buy the unclean meat they can let it alone,--no harm is done. the wanyamwesi kill for all, and some mohamadans say that they won't eat of it, but their wives and people do eat it privately. i asked mohamad to-day if it were true that he was a prisoner at casembe's. he replied, "quite so." some garaganza people, now at katanga, fought with casembe, and mohamad was suspected of being connected with them. casembe attacked his people, and during the turmoil a hundred frasilahs of copper were stolen from him, and many of his people killed. casembe kept him a prisoner till sixty of his people were either killed or died, among these mohamad's eldest son: he was thus reduced to poverty. he gave something to casembe to allow him to depart, and i suspect that my sultan's letter had considerable influence in inducing casembe to accede to his request, for he repeated again and again in my hearing that he must pay respect to my letter, and see me safe at least as far as ujiji. mohamad says that he will not return to casembe again, but will begin to trade with some other chief: it is rather hard for a man at his age to begin _de novo_. he is respected among the arabs, who pronounce him to be a good man. he says that he has been twenty-two years in africa, and never saw an outburst like that of yesterday among the wanyamwesi: it is, however, common for the people at ujiji to drink palm toddy, and then have a general row in the bazaar, but no bad feeling exists next day. if a child cuts the upper front teeth before the lower, it is killed, as unlucky: this is a widely-spread superstition. when i was amongst the makololo in one of sekelétu's wives would not allow her servant's child to be killed for this, but few would have the courage to act in opposition to public feeling as she did. in casembe's country if a child is seen to turn from one side to the other in sleep it is killed. they say of any child who has what they consider these defects "he is an arab child," because the arabs have none of this class of superstitions, and should any arab be near they give the child to him: it would bring ill-luck, misfortunes, "milando," or guilt, to the family. these superstitions may account for the readiness with which one tribe parted with their children to speke's followers. mohamad says that these children must have been taken in war, as none sell their own offspring. if casembe dreams of any man twice or three times he puts the man to death, as one who is practising secret arts against his life: if any one is pounding or cooking food for him he must preserve the strictest silence; these and other things show extreme superstition and degradation. during, his enforced detention mohamad's friends advised him to leave casembe by force, offering to aid him with their men, but he always refused. his father was the first to open this country to trade with the arabs, and all his expenses while so doing were borne by himself; but mohamad seems to be a man of peace, and unwilling to break the appearance of friendship with the chiefs. he thinks that this casembe poisoned his predecessor: he certainly killed his wife's mother, a queen, that she might be no obstacle to him in securing her daughter. we are waiting in company with a number of wanyamwesi for the cessation of the rains, which have flooded the country between this and tanganyika. if there were much slope this water would flow off: this makes me suspect that tanganyika is not so low as speke's measurement. the arabs are positive that water flows from that lake to the victoria nyanza, and assert that dagara, the father of rumanyika, was anxious to send canoes from his place to ujiji, or, as some say, to dig a canal to ujiji. the wanyamwesi here support themselves by shooting buffaloes, at a place two days distant, and selling the meat for grain and cassava: no sooner is it known that an animal is killed, than the village women crowd in here, carrying their produce to exchange it for meat, which they prefer to beads or anything else. their farinaceous food creates a great craving for flesh: were my shoes not done i would go in for buffaloes too. a man from the upper part of tanganyika gives the same account of the river from rusisi that burton and speke received when they went to its mouth. he says that the water of the lake goes up some distance, but is met by rusisi water, and driven back thereby. the lake water, he adds, finds an exit northwards and eastwards by several small rivers which would admit small canoes only. they pour into lake chowambé--probably that discovered by mr. baker. this chowambé is in hundi, the country of cannibals, but the most enlightened informants leave the impression on the mind of groping in the dark: it may be all different when we come to see it. the fruit of the palm, which yields palm-oil, is first of all boiled, then pounded in a mortar, then put into hot or boiling water, and the oil skimmed off. the palm-oil is said to be very abundant at ujiji, as much as gallons being often brought into the bazaar for sale in one morning; the people buy it eagerly for cooking purposes. mohamad says that the island of pemba, near zanzibar, contains many of these palms, but the people are ignorant of the mode of separating the oil from the nut: they call the palm nkoma at casembe's, and chikichi at zanzibar.[ ] no better authority for what has been done or left undone by mohamadans in this country can be found than mohamad bin saleh, for he is very intelligent, and takes an interest in all that happens, and his father was equally interested in this country's affairs. he declares that no attempt was ever made by mohamadans to proselytize the africans: they teach their own children to read the koran, but them only; it is never translated, and to servants who go to the mosque it is all dumb show. some servants imbibe mohamadan bigotry about eating, but they offer no prayers. circumcision, to make _halel_, or fit to slaughter the animals for their master, is the utmost advance any have made. as the arabs in east africa never feel themselves called on to propagate the doctrines of islam, among the heathen africans, the statement of captain burton that they would make better missionaries to the africans than christians, because they would not insist on the abandonment of polygamy, possesses the same force as if he had said mohamadans would catch more birds than christians, because they would put salt on their tails. the indispensable requisite or qualification for any kind of missionary is that he have some wish to proselytize: this the arabs do not possess in the slightest degree. as they never translate the koran, they neglect the best means of influencing the africans, who invariably wish to understand what they are about. when we were teaching adults the alphabet, they felt it a hard task. "give me medicine, i shall drink it to make me understand it," was their earnest entreaty. when they have advanced so far as to form clear conceptions of old testament and gospel histories, they tell them to their neighbours; and, on visiting distant tribes, feel proud to show how much they know: in this way the knowledge of christianity becomes widely diffused. those whose hatred to its self-denying doctrines has become developed by knowledge, propagate slanders; but still they speak of christianity, and awaken attention. the plan, therefore, of the christian missionary in imparting knowledge is immeasurably superior to that of the moslem in dealing with dumb show. i have, however, been astonished to see that none of the africans imitate the arab prayers: considering their great reverence of the deity, it is a wonder that they do not learn to address prayers to him except on very extraordinary occasions. my remarks referring to the education by mohamadans do not refer to the suahelis, for they teach their children to read, and even send them to school. they are the descendants of arab and african women and inhabit the coast line. although they read, they understand very little arabic beyond the few words which have been incorporated into suaheli. the establishment of moslem missions among the heathen is utterly unknown, and this is remarkable, because the wanyamwesi, for instance, are very friendly with the arabs--are great traders, too, like them, and are constantly employed as porters and native traders, being considered very trustworthy. they even acknowledge seyed majid's authority. the arabs speak of all the africans as _"gumu_" that is hard or callous to the mohamadan religion. some believe that kilimanjaro mountain has mummies, as in egypt, and that moses visited it of old. mungo park mentions that he found the africans in the far interior of the west in possession of the stories of joseph and his brethren, and others. they probably got them from the koran, as verbally explained by some liberal mullah, and showed how naturally they spread any new ideas they obtained: they were astonished to find that park knew the stories. the people at katanga are afraid to dig for the gold in their country because they believe that it has been hidden where it is by "ngolu," who is the owner of it. the arabs translate ngolu by satan: it means mézimo, or departed spirits, too. the people are all oppressed by their superstitions; the fear of death is remarkably strong. the wagtails are never molested, because, if they were killed, death would visit the village; this too is the case with the small whydah birds, the fear of death in the minds of the people saves them from molestation. but why should we be so prone to criticise? a remnant of our own superstitions is seen in the prejudice against sitting down thirteen to dinner, spilling the salt, and not throwing a little of it over the left shoulder. ferdinand i., the king of naples, in passing through the streets, perpetually put one hand into his pockets to cross the thumb over the finger in order to avert the influence of the evil eye! on the th, muabo, the great chief of these parts, came to call on mohamad: several men got up and made some antics before him, then knelt down and did obeisance, then muabo himself jumped about a little, and all applauded. he is a good-natured-looking man, fond of a joke, and always ready with a good-humoured smile: he was praised very highly, mpwéto was nothing to muabo mokolu, the great muabo; and he returned the praise by lauding tipo tipo and mpamari, mohamad's native name, which means, "give me wealth, or goods." mohamad made a few of the ungainly antics like the natives, and all were highly pleased, and went off rejoicing. some arabs believe that a serpent on one of the islands in the nyanza lake has the power of speaking, and is the same that beguiled eve. it is a crime at ujiji to kill a serpent, even though it enters a house and kills a kid! the native name, for the people of ujiji is wayeiyé, the very same as the people on the zouga, near lake ngami. they are probably an offshoot from ujiji.[ ] there are underground stone houses in kabiuré, in the range called kakoma, which is near to our place of detention. _ th march, ._--the roots of the nyumbo or noombo open in four or five months from the time of planting, those planted by me on the th february have now stalks fifteen inches long. the root is reported to be a very wholesome food, never disagreeing with the stomach; and the raw root is an excellent remedy in obstinate vomiting and nausea; four or five tubers are often given by one root, in marungu they attain a size of six inches in length by two in diameter. _ th march, ._--we started for mpwéto's village, which is situated on the lualaba, and in our course crossed the lokinda, which had a hundred yards of flood water on each side of it. the river itself is forty yards wide, with a rude bridge over it, as it flows fast away into moero. next day we ascended the rua mountains, and reached the village of mpwéto, situated in a valley between two ridges, about one mile from the right bank of the lualaba, where it comes through the mountains. it then flows about two miles along the base of a mountain lying east and west before it begins to make northing: its course is reported to be very winding, this seems additional evidence that tanganyika is not in a depression of only feet above the sea, otherwise the water of lualaba would flow faster and make a straighter channel. it is said to flow into the lufira, and that into tanganyika. _ th march, ._--on reaching mpwéto's yesterday we were taken up to the house of syde bin habib, which is built on a ridge overhanging the chiefs village, a square building of wattle and plaster, and a mud roof to prevent it being fired by an enemy. it is a very pretty spot among the mountains. sariama is bin habib's agent, and he gave us a basket of flour and leg of kid. i sent a message to mpwéto, which he politely answered by saying that he had no food ready in his village, but if we waited two days he would have some prepared, and would then see us. he knew what we should give him, and he need not tell us i met a man from seskéké, left sick at kirwa by bin habib and now with him here. a very beautiful young woman came to look at us, perfect in every way, and nearly naked, but unconscious of indecency; a very venus in black. the light-grey, red-tailed parrot seen on the west coast is common in rua, and tamed by the natives.[ ] _ th march, ._[ ]--(grant, lord, grace to love thee more and serve thee better.) the favourite son of mpwéto called on us; his father is said to do nothing without consulting him; but he did not seem to be endowed with much wisdom. _ th and st march, ._--our interview was put off; and then a sight of the cloth we were to give was required. i sent a good large cloth, and explained that we were nearly out of goods now, having been travelling two years, and were going to ujiji to get more. mpwéto had prepared a quantity of pombe, a basket of meal, and a goat; and when he looked at them and the cloth, he seemed to feel that it would be a poor bargain, so he sent to say that we had gone to casembe and given him many cloths, and then to muabo, and if i did not give another cloth he would not see me. "he had never slept with only one cloth." "i had put medicine on this one to kill him, and must go away." it seems he was offended because we went to his great rival, muabo, before visiting him. he would not see syde bin habib for eight days; and during that time was using charms to try if it would be safe to see him at all: on the ninth day he peeped past a door for some time to see if bin habib were a proper person, and then came out: he is always very suspicious. at last he sent an order to us to go away, and if we did not move, he would come with all his people and drive us off. sariamo said if he were not afraid for syde bin habib's goods, he would make a stand against mpwéto; but i had no wish to stay or to quarrel with a worthless chief, and resolved to go next day. (_ th march._) he abused a native trader with his tongue for coming to trade, and sent him away too. we slept again at our half-way village, kapemba, just as a party of salt-traders from rua came into it: they were tall, well-made men, and rather dark. _ th march, ._--reached kabwabwata at noon, and were welcomed by mohamad and all the people. his son, sheikh but, accompanied us; but mohamad told us previously that it was likely mpwéto would refuse to see us. the water is reported to be so deep in front that it is impossible to go north: the wanyamwesi, who are detained here as well as we, say it is often more than a man's depth, and there are no canoes. they would not stop here if a passage home could be made. i am thinking of going to lake bemba, because at least two months must be passed here still before a passage can be made; but my goods are getting done, and i cannot give presents to the chiefs on our way. this lake has a sandy, not muddy bottom, as we were at first informed, and there are four islands in it, one, the bangweolo, is very large, and many people live on it; they have goats and sheep in abundance: the owners of canoes demand three hoes for the hire of one capable of carrying eight or ten persons; beyond this island it is sea horizon only. the tsébula and nzoé antelopes abound. the people desire salt and not beads for sale. _ nd april, ._--if i am not deceived by the information i have received from various reliable sources, the springs of the nile rise between ° and ° south latitude, or at least or miles south of the south end of speke's lake, which he considered to be the sources of the nile. tanganyika is declared to send its water through north into lake chowambé or baker's lake; if this does not prove false, then tanganyika is an expansion of the nile, and so is lake chowambé; the two lakes being connected by the river loanda. unfortunately the people on the east side of the loanda are constantly at war with the people on the west of it, or those of rusisi. the arabs have been talking of opening up a path through to chowambé, where much ivory is reported; i hope that the most high may give me a way there. _ th april, ._--i had a long oration from mohamad yesterday against going off for bemba to-morrow. his great argument is the extortionate way of casembe, who would demand cloth, and say that in pretending to go to ujiji i had told him lies: he adds to this argument that this is the last month of the rains; the masika has begun, and our way north will soon be open. the fact of the matter is that mohamad, by not telling me of the superabundance of water in the country of the marungu, which occurs every year, caused me to lose five months. he knew that we should be detained here, but he was so eager to get out of his state of durance with casembe that he hastened my departure by asserting that we should be at ujiji in one month. i regret this deception, but it is not to be wondered at, and in a mohamadan and in a christian too it is thought clever. were my goods not nearly done i would go, and risk the displeasure of casembe for the chance of discovering the lake bemba. i thought once of buying from mohamad bogharib, but am afraid that his stock may be getting low too: i fear that i must give up this lake for the present. _ th april, ._--i think of starting to-morrow for bangweolo, even if casembe refuses a passage beyond him: we shall be better there than we are here, for everything at kabwabwata is scarce and dear. there we can get a fowl for one string of beads, here it costs six: there fish may be bought, here none. three of casembe's principal men are here, kakwata, charley, and kapitenga; they are anxious to go home, and would be a gain to me, but mohamad detains them, and when i ask his reason he says "muabo refuses," but they point to mohamad's house and say, "it is he who refuses." [a very serious desertion took place at this time amongst dr. livingstone's followers. not to judge them too harshly they had become to a great extent demoralised by camp life with mohamad and his horde of slaves and slavers. the arab tried all he could to dissuade the traveller from proceeding south instead of homewards through ujiji, and the men seem to have found their own breaking-point where this disappointment occurred.] _ th april, ._--on preparing to start this morning my people refused to go: the fact is, they are all tired, and mohamad's opposition encourages them. mohamad, who was evidently eager to make capital out of their refusal, asked me to remain over to-day, and then demanded what i was going to do with those who had absconded. i said, "nothing: if a magistrate were on the spot, i would give them over to him." "oh," said he, "i am magistrate, shall i apprehend them?" to this i assented. he repeated this question till it was tiresome: i saw his reason long afterwards, when he asserted that i "came to him and asked him to bind them, but he had refused:" he wanted to appear to the people as much better than i am. _ th april, ._--i start off with five attendants, leaving most of the luggage with mohamad, and reach the luao to spend the night. headman ndowa. _ th april, ._--amoda ran away early this morning. "wishes to stop with his brothers." they think that, by refusing to go to bemba, they will force me to remain with them, and then go to ujiji: one of them has infused the idea into their minds that i will not pay them, and exclaims "look at the sepoys!"--not knowing that they are paid by the indian government; and as for the johanna men, they were prepaid _ l. s._ in cash, besides clothing. i sent amoda's bundle back to mohamad: my messenger got to kabwabwata before amoda did, and he presented himself to my arab friend, who, of course, scolded him: he replied that he was tired of carrying, and no other fault had he; i may add that i found out that amoda wished to come south to me with one of mohamad bogharib's men, but "mpamari" told him not to return. now that i was fairly started, i told my messenger to say to mohamad that i would on no account go to ujiji, till i had done all in my power to reach the lake i sought: i would even prefer waiting at luao or moero, till people came to me from ujiji to supplant the runaways. i did not blame them very severely in my own mind for absconding: they were tired of tramping, and so verily am i, but mohamad, in encouraging them to escape to him, and talking with a double tongue, cannot be exonerated from blame. little else can be expected from him, he has lived some thirty-five years in the country, twenty-five being at casembe's, and there he had often to live by his wits. consciousness of my own defects makes me lenient. _ th april, ._--ndowa gives mita or mpamañkanana as the names of the excavations in muabo's hills, he says that they are sufficient to conceal all the people of this district in case of war: i conjecture that this implies room for ten thousand people: provisions are stored in them, and a perennial rivulet runs along a whole street of them. on one occasion, when the main entrance was besieged by an enemy, someone who knew all the intricacies of the excavations led a party out by a secret passage, and they, coming over the invaders, drove them off with heavy loss. their formation is universally ascribed to the deity. this may mean that the present inhabitants have succeeded the original burrowing race, which dug out many caves adjacent to mount hor--the _jebel nébi harin_, mount of the prophet aaron, of the arabs--and many others; and even the bushman caves, a thousand miles south of this region. a very minute, sharp-biting mosquito is found here: the women try to drive them out of their huts by whisking bundles of green leaves all round the walls before turning into them. _ th august, ._--crossed the luao by a bridge, thirty yards long, and more than half a mile of flood on each side; passed many villages, standing on little heights, which overlook plains filled with water. some three miles of grassy plains abreast of moero were the deepest parts, except the banks of luao. we had four hours of wading, the bottom being generally black tenacious mud. ruts had been formed in the paths by the feet of passengers: these were filled with soft mud, and, as they could not be seen, the foot was often placed on the edge, and when the weight came on it, down it slumped into the mud, half-way up the calves; it was difficult to draw it out, and very fatiguing. to avoid these ruts we encroached on the grass at the sides of the paths, but often stepping on the unseen edge of a rut, we floundered in with both feet to keep the balance, and this was usually followed by a rush of bubbles to the surface, which, bursting, discharged foul air of frightful faecal odour. in parts, the black mud and foul water were cold, in others hot, according as circulation went on or not. when we came near moero, the water became half-chest and whole-chest deep; all perishable articles had to be put on the head. we found a party of fishermen on the sands, and i got a hut, a bath in the clear but tepid waters, and a delicious change of dress. water of lake, ° at p.m. _ th april, ._--we marched along the north end of moero, which has a south-east direction. the soft yielding sand which is flanked by a broad belt of tangled tropical vegetation and trees, added to the fatigues of yesterday, so finding a deserted fisherman's village near the eastern hills, we gladly made it our quarters for sunday ( th). i made no mark, but the lake is at least twenty feet higher now than it was on our first visits, and there are banks showing higher rises even than this. large fish-baskets made of split reeds are used in trios for catching small fish; one man at each basket drives fish ashore. _ th april, ._--went on to katétté river, and then to a strong torrent; slept at a village on the north bank of the river vuna, where, near the hills, is a hot fountain, sometimes used to cook cassava and maize. _ st april, ._--crossed the vuna and went on to kalembwé's village, meeting the chief at the gate, who guided us to a hut, and manifested great curiosity to see all our things; he asked if we could not stop next day and drink beer, which would then be ready. leopards abound here. the lake now seems broader than ever. i could not conceive that a hole in the cartilage of the nose could be turned to any account except to hold an ornament, though that is usually only a bit of grass, but a man sewing the feathers on his arrows used his nose-hole for holding a needle! in coming on to kangalola we found the country swimming: i got separated from the company, though i saw them disappear in the long grass not a hundred yards off and shouted, but the splashing of their feet prevented any one hearing. i could not find a path going south, so i took one to the east to a village; the grass was so long and tangled, i could scarcely get along, at last i engaged a man to show me the main path south, and he took me to a neat village of a woman--nyinakasangaand would go no further, "mother kasanga," as the name means, had been very handsome, and had a beautiful daughter, probably another edition of herself, she advised my waiting in the deep shade of the ficus indica, in which her houses were placed. i fired a gun, and when my attendants came gave her a string of beads, which made her express distress at my "leaving without drinking anything of hers." people have abandoned several villages on account of the abundance of ferocious wild beasts. _ rd april, ._--through very thick tangled nyassi grass to chikosi's burned village; nsama had killed him. we spent the night in a garden hut, which the fire of the village had spared. turnips were growing in the ruins. the nyassi, or long coarse grass, hangs over the paths, and in pushing it aside the sharp seeds penetrate the clothes and are very annoying. the grass itself rubs on the face and eyes disagreeably: when it is burned off and greensward covers the soil it is much more pleasant walking. th _april, ._--we leave chikosi's ruins and make for the ford of the kalungosi. marigolds are in full bloom all over the forest, and so are foxgloves. the river is here fully yards broad with yards of flood on its western bank; so deep we had to remain in the canoes till within yards of the higher ground. the people here chew the pith of the papyrus, which is three inches in diameter and as white as snow: it has very little sweetness or anything else in it. the headman of the village to which we went was out cutting wood for a garden, and his wife refused us a hut, but when kansabala came in the evening he scolded his own spouse roundly and all the wives of the village, and then pressed me to come indoors, but i was well enough in my mosquito curtain without, and declined: i was free from insects and vermin, and few huts are so. _ th april, ._--off early west, and then on to an elevated forest land, in which our course was s.s.w. to the great bend of the rivulet kifurwa, which enters moero near to the mouth of the kalungosi. _ th april, ._--here we spent sunday in our former woodcutters' huts. yesterday we were met by a party of the same occupation, laden with bark-cloth, which they had just been stripping off the trees. their leader would not come along the path because i was sitting near it: i invited him to do so, but it would have been disrespectful to let his shadow fall on any part of my person, so he went a little out of the way: this politeness is common. _ th april, ._--but a short march to fungafunga's village: we could have gone on to the muatizé, but no village exists there, and here we could buy food. fungafunga's wife gave a handsome supper to the stranger: on afterwards acknowledging it to her husband he said, "that is your village; always go that way and eat my provisions." he is a monyamwezi trading in the country for copper, hoes, and slaves. parrots are here in numbers stealing holcus sorghum in spite of the shouts of the women. we cross muatizé by a bridge of one large tree, getting a good view of moero from a hill near kabukwa, and sleep at chirongo river. _ th april, ._--at the mandapala river. some men here from the chungu, one of whom claimed to be a relative of casembe, made a great outcry against our coming a second time to casembe without waiting at the kalungosi for permission. one of them, with his ears cropped short off, asked me when i was departing north if i should come again. i replied, "yes, i think i shall." they excited themselves by calling over the same thing again and again. "the english come the second time!" "the second time--the second time--the country spoiled! why not wait at the kalungosi? let him return thither." "come from mpamari too, and from the bagaraganza or banyamwezi!!" "the second time--the second time!" then all the adjacent villagers were called in to settle this serious affair. i look up to that higher power to influence their minds as he has often done before. i persuaded them to refer the matter to casembe himself by sending a man with one of mine up to the town. they would not consent to go on to the chungu, as the old cropped-eared man would have been obliged to come back the distance again, he having been on the way to the kalungosi as a sentinel of the ford. casembe is reasonable and fair, but his people are neither, and will do anything to mulct either strangers or their own countrymen. _ th april, ._--the cold of winter has begun, and dew is deposited in great quantities, but all the streams are very high in flood, though the rains have ceased here some time. _ st may, ._--at the mandapala river. i sent a request to mohamad bogharib to intercede with casembe for me for a man to show the way to chikumbi, who is near to bangweolo. i fear that i have become mixed up in the lunda mind with mpamari (mohamad bin saleh), from having gone off with him and returning ere we reached ujiji, whither ostensibly we were bound. i may be suspected of being in his confidence, and of forwarding his plans by coming back. a deaf and dumb man appears among the people here, making signs exactly as i have seen such do in england, and occasionally emitting a low unmodulated guttural drawl like them. _ rd may, ._--abraham, my messenger, came back, while we were at afternoon prayers, with good news for us, but what made cropped-ears quite chopfallen was that casembe was quite gracious! he did not wish me to go away, and now i am welcome back; and as soon as we hear of peace at chikumbi's we shall have a man to conduct us thither. the mazitu were reported to have made an inroad into chikumbi's country; and it was said that chief had fled, and casembe had sent messengers to hear the truth. thanks to the most high for his kindness and influence. _ th may, ._--we leave the mandapala. cropped-ears, whose name i never heard, collapsed at once on hearing the message of casembe: before that i never heard such a babbler, to every one passing, man or woman, he repeated the same insinuations about the english, and "mpamari," and the banyamwezi,--conspiracy--guilt--return a second time,--till, like a meddling lawyer, he thought that he had really got an important case in hand! the river chungu we found to be from fifteen to eighteen yards broad and breast deep, with at least one hundred yards of flood, before we reached the main stream, the mandapala. the chungu and the lundi join in the country called kimbafuma, about twelve miles from our crossing-place of mandapala, and about west of it. the lundi was now breast deep too, and twelve yards broad. on reaching casembe's, on the mofwé, we found mohamad bogharib digging and fencing up a well to prevent his slaves being taken away by the crocodiles, as three had been eaten already. a dog bit the leg of one of my goats so badly that i was obliged to kill it: they are nasty curs here, without courage, and yet they sometimes bite people badly. i met some old friends, and mohamad bogharib cooked a supper, and from this time forward never omitted sharing his victuals with me. _ th may, ._--manoel caetano pereira visited casembe in , or seventy-two years ago: his native name was moendo-mondo, or the world's leg--"world-wide traveller!" he came to mandapala, for there the casembe of the time resided, and he had a priest or "kasisé" with him, and many people with guns. pérémbé, the oldest man now in lunda, had children even then: if pérémbé were thirty years of age at that period he would now be years old, and he seems quite that, for when dr. lacerda came he had forty children. he says that pereira fired off all his guns on his arrival, and casembe asking him what he meant by that, he replied, "these guns ask for slaves and ivory," both of which were liberally given. i could not induce pérémbé to tell anything of times previous to his own. moendo-mondo, the world's leg (pereira), told dr. lacerda that the natives called him "the terror!"--a bit of vanity, for they have no such word or abstract term in their language. when major monteiro was here the town of casembe was on the same spot as now, but the mosumba, or enclosure of the chief, was about yards s.e. of the present one. monteiro went nowhere and did nothing, but some of his attendants went over to the luapula, some six miles distant. he complains in his book of having been robbed by the casembe of the time. on asking the present occupant of the office why monteiro's goods were taken from him, he replied, that he was then living at another village and did not know of the affair. mohamad bin saleh was present, and he says that monteiro's statement is false: no goods were forced from him; but it was a year of scarcity, and monteiro had to spend his goods in buying food instead of slaves and ivory, and made up the tale of casembe plundering him to appease his creditors. a number of men were sent with monteiro as an honorary escort. kapika, an old man now living, was the chief or one of the chiefs of this party, and he says that he went to tette, senna, and quillimane with monteiro: this honorary escort seems confirmatory of mohamad's explanation, for had casembe robbed the major none would have been granted or received. it is warmer here than we found it in the way; clouds cover the sky and prevent radiation. the sorghum is now in full ear. people make very neat mats of the leaves of the shuaré palm. i got lunars this time. _ th may, ._--eight or ten men went past us this morning, sent by the chief to catch people whom he intends to send to his paramount chief, matiamvo, as a tribute of slaves. pérémbé gives the following list of the casembes:-- i. kanyimbe, came from lunda, attracted by the fish of mofwé and moero, and conquered pérémbé's forefather, katéré, who planted the first palm-oil palms here from seeds got in lunda. it is probable that the intercourse then set afoot led to kanyimbé's coming and conquest. ii. kinyanta. iii. nguanda milonda. iv. kanyembo. v. lekwisa. vi. kirÉka. vii. kapumba. viii. kinyanta. ix. lekwisa, still alive, but a fugitive at nsama's. x. muonga, the present ruler, who drove lékwisa away. the portuguese came to kiréka, who is said to have been very liberal with presents of ivory, slaves, and cattle. the present man has good sense, and is very fair in his judgments, but stingy towards his own people as well as strangers: nevertheless i have had good reason to be satisfied with his conduct to me. maiyé, not in the list, and , , , are the children of kiréka. muonga is said by the others to be a slave "born out of the house," that is, his mother was not of the royal line; she is an ugly old woman, and greedy. i got rid of her begging by giving her the beads she sought, and requesting her to cook some food for me; she begged no more, afraid that i would press my claim for provisions! _ th may, ._--i sent to casembe for a guide to luapula, he replied that he had not seen me nor given me any food; i must come to-morrow: but next day he was occupied in killing a man for witchcraft and could not receive us, but said that he would on the th. he sent fish (perch) from mofwé, and a large basket of dried cassava. i have taken lunars several times, measuring both sides of the moon about times, but a silly map-maker may alter the whole for the most idiotic of reasons. _ th may, ._--mohamad bogharib has been here some seven months, and bought three tusks only; the hunting, by casembe's people, of elephants in the mofwé has been unsuccessful. we did not get an audience from casembe; the fault lay with kapika--monteiro's escort--being afraid to annoy casembe by putting him in mind of it, but on the th casembe sent for me, and told me that as the people had all fled from chikumbi's, he would therefore send guides to take us to kabaia, where there was still a population; he wished me to wait a few days till he had looked out good men as guides, and ground some flour for us to use in the journey. he understood that i wished to go to bangweolo; and it was all right to do what my own chief had sent me for, and then come back to him. it was only water--the same as luapula, mofwé, and moero; nothing to be seen. his people must not molest me again, but let me go where i liked. this made me thank him who has the hearts of all in his hand. casembe also admitted that he had injured "mpamari," but he would send him some slaves and ivory in reparation: he is better than his people, who are excessively litigious, and fond of milandos or causes--suits. he asked if i had not the leopard's skin he gave me to sit on, as it was bad to sit on the ground; i told him it had so many holes in it people laughed at it and made me ashamed, but he did not take the hint to give me another. he always talks good sense when he has not swilled beer or pombe: all the arabs are loud in his praises, but they have a bad opinion of the queen moäri or ngombé or kifuta. the garaganza people at katanga killed a near relative of casembe and herself, and when the event happened, fungafunga, one of the garaganza or banyamwezi being near the spot, fled and came to the mofwé: he continued his flight as soon as it was dark without saying anything to anyone, until he got north to kabiuré. the queen and casembe suspected mpamari of complicity with the banyamwezi, and believed that fungafunga had communicated the news to him before fleeing further. a tumult was made; mpamari's eldest son was killed; and he was plundered of all his copper, ivory, and slaves: the queen loudly demanded his execution, but casembe restrained his people as well as he was able and it is for this injury that he now professes to be sorry. the queen only acted according to the principles of her people. "mpamari killed my son, kill his son--himself." it is difficult to get at the truth, for mohamad or mpamari never tells the whole truth. he went to fight nsama with muonga, and was wounded in the foot and routed, and is now glad to get out of lunda back to ujiji. _( th may.)_ complete twenty sets of lunars. _ th may, ._--mohamad bogharib told casembe that he could buy nothing, and therefore was going away, casembe replied that he had no ivory and he might go: this was sensible; he sent far and near to find some, but failed, and now confesses a truth which most chiefs hide from unwillingness to appear poor before foreigners. _ th and th may, ._--it is hot here though winter; but cold by night. casembe has sent for fish for us. news came that one of syde bin habib's men had come to chikumbi on his way to zanzibar. _ th may, ._--a thunder-shower from the east laid the dust and cooled the ground: the last shower of this season, as a similar slight shower was the finish up of the last on the th of may. _( st may._) this cannot be called a rainy month: april is the last month of the wet season, and november the first. _ nd may, ._--casembe is so slow with his fish, meal, and guides, and his people so afraid to hurry him, that i think of going off as soon as mohamad bogharib moves; he is going to chikumbi's to buy copper, and thence he will proceed to uvira to exchange that for ivory; but this is at present kept as a secret from his slaves. the way seems thus to be opening for me to go to the large lake west of uvira. i told casembe that we were going; he said to me that if in coming back i had found no travelling party, i must not risk going by nsama's road with so few people, but must go to his brother moenempanda, and he would send men to guide me to him, and thence he would send me safely by his path along lake moero: this was all very good. _ rd may, ._--the arabs made a sort of sacrifice of a goat which was cooked all at once; they sent a good dish of it to me. they read the koran very industriously, and prayed for success or luck in leaving, and seem sincerely religious, according to the light that is in them. the use of incense and sacrifices brings back the old jewish times to mind. a number of people went off to the kanengwa, a rivulet an hour south of this, to build huts; there they are to take leave of casembe, for the main body goes off to-morrow, after we have seen the new moon. they are very particular in selecting lucky days, and anything unpleasant that may have happened in one month is supposed to be avoided by choosing a different day for beginning an enterprise in the next. mohamad left uvira on the third day of a new moon, and several fires happened in his camp; he now considers a third day inauspicious. casembe's dura or sorghum is ripe to-day: he has eaten mapemba or dura, and all may thereafter do the same: this is just about the time when it ripens and is reaped at kolobeng, thus the difference in the seasons is not great. _ th may, ._--detained four days yet. casembe's chief men refuse to escort mohamad bogharib; they know him to be in debt, and fear that he may be angry, but no dunning was intended. casembe was making every effort to get ivory to liquidate it, and at last got a couple of tusks, which he joyfully gave to mohamad: he has risen much in the estimation of us all. _ th may, ._--casembe's people killed five buffaloes by chasing them into the mud and water of mofwé, so he is seeing to the division of the meat, and will take leave to-morrow. _ th may, ._--we went to casembe; he was as gracious as usual. a case of crim. con. was brought forward against an arab's slave, and an attempt was made to arrange the matter privately by offering three cloths, beads, and another slave, but the complainant refused everything. casembe dismissed the case by saying to the complainant, "you send your women to entrap the strangers in order to get a fine, but you will get nothing:" this was highly applauded by the arabs, and the owner of the slave heaped dust on his head, as many had done before for favours received. casembe, still anxious to get ivory for mohamad, proposed another delay of four days to send for it; but all are tired, and it is evident that it is not want of will that prevents ivory being produced. his men returned without any, and he frankly confessed inability: he is evidently very poor. _ th may, ._--we went to the kanengwa rivulet at the south end of mofwé, which forms a little lagoon there fifty yards broad and thigh deep; but this is not the important feeder of the lagoon, which is from two to three miles broad, and nearly four long: that has many large flat sedgy islands in it, and its water is supplied by the mbérézé from south-east. _ st may, ._--old kapika sold his young and good-looking wife for unfaithfulness, as he alleged. the sight of a lady in the chain-gang shocked the ladies of lunda, who ran to her, and having ascertained from her own mouth what was sufficiently apparent, that she was a slave now, clapped their hands on their mouths in the way that they express wonder, surprise, and horror: the hand is placed so that the fingers are on one cheek and the thumb on the other. the case of the chieftainess excited great sympathy among the people; some brought her food, kapika's daughters brought her pombe and bananas; one man offered to redeem her with two, another with three slaves, but casembe, who is very strict in punishing infidelity, said, "no, though ten slaves be offered she must go." he is probably afraid of his own beautiful queen should the law be relaxed. old kapika came and said to her, "you refused me, and i now refuse you." a young wife of old pérémbé was also sold as a punishment, but redeemed. there is a very large proportion of very old and very tall men in this district. the slave-trader is a means of punishing the wives which these old fogies ought never to have had. casembe sent me about a hundredweight of the small fish nsipo, which seems to be the whitebait of our country; it is a little bitter when cooked alone, but with ground-nuts is a tolerable relish: we can buy flour with these at chikumbi's. footnotes: [ ] chikichi nuts have been an article of trade and export for some time from zanzibar. the oil-palm grows wild in pemba. [ ] a chief named moené ungu, who admires the arabs, sent his children to zanzibar to be instructed to read and write. [ ] this bird is often brought to zanzibar by the ivory caravans. [ ] the doctor's birthday. chapter xii. prepares to examine lake bemba. starts from casembe's th june, . dead leopard. moenampanda's reception. the river luongo. weird death-song of slaves. the forest grave. lake bembo changed to lake bangweolo. chikumbi's. the imbozhwa people. kombokombo's stockade. mazitu difficulties. discovers lake bangweolo on th july, . the lake chief mapuni. description of the lake. prepares to navigate it. embarks for lifungé island. immense size of lake. reaches mpabala island. strange dream. fears of canoe men. return to shore. march back. sends letters. meets banyamweze. reviews recent explorations at length. disturbed state of country. _ st june, ._--mohamad proposes to go to katanga to buy copper, and invites me to go too. i wish to see the lufra kiver, but i must see bemba or bangweolo. grant guidance from above! _ nd june, ._--in passing a field of cassava i picked the pods of a plant called malumbi, which climbs up the cassava bushes; at the root it has a number of tubers with eyes, exactly like the potato. one plant had sixteen of these tubers, each about inches long and - / inch in diameter: another tuber was inches long and in diameter, it would be difficult for anyone to distinguish them from english potatoes. when boiled they are a little waxy, and, compared with our potato, hard. there are colours inside, the outer part reddish, the inner whiter. at first none of the party knew them, but afterwards they were recognised as cultivated at zanzibar by the name "men," and very good when mashed with fish: if in zanzibar, they are probably known in other tropical islands, _ th june, ._--from what i see of slaving, even in its best phases, i would not be a slave-dealer for the world. _ th june, ._--the queen moäri passed us this morning, going to build a hut at her plantation; she has a pleasant european countenance, clean light-brown skin, and a merry laugh, and would be admired anywhere. i stood among the cassava to see her pass; she twirled her umbrella as she came near, borne by twelve men, and seemed to take up the laugh which made her and her maids bolt at my reception, showing that she laughs not with her mouth only, but with her eyes and cheeks: she said, "yambo" (how are you)? to which i replied, "tambo sana" (very well). one of her attendants said, "give her something of what you have at hand, or in the pockets." i said, "i have nothing here," and asked her if she would come back near my hut. she replied that she would, and i duly sent for two strings of red beads, which i presented. being lower than she, i could see that she had a hole through the cartilage, near the point of her slightly aquiline nose; and a space was filed between the two front teeth, so as to leave a triangular hole. [illustration: filed teeth of queen moäri.] after delay had grown vexatious, we march three hours on the th, and reach the katofia river, covered with aquatic trees and running into the mbérézé: five yards wide and knee deep. _ th june, ._--detained again, for business is not finished with the people of casembe. the people cannot esteem the slave-trader, who is used as a means of punishing those who have family differences, as those of a wife with her husband, or a servant with his master. the slaves are said to be generally criminals, and are sold in revenge or as punishment. kapika's wife had an ornament of the end of a shell called the cone; it was borrowed and she came away with it in her hair: the owner, without making any effort to recover it, seized one of kapika's daughters as a pledge that kapika would exert himself to get it back! [at last the tedious delay came to an end and we must now follow the doctor on his way south to discover lake bemba.] _ th june, ._--crossed the mbérézé, ten yards broad and thigh deep, ascending a range of low hills of hardened sandstone, covered, as the country generally is, with forest. our course s.e. and s.s.e. then descended into a densely-wooded valley, having a rivulet four yards wide and knee deep. buffaloes and elephants very numerous. _ th june, ._--we crossed the mbérézé again twice; then a very deep narrow rivulet, and stopped at another in a mass of trees, where we spend the night, and killing an ox remained next day to eat it. when at kanengwa a small party of men came past, shouting as if they had done something of importance: on going to them, i found that two of them carried a lion slung to a pole. it was a small maneless variety, called "the lion of _nyassi_," or long grass. it had killed a man and they killed it. they had its mouth carefully strapped, and the paws tied across its chest, and were taking it to casembe. _nyassi_ means long grass, such as towers overhead, and is as thick in the stalk as a goose-quill; and is erroneously applied to nyassa. other lions--thambwé, karamo, simba, are said to stand feet high, and some higher: this seemed about feet high, but it was too dark to measure it. _ th june, ._--the arabs distinguish the suaheli, or arabs of mixed african blood, by the absence of beard and whiskers: these are usually small and stunted in the suaheli. birds, as the drongo shrike, and a bird very like the grey linnet, with a thick reddish bill, assemble in very large flocks now that it is winter, and continue thus till november, or period of the rains. a very minute bee goes into the common small holes in wormeaten wood to make a comb and lay its eggs, with a supply of honey. there are seven or eight honey-bees of small size in this country. a sphex may be seen to make holes in the ground, placing stupified insects in them with her eggs; another species watches when she goes off to get more insects, and every now and then goes in too to lay her eggs, i suppose without any labour: there does not appear to be any enmity between them. we remained a day to buy food for the party, and eat our ox. _ th june, ._--march over well-wooded highlands with dolomite rocks cropping out and trees all covered with lichens, the watershed then changed to the south. _ th june, ._--yery cold in mornings now ( °). found moenempanda, casembe's brother, on the luluputa, a stream twenty yards wide and flowing west. the moenempanda visited by the portuguese was grandfather to this one, and not at the same spot; it is useless to put down the names of chiefs as indicating geographical positions, for the name is often continued, but at a spot far distant from the dwelling of the original possessor. a slave tried to break out of his slave-stick, and actually broke half an inch of tough iron with his fingers; the end stuck in the wood, or he would have freed himself. the chief gave me a public reception, which was like that of casembe, but better managed. he is young, and very handsome but for a defect in his eyes, which makes him keep them half shut or squinting. he walked off in the jaunty way all chiefs do in this country, to show the weight of rings and beads on the legs, and many imitate this walk who have none, exactly as our fathers imitated the big cravat of george iv., who thereby hid defects in his neck: thousands carried their cravats over the chin who had no defects to hide. moenempanda carried his back stiffly, and no wonder, he had about ten yards of a train carried behind it. about people were present. they kept rank, but not step; were well armed; marimbas and square drums formed the bands, and one musician added his voice: "i have been to syde" (the sultan); "i have been to meereput" (king of portugal); "i have been to the sea." at a private reception, where he was divested of his train, and had only one umbrella instead of three, i gave him a cloth. the arabs thought highly of him; but his graciousness had been expended on them in getting into debt; he now showed no inclination to get out of it, but offered about a twentieth part of the value of the goods in liquidation. he sent me two pots of beer, which i care not to drink except when very thirsty on a march, and promised a man to guide me to chikumbi, and then refused. casembe rose in the esteem of all as moenempanda sank, and his people were made to understand how shabbily he had behaved. the lulaputa is said to flow into the luéna, and that into the luongo: there must be two luénas. _ nd june, ._--march across a grassy plain southerly to the luongo, a deep river embowered in a dense forest of trees, all covered with lichens--some flat, others long and thready, like old men's beards, and waving in the wind, just as they do on the mangrove-swamp trees on the coast. the luongo here is fifty yards broad and three fathoms deep; near its junction with the luapula it is yards; it rises here to eight fathoms' depth. a bridge of forty yards led us over to an island, and a branch of the river was ten yards beyond: the bridge had been broken, some thought on purpose, but it was soon mended with trees eighteen to twenty yards long. we went a little way beyond, and then halted for a day at a rivulet flowing into the luongo, yards off. _ rd june, ._--we waited for copper here, which was at first refused as payment of debt. i saw now that the luongo had steep clay banks fifteen feet down, and many meadows, which must be swimming during the rains. the luéna is said to rise east of this. [in a private letter livingstone shows that he had seldom been more affected by the sufferings of slaves than at this time, and it would perhaps be difficult to imagine any scene more calculated to excite misery and distress of mind. the following incident deals with the firm belief in a future state, which enters so largely into the minds of all africans, and which for very lack of guidance assumes all the distorted growths of superstition. he must be of a thankless spirit who does not long to substitute the great vision of future peace afforded by christianity, in lieu of the ghastly satisfaction which cheered these men, when he sees by the light of this story the capacity that exists for realising a life beyond the grave.] _ th june, ._--six men slaves were singing as if they did not feel the weight and degradation of the slave-sticks. i asked the cause of their mirth, and was told that they rejoiced at the idea "of coming back after death and haunting and killing those who had sold them." some of the words i had to inquire about; for instance, the meaning of the words "to haunt and kill by spirit power;" then it was, "oh, you sent me off to manga (sea-coast), but the yoke is off when i die, and back i shall come to haunt and to kill you." then all joined in the chorus, which was the name of each vendor. it told not of fun, but of the bitterness and tears of such as were oppressed, and on the side of the oppressors there was a power: there be higher than they! pérémbé was one of the culprits thus menaced. the slave-owner asked kapika's wife if she would return to kill kapika. the others answered to the names of the different men with laughter. her heart was evidently sore: for a lady to come so low down is to her grievous. she has lost her jaunty air, and is, with her head shaved, ugly; but she never forgets to address her captors with dignity, and they seem to fear her. _ th june, ._--we went over flat forest with patches of brown haematite cropping out; this is the usual iron ore, but i saw in a village pieces of specular iron-ore which had been brought for smelting. the luongo flowed away somewhat to our right or west, and the villagers had selected their site where only well-water could be found: we went ten minutes towards the luongo and got abundance. [illustration: a forest grave.] the gardens had high hedges round to keep off wild beasts. we came to a grave in the forest; it was a little rounded mound as if the occupant sat in it in the usual native way: it was strewed over with flour, and a number of the large blue beads put on it: a little path showed that it had visitors. this is the sort of grave i should prefer: to lie in the still, still forest, and no hand ever disturb my bones. the graves at home always seemed to me to be miserable, especially those in the cold damp clay, and without elbow room; but i have nothing to do but wait till he who is over all decides where i have to lay me down and die. poor mary lies on shupanga brae, "and beeks fornent the sun."[ ] came to the chando river, which is the boundary between casembe and chikumbi; but casembe is over all. _ th june, ._--we crossed a flooded marsh with the water very cold, and then the chando itself twelve feet broad and knee deep, then on to another strong brook nsénga. _ th june, ._--after service we went on up hills to a stockade of banyamwezi, on the kalomina river, and here we built our sheds; the spot is called kizinga, and is on the top of a sandstone range covered as usual with forest. the banyamwezi beat off the mazitu with their guns, while all the country people fled. the banyamwezi are decidedly uglier than the balonda and baitawa: they eat no fish, though they come from the east side of tanganyika, where fish are abundant and cheap; but though uglier, they have more of the sense of honour with traders than the aborigines. _ th june, ._--observed the "smokes" to-day, the first of the season:[ ] they obscured the whole country. _ st july, ._--i went over to chikumbi, the paramount chief of this district, and gave him a cloth, begging a man to guide me to bangweolo. he said that i was welcome to his country; all were so: i had better wait two days till he had selected a _good_ man as a guide, and he would send some food for me to eat in the journey--he would not say ten days, but only two, and his man would take me to the smaller part of the lake, and leave others to forward me to the greater or bangweolo. the smaller part is named bemba, but that name is confusing, because bemba is the name of the country in which a portion of the lake lies. when asking for lake bemba, kasongo's son said to me, "bemba is not a lake, but a country:" it is therefore better to use the name bangweolo, which is applied to the great mass of the water, though i fear that our english folks will bogle at it, or call it bungyhollow! some arabs say bambeolo as easier of pronunciation, but bangweolo is the correct word. chikumbi's stockade is - / hour s.e. of our camp at kizinga. _ nd july, ._--writing to the consul at zanzibar to send supplies of cloth to ujiji-- pieces, kiniki; merikano inches broad, or samsam. fine red beads--talaka, frasilas. i ask for soap, coffee, sugar, candles, sardines, french preserved meats, a cheese in tin, nautical almanac for and , shoes (two or four pairs), ruled paper, pencils, sealing-wax, ink, powder, flannel-serge, frasila beads, of talaka; added f. pale red, w. white. _ rd july, ._--the summary of the sources which i have resolved to report as flowing into the central line of drainage formed by the chambezé, luapula, and lualaba are thirteen in all, and each is larger than the isis at oxford, or avon at hamilton. five flow into the eastern line of drainage going through tanganyika, and five more into the western line of drainage or lufira, twenty-three or more in all. the lualaba and the lufira unite in the lake of the chief kinkonza. _ th july, ._--i borrowed some paper from mohamad bogharib to write home by some arabs going to the coast. i will announce my discovery to lord clarendon; but i reserve the parts of the lualaba and tanganyika for future confirmation. i have no doubts on the subject, for i receive the reports of natives of intelligence at first hand, and they have no motive for deceiving me. the best maps are formed from the same sort of reports at third or fourth hand. cold n.e. winds prevail at present. _ th july, ._--divided our salt that each may buy provisions for himself: it is here of more value than beads. chikumbi sent fine flour, a load for two stout men carried in a large basket slung to a pole, and a fine fat sheep, carried too because it was too fat to walk the distance from his stockade. _ th, th, and th july, ._--after delaying several days to send our guide, chikumbi said that he feared the country people would say that the ingleza brought the mazitu to them, and so blame will be given to him. i set this down as "words of pombe," beery babble; but after returning from bangweolo, i saw that he must have been preparing to attack a stockade of banyamwezi in our path, and had he given us a guide, that man would have been in danger in coming back: he therefore preferred the safety of his man to keeping his promise to me. i got a banyamwezi guide, and left on the _ th july, _, going over gently rising sandstone hills, covered with forest and seeing many deserted villages, the effects of the mazitu foray: we saw also the mazitu sleeping-places and paths. they neglect the common paths of the country as going from one village to another, and take straight courses in the direction they wish to go, treading down the grass so as to make a well-marked route, the banyamwezi expelled them, cutting off so many of them with their guns and arrows that the marauders retired. the effect of this success on the minds of the imboshwa, or imbozhwas, as chikumbi's people are called, was not gratitude, but envy at the new power sprung up among them of those who came originally as traders in copper. kombokombo's stockade, the village to which we went this day, was the first object of assault, and when we returned, he told us that chikumbi had assaulted him on three sides, but was repulsed. the banyamwezi were, moreover, much too sharp as traders for the imboshwa, cheating them unmercifully, and lying like greeks. kombokombo's stockade was on the chibérasé river, which flows briskly, eight yards broad and deep, through a mile of sponge. we came in the midst of a general jollification, and were most bountifully supplied with pombe and food. the banyamwezi acknowledge allegiance to the sultan of zanzibar, and all connected with him are respected. kombokombo pressed food and drink on me, and when i told him that i had nothing to return for it, he said that he expected nothing: he was a child of the sultan, and ought to furnish all i needed. _ th july, ._--on leaving the chibérasé we passed up over a long line of hills with many villages and gardens, but mostly deserted during the mazitu raid. the people fled into the forests on the hills, and were an easy prey to the marauders, who seem to have been unmerciful. when we descended into the valley beyond we came to a strong stockade, which had successfully resisted the onset of the mazitu; we then entered on flat forest, with here and there sponges containing plenty of water; plains succeeded the hills, and continued all the way to bangweolo. we made a fence in the forest; and next day _( th july)_ reached the rofuba, yards broad and - / feet deep, full of aquatic plants, and flowing south-west into the luongo: it had about a mile and a half of sponge on each side of it. we encamped a little south of the river. _ th july, ._--on resting at a deserted spot, the men of a village in the vicinity came to us excited and apparently drunk, and began to work themselves up still more by running about, poising their spears at us, taking aim with their bows and arrows, and making as if about to strike with their axes: they thought that we were marauders, and some plants of ground-nuts strewn about gave colour to the idea. there is usually one good soul in such rabbles. in this case a man came to me, and, addressing his fellows, said, "this is only your pombe. white man, do not stand among them, but go away," and then he placed himself between me and a portion of the assailants, about thirty of whom were making their warlike antics. while walking quietly away with my good friend they ran in front and behind bushes and trees, took aim with bow and arrow, but none shot: the younger men ran away with our three goats. when we had gone a quarter of a mile my friend told me to wait and he would bring the goats, which he did: i could not feel the inebriates to be enemies; but in that state they are the worst one can encounter, for they have no fear as they have when sober. one snatched away a fowl from our guide, that too was restored by our friend. i did not load my gun; for any accidental discharge would have inflamed them to rashness. we got away without shedding blood, and were thankful. the mazitu raid has produced lawlessness in the country: every one was taken as an enemy. _ th july, ._--we remained a day at the stockade of moiéggéa. a banyamwezi or garaganza man is settled here in kabaia's district, and on the strong rivulet called mato. we felt secure only among the strangers, and they were friendly with us. _ th july, ._--at the village on the south bank of the mpanda we were taken by the headman as mazitu. he was evidently intoxicated, and began to shut his gates with frantic gesticulations. i offered to go away; but others of his people, equally intoxicated, insisted on my remaining. i sat down a little, but seeing that the chief was still alarmed, i said to his people, "the chief objects and i can't stay:" they saw the reasonableness of this, but i could not get my cowardly attendants to come on, though one said to me, "come, i shall show you the way: we must speak nice to them." this the wise boys think the perfection of virtue, speaking nice means adopting a childish treble tone of voice and words exactly similar to those of the little scotch girl who, passing through a meadow, was approached by a cow, probably from curiosity. to appease this enemy, she said, "oh, coo, coo, if you no hurt me, i no hurt you." i told them to come on and leave them quietly, but they remained babbling with them. the guide said that there was no water in front: this i have been told too often ever to believe, so i went on through the forest, and in an hour and a half came to a sponge where, being joined by my attendants, we passed the night. _ th july, ._--crossing this sponge, and passing through flat forest, we came to another named méshwé, when there, as a contrast, the young men volunteered to carry me across; but i had got off my shoes, and was in the water, and they came along with me, showing the shallower parts. we finished the day's march by crossing the molongosi spongy ooze, with paces of deep water, flowing n.e. the water in these oozes or sponges felt very cold, though only ° in the mornings, and ° at midday. the molongosi people invited us into the village; but the forest, unless when infested with leopards and lions, is always preferable, for one is free from vermin, and free from curiosity gazers, who in the village think they have a right to stare, but in the forest feel that they are not on an equality with strangers. [it was on the th of july, , we see that dr. livingstone discovered one of the largest of the central african lakes. it is extraordinary to notice the total absence of all pride and enthusiasm, as--almost parenthetically--he records the fact.] _ th and th july, ._--reached the chief village of mapuni, near the north bank of bangweolo. on the th i walked a little way out and saw the shores of the lake for the first time, thankful that i had come safely hither. i told the chief that my goods were all expended, and gave him a fathom of calico as all i could spare: i told him that as soon as i had seen and measured the lake i would return north; he replied, that seeing our goods were done he could say nothing, he would give me guides, and what else he should do was known to himself. he gave a public reception at once. i asked if he had ever seen anyone like me, and he said, "never." a babisa traveller asked me why i had come so far; i said i wished to make the country and people better known to the rest of the world, that we were all children of one father, and i was anxious that we should know each other better, and that friendly visits should be made in safety. i told him what the queen had done to encourage the growth of cotton on the zambezi, and how we had been thwarted by slave-traders and their abettors: they were pleased with this. when asked i showed them my note-book, watch, compass, burning-glass, and was loudly drummed home. i showed them the bible, and told them a little of its contents. i shall require a few days more at bangweolo than i at first intended. the moon being in its last stage of waning i cannot observe till it is of some size. _ th july, ._--went down to masantu's village, which is on the shore of the lake, and by a spring called chipoka, which comes out of a mass of disintegrated granite. it is seldom that we see a spring welling out beneath a rock: they are covered by oozing sponges, if indeed they exist. here we had as a spectator a man walking on stilts tied to his ankles and knees. there are a great many babisa among the people. the women have their hair ornamented with strings of cowries, and well oiled with the oil and fat from the seeds of the mosikisi trees. i sent the chief a fathom of calico, and got an audience at once. masantu is an oldish man; had never prayed to the great father of all, though he said the footsteps of "mungu," or mulungu, could be seen on a part of lifungé island: a large footstep may also be seen on the rock at the chambezé, about fifteen inches long. he informed us that the lake is much the largest at the part called bangweolo. the country around the lake is all flat, and very much denuded of trees, except the motsikiri or mosikisi, which has fine dark, dense foliage, and is spared for its shade and the fatty oil yielded by its seeds: we saw the people boiling large pots full of the dark brown fat, which they use to lubricate their hair. the islands, four in number, are all flat, but well peopled. the men have many canoes, and are all expert fishermen; they are called mboghwa, but are marked on the forehead and chin as babisa, and file the teeth to points. they have many children, as fishermen usually have. _ st july, ._--canoe-men are usually extortionate, because one cannot do without them. mapuni claims authority over them, and sent to demand another fathom that he may give orders to them to go with us: i gave a hoe and a string of beads instead, but he insisted on the cloth, and kept the hoe too, as i could not afford the time to haggle. chipoka spring water at a.m. ° } lake water at same time ° } air °. chipoka spring at p.m. ° ' } lake water at same time ° } air ° '; wet bulb °. no hot fountains or earthquakes are known in this region. the bottom of the lake consists of fine white sand, and a broad belt of strong rushes, say yards wide, shows shallow water. in the afternoons quite a crowd of canoes anchor at its outer edge to angle; the hooks are like ours, but without barbs. the fish are perch chiefly, but others similar to those that appear in the other lakes are found, and two which attain the large size of feet by - / in. thickness: one is called sampa. _ nd july, ._--a very high wind came with the new moon, and prevented our going, and also the fishermen from following their calling. mapuni thought that we meant to make, an escape from him to the babisa on the south, because we were taking our goats, i therefore left them and two attendants at masantu's village to assure him. _ rd july, ._--wind still too strong to go. took lunars. _ th july, ._--wind still strong. _ th july, ._--strong s.e. wind still blowing, but having paid the canoe-men amply for four days with beads, and given masantu a hoe and beads too, we embarked at . a.m. in a fine canoe, feet long, feet deep, and feet broad. the waves were high, but the canoe was very dry and five stout men propelled her quickly towards an opening in lifungé island, on our s.e. here we stopped to wood, and i went away to look at the island, which had the marks of hippopotami and a species of jackal on it: it had hard wiry grass, some flowers, and a species of gapparidaceous tree. the trees showed well the direction of the prevailing wind to be south-east, for the branches on that side were stunted or killed, while those on the north-west ran out straight, and made the trees appear, as sailors say, lopsided: the trunks too were bent that way. the canoe-men now said that they would start, then that they would sleep here, because we could not reach the island mpabala before dark, and would not get a hut. i said that it would be sleeping out of doors only in either case, so they went. we could see the island called kisi on our east, apparently a double island, about miles off, and the tops of the trees barely visible on mpabala on our south-east. it was all sea horizon on our south and north, between lifungé and mpabala, and between lifungé and kisi. we could not go to kisi, because, as the canoe-men told us, they had stolen their canoe thence. though we decided to go, we remained awhile to let the sea go down. a hammerhead's nest on one of the trees was fully four feet high. coarse rushes show the shoals near the islands. only one shell was seen on the shores. the canoe ships much less water in this surf than our boat did in that of nyassa. the water is of a deep sea-green colour, probably from the reflection of the fine white sand of the bottom; we saw no part having the deep dark blue of nyassa, and conjecture that the depth is not great; but i had to leave our line when amoda absconded. on kisi we observed a dark square mass, which at first i took to be a low hill: it turned out to be a mass of trees (probably the place of sepulture, for the graveyards are always untouched), and shows what a dense forest this land would become were it not for the influence of men. we reached mpabala after dark. it was bitterly cold, from the amount of moisture in the air. i asked a man who came to see what the arrival was, for a hut; he said, "do strangers require huts, or ask for them at night?" he then led us to the public place of meeting, called nsaka, which is a large shed, with planks around and open spaces between, instead of walls; here we cooked a little porridge, and ate it, then i lay down on one side, with the canoe-men and my attendants at the fire in the middle, and was soon asleep, and dreamed that i had apartments in mivart's hotel. this made me feel much amused next day, for i never dream unless i am ill, or going to be ill; and of all places in the world, i never thought of mivart's hotel in my waking moments; a freak of the fancy surely, for i was not at all discontented with my fare, or apartment, i was only afraid of getting a stock of vermin from my associates. _ th july, ._--i have to stand the stare of a crowd of people at every new place for hours: all usually talk as quickly as their glib tongues can; these certainly do not belong to the tribes who are supposed to eke out their language by signs! a few indulge their curiosity in sight-seeing, but go on steadily weaving nets, or by beating bark-cloth, or in spinning cotton, others smoke their big tobacco pipes, or nurse a baby, or enjoy the heat of the bright morning sun. i walked across the north end of the island, and found it to be about one mile broad, i also took bearings of chirubi island from the eastern point of mpabala, and found from the south-east point of chirubi that there are ° of sea horizon from it to the point of departure of the luapula. chirubi is the largest of the islands, and contains a large population, possessing many sheep and goats. at the highest part of mpabala we could see the tops of the trees on kasango, a small uninhabited islet, about thirty miles distant: the tops of the trees were evidently lifted up by the mirage, for near the shore and at other parts they were invisible, even with a good glass. this uninhabited islet would have been our second stage had we been allowed to cross the lake, as it is of the people themselves; it is as far beyond it to the mainland, called manda, as from masantu's to mpabala. _ th july, ._--took lunars and stars for latitude. the canoe-men now got into a flurry, because they were told here that the kisi men had got an inkling that their canoe was here, and were coming to take it; they said to me that they would come back for me, but i could not trust thieves to be so honest. i thought of seizing their paddles, and appealing to the headmen of the island; but aware from past experience how easy it is for acknowledged thieves like them to get up a tale to secure the cheap sympathy of the soft-headed, or tender-hearted, i resolved to bear with meekness, though groaning inwardly, the loss of two of the four days for which i had paid them. i had only my coverlet to hire another canoe, and it was now very cold; the few beads left would all be required to buy food in the way back, i might have got food by shooting buffaloes, but that on foot and through grass, with stalks as thick as a goose quill, is dreadfully hard work; i had thus to return to masantu's, and trust to the distances as deduced from the time taken by the natives in their canoes for the size of the lake. we had come to mpabala at the rate of six knots an hour, and returned in the same time with six stout paddlers. the latitude was ' in a south-east course, which may give ' as the actual distance. to the sleeping-place, the islet kasango, there was at least ' more, and from thence to the mainland "manda," other '. this + + = ' as the breadth from masantu village, looking south-east. it lies in ° ' s. if we add on the half distance to this we have ° ' as the latitude of manda. the mainland to the south of mpabala is called kabendé. the land's end running south of masantu's village is the entrance to the luapula: the clearest eye cannot see across it there. i saw clouds as if of grass burning, but they were probably "kungu," an edible insect, whose masses have exactly the same appearance as they float above and on the water. from the time the canoes take to go to kabendé i believe the southern shore to be a little into ° of south latitude: the length, as inferred from canoes taking ten days to go from mpabala to the chambezé, i take to be miles, probably more. no one gave a shorter time than that. the luapula is an arm of the lake for some twenty miles, and beyond that is never narrower than from to yards, generally much broader, and may be compared with the thames at london bridge: i think that i am considerably within the mark in setting down bangweolo as miles long by broad. when told that it contained four large islands, i imagined that these would considerably diminish the watery acreage of the whole, as is said to be the case with five islands in ukerewé; but even the largest island, chirubi, does not in the least dwarf the enormous mass of the water of bangweolo. a range of mountains, named lokinga, extends from the south-east to the south-west: some small burns come down from them, but no river; this range joins the koné, or mokoné range, west of katanga, from which on one side rises the lufira, and on the other the liambai, or zambesi. the river of manda, called matanga, is only a departing and re-entering branch of the lake, also the luma and loéla rivers--some thirty yards broad--have each to be examined as springs on the south of the lake. _july th, ._--not a single case of derbyshire neck, or of elephantiasis, was observed anywhere near the lake, consequently the report we had of its extreme unhealthiness was erroneous: no muddy banks did we see, but in the way to it we had to cross so many sponges, or oozes, that the word _matopé_, mud, was quite applicable; and i suspect, if we had come earlier, that we should have experienced great difficulty in getting to the lake at all. _ th july, ._--we commenced our march back, being eager to get to chikumbi's in case mohamad should go thence to katanga. we touched at mapuni's, and then went on to the molongosi. clouds now began to cover the sky to the mpanda, which has fifteen yards of flood, though the stream itself is only five yards wide, then on to the mato and moiéggé's stockade, where we heard of chikumbi's attack on kombokombo's. moiéggé had taken the hint, and was finishing a second line of defence around his village: we reached him on the st august, , and stopped for sunday the nd: on the rd back to the rofubu, where i was fortunate enough to hire a canoe to take me over. in examining a tsetse fly very carefully i see that it has a receptacle at the root of the piercer, which is of a black or dark-red colour; and when it is squeezed, a clear fluid is pressed out at its point: the other two parts of the proboscis are its shield, and have no bulb at the base. the bulb was pronounced at the royal society to be only muscle, but it is curious that muscle should be furnished where none is needed, and withheld in the movable parts of the shield where it is decidedly needed. _ th august, ._--reach kombokombo, who is very liberal, and pressed us to stay a day with him as well as with others; we complied, and found that mohamad had gone nowhere. _ th august, ._--we found a party starting from kizinga for the coast, having our letters with them; it will take five months to reach the sea. the disturbed state of the country prevented parties of traders proceeding in various directions, and one that set off on the same day with us was obliged to return. mohamad has resolved to go to manyuema as soon as parties of his men now out return: this is all in my favour; it is in the way i want to go to see the lualaba and lufira to chowambé. the way seems opening out before me, and i am thankful. i resolved to go north by way of casembe, and guides were ready to start, so was i; but rumours of war where we were going induced me to halt to find out the truth: the guides (banyamwezi) were going to divine, by means of a cock, to see if it would be lucky to go with me at present. the rumours of danger became so circumstantial that our fence was needed: a well was dug inside, and the banyamwezi were employed to smelt copper as for the market of manyuema, and balls for war. syde bin omar soon came over the luapula from iramba, and the state of confusion induced the traders to agree to unite their forces and make a safe retreat out of the country. they objected very strongly to my going away down the right bank of the luapula with my small party, though it was in sight, so i resolved to remain till all went. _ th august, ._--the banyamwezi use a hammer shaped like a cone, without a handle. they have both kinds of bellows, one of goatskin the other of wood, with a skin over the mouth of a drum, and a handle tied to the middle of it; with these they smelt pieces of the large bars of copper into a pot, filled nearly full of wood ashes. the fire is surrounded by masses of anthills, and in these there are hollows made to receive the melted metal: the metal is poured while the pot is held with the hands, protected by wet rags. _ th august, ._--bin omar, a suaheli, came from muaboso on chambezé in six days, crossing in that space twenty-two burns or oozes, from knee to waist deep. very high and cold winds prevail at present. it was proposed to punish chikumbi when syde bin omar came, as he is in debt and refuses payment; but i go off to casembe. i learn that there is another hot fountain in the baloba country, called fungwé; this, with kapira and vana, makes three hot fountains in this region. some people were killed in my path to casembe, so this was an additional argument against my going that way. some banyamwezi report a tribe--the bonyolo--that extract the upper front teeth, like batoka; they are near loanda, and lake chipokola is there, probably the same as kinkonza. feeling my way. all the trees are now pushing out fresh young leaves of different colours: winds s.e. clouds of upper stratum n.w. _ th august, ._--kaskas began to-day hot and sultry. this will continue till rains fall. rumours of wars perpetual and near; and one circumstantial account of an attack made by the bausé. that again contradicted. _( st august, .)_ rain began here this evening, quite remarkable and exceptional, as it precedes the rains generally off the watershed by two months at least: it was a thunder shower, and it and another on the evening of the second were quite partial. * * * * * [as we shall see, he takes advantage of his late experience to work out an elaborate treatise on the climate of this region, which is exceedingly important, bearing, as it does, upon the question of the periodical floods on the rivers which drain the enormous cistern-lakes of central africa.] * * * * * the notion of a rainy zone, in which the clouds deposit their treasures in perpetual showers, has received no confirmation from my observations. in - , the rainfall was inches. in - , it amounted to inches: this is nearly the same as falls in the same latitudes on the west coast. in both years the rains ceased entirely in may, and with the exception of two partial thunder showers on the middle of the watershed, no rain fell till the middle and end of october, and then, even in november, it was partial, and limited to small patches of country; but scarcely a day passed between october and may without a good deal of thunder. when the thunder began to roll or rumble, that was taken by the natives as an indication of the near cessation of the rains. the middle of the watershed is the most humid part: one sees the great humidity of its climate at once in the trees, old and young, being thickly covered with lichens; some flat, on the trunks and branches; others long and thready, like the beards of old men waving in the wind. large orchids on the trees in company with the profusion of lichens are seen nowhere else, except in the mangrove swamps of the sea-coast. i cannot account for the great humidity of the watershed as compared with the rest of the country, but by the prevailing winds and the rains being from the south-east, and thus from the indian ocean: with this wind generally on the surface one can observe an upper strong wind from the north-west, that is, from the low humid west coast and atlantic ocean. the double strata of winds can easily be observed when there are two sheets of clouds, or when burning grass over scores of square miles sends up smoke sufficiently high to be caught by the upper or north-west wind. these winds probably meet during the heavy rains: now in august they overlap each other. the probability arises from all continued rains within the tropics coming in the opposite direction from the prevailing wind of the year. partial rains are usually from the south-east. the direction of the prevailing wind of this region is well marked on the islands in lake bangweolo: the trunks are bent away from the south-east, and the branches on that side are stunted or killed; while those on the north-west run out straight and make the trees appear lopsided. the same bend away from the south-east is seen on all exposed situations, as in the trees covering the brow of a hill. at kizinga, which is higher than the lake, the trees are covered with lichens, chiefly on the south-east sides, and on the upper surfaces of branches, running away horizontally to or from the north-west. plants and trees, which elsewhere in africa grow only on the banks of streams and other damp localities, are seen flourishing all over the country: the very rocks are covered with lichens, and their crevices with ferns. but that which demonstrates the humidity of the climate most strikingly is the number of earthen sponges or oozes met with. in going to bangweolo from kizinga, i crossed twenty-nine of these reservoirs in thirty miles of latitude, on a south-east course: this may give about one sponge for every two miles. the word "bog" conveys much of the idea of these earthen sponges; but it is inseparably connected in our minds with peat, and these contain not a particle of peat, they consist of black porous earth, covered with a hard wiry grass, and a few other damp-loving plants. in many places the sponges hold large quantities of the oxide of iron, from the big patches of brown haematite that crop out everywhere, and streams of this oxide, as thick as treacle, are seen moving slowly along in the sponge-like small red glaciers. when one treads on the black earth of the sponge, though little or no water appears on the surface, it is frequently squirted up the limbs, and gives the idea of a sponge. in the paths that cross them, the earth readily becomes soft mud, but sinks rapidly to the bottom again, as if of great specific gravity: the water in them is always circulating and oozing. the places where the sponges are met with are slightly depressed valleys without trees or bushes, in a forest country where the grass being only a foot or fifteen inches high, and thickly planted, often looks like a beautiful glade in a gentleman's park in england. they are from a quarter of a mile to a mile broad, and from two to ten or more miles long. the water of the heavy rains soaks into the level forest lands: one never sees runnels leading it off, unless occasionally a footpath is turned to that use. the water, descending about eight feet, comes to a stratum of yellow sand, beneath which there is another stratum of fine white sand, which at its bottom cakes, so as to hold the water from sinking further. it is exactly the same as we found in the kalahari desert, in digging sucking places for water for our oxen. the water, both here and there, is guided by the fine sand stratum into the nearest valley, and here it oozes forth on all sides through the thick mantle of black porous earth, which forms the sponge. there, in the desert, it appears to damp the surface sands in certain valleys, and the bushmen, by a peculiar process, suck out a supply. when we had dug down to the caked sand there years ago, the people begged us not to dig further, as the water would all run away; and we desisted, because we saw that the fluid poured in from the fine sand all round the well, but none came from the bottom or cake. two stupid englishmen afterwards broke through the cake in spite of the entreaties of the natives, and the well and the whole valley dried up hopelessly. here the water, oozing forth from the surface of the sponge mantle, collects in the centre of the slightly depressed valley which it occupies, and near the head of the depression forms a sluggish stream; but further down, as it meets with more slope, it works out for itself a deeper channel, with perpendicular banks, with, say, a hundred or more yards of sponge on each side, constantly oozing forth fresh supplies to augment its size. when it reaches rocky ground it is a perennial burn, with many aquatic plants growing in its bottom. one peculiarity would strike anyone: the water never becomes discoloured or muddy. i have seen only one stream muddied in flood, the choma, flowing through an alluvial plain in lopéré. another peculiarity is very remarkable; it is, that after the rains have entirely ceased, these burns have their largest flow, and cause inundations. it looks as if towards the end of the rainy season the sponges were lifted up by the water off their beds, and the pores and holes, being enlarged, are all employed to give off fluid. the waters of inundation run away. when the sponges are lifted up by superabundance of water, all the pores therein are opened: as the earthen mantle subsides again, the pores act like natural valves, and are partially closed, and by the weight of earth above them, the water is thus prevented from running away altogether; time also being required to wet all the sand through which the rains soak, the great supply may only find its way to the sponge a month or so after the great rains have fallen. i travelled in lunda, when the sponges were all supersaturated. the grassy sward was so lifted up that it was separated into patches or tufts, and if the foot missed the row of tufts of this wiry grass which formed the native path, down one plumped up to the thigh in slush. at that time we could cross the sponge only by the native paths, and the central burn only where they had placed bridges: elsewhere they were impassable, as they poured off the waters of inundation: our oxen were generally bogged--all four legs went down up to the body at once. when they saw the clear sandy bottom of the central burn they readily went in, but usually plunged right over head, leaving their tail up in the air to show the nervous shock they had sustained. these sponges are a serious matter in travelling. i crossed the twenty-nine already mentioned at the end of the fourth month of the dry season, and the central burns seemed then to have suffered no diminution: they were then from calf to waist deep, and required from fifteen to forty minutes in crossing; they had many deep holes in the paths, and when one plumps therein every muscle in the frame receives a painful jerk. when past the stream, and apparently on partially dry ground, one may jog in a foot or more, and receive a squirt of black mud up the thighs: it is only when you reach the trees and are off the sour land that you feel secure from mud and leeches. as one has to strip the lower part of the person in order to ford them, i found that often four were as many as we could cross in a day. looking up these sponges a bird's-eye view would closely resemble the lichen-like vegetation of frost on window panes; or that vegetation in canada-balsam which mad philosophical instrument makers _will_ put between the lenses of the object-glasses of our telescopes. the flat, or nearly flat, tops of the subtending and transverse ridges of this central country give rise to a great many: i crossed twenty-nine, a few of the feeders of bangweolo, in thirty miles of latitude in one direction. burns are literally innumerable: rising on the ridges, or as i formerly termed them mounds, they are undoubtedly the primary or ultimate sources of the zambezi, congo, and nile: by their union are formed streams of from thirty to eighty or yards broad, and always deep enough to require either canoes or bridges. these i propose to call the secondary sources, and as in the case of the nile they are drawn off by three lines of drainage, they become the head waters (the _caput_ nili) of the river of egypt. thanks to that all-embracing providence, which has watched over and enabled me to discover what i have done. there is still much to do, and if health and protection be granted i shall make a complete thing of it. [then he adds in a note a little further on:--] but few of the sponges on the watershed ever dry; elsewhere many do; the cracks in their surface are from to inches deep, with lips from to inches apart. crabs and other animals in clearing out their runs reveal what i verified by actually digging wells at kizinga and in kabuiré, and also observed in the ditches feet deep dug by the natives round many of their stockades, that the sponge rests on a stratum of fine white washed sand. these cracks afford a good idea of the effect of the rains: the partial thunder-showers of october, november, december, and even january, produce no effect on them; it is only when the sun begins to return from his greatest southern declination that the cracks close their large lips. the whole sponge is borne up, and covers an enormous mass of water, oozing forth in march and april forming the inundations. these floods in the congo, zambesi, and nile require different times to reach the sea. the bulk of the zambesi is further augmented by the greater rains finding many pools in the beds of its feeders filled in february, as soon as the sun comes north. _mem._--in apparent contradiction of the foregoing, so far as touches the sources of the zambesi, syde bin habib informed me a few days ago that he visited the sources of the liambai and of the lufira. each comes out of a fountain; the lufira one is called changozi, and is small, and in a wood of large trees s.w. of katanga; the fountain of the liambai is so large that one cannot call to a person on the other side, and he appears also very small there--the two fountains are just five hours distant from each other. he is well acquainted with the liambai (leeambye), where i first met him. lunga, another river, comes out of nearly the same spot which goes into the leuñge, kafué (?). lufira is less than kalongosi up there; that is less than or yards, and it has deep waterfalls in it. the koné range comes down north, nearly to mpméto's. mkana is the chief of the stone houses in the baloba, and he may be reached by three days of hard travelling from mpwéto's; lufira is then one long day west. as muabo refuses to show me his "mita," "miengelo," or "mpamankanana" as they are called, i must try and get to those of the baloba of mkana. senegal swallows pair in the beginning of december. _note_.--inundation. the inundation i have explained in the note on the climate as owing to the sponges being supersaturated in the greater rains, when the sun returns from his greatest southern declination, the pores are then all enlarged, and the water of inundation flows in great volume even after the rains have entirely ceased. something has probably to be learned from the rainfall at or beyond the equator, as the sun pursues his way north beyond my beat, but the process i have named accounts undoubtedly for the inundations of the congo and zambesi. the most acute of the ancients ascribed the inundation with strabo to summer rains in the south; others to snows melting on the mountains of the moon; others to the northern wind--the etesian breezes blowing directly against the mouth of the river and its current: others, with less reason, ascribed the inundation to its having its source in the ocean: herodotus and pliny to evaporation following the course of the sun. _ st september, ._--two men come from casembe--i am reported killed. the miningo-tree distils water, which falls in large drops. the luapula seen when the smoke clears off. fifty of syde bin omar's people died of small-pox in usafa. _mem._ vaccine virus. we leave on the th, east bank of moisi river, and cross the luongo on the th, the lofubu on the st october, and the kalongosi on the th. [dr. livingstone seems to have been unable to find opportunity to make daily entries at this period. all was turmoil and panic, and his life appears to have been in imminent danger. briefly we see that on his way back from the lake he found that his arab associates of the last few months had taken up casembe's cause against the devastating hordes of mazitu, who had swept down on these parts, and had repulsed them. but now a fresh complication arose! casembe and chikumbi became alarmed lest the arabs, feeling their own power, should turn upon them and possess the whole country, so they joined forces and stormed kombokombo, one of the leading arabs, and with what success we shall see. it is a fair specimen of the unaccountable complications which dog the steps of the traveller, where war is afoot, and render life a misery. he writes as follows on the th october:--] i was detained in the imbozhwa country much longer than i relished. the inroad of the mazitu, of which casembe had just heard when we reached the mofwé, was the first cause of delay: he had at once sent off men to verify the report, and requested me to remain till his messengers should return. this foray produced a state of lawlessness in the country, which was the main reason of our further detention. the imbozhwa fled before the marauders, and the banyamwezi or garaganza, who had come in numbers to trade in copper, took on themselves the duty of expelling the invaders, and this, by means of their muskets, they did effectually, then, building stockades they excited the jealousy of the imbozhwa lords of the soil who, instead of feeling grateful, hated the new power thus sprung up among them! they had suffered severely from the sharp dealing of the strangers already, and chikumbi made a determined assault on the stockade of kombokombo in vain. confusion prevailed all over the country. some banyamwezi assumed the offensive against the baüsi, who resemble the imbozhwa, but are further south, and captured and sold some prisoners: it was in this state of things that, as already mentioned, i was surrounded by a party of furious imbozhwa. a crowd stood within fifteen or twenty yards with spears poised and arrows set in the bowstrings, and some took aim at me: they took us for plunderers, and some plants of ground-nuts thrown about gave colour to their idea. one good soul helped us away--a blessing be on him and his. another chief man took us for mazitu! in this state of confusion cazembe heard that my party had been cut off: he called in moenempanda and took the field in person, in order to punish the banyamwezi, against whom he has an old grudge for killing a near relative of his family, selling baüsi, and setting themselves up as a power in his country. the two arab traders now in the country felt that they must unite their forces, and thereby effect a safe retreat. chikumbi had kept twenty-eight tusks for syde bin omar safely; but the coming of casembe might have put it out of his power to deliver up his trust in safety, for an army here is often quite lawless: each man takes to himself what he can. when united we marched from kizinga on rd september together, built fences every night to protect ourselves and about banyamwezi, who took the opportunity to get safely away. kombokombo came away from his stockade, and also part of the way, but cut away by night across country to join the parties of his countrymen who still love to trade in katanga copper. we were not molested, but came nearly north to the kalongosi. syde parted from us, and went away east to mozamba, and thence to the coast. footnotes: [ ] the allusion is to mrs. livingstone's grave. [ ] at one season the long grass which covers the face of the country catches fire. for some three months the air is consequently filled with smoke.--ed. chapter xiii. cataracts of the kalongosi. passage of the river disputed. leeches and method of detaching them. syde bin habib's slaves escape. enormous collection of tusks. iii. theory of the nile sources. tribute to miss tinné. notes on climate. separation of lake nyassa from the nile system. observations on victoria nyanza. slaves dying. repentant deserters. mohamad bogharib. enraged imbozhwa. an attack. narrow escape. renewed attack. a parley. help arrives. bin juma. march from the imbozhwa country. slaves escape. burial of syde bin habib's brother. singular custom. an elephant killed. native game-laws. rumour of baker's expedition. christmas dinners. _ th october, ._--from kizinga north the country is all covered with forest, and thrown up into ridges of hardened sandstone, capped occasionally with fine-grained clay schist. trees often appear of large size and of a species closely resembling the gum-copal tree; on the heights masukos and rhododendrons are found, and when exposed they are bent away from the south-east. animals, as buffaloes and elephants, are plentiful, but wild. rivulets numerous, and running now as briskly as brooks do after much rain in england. all on the south-western side of kalongosi are subjects of casembe, that is balunda, or imbozhwa. it was gratifying to see the banyamwezi carrying their sick in cots slung between two men: in the course of time they tired of this, and one man, who was carried several days, remained with chuma. we crossed the luongo far above where we first became acquainted with it, and near its source in urungu or usungu hills, then the lobubu, a goodly stream thirty yards broad and rapid with fine falls above our ford, which goes into kalongosi. _ th october, ._--cross the papusi, and a mile beyond the luéna of forty yards and knee deep; here we were met by about of kabanda's men, as if they were come to dispute our passage at the ford: i went over; all were civil; but had we shown any weakness they would no doubt have taken advantage of it. _ th october, ._--we came to the kalongosi, flowing over five cataracts made by five islets in a place called kabwérumé. near the mebamba a goodly rivulet joins it. _ th october, ._--we came to the kalongosi at the ford named mosolo: by pacing i found it to be yards broad, and thigh deep at the end of the dry season, it ran so strongly that it was with difficulty i could keep my feet. here at least of nsama's people stood on the opposite shore to know what we wanted. two fathoms of calico were sent over, and then i and thirty guns went over to protect the people in the ford: as we approached they retired. i went to them, and told them that i had been to nsama's, and he gave me a goat and food, and we were good friends: some had seen me there, and they now crowded to look till the arabs thought it unsafe for me to be among them: if i had come with bared skin they would have fled. all became friendly: an elephant was killed, and we remained two days buying food. we passed down between the ranges of hills on the east of moero, the path we followed when we first visited casembe. _ th and st october, ._--from the luao i went over to the chief village of muabo, and begged him to show me the excavations in his country: he declined, by saying that i came from a crowd of people, and must go to kabwabwata, and wait awhile there, meanwhile he would think what he should do, whether to refuse or invite me to come. he evidently does not wish me to see his strongholds. all his people could go into them, though over ten thousand: they are all abundantly supplied with water, and they form the storehouses for grain. _ nd october, ._--we came to kabwabwata, and i hope i may find a way to other underground houses. it is probable that they are not the workmanship of the ancestors of the present occupants, for they ascribe their formation invariably to the deity, mulungu or réza: if their forefathers had made them, some tradition would have existed of them. _ rd october, ._--syde bin habib came over from mpwéto's; he reports lualaba and lufira flowing into the lake of kinkonza. lungabalé is paramount chief of rua. mparahala horns measured three feet long and three inches in diameter at the base: this is the yellow kualata of makololo, bastard gemsbuck of the dutch. _ th, th, and th october, ._--salem bin habib was killed by the people in rua: he had put up a tent and they attacked it in the night, and stabbed him through it. syde bin habib waged a war of vengeance all through rua after this for the murder of his brother: sef's raid may have led the people to the murder. _ th october, ._--in coming north in september and october, the last months of the dry season, i crossed many burns flowing quite in the manner of our brooks at home, after a great deal of rain; here, however, the water was clear, and the banks not abraded in the least. some rivulets had a tinge of white in them, as if of felspar in disintegrating granite; some nearly stagnant burns had as if milk and water in them, and some red oxide of iron. where leeches occur they need no coaxing to bite, but fly at the white skin like furies, and refuse to let go: with the fingers benumbed, though the water is only °, one may twist them round the finger and tug, but they slip through. i saw the natives detaching them with a smart slap of the palm, and found it quite effectual. swifts, senegal swallows, and common dark-bellied swallows appeared at kizinga in the beginning of october: other birds, as drongo shrikes, a bird with a reddish bill, but otherwise like a grey linnet, keep in flocks yet. _( th december.)_ they pair now. the kite came sooner than the swallows; i saw the first at bangweolo on the th july, . _ st november, ._--at kabwabwata; we are waiting till syde comes up that we may help him. he has an enormous number of tusks and bars of copper, sufficient it seems for all his people to take forward, going and returning three times over. he has large canoes on the lake, and will help us in return. _ nd november, ._--news came yesterday from mpwéto's that twenty-one slaves had run away from syde bin habib at one time: they were rua people, and out of the chains, as they were considered safe when fairly over the lualaba, but they showed their love of liberty on the first opportunity. mpwéto is suspected to have harboured them, or helped them over the river; this will probably lead to syde attacking him, as he has done to so many chiefs in rua. in this case mpwéto will have no sympathy; he is so wanting in the spirit of friendliness to others. _ rd november, ._--sent off men to hasten syde onwards. we start in two or three days. the oldest map known to be in existence is the map of the ethiopian goldmines, dating from the time of sethos i., the father of rameses ii., long enough before the time of the bronze tablet of aristagoras, on which was inscribed the circuit of the whole earth, and all the sea and all rivers. (tylor, p. , quoted from birch's _archaeologia_, vol. xxxiv. p. .) sesostris was the first to distribute his maps. _ th november, ._--syde bin habib is said to have amassed frasilahs of ivory = lbs., and frasilahs of copper = , lbs. with one hundred carriers he requires to make four relays, or otherwise make the journey four times over at every stage. twenty-one of his slaves ran away in one night, and only four were caught again: they were not all bought, nor was the copper and ivory come at by fair means; the murder of his brother was a good excuse for plunder, murder, and capture. mpwéto is suspected of harbouring them as living on the banks of the lualaba, for they could not get over without assistance from his canoes and people. mpwéto said, "remove from me, and we shall see if they come this way." they are not willing to deliver fugitives up. syde sen£ for elmas, the only thing of the mullam or clerical order here, probably to ask if the koran authorizes him to attack mpwéto. mullam will reply, "yes, certainly. if mpwéto won't restore your slaves, take what you can by force." syde's bloodshed is now pretty large, and he is becoming afraid for his own life; if he ceases not, he will himself be caught some day. ill of fever two days. better and thankful. [whilst waiting to start for ujiji, livingstone was intently occupied on the great problem of the nile and the important part he had taken so recently in solving it: he writes at this date as follows:--] the discovery of the sources of the nile is somewhat akin in importance to the discovery of the north-west passage, which called forth, though in a minor degree, the energy, the perseverance, and the pluck of englishmen, and anything that does that is beneficial to the nation and to its posterity. the discovery of the sources of the nile possesses, moreover, an element of interest which the north-west passage never had. the great men of antiquity have recorded their ardent desires to know the fountains of what homer called "_egypt's heaven-descended spring._" sesostris, the first who in camp with his army made and distributed maps, not to egyptians only, but to the scythians, naturally wished to know the springs, says eustathius, of the river on whose banks he flourished. alexander the great, who founded a celebrated city at this river's-mouth, looked up the stream with the same desire, and so did the caesars. the great julius caesar is made by lucan to say that he would give up the civil war if he might but see the fountains of this far-famed river. nero caesar sent two centurions to examine the "_caput nili_." they reported that they saw the river rushing with great force from two rocks, and beyond that it was lost in immense marshes. this was probably "native information," concerning the cataracts of the nile and a long space above them, which had already been enlarged by others into two hills with sharp conical tops called crophi and mophi--midway between which lay the fountains of the nile--fountains which it was impossible to fathom, and which gave forth half their water to ethiopia in the south, and the other half to egypt in the north: that which these men failed to find, and that which many great minds in ancient times longed to know, has in this late age been brought to light by the patient toil and laborious perseverance of englishmen.[ ] in laying a contribution to this discovery at the feet of his countrymen, the writer desires to give all the honour to his predecessors which they deserve. the work of speke and grant is deserving of the highest commendation, inasmuch as they opened up an immense tract of previously unexplored country, in the firm belief they were bringing to light the head of the nile. no one can appreciate the difficulties of their feat unless he has gone into new country. in association with captain burton, speke came much nearer to the "coy fountains," than at the victoria nyanza, but they all turned their backs on them. mr. baker showed courage and perseverance worthy of an englishman in following out the hints given by speke and grant. but none rises higher in my estimation than the dutch lady miss tinné, who, after the severest domestic afflictions, nobly persevered in the teeth of every difficulty, and only turned away from the object of her expedition, after being assured by speke and grant that they had already discovered in victoria nyanza the sources she sought. had they not given their own mistaken views, the wise foresight by which she provided a steamer, would inevitably have led her to pull up, and by canoes to reach lake bangweolo's sources full five hundred miles south of the most southerly part of victoria nyanza. she evidently possesses some of the indomitable pluck of van tromp, whose tomb every englishman who goes to holland must see.[ ] her doctor was made a baron--were she not a dutch lady already we think she ought to be made a duchess. by way of contrast with what, if i live through it, i shall have to give, i may note some of the most prominent ideas entertained of this world-renowned river. ptolemy, a geographer who lived in the second century, and was not a king of egypt, with the most ancient maps made the nile rise from the "montes lunae," between ten and twelve south lat., by six several streams which flowed north into two lakes, situated east and west of each other. these streams flowed about west of his river rhapta, or raptus, which is probably our rovuma or louma. this was very near the truth, but the mountains of the moon cannot be identified with the lokinga, or mountains of bisa, from which many of the springs do actually arise. unless, indeed, we are nearer to the great alterations in climate which have taken place, as we are supposed to be nearer the epoch of the mammoth, aurochs, and others. snow never lay in these latitudes, on altitudes of feet above the sea. some of the ancients supposed the river to have its source in the ocean. this was like the answer we received long ago from the natives on the liambai or upper zambesi when inquiring for its source. "it rises in leoatlé, the white man's sea, or métséhula." the second name means the "_grazing water_," from the idea of the tides coming in to graze; as to the freshness of the liambai waters, they could offer no explanation. some again thought that the nile rose in western africa, and after flowing eastwards across the continent, turned northwards to egypt; others still thought that it rose in india! and others again, from vague reports collected from their slaves, made it and several other rivers rise but of a great inland sea. _achélunda_ was said to be the name of this lake, and in the language of angola, it meant the "sea." it means only "_of_" or "_belonging to lunda_," a country. it might have been a sea that was spoken of on a whole, or anything. "_nyassi, or the sea_," was another name and another blunder. "nyassi" means long grass, and nothing else. nyanza contracted into nyassa, means lake, marsh, any piece of water, or even the dry bed of a lake. the _n_ and _y_ are joined in the mouth, and never pronounced separately. the "naianza"!--it would be nearer the mark to say the nancy! of all theoretical discoverers, the man who ran in miles of lake and placed them on a height of some feet at the north-west end of lake nyassa, deserves the highest place. dr. beke, in his guess, came nearer the sources than most others, but after all he pointed out where they would not be found. old nile played the theorists a pretty prank by having his springs miles south of them all! i call mine a contribution, because it is just a hundred years ( ) since bruce, a greater traveller than any of us, visited abyssinia, and having discovered the sources of the blue nile, he thought that he had then solved the ancient problem. am i to be cut out by some one discovering southern fountains of the river of egypt, of which i have now no conception? david livingstone. [the tiresome procrastination of mohamad and his horde was not altogether an unmixed evil. with so many new discoveries in hand livingstone had an opportunity for working out several problems, and instituting comparisons between the phenomena of inner africa and the well-marked changes which go on in other parts of the world. we find him at this time summing them up as follows:--] the subject of change of climate from alteration of level has not received the investigation it deserves. mr. darwin saw reason to believe that very great alterations of altitude, and of course of climate, had taken place in south america and the islands of the pacific; the level of a country above the sea i believe he thought to be as variable as the winds. a very great alteration of altitude has also taken place in africa; this is apparent on the sea-coast of angola, and all through the centre of the country, where large rivers which once flowed southwards and westwards are no longer able to run in these directions: the general desiccation of the country, as seen in the beds of large rivers and of enormous lakes, tells the same tale. portions of the east coast have sunk, others have risen, even in the historic period. the upper or northern end of the red sea has risen, so that the place of the passage of the children of israel is now between forty and fifty miles from suez, the modern head of the gulf. this upheaval, and not the sand from the desert, caused the disuse of the ancient canal across the isthmus: it took place since the mohamadan conquest of egypt. the women of the jewish captivities were carried past the end of the red sea and along the mediterranean in ox-waggons, where such cattle would now all perish for want of water and pasture; in fact, the route to assyria would have proved more fatal to captives then than the middle passage has been to africans since. it may be true that, _as the desert is now_, it could not have been traversed by the multitude under moses--the german strictures put forth by dr. colenso, under the plea of the progress of science, assume that no alteration has taken place in either desert or climate--but a scientific examination of the subject would have ascertained what the country was then when it afforded pasture to "flocks and herds, and even very much cattle." we know that eziongeber was, with its docks, on the seashore, with water in abundance for the ship-carpenters: it is now far from the head of the elaic gulf in a parched desert. aden, when visited by the portuguese balthazar less than years ago, was a perfect garden; but it is now a vast conglomeration of black volcanic rocks, with so little vegetation, that, on seeing flocks of goats driven out, i thought of the irish cabman at an ascent slamming the door of his cab and whispering to his fare, "whish, it's to desave the baste: he thinks that you are out walking." gigantic tanks in great numbers and the ruins of aqueducts appear as relics of the past, where no rain now falls for three or more years at a time. they have all dried up by a change of climate, possibly similar and cotemporaneous with that which has dried up the dead sea. the journey of ezra was undertaken after a fast at the river ahava. with nearly , people he had only about beasts of burden. he was ashamed to ask a band of soldiers and horsemen for protection in the way. it took about four months to reach jerusalem; this would give five and a half or six miles a day, as the crow flies, which is equal to twelve or fifteen miles of surface travelled over; this bespeaks a country capable of yielding both provisions and water, such as cannot now be found. ezra would not have been ashamed to ask for camels to carry provisions and water had the country been as dry as it is now. the prophets, in telling all the woes and miseries of the captivities, never allude to suffering or perishing by thirst in the way, or being left to rot in the route as african slaves are now in a well-watered country. had the route to assyria been then as it is now, they could scarcely have avoided referring to the thirst of the way; but everything else is mentioned except that. respecting this system of lakes in the centre of africa, it will possibly occur to some that lake nyassa may give a portion of its water off from its northern end to the nile, but this would imply a lake giving off a river at both ends; the country, too, on the north-north-west and north-east rises to from to feet above the sea, and there is not the smallest indication that nyassa and tanganyika were ever connected. lake liemba is the most southerly part of tanganyika; its latitude is ° ' south; the most northerly point of lake nyassa is probably ° '- ° ' = ° '. longitude of liemba ° '- ° ' = ° ' = ' of longitude. of latitude ' + ' = ', two-thirds of which is about ', the distance between two lakes; and no evidence of fissure, rent, or channel now appears on the highland between. again, liemba is feet above the sea. the altitude of nyassa is /x feet. tanganyika would thus go to nyassa--down the shiré into the zambesi and the sea, if a passage existed even below ground. the large lake, said to exist to the north-west of tanganyika might, however, send a branch to the nile; but the land rises up into a high ridge east of this lake. it is somewhat remarkable that the impression which intelligent suaheli, who have gone into karagwé, have received is, that the kitangulé flows from tanganyika into lake ukerewé. one of syde bin omar's people put it to me very forcibly the other day by saying, "kitangulé is an arm of tanganyika!" he had not followed it out; but that dagara, the father of rumanyika, should have in his lifetime seriously proposed to deepen the upper part of it, so as to allow canoes to pass from his place to ujiji, is very strong evidence of the river being large on the tanganyika side. we know it to be of good size, and requiring canoes on the ukerewé side. burton came to the very silly conclusion that when a native said a river ran one way, he meant that it flowed in the opposite direction. ujiji, in rumanyika's time, was the only mart for merchandise in the country. garaganza or galaganza has most trade and influence now. (_ th sept., ._) okara is the name by which victoria nyanza is known on the eastern side, and an arm of it, called kavirondo, is about forty miles broad. lake baringo is a distinct body of water, some fifty miles broad, and giving off a river called ngardabash, which flows eastwards into the somauli country. lake naibash is more to the east than kavirondo, and about fifty miles broad too: it gives off the river kidété, which is supposed to flow into lufu. it is south-east of kavirondo; and kilimanjaro can be seen from its shores; in the south-east okara, naibash and baringo seem to have been run by speke into one lake. okara, in the south, is full of large islands, and has but little water between them; that little is encumbered with aquatic vegetation called "tikatika," on which, as in lakelet gumadona, a man can walk. waterlilies and duckweed are not the chief part of this floating mass. in the north okara is large. burukineggé land is the boundary between the people of kavirondo and the gallahs with camels and horses. _ th november, ._--copied several notes written at kizinga and elsewhere, and at kabwabwata resume journal. some slight showers have cooled the air a little: this is the hottest time of the year. _ th november, ._--a heavier shower this morning will have more of the same effect. _ th november, ._--muabo visited this village, but refuses to show his underground houses. _ th november, ._--i was on the point of starting without mohamad bogharib, but he begged me not to go till he had settled some weighty matter about a wife he is to get at ujiji from mpamari; we must have the new moon, which will appear in three days, for lucky starting, and will leave syde bin habib at chisabi's. meanwhile two women slaves ran away, and syde has got only five back of his twenty-one fugitives. mullam was mild with his decisions, and returned here; he informed me that many of syde's slaves, about forty, fled. of those who cannot escape many die, evidently broken-hearted; they are captives, and not, as slaves often are, criminals sold for their guilt, hence the great mortality caused by being taken to the sea to be, as they believe, fatted and eaten. poor things! heaven help them! ujiji is the pronunciation of the banyamwezi; and they call the people wayeiyé, exactly as the same people styled themselves on the river zougha, near ngami. [it will be remembered that several of his men refused to go to lake bangweolo with him: they seem now to have thought better of it, and on his return are anxious to come back to their old master who, for his part, is evidently willing to overlook a good deal.] i have taken all the runaways back again; after trying the independent life they will behave better. much of their ill conduct may be ascribed to seeing that after the flight of the johanna men i was entirely dependent on them: more enlightened people often take advantage of men in similar circumstances; though i have seen pure africans come out generously to aid one abandoned to their care. i have faults myself. _ th november, ._--the arabs have some tradition of the emir musa coming as far south as the jagga country. some say he lived n.e. of sunna, now mtéza; but it is so mixed up with fable and tales of the genii (mageni), that it cannot refer to the great moses, concerning whose residence at meröe and marriage of the king of ethiopia's daughter there is also some vague tradition further north: the only thing of interest to me is the city of meröe, which is lost, and may, if built by ancient egyptians, still be found. the africans all beckon with the hand, to call a person, in a different way from what europeans do. the hand is held, as surgeons say, _prone_, or palm down, while we beckon with the hand held _supine_, or palm up: it is quite natural in them, for the idea in their mind is to lay the hand on the person and draw him towards them. if the person wished for is near, say forty yards off, the beckoner puts out his right hand on a level with his breast, and makes the motion of catching the other by shutting the fingers and drawing him to himself: if the person is further off, this motion is exaggerated by lifting up the right hand as high as he can; he brings it down with a sweep towards the ground, the hand being still held prone as before. in nodding assent they differ from us by lifting up the chin instead of bringing it down as we do. this lifting up the chin looks natural after a short usage therewith, and is perhaps purely conventional, not natural, as the other seems to be. _ th november, ._--i am tired out by waiting after finishing the journal, and will go off to-morrow north. simon killed a zebra after i had taken the above resolution, and this supply of meat makes delay bearable, for besides flesh, of which i had none, we can buy all kinds of grain and pulse for the next few days. the women of the adjacent villages crowd into this as soon as they hear of an animal killed, and sell all the produce of their plantations for meat. _ th november, ._--it is said that on the road to the great salt lake in america the bones and skulls of animals lie scattered everywhere, yet travellers are often put to great straits for fuel: this, if true, is remarkable among a people so apt in turning everything to account as the americans. when we first steamed up the river shiré our fuel ran out in the elephant marsh, where no trees exist, and none could be reached without passing through many miles on either side of impassable swamp, covered with reeds, and intersected everywhere with deep branches of the river. coming to a spot where an elephant had been slaughtered, i at once took the bones on board, and these, with the bones of a second elephant, enabled us to steam briskly up to where wood abounded. the scythians, according to herodotus, used the bones[ ] of the animal sacrificed to boil the flesh, the guachos of south america do the same when they have no fuel: the ox thus boils himself. _ th november, ._--a pretty little woman ran away from her husband, and came to "mpamari." her husband brought three hoes, a checked cloth, and two strings of large neck beads to redeem her; but this old fellow wants her for himself, and by native law he can keep her as his slave-wife. slave-owners make a bad neighbourhood, for the slaves, are always running away and the headmen are expected to restore the fugitives for a bit of cloth. an old woman of mpmari fled three times; she was caught yesterday, and tied to a post for the young slaves to plague her. her daughter burst into an agony of tears on seeing them tying her mother, and mpamari ordered her to be tied to the mother's back for crying; i interceded for her, and she was let go. he said, "you don't care, though sayed majid loses his money." i replied, "let the old woman go, she will be off again to-morrow." but they cannot bear to let a slave have freedom. i don't understand what effect his long prayers and prostrations towards the "kibla" have on his own mind, they cannot affect the minds of his slaves favourably, nor do they mine, though i am as charitable as most people. _ th november, ._--i prepared to start to-day, but mohamad bogharib has been very kind, and indeed cooked meals for me from my arrival at casembe's, th may last, till we came here, nd october; the food was coarse enough, but still it was food; and i did not like to refuse his genuine hospitality. he now begged of me not to go for three days, and then he would come along with me! mpamari also entreated. i would not have minded him, but they have influence with the canoe-men on tanganyika, and it is well not to get a bad name if possible. _ th november, ._--mohamad bogharib purposed to attack two villages near to this, from an idea that the people there concealed his runaway slaves; by remaining i think that i have put a stop to this, as he did not like to pillage while i was in company: mpamari also turned round towards peace, though he called all the riff-raff to muster, and caracoled among them like an old broken-winded horse. one man became so excited with yelling, that the others had to disarm him, and he then fell down as if in a fit; water poured on his head brought him to calmness. we go on the nd. _ nd november, ._--this evening the imbozhwa, or babemba, came at dusk, and killed a wanyamwezi woman on one side of the village, and a woman and child on the other side of it. i took this to be the result of the warlike demonstration mentioned above; but one of mohamad bogharib's people, named bin juma, had gone to a village on the north of this and seized two women and two girls, in lieu of four slaves who had run away. the headman, resenting this, shot an arrow into one of bin junta's party, and bin juma shot a woman with his gun. this, it turned out, had roused the whole country, and next morning we were assailed by a crowd of imbozhwa on three sides: we had no stockade, but the men built one as fast as the enemy allowed, cutting down trees and carrying them to the line of defence, while others kept the assailants at bay with their guns. had it not been for the crowd of banyamwezi which we have, who shot vigorously with their arrows, and occasionally chased the imbozhwa, we should have been routed. i did not go near the fighting, but remained in my house to defend my luggage if necessary. the women went up and down the village with sieves, as if winnowing, and singing songs, and lullilooing, to encourage their husbands and friends who were fighting, each had a branch of the ficus indica in her hand, which she waved, i suppose as a charm. about ten of the imbozhwa are said to have been killed, but dead and wounded were at once carried off by their countrymen. they continued the assault from early dawn till p.m., and showed great bravery, but they wounded only two with their arrows. their care to secure the wounded was admirable: two or three at once seized the fallen man, and ran off with him, though pursued by a great crowd of banyamwezi with spears, and fired at by the suaheli--victoria-cross fellows truly many of them were! those who had a bunch of animals' tails, with medicine, tied to their waists, came sidling and ambling up to near the unfinished stockade, and shot their arrows high up into the air, to fall among the wanyamwezi, then picked up any arrows on the field, ran back, and returned again. they thought that by the ambling gait they avoided the balls, and when these whistled past them they put down their heads, as if to allow them to pass over; they had never encountered guns before. we did not then know it, but muabo, phuta, ngurué, sandaruko, and chapi, were the assailants, for we found it out by the losses each of these five chiefs sustained. it was quite evident to me that the suaheli arabs were quite taken aback by the attitude of the natives; they expected them to flee as soon as they heard a gun fired in anger, but instead of this we were very nearly being cut off, and should have been but for our banyamwezi allies. it is fortunate that the attacking party had no success in trying to get mpwéto and karembwé to join them against us, or it would have been more serious still. _ th november, ._--the imbozhwa, or babemba rather, came early this morning, and called on mohamad to come out of his stockade if he were a man who could fight, but the fence is now finished, and no one seems willing to obey the taunting call: i have nothing to do with it, but feel thankful that i was detained, and did not, with my few attendants, fall into the hands of the justly infuriated babemba. they kept up the attack to-day, and some went out to them, fighting till noon: when a man was killed and not carried off, the wanyamwezi brought his head and put it on a pole on the stockade--six heads were thus placed. a fine young man was caught and brought in by the wanyamwezi, one stabbed him behind, another cut his forehead with an axe, i called in vain to them not to kill him. as a last appeal, he said to the crowd that surrounded him, "don't kill me, and i shall take you to where the women are." "you lie," said his enemies; "you intend to take us where we may be shot by your friends;" and they killed him. it was horrible: i protested loudly against any repetition of this wickedness, and the more sensible agreed that prisoners ought not to be killed, but the banyamwezi are incensed against the babemba because of the women killed on the nd. _ th november, ._--the babemba kept off on the third day, and the arabs are thinking it will be a good thing if we get out of the country unscathed. men were sent off on the night of the rd to syde bin habib for powder and help. mohamad bogharib is now unwilling to take the onus of the war: he blames mpamari, and mpamari blames him; i told mohamad that the war was undoubtedly his work, inasmuch as bin juma is his man, and he approved of his seizing the women. he does not like this, but it is true; he would not have entered a village of casembe or moamba or chikumbi as he did chapi's man's village: the people here are simply men of more metal than he imagined, and his folly in beginning a war in which, if possible, his slaves will slip through his hands is apparent to all, even to himself. syde sent four barrels of gunpowder and ten men, who arrived during last night. _ th november, ._--two of muabo's men came over to bring on a parley; one told us that he had been on the south side of the village before, and heard one man say to another "mo pigé" (shoot him). mpamari gave them a long oration in exculpation, but it was only the same everlasting, story of fugitive slaves. the slave-traders cannot prevent them from escaping, and impudently think that the country people ought to catch them, and thus be their humble servants, and also the persecutors of their own countrymen! if they cannot keep them, why buy them--why put their money into a bag with holes? it is exactly what took place in america--slave-owners are bad neighbours everywhere. canada was threatened, england browbeaten, and the northerners all but kicked on the same score, and all as if property in slaves had privileges which no other goods have. to hear the arabs say of the slaves after they are fled, "oh, they are bad, bad, very bad!" (and they entreated me too to free them from the yoke), is, as the young ladies say, "too absurd." the chiefs also who do not apprehend fugitives, they too are "bad." i proposed to mohamad bogharib to send back the women seized by bin juma, to show the babemba that he disapproved of the act and was willing to make peace, but this was too humiliating; i added that their price as slaves was four barrels of gunpowder or dollars, while slaves lawfully bought would have cost him only eight or ten yards of calico each. at the conclusion of mpamari's speech the four barrels of gunpowder were exhibited, and so was the koran, to impress them (muabo's people) with an idea of their great power. _ th and th november, ._--it is proposed to go and force our way if we can to the north, but all feel that that would be a fine opportunity for the slaves to escape, and they would not be loth to embrace it; this makes it a serious matter, and the koran is consulted at hours which are auspicious. _ th november, ._--messengers sent to muabo to ask a path, or in plain words protection from him; mpamari protests his innocence of the whole affair. _ st december, ._--muabo's people over again; would fain send them to make peace with chapi! _ nd december, ._--the detention is excessively vexatious to me. muabo sent three slaves as offers of peace--a fine self-imposed, but he is on our south side, and we wish to go north. _ rd december, ._--a party went to-day to clear the way to the north, but were warmly received by babemba with arrows; they came back with one woman captured, and they say that they killed one man: one of themselves is wounded, and many others in danger: others who went east were shot at, and wounded too. _ th december, ._--a party went east, and were fain to flee from the babemba, the same thing occurred on our west, and to-day _( th)_ all were called to strengthen the stockade for fear that the enemy may enter uninvited. the slaves would certainly flee, and small blame to them though they did. mpamari proposed to go off north by night, but his people objected, as even a child crying would arouse the babemba, and reveal the flight, so finally he sent off to ask syde what he ought to do, whether to retire by day or by night; probably entreating syde to come and protect him. a sort of idol is found in every village in this part, it is of wood, and represents the features, markings and fashion of the hair of the inhabitants: some have little huts built for them--others are in common houses. the babemba call them _nkisi_ ("sancan" of the arabs): the people of rua name one _kalubi_; the plural, _tulubi_; and they present pombe, flour, bhang, tobacco, and light a fire for them to smoke by. they represent the departed father or mother, and it is supposed that they are pleased with the offerings made to their representatives, but all deny that they pray to them. casembe has very many of these nkisi; one with long hair, and named _motombo_, is carried in front when he takes the field; names of dead chiefs are sometimes given to them. i have not met with anyone intelligent enough to explain if prayers are ever made to anyone; the arabs who know their language, say they have no prayers, and think that at death there is an end of the whole man, but other things lead me to believe this is erroneous. slaves laugh at their countrymen, in imitation of their masters, and will not reveal their real thoughts: one said that they believed in two superior beings--réza above, who kills people, and réza below, who carries them away after death. _ th december, ._--ten of syde bin habib's people came over, bringing a letter, the contents of which neither mpamari nor mohamad cares to reveal. some think, with great probability, that he asks, "why did you begin a war if you wanted to leave so soon? did you not know that the country people would take advantage of your march, encumbered as you will be by women and slaves?" mohamad bogharib called me to ask what advice i could give him, as all his own advice, and devices too, had been lost or were useless, and he did not know what to do. the banyamwezi threatened to go off by night and leave him, as they are incensed against the babemba, and offended because the arabs do not aid them in wreaking their vengeance upon them. i took care not to give any advice, but said, if i had been or was in his place, i would have sent or would send back bin juma's captives, to show that i disapproved of his act--the first in the war--and was willing to make peace with chapi. he said that he did not know that bin juma would capture these people; that bin juma had met some natives with fish, and took ten by force, that the natives, in revenge, caught three banyamwezi slaves, and bin juma then gave one slave to them as a fine, but mohamad did not know of this affair either. i am of opinion, however, that he was fully aware of both matters, and mpamari's caracoling showed that he knew it all, though now he denies it. bin juma is a long, thin, lanky suaheli, six feet two high, with a hooked nose and large lips: i told mohamad that if he were to go with us to manyuema, the whole party would be cut off. he came here, bought a slave-boy, and allowed him to escape; then browbeat chapi's man about him (and he says, three others); and caught ten in lieu of him, of which mohamad restored six: this was the origin of the war. now that we are in the middle of it, i must do as mohamad does in going off either by day or by night. it is unreasonable to ask my advice now, but it is felt that they have very unjustifiably placed me in a false position, and they fear that syed majid will impute blame to them, meanwhile syde bin habib sent a private message to me to come with his men to him, and leave this party. i perceive that the plan now is to try and clear our way of chapi, and then march, but i am so thoroughly disgusted with this slave-war, that i think of running the risk of attack by the country people, and go off to-morrow without mohamad bogharib, though i like him much more than i do mpamari or syde bin habib. it is too glaring hypocrisy to go to the koran for guidance while the stolen women, girls, and fish, are in bin juma's hands. _ th and th december, ._--i had to wait for the banyamwezi preparing food: mohamad has no authority over them, or indeed over anyone else. two babemba men came in and said that they had given up fighting, and begged for their wives, who had been captured by syde's people on their way here: this reasonable request was refused at first, but better counsels prevailed, and they were willing to give something to appease the anger of the enemy, and sent back six captives, two of whom were the wives prayed for. [at last he makes a start on the th of december with the arabs, who are bound eastwards for ujiji. it is a motley group, composed of mohamad and his friends, a gang of unyamwezi hangers-on, and strings of wretched slaves yoked together in their heavy slave-sticks. some carry ivory, others copper, or food for the march, whilst hope and fear, misery and villainy, may be read off on the various faces that pass in line out of this country, like a serpent dragging its accursed folds away from the victim it has paralysed with its fangs.] * * * * * _ th december, ._--we marched four hours unmolested by the natives, built a fence, and next day crossed the lokinda river and its feeder the mookosi; here the people belonged to chisabi, who had not joined the other babemba. we go between two ranges of tree-covered mountains, which are continuations of those on each side of moero. _ th december, ._--the tiresome tale of slaves running away was repeated again last night by two of mpamari's making off, though in the yoke, and they had been with him from boyhood. not one good-looking slave-woman is now left of mohamad bogharib's fresh slaves; all the pretty ones obtain favour by their address, beg to be unyoked, and then escape. four hours brought us to many villages of chisabi and the camp of syde bin habib in the middle of a set-in rain, which marred the demonstration at meeting with his relative mpamari; but the women braved it through, wet to the skin, and danced and lullilooed with "draigled" petticoats with a zeal worthy of a better cause, as the "penny-a-liners" say. it is the custom for the trader who receives visitors to slaughter goats, and feed all his guests for at least two days, nor was syde wanting in this hospitality, though the set-in rain continuing, we did not enjoy it as in fine weather. _ th december, ._--cotton-grass and brackens all over the country show the great humidity of marungu. rain daily; but this is not the great rain which falls when the sun comes back south over our heads. _ th december, ._--march two hours only to the range of tamba. a pretty little light-grey owl, called "nkwékwé," was killed by a native as food; a black ring round its face and its black ears gave it all the appearance of a cat, whose habits it follows. _ th to th december, ._--a brother of syde bin habib died last night: i had made up my mind to leave the whole party, but syde said that chisabi was not to be trusted, and the death of his brother having happened, it would not be respectful to leave him to bury his dead alone. six of his slaves fled during the night--one, the keeper of the others. a mobemba man, who had been to the coast twice with him, is said to have wished a woman who was in the chain, so he loosed five out, and took her off; the others made clear heels of it, and now that the grass is long and green, no one can trace their course. syde told me that the slaves would not have detained him, but his brother's death did. we buried the youth, who has been ill three months. mpamari descended into the grave with four others; a broad cloth was held over them horizontally, and a little fluctuation made, as if to fan those who were depositing the body in the side excavation made at the bottom: when they had finished they pulled in earth, and all shoved it towards them till the grave was level. mullam then came and poured a little water into and over the grave, mumbled a few prayers, at which mpamari said aloud to me, "mullam does not let his voice be heard;" and mullam smiled to me, as if to say, "loud enough for all i shall get:" during the ceremony the women were all wailing loudly. we went to the usual sitting-place, and shook hands with syde, as if receiving him back again into the company of the living. syde told me previously to this event that he had fought the people who killed his elder brother salem bin habib, and would continue to fight them till all their country was spoiled and a desolation: there is no forgiveness with moslems for bloodshed. he killed many, and took many slaves, ivory, and copper: his tusks number over , many of large size. _ th and th december, ._--to chisabi's village stockade, on the left bank of the lofunso, which flows in a marshy valley three miles broad. eight of mohamad bogharib's slaves fled by night, one with his gun and wife; a, large party went in search, but saw nothing of them. to-day an elephant was killed, and they sent for the meat, but chisabi ordered the men to let his meat alone: experience at kabwabwata said, "take the gentle course," so two fathoms of calico and two hoes were sent to propitiate the chief; chisabi then demanded half the meat and one tusk: the meat was given, but the tusk was mildly refused: he is but a youth, and this is only the act of his counsellors. it was replied that casembe, chikumbi, nsama, meréré, made no demand at all: his counsellors have probably heard of the portuguese self-imposed law, and wish to introduce it here, but both tusks were secured. _ nd december, ._--we crossed the lofunso river, wading three branches, the first of forty-seven yards, then the river itself, fifty yards, and neck deep to men and women of ordinary size. two were swept away and drowned; other two were rescued by men leaping in and saving them, one of whom was my man susi. a crocodile bit one person badly, but was struck, and driven off. two slaves escaped by night; a woman loosed her husband's yoke from the tree, and got clear off. _ th december, ._--five sick people detain us to-day; some cannot walk from feebleness and purging brought on by sleeping on the damp ground without clothes. syde bin habib reports a peculiar breed of goats in rua, remarkably short in the legs, so much so, that they cannot travel far; they give much milk, and become very fat, but the meat is indifferent. gold is found at katanga in the pool of a waterfall only: it probably comes from the rocks above this. his account of the lofu, or, as he says, west lualaba, is identical with that of his cousin, syde bin omar; it flows north, but west of lufira, into the lake of kinkonza, so named after the chief. the east lualaba becomes very large, often as much as six or eight miles broad, with many inhabited islands, the people of which, being safe from invasion, are consequently rapacious and dishonest, and their chiefs, moengé and nyamakunda, are equally lawless. a hunter, belonging to syde, named kabwebwa, gave much information gleaned during his hunting trips; for instance, the lufira has nine feeders of large size; and one, the lekulwé, has also nine feeders; another, the kisungu, is covered with, "tikatika," by which the people cross it, though it bends under their weight; he also ascribes the origin of the lufira and the lualaba west, or lofu, with the liambai to one large earthen mound, which he calls "segulo," or an anthill! _ th december, , christmas day._--we can buy nothing except the very coarsest food--not a goat or fowl--while syde, having plenty of copper, can get all the luxuries. we marched past mount katanga, leaving it on our left, to the river kapéta, and slaughtered a favourite kid to make a christmas dinner. a trading-party came up from ujiji; they said that we were ten camps from tanganyika. they gave an erroneous report that a steamer with a boat in tow was on lake chowambé--an english one, too, with plenty of cloth and beads on board. a letter had come from abdullah bin salem, moslem missionary at mtésa's, to ujiji three months ago with this news. _ th december, ._--we marched up an ascent - / hours, and got on to the top of one of the mountain ridges, which generally run n. and s. three hours along this level top brought us to the kibawé river, a roaring rivulet beside villages. there were no people on the height over which we came, though the country is very fine--green and gay with varying shades of that colour. we passed through patches of brackens five feet high and gingers in flower, and were in a damp cloud all day. now and then a drizzle falls in these parts, but it keeps all damp only, and does not show in the rain-gauge. neither sun nor stars appear. _ th and th december, ._--remain on sunday, then march and cross five rivulets about four yards wide and knee deep, going to the lofunso. the grass now begins to cover and hide the paths; its growth is very rapid: blobs of water lie on the leaves all day, and keep the feet constantly wet by falling as we pass. _ th december, ._--we kept well on the ridge between two ranges of hills; then went down, and found a partially-burned native stockade, and lodged in it; the fires of the ujiji party had set the huts on fire after the party left. we are in the itandé district at the nswiba river. _ th december, ._--we now went due east, and made a good deal of easting too from mount katanga on the lofunso, and crossed the river lokivwa, twelve yards wide, and very deep, with villages all about. we ascended much as we went east. very high mountains appeared on the n.w. the woods dark gieen, with large patches of a paler hue. _ st december, ._--we reached the lofuko yesterday in a pelting rain; not knowing that the camp with huts was near, i stopped and put on a bernouse, got wet, and had no dry clothes. remain to-day to buy food. clouds cover all the sky from n.w. the river, thirty yards wide, goes to tanganyika east of this. scenery very lovely. footnotes: [ ] in linant reached ° ' n. on the white nile. in the second egyptian, under d'arnauld and sabatier, explored the river to ° ' n., and jomard published his work on limmoo and the river habaiah. dr. beke and mr. d'abbadie contributed their share to making the nile better known. brun rollet established a trading station in at belema on the nile at ° n. lat. [ ] miss tinné succumbed to the dangers of african travelling before livingstone penned these just words of appreciation. [ ] ezek. xxiv. . end of vol. i. the original was typed in (manually) twice and electronically compared. italicized words or phrases are capitalized. david livingstone was born in scotland, received his medical degree from the university of glasgow, and was sent to south africa by the london missionary society. circumstances led him to try to meet the material needs as well as the spiritual needs of the people he went to, and while promoting trade and trying to end slavery, he became the first european to cross the continent of africa, which story is related in this book. two appendixes have been added to this etext, one of which is simply notes on the minor changes made to make this etext more readable, (old vs. new forms of words, names, etc.); the other is a review from the february, edition of harper's magazine, which is included both for those readers who want to see a brief synopsis, and more importantly to give an example of how livingstone's accomplishments were seen in his own time. the unnamed reviewer was by no means as enlightened as livingstone, yet he was not entirely in the dark, either. the casual reader, who may not be familiar with the historical period, should note that a few things that livingstone wrote, which might be seen as racist by today's standards, was not considered so in his own time. livingstone simply uses the terms and the science of his day--these were no doubt flawed, as is also seen elsewhere, in his references to malaria, for example. which all goes to show that it was the science of the day which was flawed, and not so much livingstone. i will also add that the rev. livingstone has a fine sense of humour, which i hope the reader will enjoy. his description of a makololo dance is classic. lastly, i will note that what i love most about livingstone's descriptions is not only that he was not polluted by the racism of his day, but that he was not polluted by the anti-racism of our own. he states things as he sees them, and notes that the africans are, like all other men, a curious mixture of good and evil. this, to me, demonstrates his good faith better than any other description could. you see, david livingstone does not write about africa as a missionary, nor as an explorer, nor yet as a scientist, but as a man meeting fellow men. i hope you will enjoy his writings as much as i did. alan r. light monroe, n.c., .] missionary travels and researches in south africa; including a sketch of sixteen years' residence in the interior of africa, and a journey from the cape of good hope to loanda on the west coast; thence across the continent, down the river zambesi, to the eastern ocean. by david livingstone, ll.d., d.c.l., fellow of the faculty of physicians and surgeons, glasgow; corresponding member of the geographical and statistical society of new york; gold medalist and corresponding member of the royal geographical societies of london and paris f.s.a., etc., etc. dedication. to sir roderick impey murchison, president royal geographical society, f.r.s., v.p.g.s., corr. inst. of france, and member of the academies of st. petersburg, berlin, stockholm, copenhagen, brussels, etc., this work is affectionately offered as a token of gratitude for the kind interest he has always taken in the author's pursuits and welfare; and to express admiration of his eminent scientific attainments, nowhere more strongly evidenced than by the striking hypothesis respecting the physical conformation of the african continent, promulgated in his presidential address to the royal geographic society in , and verified three years afterward by the author of these travels. david livingstone. london, oct., . preface. when honored with a special meeting of welcome by the royal geographical society a few days after my arrival in london in december last, sir roderick murchison, the president, invited me to give the world a narrative of my travels; and at a similar meeting of the directors of the london missionary society i publicly stated my intention of sending a book to the press, instead of making many of those public appearances which were urged upon me. the preparation of this narrative* has taken much longer time than, from my inexperience in authorship, i had anticipated. * several attempts having been made to impose upon the public, as mine, spurious narratives of my travels, i beg to tender my thanks to the editors of the 'times' and of the 'athenaeum' for aiding to expose them, and to the booksellers of london for refusing to subscribe for any copies. greater smoothness of diction and a saving of time might have been secured by the employment of a person accustomed to compilation; but my journals having been kept for my own private purposes, no one else could have made use of them, or have entered with intelligence into the circumstances in which i was placed in africa, far from any european companion. those who have never carried a book through the press can form no idea of the amount of toil it involves. the process has increased my respect for authors and authoresses a thousand-fold. i can not refrain from referring, with sentiments of admiration and gratitude, to my friend thomas maclear, esq., the accomplished astronomer royal at the cape. i shall never cease to remember his instructions and help with real gratitude. the intercourse i had the privilege to enjoy at the observatory enabled me to form an idea of the almost infinite variety of acquirements necessary to form a true and great astronomer, and i was led to the conviction that it will be long before the world becomes overstocked with accomplished members of that profession. let them be always honored according to their deserts; and long may maclear, herschel, airy, and others live to make known the wonders and glory of creation, and to aid in rendering the pathway of the world safe to mariners, and the dark places of the earth open to christians! i beg to offer my hearty thanks to my friend sir roderick murchison, and also to dr. norton shaw, the secretary of the royal geographical society, for aiding my researches by every means in their power. his faithful majesty don pedro v., having kindly sent out orders to support my late companions until my return, relieved my mind of anxiety on their account. but for this act of liberality, i should certainly have been compelled to leave england in may last; and it has afforded me the pleasure of traveling over, in imagination, every scene again, and recalling the feelings which actuated me at the time. i have much pleasure in acknowledging my deep obligations to the hospitality and kindness of the portuguese on many occasions. i have not entered into the early labors, trials, and successes of the missionaries who preceded me in the bechuana country, because that has been done by the much abler pen of my father-in-law, rev. robert moffat, of kuruman, who has been an energetic and devoted actor in the scene for upward of forty years. a slight sketch only is given of my own attempts, and the chief part of the book is taken up with a detail of the efforts made to open up a new field north of the bechuana country to the sympathies of christendom. the prospects there disclosed are fairer than i anticipated, and the capabilities of the new region lead me to hope that by the production of the raw materials of our manufactures, african and english interests will become more closely linked than heretofore, that both countries will be eventually benefited, and that the cause of freedom throughout the world will in some measure be promoted. dr. hooker, of kew, has had the kindness to name and classify for me, as far as possible, some of the new botanical specimens which i brought over; dr. andrew smith (himself an african traveler) has aided me in the zoology; and captain need has laid open for my use his portfolio of african sketches, for all which acts of liberality my thanks are deservedly due, as well as to my brother, who has rendered me willing aid as an amanuensis. although i can not profess to be a draughtsman, i brought home with me a few rough diagram-sketches, from one of which the view of the falls of the zambesi has been prepared by a more experienced artist. october, . contents. introduction. personal sketch--highland ancestors--family traditions--grandfather removes to the lowlands--parents-- early labors and efforts--evening school--love of reading-- religious impressions--medical education--youthful travels-- geology--mental discipline--study in glasgow--london missionary society--native village--medical diploma-- theological studies--departure for africa--no claim to literary accomplishments. chapter . the bakwain country--study of the language--native ideas regarding comets--mabotsa station--a lion encounter-- virus of the teeth of lions--names of the bechuana tribes-- sechele--his ancestors--obtains the chieftainship--his marriage and government--the kotla--first public religious services--sechele's questions--he learns to read--novel mode for converting his tribe--surprise at their indifference-- polygamy--baptism of sechele--opposition of the natives-- purchase land at chonuane--relations with the people--their intelligence--prolonged drought--consequent trials--rain- medicine--god's word blamed--native reasoning--rain-maker-- dispute between rain doctor and medical doctor--the hunting hopo--salt or animal food a necessary of life--duties of a missionary. chapter . the boers--their treatment of the natives--seizure of native children for slaves--english traders--alarm of the boers--native espionage--the tale of the cannon--the boers threaten sechele--in violation of treaty, they stop english traders and expel missionaries--they attack the bakwains-- their mode of fighting--the natives killed and the school- children carried into slavery--destruction of english property--african housebuilding and housekeeping--mode of spending the day--scarcity of food--locusts--edible frogs-- scavenger beetle--continued hostility of the boers--the journey north--preparations--fellow-travelers--the kalahari desert--vegetation--watermelons--the inhabitants--the bushmen- -their nomad mode of life--appearance--the bakalahari--their love for agriculture and for domestic animals--timid character--mode of obtaining water--female water-suckers--the desert--water hidden. chapter . departure from kolobeng, st june, -- companions--our route--abundance of grass--serotli, a fountain in the desert--mode of digging wells--the eland--animals of the desert--the hyaena--the chief sekomi--dangers--the wandering guide--cross purposes--slow progress--want of water-- capture of a bushwoman--the salt-pan at nchokotsa--the mirage--reach the river zouga--the quakers of africa-- discovery of lake ngami, st august, --its extent--small depth of water--position as the reservoir of a great river system--the bamangwato and their chief--desire to visit sebituane, the chief of the makololo--refusal of lechulatebe to furnish us with guides--resolve to return to the cape--the banks of the zouga--pitfalls--trees of the district-- elephants--new species of antelope--fish in the zouga. chapter . leave kolobeng again for the country of sebituane-- reach the zouga--the tsetse--a party of englishmen--death of mr. rider--obtain guides--children fall sick with fever-- relinquish the attempt to reach sebituane--mr. oswell's elephant-hunting--return to kolobeng--make a third start thence--reach nchokotsa--salt-pans--"links", or springs-- bushmen--our guide shobo--the banajoa--an ugly chief--the tsetse--bite fatal to domestic animals, but harmless to wild animals and man--operation of the poison--losses caused by it-- the makololo--our meeting with sebituane--sketch of his career--his courage and conquests--manoeuvres of the batoka-- he outwits them--his wars with the matebele--predictions of a native prophet--successes of the makololo--renewed attacks of the matebele--the island of loyelo--defeat of the matebele-- sebituane's policy--his kindness to strangers and to the poor-- his sudden illness and death--succeeded by his daughter--her friendliness to us--discovery, in june, , of the zambesi flowing in the centre of the continent--its size--the mambari-- the slave-trade--determine to send family to england--return to the cape in april, --safe transit through the caffre country during hostilities--need of a "special correspondent" --kindness of the london missionary society--assistance afforded by the astronomer royal at the cape. chapter . start in june, , on the last and longest journey from cape town--companions--wagon-traveling--physical divisions of africa--the eastern, central, and western zones-- the kalahari desert--its vegetation--increasing value of the interior for colonization--our route--dutch boers--their habits--sterile appearance of the district--failure of grass-- succeeded by other plants--vines--animals--the boers as farmers--migration of springbucks--wariness of animals--the orange river--territory of the griquas and bechuanas--the griquas--the chief waterboer--his wise and energetic government--his fidelity--ill-considered measures of the colonial government in regard to supplies of gunpowder-- success of the missionaries among the griquas and bechuanas-- manifest improvement of the native character--dress of the natives--a full-dress costume--a native's description of the natives--articles of commerce in the country of the bechuanas-- their unwillingness to learn, and readiness to criticise. chapter . kuruman--its fine fountain--vegetation of the district--remains of ancient forests--vegetable poison--the bible translated by mr. moffat--capabilities of the language-- christianity among the natives--the missionaries should extend their labors more beyond the cape colony--model christians-- disgraceful attack of the boers on the bakwains--letter from sechele--details of the attack--numbers of school-children carried away into slavery--destruction of house and property at kolobeng--the boers vow vengeance against me--consequent difficulty of getting servants to accompany me on my journey-- start in november, --meet sechele on his way to england to obtain redress from the queen--he is unable to proceed beyond the cape--meet mr. macabe on his return from lake ngami--the hot wind of the desert--electric state of the atmosphere-- flock of swifts--reach litubaruba--the cave lepelole-- superstitions regarding it--impoverished state of the bakwains--retaliation on the boers--slavery--attachment of the bechuanas to children--hydrophobia unknown--diseases of the bakwains few in number--yearly epidemics--hasty burials-- ophthalmia--native doctors--knowledge of surgery at a very low ebb--little attendance given to women at their confinements-- the "child medicine"--salubrity of the climate well adapted for invalids suffering from pulmonary complaints. chapter . departure from the country of the bakwains--large black ant--land tortoises--diseases of wild animals--habits of old lions--cowardice of the lion--its dread of a snare--major vardon's note--the roar of the lion resembles the cry of the ostrich--seldom attacks full-grown animals--buffaloes and lions--mice--serpents--treading on one--venomous and harmless varieties--fascination--sekomi's ideas of honesty--ceremony of the sechu for boys--the boyale for young women--bamangwato hills--the unicorn's pass--the country beyond--grain--scarcity of water--honorable conduct of english gentlemen--gordon cumming's hunting adventures--a word of advice for young sportsmen--bushwomen drawing water--ostrich--silly habit-- paces--eggs--food. chapter . effects of missionary efforts--belief in the deity-- ideas of the bakwains on religion--departure from their country--salt-pans--sour curd--nchokotsa--bitter waters-- thirst suffered by the wild animals--wanton cruelty in hunting--ntwetwe--mowana-trees--their extraordinary vitality-- the mopane-tree--the morala--the bushmen--their superstitions-- elephant-hunting--superiority of civilized over barbarous sportsmen--the chief kaisa--his fear of responsibility--beauty of the country at unku--the mohonono bush--severe labor in cutting our way--party seized with fever--escape of our cattle--bakwain mode of recapturing them--vagaries of sick servants--discovery of grape-bearing vines--an ant-eater-- difficulty of passing through the forest--sickness of my companion--the bushmen--their mode of destroying lions-- poisons--the solitary hill--a picturesque valley--beauty of the country--arrive at the sanshureh river--the flooded prairies--a pontooning expedition--a night bivouac--the chobe-- arrive at the village of moremi--surprise of the makololo at our sudden appearance--cross the chobe on our way to linyanti. chapter . reception at linyanti--the court herald--sekeletu obtains the chieftainship from his sister--mpepe's plot-- slave-trading mambari--their sudden flight--sekeletu narrowly escapes assassination--execution of mpepe--the courts of law-- mode of trying offenses--sekeletu's reason for not learning to read the bible--the disposition made of the wives of a deceased chief--makololo women--they work but little--employ serfs--their drink, dress, and ornaments--public religious services in the kotla--unfavorable associations of the place-- native doctors--proposals to teach the makololo to read-- sekeletu's present--reason for accepting it--trading in ivory-- accidental fire--presents for sekeletu--two breeds of native cattle--ornamenting the cattle--the women and the looking- glass--mode of preparing the skins of oxen for mantles and for shields--throwing the spear. chapter . the fever--its symptoms--remedies of the native doctors--hospitality of sekeletu and his people--one of their reasons for polygamy--they cultivate largely--the makalaka or subject tribes--sebituane's policy respecting them--their affection for him--products of the soil--instrument of culture--the tribute--distributed by the chief--a warlike demonstration--lechulatebe's provocations--the makololo determine to punish him--the bechuanas--meaning of the term-- three divisions of the great family of south africans. chapter . departure from linyanti for sesheke--level country--ant-hills--wild date-trees--appearance of our attendants on the march--the chief's guard--they attempt to ride on ox-back--vast herds of the new antelopes, leches, and nakongs--the native way of hunting them--reception at the villages--presents of beer and milk--eating with the hand--the chief provides the oxen for slaughter--social mode of eating-- the sugar-cane--sekeletu's novel test of character-- cleanliness of makololo huts--their construction and appearance--the beds--cross the leeambye--aspect of this part of the country--the small antelope tianyane unknown in the south--hunting on foot--an eland. chapter . procure canoes and ascend the leeambye--beautiful islands--winter landscape--industry and skill of the banyeti-- rapids--falls of gonye--tradition--annual inundations-- fertility of the great barotse valley--execution of two conspirators--the slave-dealer's stockade--naliele, the capital, built on an artificial mound--santuru, a great hunter--the barotse method of commemorating any remarkable event--better treatment of women--more religious feeling-- belief in a future state, and in the existence of spiritual beings--gardens--fish, fruit, and game--proceed to the limits of the barotse country--sekeletu provides rowers and a herald-- the river and vicinity--hippopotamus-hunters--no healthy location--determine to go to loanda--buffaloes, elands, and lions above libonta--interview with the mambari--two arabs from zanzibar--their opinion of the portuguese and the english --reach the town of ma-sekeletu--joy of the people at the first visit of their chief--return to sesheke--heathenism. chapter . preliminary arrangements for the journey--a picho-- twenty-seven men appointed to accompany me to the west-- eagerness of the makololo for direct trade with the coast-- effects of fever--a makololo question--the lost journal-- reflections--the outfit for the journey-- th november, , leave linyanti, and embark on the chobe--dangerous hippopotami--banks of chobe--trees--the course of the river-- the island mparia at the confluence of the chobe and the leeambye--anecdote--ascend the leeambye--a makalaka mother defies the authority of the makololo head man at sesheke-- punishment of thieves--observance of the new moon--public addresses at sesheke--attention of the people--results-- proceed up the river--the fruit which yields 'nux vomica'-- other fruits--the rapids--birds--fish--hippopotami and their young. chapter . increasing beauty of the country--mode of spending the day--the people and the falls of gonye--a makololo foray-- a second prevented, and captives delivered up--politeness and liberality of the people--the rains--present of oxen--the fugitive barotse--sekobinyane's misgovernment--bee-eaters and other birds--fresh-water sponges--current--death from a lion's bite at libonta--continued kindness--arrangements for spending the night during the journey--cooking and washing--abundance of animal life--different species of birds--water-fowl-- egyptian geese--alligators--narrow escape of one of my men-- superstitious feelings respecting the alligator--large game-- the most vulnerable spot--gun medicine--a sunday--birds of song--depravity; its treatment--wild fruits--green pigeons-- shoals of fish--hippopotami. chapter . message to masiko, the barotse chief, regarding the captives--navigation of the leeambye--capabilities of this district--the leeba--flowers and bees--buffalo-hunt--field for a botanist--young alligators; their savage nature--suspicion of the balonda--sekelenke's present--a man and his two wives-- hunters--message from manenko, a female chief--mambari traders--a dream--sheakondo and his people--teeth-filing-- desire for butter--interview with nyamoana, another female chief--court etiquette--hair versus wool--increase of superstition--arrival of manenko; her appearance and husband-- mode of salutation--anklets--embassy, with a present from masiko--roast beef--manioc--magic lantern--manenko an accomplished scold: compels us to wait--unsuccessful zebra- hunt. chapter . nyamoana's present--charms--manenko's pedestrian powers--an idol--balonda arms--rain--hunger--palisades--dense forests--artificial beehives--mushrooms--villagers lend the roofs of their houses--divination and idols--manenko's whims-- a night alarm--shinte's messengers and present--the proper way to approach a village--a merman--enter shinte's town: its appearance--meet two half-caste slave-traders--the makololo scorn them--the balonda real negroes--grand reception from shinte--his kotla--ceremony of introduction--the orators-- women--musicians and musical instruments--a disagreeable request--private interviews with shinte--give him an ox-- fertility of soil--manenko's new hut--conversation with shinte--kolimbota's proposal--balonda's punctiliousness-- selling children--kidnapping--shinte's offer of a slave--magic lantern--alarm of women--delay--sambanza returns intoxicated-- the last and greatest proof of shinte's friendship. chapter . leave shinte--manioc gardens--mode of preparing the poisonous kind--its general use--presents of food-- punctiliousness of the balonda--their idols and superstition-- dress of the balonda--villages beyond lonaje--cazembe--our guides and the makololo--night rains--inquiries for english cotton goods--intemese's fiction--visit from an old man-- theft--industry of our guide--loss of pontoon--plains covered with water--affection of the balonda for their mothers--a night on an island--the grass on the plains--source of the rivers--loan of the roofs of huts--a halt--fertility of the country through which the lokalueje flows--omnivorous fish-- natives' mode of catching them--the village of a half-brother of katema, his speech and present--our guide's perversity-- mozenkwa's pleasant home and family--clear water of the flooded rivers--a messenger from katema--quendende's village: his kindness--crop of wool--meet people from the town of matiamvo--fireside talk--matiamvo's character and conduct-- presentation at katema's court: his present, good sense, and appearance--interview on the following day--cattle--a feast and a makololo dance--arrest of a fugitive--dignified old courtier--katema's lax government--cold wind from the north-- canaries and other singing birds--spiders, their nests and webs--lake dilolo--tradition--sagacity of ants. chapter . the watershed between the northern and southern rivers--a deep valley--rustic bridge--fountains on the slopes of the valleys--village of kabinje--good effects of the belief in the power of charms--demand for gunpowder and english calico--the kasai--vexatious trick--want of food--no game-- katende's unreasonable demand--a grave offense--toll-bridge keeper--greedy guides--flooded valleys--swim the nyuana loke-- prompt kindness of my men--makololo remarks on the rich uncultivated valleys--difference in the color of africans-- reach a village of the chiboque--the head man's impudent message--surrounds our encampment with his warriors--the pretense--their demand--prospect of a fight--way in which it was averted--change our path--summer--fever--beehives and the honey-guide--instinct of trees--climbers--the ox sinbad-- absence of thorns in the forests--plant peculiar to a forsaken garden--bad guides--insubordination suppressed--beset by enemies--a robber party--more troubles--detained by ionga panza--his village--annoyed by bangala traders--my men discouraged--their determination and precaution. chapter . guides prepaid--bark canoes--deserted by guides-- mistakes respecting the coanza--feelings of freed slaves-- gardens and villages--native traders--a grave--valley of the quango--bamboo--white larvae used as food--bashinje insolence-- a posing question--the chief sansawe--his hostility--pass him safely--the river quango--chief's mode of dressing his hair-- opposition--opportune aid by cypriano--his generous hospitality--ability of half-castes to read and write--books and images--marauding party burned in the grass--arrive at cassange--a good supper--kindness of captain neves-- portuguese curiosity and questions--anniversary of the resurrection--no prejudice against color--country around cassange--sell sekeletu's ivory--makololo's surprise at the high price obtained--proposal to return home, and reasons-- soldier-guide--hill kasala--tala mungongo, village of-- civility of basongo--true negroes--a field of wheat--carriers-- sleeping-places--fever--enter district of ambaca--good fruits of jesuit teaching--the 'tampan'; its bite--universal hospitality of the portuguese--a tale of the mambari-- exhilarating effects of highland scenery--district of golungo alto--want of good roads--fertility--forests of gigantic timber--native carpenters--coffee estate--sterility of country near the coast--mosquitoes--fears of the makololo--welcome by mr. gabriel to loanda. chapter . continued sickness--kindness of the bishop of angola and her majesty's officers--mr. gabriel's unwearied hospitality--serious deportment of the makololo--they visit ships of war--politeness of the officers and men--the makololo attend mass in the cathedral--their remarks--find employment in collecting firewood and unloading coal--their superior judgment respecting goods--beneficial influence of the bishop of angola--the city of st. paul de loanda--the harbor--custom- house--no english merchants--sincerity of the portuguese government in suppressing the slave-trade--convict soldiers-- presents from bishop and merchants for sekeletu--outfit--leave loanda th september, --accompanied by mr. gabriel as far as icollo i bengo--sugar manufactory--geology of this part of the country--women spinning cotton--its price--native weavers-- market-places--cazengo; its coffee plantations--south american trees--ruins of iron foundry--native miners--the banks of the lucalla--cottages with stages--tobacco-plants-- town of massangano--sugar and rice--superior district for cotton--portuguese merchants and foreign enterprise--ruins-- the fort and its ancient guns--former importance of massangano--fires--the tribe kisama--peculiar variety of domestic fowl--coffee plantations--return to golungo alto-- self-complacency of the makololo--fever--jaundice--insanity. chapter . visit a deserted convent--favorable report of jesuits and their teaching--gradations of native society-- punishment of thieves--palm-toddy; its baneful effects-- freemasons--marriages and funerals--litigation--mr. canto's illness--bad behavior of his slaves--an entertainment--ideas on free labor--loss of american cotton-seed--abundance of cotton in the country--sickness of sekeletu's horse--eclipse of the sun--insects which distill water--experiments with them--proceed to ambaca--sickly season--office of commandant-- punishment of official delinquents--present from mr. schut of loanda--visit pungo andongo--its good pasturage, grain, fruit, etc.--the fort and columnar rocks--the queen of jinga-- salubrity of pungo andongo--price of a slave--a merchant- prince--his hospitality--hear of the loss of my papers in "forerunner"--narrow escape from an alligator--ancient burial- places--neglect of agriculture in angola--manioc the staple product--its cheapness--sickness--friendly visit from a colored priest--the prince of congo--no priests in the interior of angola. chapter . leave pungo andongo--extent of portuguese power-- meet traders and carriers--red ants; their fierce attack; usefulness; numbers--descend the heights of tala mungongo-- fruit-trees in the valley of cassange--edible muscle--birds-- cassange village--quinine and cathory--sickness of captain neves' infant--a diviner thrashed--death of the child-- mourning--loss of life from the ordeal--wide-spread superstitions--the chieftainship--charms--receive copies of the "times"--trading pombeiros--present for matiamvo--fever after westerly winds--capabilities of angola for producing the raw materials of english manufacture--trading parties with ivory--more fever--a hyaena's choice--makololo opinion of the portuguese--cypriano's debt--a funeral--dread of disembodied spirits--beautiful morning scenes--crossing the quango-- ambakistas called "the jews of angola"--fashions of the bashinje--approach the village of sansawe--his idea of dignity--the pombeiros' present--long detention--a blow on the beard--attacked in a forest--sudden conversion of a fighting chief to peace principles by means of a revolver--no blood shed in consequence--rate of traveling--slave women--way of addressing slaves--their thievish propensities--feeders of the congo or zaire--obliged to refuse presents--cross the loajima-- appearance of people; hair fashions. chapter . make a detour southward--peculiarities of the inhabitants--scarcity of animals--forests--geological structure of the country--abundance and cheapness of food near the chihombo--a slave lost--the makololo opinion of slaveholders--funeral obsequies in cabango--send a sketch of the country to mr. gabriel--native information respecting the kasai and quango--the trade with luba--drainage of londa-- report of matiamvo's country and government--senhor faria's present to a chief--the balonda mode of spending time-- faithless guide--makololo lament the ignorance of the balonda-- eagerness of the villagers for trade--civility of a female chief--the chief bango and his people--refuse to eat beef-- ambition of africans to have a village--winters in the interior--spring at kolobeng--white ants: "never could desire to eat any thing better"--young herbage and animals--valley of the loembwe--the white man a hobgoblin--specimen of quarreling--eager desire for calico--want of clothing at kawawa's--funeral observances--agreeable intercourse with kawawa--his impudent demand--unpleasant parting--kawawa tries to prevent our crossing the river kasai--stratagem. chapter . level plains--vultures and other birds--diversity of color in flowers of the same species--the sundew--twenty- seventh attack of fever--a river which flows in opposite directions--lake dilolo the watershed between the atlantic and indian oceans--position of rocks--sir roderick murchison's explanation--characteristics of the rainy season in connection with the floods of the zambesi and the nile--probable reason of difference in amount of rain south and north of the equator--arab reports of region east of londa--probable watershed of the zambesi and the nile--lake dilolo--reach katema's town: his renewed hospitality; desire to appear like a white man; ludicrous departure--jackdaws--ford southern branch of lake dilolo--small fish--project for a makololo village near the confluence of the leeba and the leeambye-- hearty welcome from shinte--kolimbota's wound--plant-seeds and fruit-trees brought from angola--masiko and limboa's quarrel-- nyamoana now a widow--purchase canoes and descend the leeba-- herds of wild animals on its banks--unsuccessful buffalo- hunt--frogs--sinbad and the tsetse--dispatch a message to manenko--arrival of her husband sambanza--the ceremony called kasendi--unexpected fee for performing a surgical operation-- social condition of the tribes--desertion of mboenga-- stratagem of mambowe hunters--water-turtles--charged by a buffalo--reception from the people of libonta--explain the causes of our long delay--pitsane's speech--thanksgiving services--appearance of my "braves"--wonderful kindness of the people. chapter . colony of birds called linkololo--the village of chitlane--murder of mpololo's daughter--execution of the murderer and his wife--my companions find that their wives have married other husbands--sunday--a party from masiko-- freedom of speech--canoe struck by a hippopotamus--gonye-- appearance of trees at the end of winter--murky atmosphere-- surprising amount of organic life--hornets--the packages forwarded by mr. moffat--makololo suspicions and reply to the matebele who brought them--convey the goods to an island and build a hut over them--ascertain that sir r. murchison had recognized the true form of african continent--arrival at linyanti--a grand picho--shrewd inquiry--sekeletu in his uniform--a trading-party sent to loanda with ivory--mr. gabriel's kindness to them--difficulties in trading--two makololo forays during our absence--report of the country to the n.e.--death of influential men--the makololo desire to be nearer the market--opinions upon a change of residence-- climate of barotse valley--diseases--author's fevers not a fair criterion in the matter--the interior an inviting field for the philanthropist--consultations about a path to the east coast--decide on descending north bank of zambesi--wait for the rainy season--native way of spending time during the period of greatest heat--favorable opening for missionary enterprise--ben habib wishes to marry--a maiden's choice-- sekeletu's hospitality--sulphureted hydrogen and malaria-- conversations with makololo--their moral character and conduct--sekeletu wishes to purchase a sugar-mill, etc.--the donkeys--influence among the natives--"food fit for a chief"-- parting words of mamire--motibe's excuses. chapter . departure from linyanti--a thunder-storm--an act of genuine kindness--fitted out a second time by the makololo-- sail down the leeambye--sekote's kotla and human skulls; his grave adorned with elephants' tusks--victoria falls--native names--columns of vapor--gigantic crack--wear of the rocks-- shrines of the barimo--"the pestle of the gods"--second visit to the falls--island garden--store-house island--native diviners--a european diviner--makololo foray--marauder to be fined--mambari--makololo wish to stop mambari slave-trading-- part with sekeletu--night traveling--river lekone--ancient fresh-water lakes--formation of lake ngami--native traditions-- drainage of the great valley--native reports of the country to the north--maps--moyara's village--savage customs of the batoka--a chain of trading stations--remedy against tsetse-- "the well of joy"--first traces of trade with europeans-- knocking out the front teeth--facetious explanation-- degradation of the batoka--description of the traveling party-- cross the unguesi--geological formation--ruins of a large town--productions of the soil similar to those in angola-- abundance of fruit. chapter . low hills--black soldier-ants; their cannibalism-- the plasterer and its chloroform--white ants; their usefulness--mutokwane-smoking; its effects--border territory-- healthy table-lands--geological formation--cicadae--trees-- flowers--river kalomo--physical conformation of country-- ridges, sanatoria--a wounded buffalo assisted--buffalo-bird-- rhinoceros-bird--leaders of herds--the honey-guide--the white mountain--mozuma river--sebituane's old home--hostile village-- prophetic phrensy--food of the elephant--ant-hills--friendly batoka--clothing despised--method of salutation--wild fruits-- the captive released--longings for peace--pingola's conquests-- the village of monze--aspect of the country--visit from the chief monze and his wife--central healthy locations--friendly feelings of the people in reference to a white resident-- fertility of the soil--bashukulompo mode of dressing their hair--gratitude of the prisoner we released--kindness and remarks of monze's sister--dip of the rocks--vegetation-- generosity of the inhabitants--their anxiety for medicine-- hooping-cough--birds and rain. chapter . beautiful valley--buffalo--my young men kill two elephants--the hunt--mode of measuring height of live elephants--wild animals smaller here than in the south, though their food is more abundant--the elephant a dainty feeder-- semalembue--his presents--joy in prospect of living in peace-- trade--his people's way of wearing their hair--their mode of salutation--old encampment--sebituane's former residence--ford of kafue--hippopotami--hills and villages--geological formation--prodigious quantities of large game--their tameness--rains--less sickness than in the journey to loanda-- reason--charge from an elephant--vast amount of animal life on the zambesi--water of river discolored--an island with buffaloes and men on it--native devices for killing game-- tsetse now in country--agricultural industry--an albino murdered by his mother--"guilty of tlolo"--women who make their mouths "like those of ducks"--first symptom of the slave-trade on this side--selole's hostility--an armed party hoaxed--an italian marauder slain--elephant's tenacity of life--a word to young sportsmen--mr. oswell's adventure with an elephant; narrow escape--mburuma's village--suspicious conduct of his people--guides attempt to detain us--the village and people of ma mburuma--character our guides give of us. chapter . confluence of loangwa and zambesi--hostile appearances--ruins of a church--turmoil of spirit--cross the river--friendly parting--ruins of stone houses--the situation of zumbo for commerce--pleasant gardens--dr. lacerda's visit to cazembe--pereira's statement--unsuccessful attempt to establish trade with the people of cazembe--one of my men tossed by a buffalo--meet a man with jacket and hat on--hear of the portuguese and native war--holms and terraces on the banks of a river--dancing for corn--beautiful country-- mpende's hostility--incantations--a fight anticipated--courage and remarks of my men--visit from two old councilors of mpende--their opinion of the english--mpende concludes not to fight us--his subsequent friendship--aids us to cross the river--the country--sweet potatoes--bakwain theory of rain confirmed--thunder without clouds--desertion of one of my men-- other natives' ideas of the english--dalama (gold)-- inhabitants dislike slave-buyers--meet native traders with american calico--game-laws--elephant medicine--salt from the sand--fertility of soil--spotted hyaena--liberality and politeness of the people--presents--a stingy white trader-- natives' remarks about him--effect on their minds--rain and wind now from an opposite direction--scarcity of fuel--trees for boat-building--boroma--freshets--leave the river--chicova, its geological features--small rapid near tete--loquacious guide--nyampungo, the rain-charmer--an old man--no silver-- gold-washing--no cattle. chapter . an elephant-hunt--offering and prayers to the barimo for success--native mode of expression--working of game-laws--a feast--laughing hyaenas--numerous insects-- curious notes of birds of song--caterpillars--butterflies-- silica--the fruit makoronga and elephants--rhinoceros adventure--korwe bird--its nest--a real confinement--honey and beeswax--superstitious reverence for the lion--slow traveling-- grapes--the ue--monina's village--native names--government of the banyai--electing a chief--youths instructed in "bonyai"-- suspected of falsehood--war-dance--insanity and disappearance of monahin--fruitless search--monina's sympathy--the sand- river tangwe--the ordeal muavi: its victims--an unreasonable man--"woman's rights"--presents--temperance--a winding course to shun villages--banyai complexion and hair--mushrooms--the tubers, mokuri--the tree shekabakadzi--face of the country-- pot-holes--pursued by a party of natives--unpleasant threat-- aroused by a company of soldiers--a civilized breakfast-- arrival at tete. chapter . kind reception from the commandant--his generosity to my men--the village of tete--the population--distilled spirits--the fort--cause of the decadence of portuguese power-- former trade--slaves employed in gold-washing--slave-trade drained the country of laborers--the rebel nyaude's stockade-- he burns tete--kisaka's revolt and ravages--extensive field of sugar-cane--the commandant's good reputation among the natives--providential guidance--seams of coal--a hot spring-- picturesque country--water-carriage to the coal-fields-- workmen's wages--exports--price of provisions--visit gold- washings--the process of obtaining the precious metal--coal within a gold-field--present from major sicard--natives raise wheat, etc.--liberality of the commandant--geographical information from senhor candido--earthquakes--native ideas of a supreme being--also of the immortality and transmigration of souls--fondness for display at funerals--trade restrictions-- former jesuit establishment--state of religion and education at tete--inundation of the zambesi--cotton cultivated--the fibrous plants conge and buaze--detained by fever--the kumbanzo bark--native medicines--iron, its quality--hear of famine at kilimane--death of a portuguese lady--the funeral-- disinterested kindness of the portuguese. chapter . leave tete and proceed down the river--pass the stockade of bonga--gorge of lupata--"spine of the world"-- width of river--islands--war drum at shiramba--canoe navigation--reach senna--its ruinous state--landeens levy fines upon the inhabitants--cowardice of native militia--state of the revenue--no direct trade with portugal--attempts to revive the trade of eastern africa--country round senna-- gorongozo, a jesuit station--manica, the best gold region in eastern africa--boat-building at senna--our departure--capture of a rebel stockade--plants alfacinya and njefu at the confluence of the shire--landeen opinion of the whites-- mazaro, the point reached by captain parker--his opinion respecting the navigation of the river from this to the ocean-- lieutenant hoskins' remarks on the same subject--fever, its effects--kindly received into the house of colonel nunes at kilimane--forethought of captain nolloth and dr. walsh--joy imbittered--deep obligations to the earl of clarendon, etc.-- on developing resources of the interior--desirableness of missionary societies selecting healthy stations--arrangements on leaving my men--retrospect--probable influence of the discoveries on slavery--supply of cotton, sugar, etc., by free labor--commercial stations--development of the resources of africa a work of time--site of kilimane--unhealthiness--death of a shipwrecked crew from fever--the captain saved by quinine--arrival of h. m. brig "frolic"--anxiety of one of my men to go to england--rough passage in the boats to the ship-- sekwebu's alarm--sail for mauritius--sekwebu on board; he becomes insane; drowns himself--kindness of major-general c. m. hay--escape shipwreck--reach home. appendix.--latitudes and longitudes of positions. appendix.--book review in harper's new monthly magazine, february, . appendix.--notes to etext. -------------------------------------------------- missionary travels and researches in south africa. -------------------------------------------------- introduction. personal sketch--highland ancestors--family traditions--grandfather removes to the lowlands--parents--early labors and efforts --evening school--love of reading--religious impressions--medical education--youthful travels--geology--mental discipline--study in glasgow--london missionary society--native village--medical diploma--theological studies--departure for africa--no claim to literary accomplishments. my own inclination would lead me to say as little as possible about myself; but several friends, in whose judgment i have confidence, have suggested that, as the reader likes to know something about the author, a short account of his origin and early life would lend additional interest to this book. such is my excuse for the following egotism; and, if an apology be necessary for giving a genealogy, i find it in the fact that it is not very long, and contains only one incident of which i have reason to be proud. our great-grandfather fell at the battle of culloden, fighting for the old line of kings; and our grandfather was a small farmer in ulva, where my father was born. it is one of that cluster of the hebrides thus alluded to by walter scott: "and ulva dark, and colonsay, and all the group of islets gay that guard famed staffa round."* * lord of the isles, canto . our grandfather was intimately acquainted with all the traditionary legends which that great writer has since made use of in the "tales of a grandfather" and other works. as a boy i remember listening to him with delight, for his memory was stored with a never-ending stock of stories, many of which were wonderfully like those i have since heard while sitting by the african evening fires. our grandmother, too, used to sing gaelic songs, some of which, as she believed, had been composed by captive islanders languishing hopelessly among the turks. grandfather could give particulars of the lives of his ancestors for six generations of the family before him; and the only point of the tradition i feel proud of is this: one of these poor hardy islanders was renowned in the district for great wisdom and prudence; and it is related that, when he was on his death-bed, he called all his children around him and said, "now, in my lifetime, i have searched most carefully through all the traditions i could find of our family, and i never could discover that there was a dishonest man among our forefathers. if, therefore, any of you or any of your children should take to dishonest ways, it will not be because it runs in our blood: it does not belong to you. i leave this precept with you: be honest." if, therefore, in the following pages i fall into any errors, i hope they will be dealt with as honest mistakes, and not as indicating that i have forgotten our ancient motto. this event took place at a time when the highlanders, according to macaulay, were much like the cape caffres, and any one, it was said, could escape punishment for cattle-stealing by presenting a share of the plunder to his chieftain. our ancestors were roman catholics; they were made protestants by the laird coming round with a man having a yellow staff, which would seem to have attracted more attention than his teaching, for the new religion went long afterward, perhaps it does so still, by the name of "the religion of the yellow stick". finding his farm in ulva insufficient to support a numerous family, my grandfather removed to blantyre works, a large cotton manufactory on the beautiful clyde, above glasgow; and his sons, having had the best education the hebrides afforded, were gladly received as clerks by the proprietors, monteith and co. he himself, highly esteemed for his unflinching honesty, was employed in the conveyance of large sums of money from glasgow to the works, and in old age was, according to the custom of that company, pensioned off, so as to spend his declining years in ease and comfort. our uncles all entered his majesty's service during the last french war, either as soldiers or sailors; but my father remained at home, and, though too conscientious ever to become rich as a small tea-dealer, by his kindliness of manner and winning ways he made the heart-strings of his children twine around him as firmly as if he had possessed, and could have bestowed upon them, every worldly advantage. he reared his children in connection with the kirk of scotland--a religious establishment which has been an incalculable blessing to that country--but he afterward left it, and during the last twenty years of his life held the office of deacon of an independent church in hamilton, and deserved my lasting gratitude and homage for presenting me, from my infancy, with a continuously consistent pious example, such as that ideal of which is so beautifully and truthfully portrayed in burns's "cottar's saturday night". he died in february, , in peaceful hope of that mercy which we all expect through the death of our lord and savior. i was at the time on my way below zumbo, expecting no greater pleasure in this country than sitting by our cottage fire and telling him my travels. i revere his memory. the earliest recollection of my mother recalls a picture so often seen among the scottish poor--that of the anxious housewife striving to make both ends meet. at the age of ten i was put into the factory as a "piecer", to aid by my earnings in lessening her anxiety. with a part of my first week's wages i purchased ruddiman's "rudiments of latin", and pursued the study of that language for many years afterward, with unabated ardor, at an evening school, which met between the hours of eight and ten. the dictionary part of my labors was followed up till twelve o'clock, or later, if my mother did not interfere by jumping up and snatching the books out of my hands. i had to be back in the factory by six in the morning, and continue my work, with intervals for breakfast and dinner, till eight o'clock at night. i read in this way many of the classical authors, and knew virgil and horace better at sixteen than i do now. our schoolmaster--happily still alive--was supported in part by the company; he was attentive and kind, and so moderate in his charges that all who wished for education might have obtained it. many availed themselves of the privilege; and some of my schoolfellows now rank in positions far above what they appeared ever likely to come to when in the village school. if such a system were established in england, it would prove a never-ending blessing to the poor. in reading, every thing that i could lay my hands on was devoured except novels. scientific works and books of travels were my especial delight; though my father, believing, with many of his time who ought to have known better, that the former were inimical to religion, would have preferred to have seen me poring over the "cloud of witnesses", or boston's "fourfold state". our difference of opinion reached the point of open rebellion on my part, and his last application of the rod was on my refusal to peruse wilberforce's "practical christianity". this dislike to dry doctrinal reading, and to religious reading of every sort, continued for years afterward; but having lighted on those admirable works of dr. thomas dick, "the philosophy of religion" and "the philosophy of a future state", it was gratifying to find my own ideas, that religion and science are not hostile, but friendly to each other, fully proved and enforced. great pains had been taken by my parents to instill the doctrines of christianity into my mind, and i had no difficulty in understanding the theory of our free salvation by the atonement of our savior, but it was only about this time that i really began to feel the necessity and value of a personal application of the provisions of that atonement to my own case. the change was like what may be supposed would take place were it possible to cure a case of "color blindness". the perfect freeness with which the pardon of all our guilt is offered in god's book drew forth feelings of affectionate love to him who bought us with his blood, and a sense of deep obligation to him for his mercy has influenced, in some small measure, my conduct ever since. but i shall not again refer to the inner spiritual life which i believe then began, nor do i intend to specify with any prominence the evangelistic labors to which the love of christ has since impelled me. this book will speak, not so much of what has been done, as of what still remains to be performed, before the gospel can be said to be preached to all nations. in the glow of love which christianity inspires, i soon resolved to devote my life to the alleviation of human misery. turning this idea over in my mind, i felt that to be a pioneer of christianity in china might lead to the material benefit of some portions of that immense empire; and therefore set myself to obtain a medical education, in order to be qualified for that enterprise. in recognizing the plants pointed out in my first medical book, that extraordinary old work on astrological medicine, culpeper's "herbal", i had the guidance of a book on the plants of lanarkshire, by patrick. limited as my time was, i found opportunities to scour the whole country-side, "collecting simples". deep and anxious were my studies on the still deeper and more perplexing profundities of astrology, and i believe i got as far into that abyss of phantasies as my author said he dared to lead me. it seemed perilous ground to tread on farther, for the dark hint seemed to my youthful mind to loom toward "selling soul and body to the devil", as the price of the unfathomable knowledge of the stars. these excursions, often in company with brothers, one now in canada, and the other a clergyman in the united states, gratified my intense love of nature; and though we generally returned so unmercifully hungry and fatigued that the embryo parson shed tears, yet we discovered, to us, so many new and interesting things, that he was always as eager to join us next time as he was the last. on one of these exploring tours we entered a limestone quarry--long before geology was so popular as it is now. it is impossible to describe the delight and wonder with which i began to collect the shells found in the carboniferous limestone which crops out in high blantyre and cambuslang. a quarry-man, seeing a little boy so engaged, looked with that pitying eye which the benevolent assume when viewing the insane. addressing him with, "how ever did these shells come into these rocks?" "when god made the rocks, he made the shells in them," was the damping reply. what a deal of trouble geologists might have saved themselves by adopting the turk-like philosophy of this scotchman! my reading while at work was carried on by placing the book on a portion of the spinning-jenny, so that i could catch sentence after sentence as i passed at my work; i thus kept up a pretty constant study undisturbed by the roar of the machinery. to this part of my education i owe my present power of completely abstracting the mind from surrounding noises, so as to read and write with perfect comfort amid the play of children or near the dancing and songs of savages. the toil of cotton-spinning, to which i was promoted in my nineteenth year, was excessively severe on a slim, loose-jointed lad, but it was well paid for; and it enabled me to support myself while attending medical and greek classes in glasgow in winter, as also the divinity lectures of dr. wardlaw, by working with my hands in summer. i never received a farthing of aid from any one, and should have accomplished my project of going to china as a medical missionary, in the course of time, by my own efforts, had not some friends advised my joining the london missionary society on account of its perfectly unsectarian character. it "sends neither episcopacy, nor presbyterianism, nor independency, but the gospel of christ to the heathen." this exactly agreed with my ideas of what a missionary society ought to do; but it was not without a pang that i offered myself, for it was not quite agreeable to one accustomed to work his own way to become in a measure dependent on others; and i would not have been much put about though my offer had been rejected. looking back now on that life of toil, i can not but feel thankful that it formed such a material part of my early education; and, were it possible, i should like to begin life over again in the same lowly style, and to pass through the same hardy training. time and travel have not effaced the feelings of respect i imbibed for the humble inhabitants of my native village. for morality, honesty, and intelligence, they were, in general, good specimens of the scottish poor. in a population of more than two thousand souls, we had, of course, a variety of character. in addition to the common run of men, there were some characters of sterling worth and ability, who exerted a most beneficial influence on the children and youth of the place by imparting gratuitous religious instruction.* much intelligent interest was felt by the villagers in all public questions, and they furnished a proof that the possession of the means of education did not render them an unsafe portion of the population. they felt kindly toward each other, and much respected those of the neighboring gentry who, like the late lord douglas, placed some confidence in their sense of honor. through the kindness of that nobleman, the poorest among us could stroll at pleasure over the ancient domains of bothwell, and other spots hallowed by the venerable associations of which our school-books and local traditions made us well aware; and few of us could view the dear memorials of the past without feeling that these carefully kept monuments were our own. the masses of the working-people of scotland have read history, and are no revolutionary levelers. they rejoice in the memories of "wallace and bruce and a' the lave," who are still much revered as the former champions of freedom. and while foreigners imagine that we want the spirit only to overturn capitalists and aristocracy, we are content to respect our laws till we can change them, and hate those stupid revolutions which might sweep away time-honored institutions, dear alike to rich and poor. * the reader will pardon my mentioning the names of two of these most worthy men--david hogg, who addressed me on his death-bed with the words, "now, lad, make religion the every- day business of your life, and not a thing of fits and starts; for if you do not, temptation and other things will get the better of you;" and thomas burke, an old forty-second peninsula soldier, who has been incessant and never weary in good works for about forty years. i was delighted to find him still alive; men like these are an honor to their country and profession. having finished the medical curriculum and presented a thesis on a subject which required the use of the stethoscope for its diagnosis, i unwittingly procured for myself an examination rather more severe and prolonged than usual among examining bodies. the reason was, that between me and the examiners a slight difference of opinion existed as to whether this instrument could do what was asserted. the wiser plan would have been to have had no opinion of my own. however, i was admitted a licentiate of faculty of physicians and surgeons. it was with unfeigned delight i became a member of a profession which is pre-eminently devoted to practical benevolence, and which with unwearied energy pursues from age to age its endeavors to lessen human woe. but though now qualified for my original plan, the opium war was then raging, and it was deemed inexpedient for me to proceed to china. i had fondly hoped to have gained access to that then closed empire by means of the healing art; but there being no prospect of an early peace with the chinese, and as another inviting field was opening out through the labors of mr. moffat, i was induced to turn my thoughts to africa; and after a more extended course of theological training in england than i had enjoyed in glasgow, i embarked for africa in , and, after a voyage of three months, reached cape town. spending but a short time there, i started for the interior by going round to algoa bay, and soon proceeded inland, and have spent the following sixteen years of my life, namely, from to , in medical and missionary labors there without cost to the inhabitants. as to those literary qualifications which are acquired by habits of writing, and which are so important to an author, my african life has not only not been favorable to the growth of such accomplishments, but quite the reverse; it has made composition irksome and laborious. i think i would rather cross the african continent again than undertake to write another book. it is far easier to travel than to write about it. i intended on going to africa to continue my studies; but as i could not brook the idea of simply entering into other men's labors made ready to my hands, i entailed on myself, in addition to teaching, manual labor in building and other handicraft work, which made me generally as much exhausted and unfit for study in the evenings as ever i had been when a cotton-spinner. the want of time for self-improvement was the only source of regret that i experienced during my african career. the reader, remembering this, will make allowances for the mere gropings for light of a student who has the vanity to think himself "not yet too old to learn". more precise information on several subjects has necessarily been omitted in a popular work like the present; but i hope to give such details to the scientific reader through some other channel. chapter . the bakwain country--study of the language--native ideas regarding comets--mabotsa station--a lion encounter--virus of the teeth of lions--names of the bechuana tribes--sechele--his ancestors--obtains the chieftainship--his marriage and government--the kotla--first public religious services--sechele's questions--he learns to read--novel mode for converting his tribe--surprise at their indifference-- polygamy--baptism of sechele--opposition of the natives--purchase land at chonuane--relations with the people--their intelligence--prolonged drought--consequent trials--rain-medicine--god's word blamed--native reasoning--rain-maker--dispute between rain doctor and medical doctor--the hunting hopo--salt or animal food a necessary of life--duties of a missionary. the general instructions i received from the directors of the london missionary society led me, as soon as i reached kuruman or lattakoo, then, as it is now, their farthest inland station from the cape, to turn my attention to the north. without waiting longer at kuruman than was necessary to recruit the oxen, which were pretty well tired by the long journey from algoa bay, i proceeded, in company with another missionary, to the bakuena or bakwain country, and found sechele, with his tribe, located at shokuane. we shortly after retraced our steps to kuruman; but as the objects in view were by no means to be attained by a temporary excursion of this sort, i determined to make a fresh start into the interior as soon as possible. accordingly, after resting three months at kuruman, which is a kind of head station in the country, i returned to a spot about fifteen miles south of shokuane, called lepelole (now litubaruba). here, in order to obtain an accurate knowledge of the language, i cut myself off from all european society for about six months, and gained by this ordeal an insight into the habits, ways of thinking, laws, and language of that section of the bechuanas called bakwains, which has proved of incalculable advantage in my intercourse with them ever since. in this second journey to lepelole--so called from a cavern of that name--i began preparations for a settlement, by making a canal to irrigate gardens, from a stream then flowing copiously, but now quite dry. when these preparations were well advanced, i went northward to visit the bakaa and bamangwato, and the makalaka, living between degrees and degrees south latitude. the bakaa mountains had been visited before by a trader, who, with his people, all perished from fever. in going round the northern part of these basaltic hills near letloche i was only ten days distant from the lower part of the zouga, which passed by the same name as lake ngami;* and i might then (in ) have discovered that lake, had discovery alone been my object. most part of this journey beyond shokuane was performed on foot, in consequence of the draught oxen having become sick. some of my companions who had recently joined us, and did not know that i understood a little of their speech, were overheard by me discussing my appearance and powers: "he is not strong; he is quite slim, and only appears stout because he puts himself into those bags (trowsers); he will soon knock up." this caused my highland blood to rise, and made me despise the fatigue of keeping them all at the top of their speed for days together, and until i heard them expressing proper opinions of my pedestrian powers. * several words in the african languages begin with the ringing sound heard in the end of the word "coming". if the reader puts an 'i' to the beginning of the name of the lake, as ingami, and then sounds the 'i' as little as possible, he will have the correct pronunciation. the spanish n [ny] is employed to denote this sound, and ngami is spelt nyami--naka means a tusk, nyaka a doctor. every vowel is sounded in all native words, and the emphasis in pronunciation is put upon the penultimate. returning to kuruman, in order to bring my luggage to our proposed settlement, i was followed by the news that the tribe of bakwains, who had shown themselves so friendly toward me, had been driven from lepelole by the barolongs, so that my prospects for the time of forming a settlement there were at an end. one of those periodical outbreaks of war, which seem to have occurred from time immemorial, for the possession of cattle, had burst forth in the land, and had so changed the relations of the tribes to each other, that i was obliged to set out anew to look for a suitable locality for a mission station. in going north again, a comet blazed on our sight, exciting the wonder of every tribe we visited. that of had been followed by an irruption of the matebele, the most cruel enemies the bechuanas ever knew, and this they thought might portend something as bad, or it might only foreshadow the death of some great chief. on this subject of comets i knew little more than they did themselves, but i had that confidence in a kind, overruling providence, which makes such a difference between christians and both the ancient and modern heathen. as some of the bamangwato people had accompanied me to kuruman, i was obliged to restore them and their goods to their chief sekomi. this made a journey to the residence of that chief again necessary, and, for the first time, i performed a distance of some hundred miles on ox-back. returning toward kuruman, i selected the beautiful valley of mabotsa (lat. d ' south, long. d '?) as the site of a missionary station, and thither i removed in . here an occurrence took place concerning which i have frequently been questioned in england, and which, but for the importunities of friends, i meant to have kept in store to tell my children when in my dotage. the bakatla of the village mabotsa were much troubled by lions, which leaped into the cattle-pens by night, and destroyed their cows. they even attacked the herds in open day. this was so unusual an occurrence that the people believed that they were bewitched--"given," as they said, "into the power of the lions by a neighboring tribe." they went once to attack the animals, but, being rather a cowardly people compared to bechuanas in general on such occasions, they returned without killing any. it is well known that if one of a troop of lions is killed, the others take the hint and leave that part of the country. so, the next time the herds were attacked, i went with the people, in order to encourage them to rid themselves of the annoyance by destroying one of the marauders. we found the lions on a small hill about a quarter of a mile in length, and covered with trees. a circle of men was formed round it, and they gradually closed up, ascending pretty near to each other. being down below on the plain with a native schoolmaster, named mebalwe, a most excellent man, i saw one of the lions sitting on a piece of rock within the now closed circle of men. mebalwe fired at him before i could, and the ball struck the rock on which the animal was sitting. he bit at the spot struck, as a dog does at a stick or stone thrown at him; then leaping away, broke through the opening circle and escaped unhurt. the men were afraid to attack him, perhaps on account of their belief in witchcraft. when the circle was re-formed, we saw two other lions in it; but we were afraid to fire lest we should strike the men, and they allowed the beasts to burst through also. if the bakatla had acted according to the custom of the country, they would have speared the lions in their attempt to get out. seeing we could not get them to kill one of the lions, we bent our footsteps toward the village; in going round the end of the hill, however, i saw one of the beasts sitting on a piece of rock as before, but this time he had a little bush in front. being about thirty yards off, i took a good aim at his body through the bush, and fired both barrels into it. the men then called out, "he is shot, he is shot!" others cried, "he has been shot by another man too; let us go to him!" i did not see any one else shoot at him, but i saw the lion's tail erected in anger behind the bush, and, turning to the people, said, "stop a little, till i load again." when in the act of ramming down the bullets, i heard a shout. starting, and looking half round, i saw the lion just in the act of springing upon me. i was upon a little height; he caught my shoulder as he sprang, and we both came to the ground below together. growling horribly close to my ear, he shook me as a terrier dog does a rat. the shock produced a stupor similar to that which seems to be felt by a mouse after the first shake of the cat. it caused a sort of dreaminess, in which there was no sense of pain nor feeling of terror, though quite conscious of all that was happening. it was like what patients partially under the influence of chloroform describe, who see all the operation, but feel not the knife. this singular condition was not the result of any mental process. the shake annihilated fear, and allowed no sense of horror in looking round at the beast. this peculiar state is probably produced in all animals killed by the carnivora; and if so, is a merciful provision by our benevolent creator for lessening the pain of death. turning round to relieve myself of the weight, as he had one paw on the back of my head, i saw his eyes directed to mebalwe, who was trying to shoot him at a distance of ten or fifteen yards. his gun, a flint one, missed fire in both barrels; the lion immediately left me, and, attacking mebalwe, bit his thigh. another man, whose life i had saved before, after he had been tossed by a buffalo, attempted to spear the lion while he was biting mebalwe. he left mebalwe and caught this man by the shoulder, but at that moment the bullets he had received took effect, and he fell down dead. the whole was the work of a few moments, and must have been his paroxysms of dying rage. in order to take out the charm from him, the bakatla on the following day made a huge bonfire over the carcass, which was declared to be that of the largest lion they had ever seen. besides crunching the bone into splinters, he left eleven teeth wounds on the upper part of my arm. a wound from this animal's tooth resembles a gun-shot wound; it is generally followed by a great deal of sloughing and discharge, and pains are felt in the part periodically ever afterward. i had on a tartan jacket on the occasion, and i believe that it wiped off all the virus from the teeth that pierced the flesh, for my two companions in this affray have both suffered from the peculiar pains, while i have escaped with only the inconvenience of a false joint in my limb. the man whose shoulder was wounded showed me his wound actually burst forth afresh on the same month of the following year. this curious point deserves the attention of inquirers. the different bechuana tribes are named after certain animals, showing probably that in former times they were addicted to animal-worship like the ancient egyptians. the term bakatla means "they of the monkey"; bakuena, "they of the alligator"; batlapi, "they of the fish": each tribe having a superstitious dread of the animal after which it is called. they also use the word "bina", to dance, in reference to the custom of thus naming themselves, so that, when you wish to ascertain what tribe they belong to, you say, "what do you dance?" it would seem as if that had been a part of the worship of old. a tribe never eats the animal which is its namesake, using the term "ila", hate or dread, in reference to killing it. we find traces of many ancient tribes in the country in individual members of those now extinct, as the batau, "they of the lion"; the banoga, "they of the serpent"; though no such tribes now exist. the use of the personal pronoun they, ba-ma, wa, va or ova, am-ki, &c., prevails very extensively in the names of tribes in africa. a single individual is indicated by the terms mo or le. thus mokwain is a single person of the bakwain tribe, and lekoa is a single white man or englishman--makoa being englishmen. i attached myself to the tribe called bakuena or bakwains, the chief of which, named sechele, was then living with his people at a place called shokuane. i was from the first struck by his intelligence, and by the marked manner in which we both felt drawn to each other. as this remarkable man has not only embraced christianity, but expounds its doctrines to his people, i will here give a brief sketch of his career. his great-grandfather mochoasele was a great traveler, and the first that ever told the bakwains of the existence of white men. in his father's lifetime two white travelers, whom i suppose to have been dr. cowan and captain donovan, passed through the country (in ), and, descending the river limpopo, were, with their party, all cut off by fever. the rain-makers there, fearing lest their wagons might drive away the rain, ordered them to be thrown into the river. this is the true account of the end of that expedition, as related to me by the son of the chief at whose village they perished. he remembered, when a boy, eating part of one of the horses, and said it tasted like zebra's flesh. thus they were not killed by the bangwaketse, as reported, for they passed the bakwains all well. the bakwains were then rich in cattle; and as one of the many evidences of the desiccation of the country, streams are pointed out where thousands and thousands of cattle formerly drank, but in which water now never flows, and where a single herd could not find fluid for its support. when sechele was still a boy, his father, also called mochoasele, was murdered by his own people for taking to himself the wives of his rich under-chiefs. the children being spared, their friends invited sebituane, the chief of the makololo, who was then in those parts, to reinstate them in the chieftainship. sebituane surrounded the town of the bakwains by night; and just as it began to dawn, his herald proclaimed in a loud voice that he had come to revenge the death of mochoasele. this was followed by sebituane's people beating loudly on their shields all round the town. the panic was tremendous, and the rush like that from a theatre on fire, while the makololo used their javelins on the terrified bakwains with a dexterity which they alone can employ. sebituane had given orders to his men to spare the sons of the chief; and one of them, meeting sechele, put him in ward by giving him such a blow on the head with a club as to render him insensible. the usurper was put to death; and sechele, reinstated in his chieftainship, felt much attached to sebituane. the circumstances here noticed ultimately led me, as will be seen by-and-by, into the new, well-watered country to which this same sebituane had preceded me by many years. sechele married the daughters of three of his under-chiefs, who had, on account of their blood relationship, stood by him in his adversity. this is one of the modes adopted for cementing the allegiance of a tribe. the government is patriarchal, each man being, by virtue of paternity, chief of his own children. they build their huts around his, and the greater the number of children, the more his importance increases. hence children are esteemed one of the greatest blessings, and are always treated kindly. near the centre of each circle of huts there is a spot called a "kotla", with a fireplace; here they work, eat, or sit and gossip over the news of the day. a poor man attaches himself to the kotla of a rich one, and is considered a child of the latter. an under-chief has a number of these circles around his; and the collection of kotlas around the great one in the middle of the whole, that of the principal chief, constitutes the town. the circle of huts immediately around the kotla of the chief is composed of the huts of his wives and those of his blood relations. he attaches the under-chiefs to himself and his government by marrying, as sechele did, their daughters, or inducing his brothers to do so. they are fond of the relationship to great families. if you meet a party of strangers, and the head man's relationship to some uncle of a certain chief is not at once proclaimed by his attendants, you may hear him whispering, "tell him who i am." this usually involves a counting on the fingers of a part of his genealogical tree, and ends in the important announcement that the head of the party is half-cousin to some well-known ruler. sechele was thus seated in his chieftainship when i made his acquaintance. on the first occasion in which i ever attempted to hold a public religious service, he remarked that it was the custom of his nation, when any new subject was brought before them, to put questions on it; and he begged me to allow him to do the same in this case. on expressing my entire willingness to answer his questions, he inquired if my forefathers knew of a future judgment. i replied in the affirmative, and began to describe the scene of the "great white throne, and him who shall sit on it, from whose face the heaven and earth shall flee away," &c. he said, "you startle me: these words make all my bones to shake; i have no more strength in me; but my forefathers were living at the same time yours were, and how is it that they did not send them word about these terrible things sooner? they all passed away into darkness without knowing whither they were going." i got out of the difficulty by explaining the geographical barriers in the north, and the gradual spread of knowledge from the south, to which we first had access by means of ships; and i expressed my belief that, as christ had said, the whole world would yet be enlightened by the gospel. pointing to the great kalahari desert, he said, "you never can cross that country to the tribes beyond; it is utterly impossible even for us black men, except in certain seasons, when more than the usual supply of rain falls, and an extraordinary growth of watermelons follows. even we who know the country would certainly perish without them." reasserting my belief in the words of christ, we parted; and it will be seen farther on that sechele himself assisted me in crossing that desert which had previously proved an insurmountable barrier to so many adventurers. as soon as he had an opportunity of learning, he set himself to read with such close application that, from being comparatively thin, the effect of having been fond of the chase, he became quite corpulent from want of exercise. mr. oswell gave him his first lesson in figures, and he acquired the alphabet on the first day of my residence at chonuane. he was by no means an ordinary specimen of the people, for i never went into the town but i was pressed to hear him read some chapters of the bible. isaiah was a great favorite with him; and he was wont to use the same phrase nearly which the professor of greek at glasgow, sir d. k. sandford, once used respecting the apostle paul, when reading his speeches in the acts: "he was a fine fellow, that paul!" "he was a fine man, that isaiah; he knew how to speak." sechele invariably offered me something to eat on every occasion of my visiting him. seeing me anxious that his people should believe the words of christ, he once said, "do you imagine these people will ever believe by your merely talking to them? i can make them do nothing except by thrashing them; and if you like, i shall call my head men, and with our litupa (whips of rhinoceros hide) we will soon make them all believe together." the idea of using entreaty and persuasion to subjects to become christians--whose opinion on no other matter would he condescend to ask--was especially surprising to him. he considered that they ought only to be too happy to embrace christianity at his command. during the space of two years and a half he continued to profess to his people his full conviction of the truth of christianity; and in all discussions on the subject he took that side, acting at the same time in an upright manner in all the relations of life. he felt the difficulties of his situation long before i did, and often said, "oh, i wish you had come to this country before i became entangled in the meshes of our customs!" in fact, he could not get rid of his superfluous wives, without appearing to be ungrateful to their parents, who had done so much for him in his adversity. in the hope that others would be induced to join him in his attachment to christianity, he asked me to begin family worship with him in his house. i did so; and by-and-by was surprised to hear how well he conducted the prayer in his own simple and beautiful style, for he was quite a master of his own language. at this time we were suffering from the effects of a drought, which will be described further on, and none except his family, whom he ordered to attend, came near his meeting. "in former times," said he, "when a chief was fond of hunting, all his people got dogs, and became fond of hunting too. if he was fond of dancing or music, all showed a liking to these amusements too. if the chief loved beer, they all rejoiced in strong drink. but in this case it is different. i love the word of god, and not one of my brethren will join me." one reason why we had no volunteer hypocrites was the hunger from drought, which was associated in their minds with the presence of christian instruction; and hypocrisy is not prone to profess a creed which seems to insure an empty stomach. sechele continued to make a consistent profession for about three years; and perceiving at last some of the difficulties of his case, and also feeling compassion for the poor women, who were by far the best of our scholars, i had no desire that he should be in any hurry to make a full profession by baptism, and putting away all his wives but one. his principal wife, too, was about the most unlikely subject in the tribe ever to become any thing else than an out-and-out greasy disciple of the old school. she has since become greatly altered, i hear, for the better; but again and again have i seen sechele send her out of church to put her gown on, and away she would go with her lips shot out, the very picture of unutterable disgust at his new-fangled notions. when he at last applied for baptism, i simply asked him how he, having the bible in his hand, and able to read it, thought he ought to act. he went home, gave each of his superfluous wives new clothing, and all his own goods, which they had been accustomed to keep in their huts for him, and sent them to their parents with an intimation that he had no fault to find with them, but that in parting with them he wished to follow the will of god. on the day on which he and his children were baptized, great numbers came to see the ceremony. some thought, from a stupid calumny circulated by enemies to christianity in the south, that the converts would be made to drink an infusion of "dead men's brains", and were astonished to find that water only was used at baptism. seeing several of the old men actually in tears during the service, i asked them afterward the cause of their weeping; they were crying to see their father, as the scotch remark over a case of suicide, "so far left to himself". they seemed to think that i had thrown the glamour over him, and that he had become mine. here commenced an opposition which we had not previously experienced. all the friends of the divorced wives became the opponents of our religion. the attendance at school and church diminished to very few besides the chief's own family. they all treated us still with respectful kindness, but to sechele himself they said things which, as he often remarked, had they ventured on in former times, would have cost them their lives. it was trying, after all we had done, to see our labors so little appreciated; but we had sown the good seed, and have no doubt but it will yet spring up, though we may not live to see the fruits. leaving this sketch of the chief, i proceed to give an equally rapid one of our dealing with his people, the bakena, or bakwains. a small piece of land, sufficient for a garden, was purchased when we first went to live with them, though that was scarcely necessary in a country where the idea of buying land was quite new. it was expected that a request for a suitable spot would have been made, and that we should have proceeded to occupy it as any other member of the tribe would. but we explained to them that we wished to avoid any cause of future dispute when land had become more valuable; or when a foolish chief began to reign, and we had erected large or expensive buildings, he might wish to claim the whole. these reasons were considered satisfactory. about pounds worth of goods were given for a piece of land, and an arrangement was come to that a similar piece should be allotted to any other missionary, at any other place to which the tribe might remove. the particulars of the sale sounded strangely in the ears of the tribe, but were nevertheless readily agreed to. in our relations with this people we were simply strangers exercising no authority or control whatever. our influence depended entirely on persuasion; and having taught them by kind conversation as well as by public instruction, i expected them to do what their own sense of right and wrong dictated. we never wished them to do right merely because it would be pleasing to us, nor thought ourselves to blame when they did wrong, although we were quite aware of the absurd idea to that effect. we saw that our teaching did good to the general mind of the people by bringing new and better motives into play. five instances are positively known to me in which, by our influence on public opinion, war was prevented; and where, in individual cases, we failed, the people did no worse than they did before we came into the country. in general they were slow, like all the african people hereafter to be described, in coming to a decision on religious subjects; but in questions affecting their worldly affairs they were keenly alive to their own interests. they might be called stupid in matters which had not come within the sphere of their observation, but in other things they showed more intelligence than is to be met with in our own uneducated peasantry. they are remarkably accurate in their knowledge of cattle, sheep, and goats, knowing exactly the kind of pasturage suited to each; and they select with great judgment the varieties of soil best suited to different kinds of grain. they are also familiar with the habits of wild animals, and in general are well up in the maxims which embody their ideas of political wisdom. the place where we first settled with the bakwains is called chonuane, and it happened to be visited, during the first year of our residence there, by one of those droughts which occur from time to time in even the most favored districts of africa. the belief in the gift or power of rain-making is one of the most deeply-rooted articles of faith in this country. the chief sechele was himself a noted rain-doctor, and believed in it implicitly. he has often assured me that he found it more difficult to give up his faith in that than in any thing else which christianity required him to abjure. i pointed out to him that the only feasible way of watering the gardens was to select some good, never-failing river, make a canal, and irrigate the adjacent lands. this suggestion was immediately adopted, and soon the whole tribe was on the move to the kolobeng, a stream about forty miles distant. the experiment succeeded admirably during the first year. the bakwains made the canal and dam in exchange for my labor in assisting to build a square house for their chief. they also built their own school under my superintendence. our house at the river kolobeng, which gave a name to the settlement, was the third which i had reared with my own hands. a native smith taught me to weld iron; and having improved by scraps of information in that line from mr. moffat, and also in carpentering and gardening, i was becoming handy at almost any trade, besides doctoring and preaching; and as my wife could make candles, soap, and clothes, we came nearly up to what may be considered as indispensable in the accomplishments of a missionary family in central africa, namely, the husband to be a jack-of-all-trades without doors, and the wife a maid-of-all-work within. but in our second year again no rain fell. in the third the same extraordinary drought followed. indeed, not ten inches of water fell during these two years, and the kolobeng ran dry; so many fish were killed that the hyaenas from the whole country round collected to the feast, and were unable to finish the putrid masses. a large old alligator, which had never been known to commit any depredations, was found left high and dry in the mud among the victims. the fourth year was equally unpropitious, the fall of rain being insufficient to bring the grain to maturity. nothing could be more trying. we dug down in the bed of the river deeper and deeper as the water receded, striving to get a little to keep the fruit-trees alive for better times, but in vain. needles lying out of doors for months did not rust; and a mixture of sulphuric acid and water, used in a galvanic battery, parted with all its water to the air, instead of imbibing more from it, as it would have done in england. the leaves of indigenous trees were all drooping, soft, and shriveled, though not dead; and those of the mimosae were closed at midday, the same as they are at night. in the midst of this dreary drought, it was wonderful to see those tiny creatures, the ants, running about with their accustomed vivacity. i put the bulb of a thermometer three inches under the soil, in the sun, at midday, and found the mercury to stand at deg. to deg.; and if certain kinds of beetles were placed on the surface, they ran about a few seconds and expired. but this broiling heat only augmented the activity of the long-legged black ants: they never tire; their organs of motion seem endowed with the same power as is ascribed by physiologists to the muscles of the human heart, by which that part of the frame never becomes fatigued, and which may be imparted to all our bodily organs in that higher sphere to which we fondly hope to rise. where do these ants get their moisture? our house was built on a hard ferruginous conglomerate, in order to be out of the way of the white ant, but they came in despite the precaution; and not only were they, in this sultry weather, able individually to moisten soil to the consistency of mortar for the formation of galleries, which, in their way of working, is done by night (so that they are screened from the observation of birds by day in passing and repassing toward any vegetable matter they may wish to devour), but, when their inner chambers were laid open, these were also surprisingly humid. yet there was no dew, and, the house being placed on a rock, they could have no subterranean passage to the bed of the river, which ran about three hundred yards below the hill. can it be that they have the power of combining the oxygen and hydrogen of their vegetable food by vital force so as to form water?* * when we come to angola, i shall describe an insect there which distills several pints of water every night. rain, however, would not fall. the bakwains believed that i had bound sechele with some magic spell, and i received deputations, in the evenings, of the old counselors, entreating me to allow him to make only a few showers: "the corn will die if you refuse, and we shall become scattered. only let him make rain this once, and we shall all, men, women, and children, come to the school, and sing and pray as long as you please." it was in vain to protest that i wished sechele to act just according to his own ideas of what was right, as he found the law laid down in the bible, and it was distressing to appear hard-hearted to them. the clouds often collected promisingly over us, and rolling thunder seemed to portend refreshing showers, but next morning the sun would rise in a clear, cloudless sky; indeed, even these lowering appearances were less frequent by far than days of sunshine are in london. the natives, finding it irksome to sit and wait helplessly until god gives them rain from heaven, entertain the more comfortable idea that they can help themselves by a variety of preparations, such as charcoal made of burned bats, inspissated renal deposit of the mountain cony--'hyrax capensis'--(which, by the way, is used, in the form of pills, as a good antispasmodic, under the name of "stone-sweat"*), the internal parts of different animals--as jackals' livers, baboons' and lions' hearts, and hairy calculi from the bowels of old cows--serpents' skins and vertebrae, and every kind of tuber, bulb, root, and plant to be found in the country. although you disbelieve their efficacy in charming the clouds to pour out their refreshing treasures, yet, conscious that civility is useful every where, you kindly state that you think they are mistaken as to their power. the rain-doctor selects a particular bulbous root, pounds it, and administers a cold infusion to a sheep, which in five minutes afterward expires in convulsions. part of the same bulb is converted into smoke, and ascends toward the sky; rain follows in a day or two. the inference is obvious. were we as much harassed by droughts, the logic would be irresistible in england in . * the name arises from its being always voided on one spot, in the manner practiced by others of the rhinocerontine family; and, by the action of the sun, it becomes a black, pitchy substance. as the bakwains believed that there must be some connection between the presence of "god's word" in their town and these successive and distressing droughts, they looked with no good will at the church bell, but still they invariably treated us with kindness and respect. i am not aware of ever having had an enemy in the tribe. the only avowed cause of dislike was expressed by a very influential and sensible man, the uncle of sechele. "we like you as well as if you had been born among us; you are the only white man we can become familiar with (thoaela); but we wish you to give up that everlasting preaching and praying; we can not become familiar with that at all. you see we never get rain, while those tribes who never pray as we do obtain abundance." this was a fact; and we often saw it raining on the hills ten miles off, while it would not look at us "even with one eye". if the prince of the power of the air had no hand in scorching us up, i fear i often gave him the credit of doing so. as for the rain-makers, they carried the sympathies of the people along with them, and not without reason. with the following arguments they were all acquainted, and in order to understand their force, we must place ourselves in their position, and believe, as they do, that all medicines act by a mysterious charm. the term for cure may be translated "charm" ('alaha'). medical doctor. hail, friend! how very many medicines you have about you this morning! why, you have every medicine in the country here. rain doctor. very true, my friend; and i ought; for the whole country needs the rain which i am making. m. d. so you really believe that you can command the clouds? i think that can be done by god alone. r. d. we both believe the very same thing. it is god that makes the rain, but i pray to him by means of these medicines, and, the rain coming, of course it is then mine. it was i who made it for the bakwains for many years, when they were at shokuane; through my wisdom, too, their women became fat and shining. ask them; they will tell you the same as i do. m. d. but we are distinctly told in the parting words of our savior that we can pray to god acceptably in his name alone, and not by means of medicines. r. d. truly! but god told us differently. he made black men first, and did not love us as he did the white men. he made you beautiful, and gave you clothing, and guns, and gunpowder, and horses, and wagons, and many other things about which we know nothing. but toward us he had no heart. he gave us nothing except the assegai, and cattle, and rain-making; and he did not give us hearts like yours. we never love each other. other tribes place medicines about our country to prevent the rain, so that we may be dispersed by hunger, and go to them, and augment their power. we must dissolve their charms by our medicines. god has given us one little thing, which you know nothing of. he has given us the knowledge of certain medicines by which we can make rain. we do not despise those things which you possess, though we are ignorant of them. we don't understand your book, yet we don't despise it. you ought not to despise our little knowledge, though you are ignorant of it. m. d. i don't despise what i am ignorant of; i only think you are mistaken in saying that you have medicines which can influence the rain at all. r. d. that's just the way people speak when they talk on a subject of which they have no knowledge. when we first opened our eyes, we found our forefathers making rain, and we follow in their footsteps. you, who send to kuruman for corn, and irrigate your garden, may do without rain; we can not manage in that way. if we had no rain, the cattle would have no pasture, the cows give no milk, our children become lean and die, our wives run away to other tribes who do make rain and have corn, and the whole tribe become dispersed and lost; our fire would go out. m. d. i quite agree with you as to the value of the rain; but you can not charm the clouds by medicines. you wait till you see the clouds come, then you use your medicines, and take the credit which belongs to god only. r. d. i use my medicines, and you employ yours; we are both doctors, and doctors are not deceivers. you give a patient medicine. sometimes god is pleased to heal him by means of your medicine; sometimes not--he dies. when he is cured, you take the credit of what god does. i do the same. sometimes god grants us rain, sometimes not. when he does, we take the credit of the charm. when a patient dies, you don't give up trust in your medicine, neither do i when rain fails. if you wish me to leave off my medicines, why continue your own? m. d. i give medicine to living creatures within my reach, and can see the effects, though no cure follows; you pretend to charm the clouds, which are so far above us that your medicines never reach them. the clouds usually lie in one direction, and your smoke goes in another. god alone can command the clouds. only try and wait patiently; god will give us rain without your medicines. r. d. mahala-ma-kapa-a-a!! well, i always thought white men were wise till this morning. who ever thought of making trial of starvation? is death pleasant, then? m. d. could you make it rain on one spot and not on another? r. d. i wouldn't think of trying. i like to see the whole country green, and all the people glad; the women clapping their hands, and giving me their ornaments for thankfulness, and lullilooing for joy. m. d. i think you deceive both them and yourself. r. d. well, then, there is a pair of us (meaning both are rogues). the above is only a specimen of their way of reasoning, in which, when the language is well understood, they are perceived to be remarkably acute. these arguments are generally known, and i never succeeded in convincing a single individual of their fallacy, though i tried to do so in every way i could think of. their faith in medicines as charms is unbounded. the general effect of argument is to produce the impression that you are not anxious for rain at all; and it is very undesirable to allow the idea to spread that you do not take a generous interest in their welfare. an angry opponent of rain-making in a tribe would be looked upon as were some greek merchants in england during the russian war. the conduct of the people during this long-continued drought was remarkably good. the women parted with most of their ornaments to purchase corn from more fortunate tribes. the children scoured the country in search of the numerous bulbs and roots which can sustain life, and the men engaged in hunting. very great numbers of the large game, buffaloes, zebras, giraffes, tsessebes, kamas or hartebeests, kokongs or gnus, pallahs, rhinoceroses, etc., congregated at some fountains near kolobeng, and the trap called "hopo" was constructed, in the lands adjacent, for their destruction. the hopo consists of two hedges in the form of the letter v, which are very high and thick near the angle. instead of the hedges being joined there, they are made to form a lane of about fifty yards in length, at the extremity of which a pit is formed, six or eight feet deep, and about twelve or fifteen in breadth and length. trunks of trees are laid across the margins of the pit, and more especially over that nearest the lane where the animals are expected to leap in, and over that farthest from the lane where it is supposed they will attempt to escape after they are in. the trees form an overlapping border, and render escape almost impossible. the whole is carefully decked with short green rushes, making the pit like a concealed pitfall. as the hedges are frequently about a mile long, and about as much apart at their extremities, a tribe making a circle three or four miles round the country adjacent to the opening, and gradually closing up, are almost sure to inclose a large body of game. driving it up with shouts to the narrow part of the hopo, men secreted there throw their javelins into the affrighted herds, and on the animals rush to the opening presented at the converging hedges, and into the pit, till that is full of a living mass. some escape by running over the others, as a smithfield market-dog does over the sheep's backs. it is a frightful scene. the men, wild with excitement, spear the lovely animals with mad delight; others of the poor creatures, borne down by the weight of their dead and dying companions, every now and then make the whole mass heave in their smothering agonies. the bakwains often killed between sixty and seventy head of large game at the different hopos in a single week; and as every one, both rich and poor, partook of the prey, the meat counteracted the bad effects of an exclusively vegetable diet. when the poor, who had no salt, were forced to live entirely on roots, they were often troubled with indigestion. such cases we had frequent opportunities of seeing at other times, for, the district being destitute of salt, the rich alone could afford to buy it. the native doctors, aware of the cause of the malady, usually prescribed some of that ingredient with their medicines. the doctors themselves had none, so the poor resorted to us for aid. we took the hint, and henceforth cured the disease by giving a teaspoonful of salt, minus the other remedies. either milk or meat had the same effect, though not so rapidly as salt. long afterward, when i was myself deprived of salt for four months, at two distinct periods, i felt no desire for that condiment, but i was plagued by very great longing for the above articles of food. this continued as long as i was confined to an exclusively vegetable diet, and when i procured a meal of flesh, though boiled in perfectly fresh rain-water, it tasted as pleasantly saltish as if slightly impregnated with the condiment. milk or meat, obtained in however small quantities, removed entirely the excessive longing and dreaming about roasted ribs of fat oxen, and bowls of cool thick milk gurgling forth from the big-bellied calabashes; and i could then understand the thankfulness to mrs. l. often expressed by poor bakwain women, in the interesting condition, for a very little of either. in addition to other adverse influences, the general uncertainty, though not absolute want of food, and the necessity of frequent absence for the purpose of either hunting game or collecting roots and fruits, proved a serious barrier to the progress of the people in knowledge. our own education in england is carried on at the comfortable breakfast and dinner table, and by the cosy fire, as well as in the church and school. few english people with stomachs painfully empty would be decorous at church any more than they are when these organs are overcharged. ragged schools would have been a failure had not the teachers wisely provided food for the body as well as food for the mind; and not only must we show a friendly interest in the bodily comfort of the objects of our sympathy as a christian duty, but we can no more hope for healthy feelings among the poor, either at home or abroad, without feeding them into them, than we can hope to see an ordinary working-bee reared into a queen-mother by the ordinary food of the hive. sending the gospel to the heathen must, if this view be correct, include much more than is implied in the usual picture of a missionary, namely, a man going about with a bible under his arm. the promotion of commerce ought to be specially attended to, as this, more speedily than any thing else, demolishes that sense of isolation which heathenism engenders, and makes the tribes feel themselves mutually dependent on, and mutually beneficial to each other. with a view to this, the missionaries at kuruman got permission from the government for a trader to reside at the station, and a considerable trade has been the result; the trader himself has become rich enough to retire with a competence. those laws which still prevent free commercial intercourse among the civilized nations seem to be nothing else but the remains of our own heathenism. my observations on this subject make me extremely desirous to promote the preparation of the raw materials of european manufactures in africa, for by that means we may not only put a stop to the slave-trade, but introduce the negro family into the body corporate of nations, no one member of which can suffer without the others suffering with it. success in this, in both eastern and western africa, would lead, in the course of time, to a much larger diffusion of the blessings of civilization than efforts exclusively spiritual and educational confined to any one small tribe. these, however, it would of course be extremely desirable to carry on at the same time at large central and healthy stations, for neither civilization nor christianity can be promoted alone. in fact, they are inseparable. chapter . the boers--their treatment of the natives--seizure of native children for slaves--english traders--alarm of the boers--native espionage--the tale of the cannon--the boers threaten sechele--in violation of treaty, they stop english traders and expel missionaries--they attack the bakwains--their mode of fighting--the natives killed and the school-children carried into slavery--destruction of english property--african housebuilding and housekeeping--mode of spending the day--scarcity of food--locusts--edible frogs--scavenger beetle--continued hostility of the boers--the journey north--preparations--fellow-travelers--the kalahari desert-- vegetation--watermelons--the inhabitants--the bushmen--their nomad mode of life--appearance--the bakalahari--their love for agriculture and for domestic animals--timid character--mode of obtaining water--female water-suckers--the desert--water hidden. another adverse influence with which the mission had to contend was the vicinity of the boers of the cashan mountains, otherwise named "magaliesberg". these are not to be counfounded with the cape colonists, who sometimes pass by the name. the word boer simply means "farmer", and is not synonymous with our word boor. indeed, to the boers generally the latter term would be quite inappropriate, for they are a sober, industrious, and most hospitable body of peasantry. those, however, who have fled from english law on various pretexts, and have been joined by english deserters and every other variety of bad character in their distant localities, are unfortunately of a very different stamp. the great objection many of the boers had, and still have, to english law, is that it makes no distinction between black men and white. they felt aggrieved by their supposed losses in the emancipation of their hottentot slaves, and determined to erect themselves into a republic, in which they might pursue, without molestation, the "proper treatment of the blacks". it is almost needless to add that the "proper treatment" has always contained in it the essential element of slavery, namely, compulsory unpaid labor. one section of this body, under the late mr. hendrick potgeiter, penetrated the interior as far as the cashan mountains, whence a zulu or caffre chief, named mosilikatze, had been expelled by the well-known caffre dingaan; and a glad welcome was given them by the bechuana tribes, who had just escaped the hard sway of that cruel chieftain. they came with the prestige of white men and deliverers; but the bechuanas soon found, as they expressed it, "that mosilikatze was cruel to his enemies, and kind to those he conquered; but that the boers destroyed their enemies, and made slaves of their friends." the tribes who still retain the semblance of independence are forced to perform all the labor of the fields, such as manuring the land, weeding, reaping, building, making dams and canals, and at the same time to support themselves. i have myself been an eye-witness of boers coming to a village, and, according to their usual custom, demanding twenty or thirty women to weed their gardens, and have seen these women proceed to the scene of unrequited toil, carrying their own food on their heads, their children on their backs, and instruments of labor on their shoulders. nor have the boers any wish to conceal the meanness of thus employing unpaid labor; on the contrary, every one of them, from mr. potgeiter and mr. gert krieger, the commandants, downward, lauded his own humanity and justice in making such an equitable regulation. "we make the people work for us, in consideration of allowing them to live in our country." i can appeal to the commandant krieger if the foregoing is not a fair and impartial statement of the views of himself and his people. i am sensible of no mental bias toward or against these boers; and during the several journeys i made to the poor enslaved tribes, i never avoided the whites, but tried to cure and did administer remedies to their sick, without money and without price. it is due to them to state that i was invariably treated with respect; but it is most unfortunate that they should have been left by their own church for so many years to deteriorate and become as degraded as the blacks, whom the stupid prejudice against color leads them to detest. this new species of slavery which they have adopted serves to supply the lack of field-labor only. the demand for domestic servants must be met by forays on tribes which have good supplies of cattle. the portuguese can quote instances in which blacks become so degraded by the love of strong drink as actually to sell themselves; but never in any one case, within the memory of man, has a bechuana chief sold any of his people, or a bechuana man his child. hence the necessity for a foray to seize children. and those individual boers who would not engage in it for the sake of slaves can seldom resist the two-fold plea of a well-told story of an intended uprising of the devoted tribe, and the prospect of handsome pay in the division of the captured cattle besides. it is difficult for a person in a civilized country to conceive that any body of men possessing the common attributes of humanity (and these boers are by no means destitute of the better feelings of our nature) should with one accord set out, after loading their own wives and children with caresses, and proceed to shoot down in cold blood men and women, of a different color, it is true, but possessed of domestic feelings and affections equal to their own. i saw and conversed with children in the houses of boers who had, by their own and their masters' account, been captured, and in several instances i traced the parents of these unfortunates, though the plan approved by the long-headed among the burghers is to take children so young that they soon forget their parents and their native language also. it was long before i could give credit to the tales of bloodshed told by native witnesses, and had i received no other testimony but theirs i should probably have continued skeptical to this day as to the truth of the accounts; but when i found the boers themselves, some bewailing and denouncing, others glorying in the bloody scenes in which they had been themselves the actors, i was compelled to admit the validity of the testimony, and try to account for the cruel anomaly. they are all traditionally religious, tracing their descent from some of the best men (huguenots and dutch) the world ever saw. hence they claim to themselves the title of "christians", and all the colored race are "black property" or "creatures". they being the chosen people of god, the heathen are given to them for an inheritance, and they are the rod of divine vengeance on the heathen, as were the jews of old. living in the midst of a native population much larger than themselves, and at fountains removed many miles from each other, they feel somewhat in the same insecure position as do the americans in the southern states. the first question put by them to strangers is respecting peace; and when they receive reports from disaffected or envious natives against any tribe, the case assumes all the appearance and proportions of a regular insurrection. severe measures then appear to the most mildly disposed among them as imperatively called for, and, however bloody the massacre that follows, no qualms of conscience ensue: it is a dire necessity for the sake of peace. indeed, the late mr. hendrick potgeiter most devoutly believed himself to be the great peacemaker of the country. but how is it that the natives, being so vastly superior in numbers to the boers, do not rise and annihilate them? the people among whom they live are bechuanas, not caffres, though no one would ever learn that distinction from a boer; and history does not contain one single instance in which the bechuanas, even those of them who possess fire-arms, have attacked either the boers or the english. if there is such an instance, i am certain it is not generally known, either beyond or in the cape colony. they have defended themselves when attacked, as in the case of sechele, but have never engaged in offensive war with europeans. we have a very different tale to tell of the caffres, and the difference has always been so evident to these border boers that, ever since those "magnificent savages"* obtained possession of fire-arms, not one boer has ever attempted to settle in caffreland, or even face them as an enemy in the field. the boers have generally manifested a marked antipathy to any thing but "long-shot" warfare, and, sidling away in their emigrations toward the more effeminate bechuanas, have left their quarrels with the caffres to be settled by the english, and their wars to be paid for by english gold. * the "united service journal" so styles them. the bakwains at kolobeng had the spectacle of various tribes enslaved before their eyes--the bakatla, the batlokua, the bahukeng, the bamosetla, and two other tribes of bakwains were all groaning under the oppression of unrequited labor. this would not have been felt as so great an evil but that the young men of those tribes, anxious to obtain cattle, the only means of rising to respectability and importance among their own people, were in the habit of sallying forth, like our irish and highland reapers, to procure work in the cape colony. after laboring there three or four years, in building stone dikes and dams for the dutch farmers, they were well content if at the end of that time they could return with as many cows. on presenting one to their chief, they ranked as respectable men in the tribe ever afterward. these volunteers were highly esteemed among the dutch, under the name of mantatees. they were paid at the rate of one shilling a day and a large loaf of bread between six of them. numbers of them, who had formerly seen me about twelve hundred miles inland from the cape, recognized me with the loud laughter of joy when i was passing them at their work in the roggefelt and bokkefelt, within a few days of cape town. i conversed with them and with elders of the dutch church, for whom they were working, and found that the system was thoroughly satisfactory to both parties. i do not believe that there is one boer, in the cashan or magaliesberg country, who would deny that a law was made, in consequence of this labor passing to the colony, to deprive these laborers of their hardly-earned cattle, for the very cogent reason that, "if they want to work, let them work for us their masters," though boasting that in their case it would not be paid for. i can never cease to be most unfeignedly thankful that i was not born in a land of slaves. no one can understand the effect of the unutterable meanness of the slave-system on the minds of those who, but for the strange obliquity which prevents them from feeling the degradation of not being gentlemen enough to pay for services rendered, would be equal in virtue to ourselves. fraud becomes as natural to them as "paying one's way" is to the rest of mankind. wherever a missionary lives, traders are sure to come; they are mutually dependent, and each aids in the work of the other; but experience shows that the two employments can not very well be combined in the same person. such a combination would not be morally wrong, for nothing would be more fair, and apostolical too, than that the man who devotes his time to the spiritual welfare of a people should derive temporal advantage from upright commerce, which traders, who aim exclusively at their own enrichment, modestly imagine ought to be left to them. but, though it is right for missionaries to trade, the present system of missions renders it inexpedient to spend time in so doing. no missionary with whom i ever came in contact, traded; and while the traders, whom we introduced and rendered secure in the country, waxed rich, the missionaries have invariably remained poor, and have died so. the jesuits, in africa at least, were wiser in their generation than we; theirs were large, influential communities, proceeding on the system of turning the abilities of every brother into that channel in which he was most likely to excel; one, fond of natural history, was allowed to follow his bent; another, fond of literature, found leisure to pursue his studies; and he who was great in barter was sent in search of ivory and gold-dust; so that while in the course of performing the religious acts of his mission to distant tribes, he found the means of aiding effectually the brethren whom he had left in the central settlement.* we protestants, with the comfortable conviction of superiority, have sent out missionaries with a bare subsistence only, and are unsparing in our laudations of some for not being worldly-minded whom our niggardliness made to live as did the prodigal son. i do not speak of myself, nor need i to do so, but for that very reason i feel at liberty to interpose a word in behalf of others. i have before my mind at this moment facts and instances which warrant my putting the case in this way: the command to "go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature" must be obeyed by christians either personally or by substitute. now it is quite possible to find men whose love for the heathen and devotion to the work will make them ready to go forth on the terms "bare subsistence", but what can be thought of the justice, to say nothing of the generosity, of christians and churches who not only work their substitutes at the lowest terms, but regard what they give as charity! the matter is the more grave in respect to the protestant missionary, who may have a wife and family. the fact is, there are many cases in which it is right, virtuous, and praiseworthy for a man to sacrifice every thing for a great object, but in which it would be very wrong for others, interested in the object as much as he, to suffer or accept the sacrifice, if they can prevent it. * the dutch clergy, too, are not wanting in worldly wisdom. a fountain is bought, and the lands which it can irrigate parceled out and let to villagers. as they increase in numbers, the rents rise and the church becomes rich. with pounds per annum in addition from government, the salary amounts to or pounds a year. the clergymen then preach abstinence from politics as a christian duty. it is quite clear that, with pounds a year, but little else except pure spirituality is required. english traders sold those articles which the boers most dread, namely, arms and ammunition; and when the number of guns amounted to five, so much alarm was excited among our neighbors that an expedition of several hundred boers was seriously planned to deprive the bakwains of their guns. knowing that the latter would rather have fled to the kalahari desert than deliver up their weapons and become slaves, i proceeded to the commandant, mr. gert krieger, and, representing the evils of any such expedition, prevailed upon him to defer it; but that point being granted, the boer wished to gain another, which was that i should act as a spy over the bakwains. i explained the impossibility of my complying with his wish, even though my principles as an englishman had not stood in the way, by referring to an instance in which sechele had gone with his whole force to punish an under-chief without my knowledge. this man, whose name was kake, rebelled, and was led on in his rebellion by his father-in-law, who had been regicide in the case of sechele's father. several of those who remained faithful to that chief were maltreated by kake while passing to the desert in search of skins. we had just come to live with the bakwains when this happened, and sechele consulted me. i advised mild measures, but the messengers he sent to kake were taunted with the words, "he only pretends to wish to follow the advice of the teacher: sechele is a coward; let him come and fight if he dare." the next time the offense was repeated, sechele told me he was going to hunt elephants; and as i knew the system of espionage which prevails among all the tribes, i never made inquiries that would convey the opinion that i distrusted them. i gave credit to his statement. he asked the loan of a black-metal pot to cook with, as theirs of pottery are brittle. i gave it and a handful of salt, and desired him to send back two tit-bits, the proboscis and fore-foot of the elephant. he set off, and i heard nothing more until we saw the bakwains carrying home their wounded, and heard some of the women uttering the loud wail of sorrow for the dead, and others pealing forth the clear scream of victory. it was then clear that sechele had attacked and driven away the rebel. mentioning this to the commandant in proof of the impossibility of granting his request, i had soon an example how quickly a story can grow among idle people. the five guns were, within one month, multiplied into a tale of five hundred, and the cooking-pot, now in a museum at cape town, was magnified into a cannon; "i had myself confessed to the loan." where the five hundred guns came from, it was easy to divine; for, knowing that i used a sextant, my connection with government was a thing of course; and, as i must know all her majesty's counsels, i was questioned on the subject of the indistinct rumors which had reached them of lord rosse's telescope. "what right has your government to set up that large glass at the cape to look after us behind the cashan mountains?" many of the boers visited us afterward at kolobeng, some for medical advice, and others to trade in those very articles which their own laws and policy forbid. when i happened to stumble upon any of them in the town, with his muskets and powder displayed, he would begin an apology, on the ground that he was a poor man, etc., which i always cut short by frankly saying that i had nothing to do with either the boers or their laws. many attempts were made during these visits to elicit the truth about the guns and cannon; and ignorant of the system of espionage which prevails, eager inquiries were made by them among those who could jabber a little dutch. it is noticeable that the system of espionage is as well developed among the savage tribes as in austria or russia. it is a proof of barbarism. every man in a tribe feels himself bound to tell the chief every thing that comes to his knowledge, and, when questioned by a stranger, either gives answers which exhibit the utmost stupidity, or such as he knows will be agreeable to his chief. i believe that in this way have arisen tales of their inability to count more than ten, as was asserted of the bechuanas about the very time when sechele's father counted out one thousand head of cattle as a beginning of the stock of his young son. in the present case, sechele, knowing every question put to his people, asked me how they ought to answer. my reply was, "tell the truth." every one then declared that no cannon existed there; and our friends, judging the answer by what they themselves would in the circumstances have said, were confirmed in the opinion that the bakwains actually possessed artillery. this was in some degree beneficial to us, inasmuch as fear prevented any foray in our direction for eight years. during that time no winter passed without one or two tribes in the east country being plundered of both cattle and children by the boers. the plan pursued is the following: one or two friendly tribes are forced to accompany a party of mounted boers, and these expeditions can be got up only in the winter, when horses may be used without danger of being lost by disease. when they reach the tribe to be attacked, the friendly natives are ranged in front, to form, as they say, "a shield"; the boers then coolly fire over their heads till the devoted people flee and leave cattle, wives, and children to the captors. this was done in nine cases during my residence in the interior, and on no occasion was a drop of boer's blood shed. news of these deeds spread quickly among the bakwains, and letters were repeatedly sent by the boers to sechele, ordering him to come and surrender himself as their vassal, and stop english traders from proceeding into the country with fire-arms for sale. but the discovery of lake ngami, hereafter to be described, made the traders come in five-fold greater numbers, and sechele replied, "i was made an independent chief and placed here by god, and not by you. i was never conquered by mosilikatze, as those tribes whom you rule over; and the english are my friends. i get every thing i wish from them. i can not hinder them from going where they like." those who are old enough to remember the threatened invasion of our own island may understand the effect which the constant danger of a boerish invasion had on the minds of the bakwains; but no others can conceive how worrying were the messages and threats from the endless self-constituted authorities of the magaliesberg boers; and when to all this harassing annoyance was added the scarcity produced by the drought, we could not wonder at, though we felt sorry for, their indisposition to receive instruction. the myth of the black pot assumed serious proportions. i attempted to benefit the tribes among the boers of magaliesberg by placing native teachers at different points. "you must teach the blacks," said mr. hendrick potgeiter, the commandant in chief, "that they are not equal to us." other boers told me, "i might as well teach the baboons on the rocks as the africans," but declined the test which i proposed, namely, to examine whether they or my native attendants could read best. two of their clergymen came to baptize the children of the boers; so, supposing these good men would assist me in overcoming the repugnance of their flock to the education of the blacks, i called on them; but my visit ended in a 'ruse' practiced by the boerish commandant, whereby i was led, by professions of the greatest friendship, to retire to kolobeng, while a letter passed me by another way to the other missionaries in the south, demanding my instant recall "for lending a cannon to their enemies." the colonial government was also gravely informed that the story was true, and i came to be looked upon as a most suspicious character in consequence. these notices of the boers are not intended to produce a sneer at their ignorance, but to excite the compassion of their friends. they are perpetually talking about their laws; but practically theirs is only the law of the strongest. the bechuanas could never understand the changes which took place in their commandants. "why, one can never know who is the chief among these boers. like the bushmen, they have no king--they must be the bushmen of the english." the idea that any tribe of men could be so senseless as not to have an hereditary chief was so absurd to these people, that, in order not to appear equally stupid, i was obliged to tell them that we english were so anxious to preserve the royal blood, that we had made a young lady our chief. this seemed to them a most convincing proof of our sound sense. we shall see farther on the confidence my account of our queen inspired. the boers, encouraged by the accession of mr. pretorius, determined at last to put a stop to english traders going past kolobeng, by dispersing the tribe of bakwains, and expelling all the missionaries. sir george cathcart proclaimed the independence of the boers, the best thing that could have been done had they been between us and the caffres. a treaty was entered into with these boers; an article for the free passage of englishmen to the country beyond, and also another, that no slavery should be allowed in the independent territory, were duly inserted, as expressive of the views of her majesty's government at home. "but what about the missionaries?" inquired the boers. "you may do as you please with them," is said to have been the answer of the "commissioner". this remark, if uttered at all, was probably made in joke: designing men, however, circulated it, and caused the general belief in its accuracy which now prevails all over the country, and doubtless led to the destruction of three mission stations immediately after. the boers, four hundred in number, were sent by the late mr. pretorius to attack the bakwains in . boasting that the english had given up all the blacks into their power, and had agreed to aid them in their subjugation by preventing all supplies of ammunition from coming into the bechuana country, they assaulted the bakwains, and, besides killing a considerable number of adults, carried off two hundred of our school children into slavery. the natives under sechele defended themselves till the approach of night enabled them to flee to the mountains; and having in that defense killed a number of the enemy, the very first ever slain in this country by bechuanas, i received the credit of having taught the tribe to kill boers! my house, which had stood perfectly secure for years under the protection of the natives, was plundered in revenge. english gentlemen, who had come in the footsteps of mr. cumming to hunt in the country beyond, and had deposited large quantities of stores in the same keeping, and upward of eighty head of cattle as relays for the return journeys, were robbed of all, and, when they came back to kolobeng, found the skeletons of the guardians strewed all over the place. the books of a good library--my solace in our solitude--were not taken away, but handfuls of the leaves were torn out and scattered over the place. my stock of medicines was smashed; and all our furniture and clothing carried off and sold at public auction to pay the expenses of the foray. i do not mention these things by way of making a pitiful wail over my losses, nor in order to excite commiseration; for, though i do feel sorry for the loss of lexicons, dictionaries, &c., which had been the companions of my boyhood, yet, after all, the plundering only set me entirely free for my expedition to the north, and i have never since had a moment's concern for any thing i left behind. the boers resolved to shut up the interior, and i determined to open the country, and we shall see who have been most successful in resolution, they or i. a short sketch of african housekeeping may not prove uninteresting to the reader. the entire absence of shops led us to make every thing we needed from the raw materials. you want bricks to build a house, and must forthwith proceed to the field, cut down a tree, and saw it into planks to make the brick-moulds; the materials for doors and windows, too, are standing in the forest; and, if you want to be respected by the natives, a house of decent dimensions, costing an immense amount of manual labor, must be built. the people can not assist you much; for, though most willing to labor for wages, the bakwains have a curious inability to make or put things square: like all bechuanas, their dwellings are made round. in the case of three large houses, erected by myself at different times, every brick and stick had to be put square by my own right hand. having got the meal ground, the wife proceeds to make it into bread; an extempore oven is often constructed by scooping out a large hole in an anthill, and using a slab of stone for a door. another plan, which might be adopted by the australians to produce something better than their "dampers", is to make a good fire on a level piece of ground, and, when the ground is thoroughly heated, place the dough in a small, short-handled frying-pan, or simply on the hot ashes; invert any sort of metal pot over it, draw the ashes around, and then make a small fire on the top. dough, mixed with a little leaven from a former baking, and allowed to stand an hour or two in the sun, will by this process become excellent bread. we made our own butter, a jar serving as a churn; and our own candles by means of moulds; and soap was procured from the ashes of the plant salsola, or from wood-ashes, which in africa contain so little alkaline matter that the boiling of successive leys has to be continued for a month or six weeks before the fat is saponified. there is not much hardship in being almost entirely dependent on ourselves; there is something of the feeling which must have animated alexander selkirk on seeing conveniences springing up before him from his own ingenuity; and married life is all the sweeter when so many comforts emanate directly from the thrifty striving housewife's hands. to some it may appear quite a romantic mode of life; it is one of active benevolence, such as the good may enjoy at home. take a single day as a sample of the whole. we rose early, because, however hot the day may have been, the evening, night, and morning at kolobeng were deliciously refreshing; cool is not the word, where you have neither an increase of cold nor heat to desire, and where you can sit out till midnight with no fear of coughs or rheumatism. after family worship and breakfast between six and seven, we went to keep school for all who would attend--men, women, and children being all invited. school over at eleven o'clock, while the missionary's wife was occupied in domestic matters, the missionary himself had some manual labor as a smith, carpenter, or gardener, according to whatever was needed for ourselves or for the people; if for the latter, they worked for us in the garden, or at some other employment; skilled labor was thus exchanged for the unskilled. after dinner and an hour's rest, the wife attended her infant-school, which the young, who were left by their parents entirely to their own caprice, liked amazingly, and generally mustered a hundred strong; or she varied that with a sewing-school, having classes of girls to learn the art; this, too, was equally well relished. during the day every operation must be superintended, and both husband and wife must labor till the sun declines. after sunset the husband went into the town to converse with any one willing to do so, sometimes on general subjects, at other times on religion. on three nights of the week, as soon as the milking of the cows was over and it had become dark, we had a public religious service, and one of instruction on secular subjects, aided by pictures and specimens. these services were diversified by attending upon the sick and prescribing for them, giving food, and otherwise assisting the poor and wretched. we tried to gain their affections by attending to the wants of the body. the smallest acts of friendship, an obliging word and civil look, are, as st. xavier thought, no despicable part of the missionary armor. nor ought the good opinion of the most abject to be uncared for, when politeness may secure it. their good word in the aggregate forms a reputation which may be well employed in procuring favor for the gospel. show kind attention to the reckless opponents of christianity on the bed of sickness and pain, and they never can become your personal enemies. here, if any where, love begets love. when at kolobeng, during the droughts we were entirely dependent on kuruman for supplies of corn. once we were reduced to living on bran, to convert which into fine meal we had to grind it three times over. we were much in want of animal food, which seems to be a greater necessary of life there than vegetarians would imagine. being alone, we could not divide the butcher-meat of a slaughtered animal with a prospect of getting a return with regularity. sechele had, by right of chieftainship, the breast of every animal slaughtered either at home or abroad, and he most obligingly sent us a liberal share during the whole period of our sojourn. but these supplies were necessarily so irregular that we were sometimes fain to accept a dish of locusts. these are quite a blessing in the country, so much so that the rain-doctors sometimes promised to bring them by their incantations. the locusts are strongly vegetable in taste, the flavor varying with the plants on which they feed. there is a physiological reason why locusts and honey should be eaten together. some are roasted and pounded into meal, which, eaten with a little salt, is palatable. it will keep thus for months. boiled, they are disagreeable; but when they are roasted i should much prefer locusts to shrimps, though i would avoid both if possible. in traveling we sometimes suffered considerably from scarcity of meat, though not from absolute want of food. this was felt more especially by my children; and the natives, to show their sympathy, often gave them a large kind of caterpillar, which they seemed to relish; these insects could not be unwholesome, for the natives devoured them in large quantities themselves. another article of which our children partook with eagerness was a very large frog, called "matlametlo".* * the pyxicephalus adspersus of dr. smith. length of head and body, - / inches; fore legs, inches; hind legs, inches. width of head posteriorly, inches; of body, - / inches. these enormous frogs, which, when cooked, look like chickens, are supposed by the natives to fall down from thunder-clouds, because after a heavy thunder-shower the pools, which are filled and retain water a few days, become instantly alive with this loud-croaking, pugnacious game. this phenomenon takes place in the driest parts of the desert, and in places where, to an ordinary observer, there is not a sign of life. having been once benighted in a district of the kalahari where there was no prospect of getting water for our cattle for a day or two, i was surprised to hear in the fine still evening the croaking of frogs. walking out until i was certain that the musicians were between me and our fire, i found that they could be merry on nothing else but a prospect of rain. from the bushmen i afterward learned that the matlametlo makes a hole at the root of certain bushes, and there ensconces himself during the months of drought. as he seldom emerges, a large variety of spider takes advantage of the hole, and makes its web across the orifice. he is thus furnished with a window and screen gratis; and no one but a bushman would think of searching beneath a spider's web for a frog. they completely eluded my search on the occasion referred to; and as they rush forth into the hollows filled by the thunder-shower when the rain is actually falling, and the bechuanas are cowering under their skin garments, the sudden chorus struck up simultaneously from all sides seems to indicate a descent from the clouds. the presence of these matlametlo in the desert in a time of drought was rather a disappointment, for i had been accustomed to suppose that the note was always emitted by them when they were chin-deep in water. their music was always regarded in other spots as the most pleasant sound that met the ear after crossing portions of the thirsty desert; and i could fully appreciate the sympathy for these animals shown by aesop, himself an african, in his fable of the "boys and the frogs". it is remarkable that attempts have not been made to any extent to domesticate some of the noble and useful creatures of africa in england. the eland, which is the most magnificent of all antelopes, would grace the parks of our nobility more than deer. this animal, from the excellence of its flesh, would be appropriate to our own country; and as there is also a splendid esculent frog nearly as large as a chicken, it would no doubt tend to perpetuate the present alliance if we made a gift of that to france. the scavenger beetle is one of the most useful of all insects, as it effectually answers the object indicated by the name. where they abound, as at kuruman, the villages are sweet and clean, for no sooner are animal excretions dropped than, attracted by the scent, the scavengers are heard coming booming up the wind. they roll away the droppings of cattle at once, in round pieces often as large as billiard-balls; and when they reach a place proper by its softness for the deposit of their eggs and the safety of their young, they dig the soil out from beneath the ball till they have quite let it down and covered it: they then lay their eggs within the mass. while the larvae are growing, they devour the inside of the ball before coming above ground to begin the world for themselves. the beetles with their gigantic balls look like atlas with the world on his back; only they go backward, and, with their heads down, push with the hind legs, as if a boy should roll a snow-ball with his legs while standing on his head. as we recommend the eland to john bull, and the gigantic frog to france, we can confidently recommend this beetle to the dirty italian towns and our own sanitary commissioners. in trying to benefit the tribes living under the boers of the cashan mountains, i twice performed a journey of about three hundred miles to the eastward of kolobeng. sechele had become so obnoxious to the boers that, though anxious to accompany me in my journey, he dared not trust himself among them. this did not arise from the crime of cattle-stealing; for that crime, so common among the caffres, was never charged against his tribe, nor, indeed, against any bechuana tribe. it is, in fact, unknown in the country, except during actual warfare. his independence and love of the english were his only faults. in my last journey there, of about two hundred miles, on parting at the river marikwe he gave me two servants, "to be," as he said, "his arms to serve me," and expressed regret that he could not come himself. "suppose we went north," i said, "would you come?" he then told me the story of sebituane having saved his life, and expatiated on the far-famed generosity of that really great man. this was the first time i had thought of crossing the desert to lake ngami. the conduct of the boers, who, as will be remembered, had sent a letter designed to procure my removal out of the country, and their well-known settled policy which i have already described, became more fully developed on this than on any former occasion. when i spoke to mr. hendrick potgeiter of the danger of hindering the gospel of christ among these poor savages, he became greatly excited, and called one of his followers to answer me. he threatened to attack any tribe that might receive a native teacher, yet he promised to use his influence to prevent those under him from throwing obstacles in our way. i could perceive plainly that nothing more could be done in that direction, so i commenced collecting all the information i could about the desert, with the intention of crossing it, if possible. sekomi, the chief of the bamangwato, was acquainted with a route which he kept carefully to himself, because the lake country abounded in ivory, and he drew large quantities thence periodically at but small cost to himself. sechele, who valued highly every thing european, and was always fully alive to his own interest, was naturally anxious to get a share of that inviting field. he was most anxious to visit sebituane too, partly, perhaps, from a wish to show off his new acquirements, but chiefly, i believe, from having very exalted ideas of the benefits he would derive from the liberality of that renowned chieftain. in age and family sechele is the elder and superior of sekomi; for when the original tribe broke up into bamangwato, bangwaketse, and bakwains, the bakwains retained the hereditary chieftainship; so their chief, sechele, possesses certain advantages over sekomi, the chief of the bamangwato. if the two were traveling or hunting together, sechele would take, by right, the heads of the game shot by sekomi. there are several vestiges, besides, of very ancient partitions and lordships of tribes. the elder brother of sechele's father, becoming blind, gave over the chieftainship to sechele's father. the descendants of this man pay no tribute to sechele, though he is the actual ruler, and superior to the head of that family; and sechele, while in every other respect supreme, calls him kosi, or chief. the other tribes will not begin to eat the early pumpkins of a new crop until they hear that the bahurutse have "bitten it", and there is a public ceremony on the occasion--the son of the chief being the first to taste of the new harvest. sechele, by my advice, sent men to sekomi, asking leave for me to pass along his path, accompanying the request with the present of an ox. sekomi's mother, who possesses great influence over him, refused permission, because she had not been propitiated. this produced a fresh message; and the most honorable man in the bakwain tribe, next to sechele, was sent with an ox for both sekomi and his mother. this, too, was met by refusal. it was said, "the matebele, the mortal enemies of the bechuanas, are in the direction of the lake, and, should they kill the white man, we shall incur great blame from all his nation." the exact position of the lake ngami had, for half a century at least, been correctly pointed out by the natives, who had visited it when rains were more copious in the desert than in more recent times, and many attempts had been made to reach it by passing through the desert in the direction indicated; but it was found impossible, even for griquas, who, having some bushman blood in them, may be supposed more capable of enduring thirst than europeans. it was clear, then, that our only chance of success was by going round, instead of through, the desert. the best time for the attempt would have been about the end of the rainy season, in march or april, for then we should have been likely to meet with pools of rain-water, which always dry up during the rainless winter. i communicated my intention to an african traveler, colonel steele, then aid-de-camp to the marquis of tweedale at madras, and he made it known to two other gentlemen, whose friendship we had gained during their african travel, namely, major vardon and mr. oswell. all of these gentlemen were so enamored with african hunting and african discovery that the two former must have envied the latter his good fortune in being able to leave india to undertake afresh the pleasures and pains of desert life. i believe mr. oswell came from his high position at a very considerable pecuniary sacrifice, and with no other end in view but to extend the boundaries of geographical knowledge. before i knew of his coming, i had arranged that the payment for the guides furnished by sechele should be the loan of my wagon, to bring back whatever ivory he might obtain from the chief at the lake. when, at last, mr. oswell came, bringing mr. murray with him, he undertook to defray the entire expenses of the guides, and fully executed his generous intention. sechele himself would have come with us, but, fearing that the much-talked-of assault of the boers might take place during our absence, and blame be attached to me for taking him away, i dissuaded him against it by saying that he knew mr. oswell "would be as determined as himself to get through the desert." before narrating the incidents of this journey, i may give some account of the great kalahari desert, in order that the reader may understand in some degree the nature of the difficulties we had to encounter. the space from the orange river in the south, lat. degrees, to lake ngami in the north, and from about degrees east long. to near the west coast, has been called a desert simply because it contains no running water, and very little water in wells. it is by no means destitute of vegetation and inhabitants, for it is covered with grass and a great variety of creeping plants; besides which there are large patches of bushes, and even trees. it is remarkably flat, but interesected in different parts by the beds of ancient rivers; and prodigious herds of certain antelopes, which require little or no water, roam over the trackless plains. the inhabitants, bushmen and bakalahari, prey on the game and on the countless rodentia and small species of the feline race which subsist on these. in general, the soil is light-colored soft sand, nearly pure silica. the beds of the ancient rivers contain much alluvial soil; and as that is baked hard by the burning sun, rain-water stands in pools in some of them for several months in the year. the quantity of grass which grows on this remarkable region is astonishing, even to those who are familiar with india. it usually rises in tufts with bare spaces between, or the intervals are occupied by creeping plants, which, having their roots buried far beneath the soil, feel little the effects of the scorching sun. the number of these which have tuberous roots is very great; and their structure is intended to supply nutriment and moisture, when, during the long droughts, they can be obtained nowhere else. here we have an example of a plant, not generally tuber-bearing, becoming so under circumstances where that appendage is necessary to act as a reservoir for preserving its life; and the same thing occurs in angola to a species of grape-bearing vine, which is so furnished for the same purpose. the plant to which i at present refer is one of the cucurbitaceae, which bears a small, scarlet-colored, eatable cucumber. another plant, named leroshua, is a blessing to the inhabitants of the desert. we see a small plant with linear leaves, and a stalk not thicker than a crow's quill; on digging down a foot or eighteen inches beneath, we come to a tuber, often as large as the head of a young child; when the rind is removed, we find it to be a mass of cellular tissue, filled with fluid much like that in a young turnip. owing to the depth beneath the soil at which it is found, it is generally deliciously cool and refreshing. another kind, named mokuri, is seen in other parts of the country, where long-continued heat parches the soil. this plant is an herbaceous creeper, and deposits under ground a number of tubers, some as large as a man's head, at spots in a circle a yard or more, horizontally, from the stem. the natives strike the ground on the circumference of the circle with stones, till, by hearing a difference of sound, they know the water-bearing tuber to be beneath. they then dig down a foot or so, and find it. but the most surprising plant of the desert is the "kengwe or keme" ('cucumis caffer'), the watermelon. in years when more than the usual quantity of rain falls, vast tracts of the country are literally covered with these melons; this was the case annually when the fall of rain was greater than it is now, and the bakwains sent trading parties every year to the lake. it happens commonly once every ten or eleven years, and for the last three times its occurrence has coincided with an extraordinarily wet season. then animals of every sort and name, including man, rejoice in the rich supply. the elephant, true lord of the forest, revels in this fruit, and so do the different species of rhinoceros, although naturally so diverse in their choice of pasture. the various kinds of antelopes feed on them with equal avidity, and lions, hyaenas, jackals, and mice, all seem to know and appreciate the common blessing. these melons are not, however, all of them eatable; some are sweet, and others so bitter that the whole are named by the boers the "bitter watermelon". the natives select them by striking one melon after another with a hatchet, and applying the tongue to the gashes. they thus readily distinguish between the bitter and sweet. the bitter are deleterious, but the sweet are quite wholesome. this peculiarity of one species of plant bearing both sweet and bitter fruits occurs also in a red, eatable cucumber, often met with in the country. it is about four inches long, and about an inch and a half in diameter. it is of a bright scarlet color when ripe. many are bitter, others quite sweet. even melons in a garden may be made bitter by a few bitter kengwe in the vicinity. the bees convey the pollen from one to the other. the human inhabitants of this tract of country consist of bushmen and bakalahari. the former are probably the aborigines of the southern portion of the continent, the latter the remnants of the first emigration of bechuanas. the bushmen live in the desert from choice, the bakalahari from compulsion, and both possess an intense love of liberty. the bushmen are exceptions in language, race, habits, and appearance. they are the only real nomads in the country; they never cultivate the soil, nor rear any domestic animal save wretched dogs. they are so intimately acquainted with the habits of the game that they follow them in their migrations, and prey upon them from place to place, and thus prove as complete a check upon their inordinate increase as the other carnivora. the chief subsistence of the bushmen is the flesh of game, but that is eked out by what the women collect of roots and beans, and fruits of the desert. those who inhabit the hot sandy plains of the desert possess generally thin, wiry forms, capable of great exertion and of severe privations. many are of low stature, though not dwarfish; the specimens brought to europe have been selected, like costermongers' dogs, on account of their extreme ugliness; consequently, english ideas of the whole tribe are formed in the same way as if the ugliest specimens of the english were exhibited in africa as characteristic of the entire british nation. that they are like baboons is in some degree true, just as these and other simiae are in some points frightfully human. the bakalahari are traditionally reported to be the oldest of the bechuana tribes, and they are said to have possessed enormous herds of the large horned cattle mentioned by bruce, until they were despoiled of them and driven into the desert by a fresh migration of their own nation. living ever since on the same plains with the bushmen, subjected to the same influences of climate, enduring the same thirst, and subsisting on similar food for centuries, they seem to supply a standing proof that locality is not always sufficient of itself to account for difference in races. the bakalahari retain in undying vigor the bechuana love for agriculture and domestic animals. they hoe their gardens annually, though often all they can hope for is a supply of melons and pumpkins. and they carefully rear small herds of goats, though i have seen them lift water for them out of small wells with a bit of ostrich egg-shell, or by spoonfuls. they generally attach themselves to influential men in the different bechuana tribes living adjacent to their desert home, in order to obtain supplies of spears, knives, tobacco, and dogs, in exchange for the skins of the animals they may kill. these are small carnivora of the feline species, including two species of jackal, the dark and the golden; the former, "motlose" ('megalotis capensis' or 'cape fennec'), has the warmest fur the country yields; the latter, "pukuye" ('canis mesomelas' and 'c. aureus'), is very handsome when made into the skin mantle called kaross. next in value follow the "tsipa" or small ocelot ('felis nigripes'), the "tuane" or lynx, the wild cat, the spotted cat, and other small animals. great numbers of 'puti' ('duiker') and 'puruhuru' ('steinbuck') skins are got too, besides those of lions, leopards, panthers, and hyaenas. during the time i was in the bechuana country, between twenty and thirty thousand skins were made up into karosses; part of them were worn by the inhabitants, and part sold to traders: many, i believe, find their way to china. the bakwains bought tobacco from the eastern tribes, then purchased skins with it from the bakalahari, tanned them, and sewed them into karosses, then went south to purchase heifer-calves with them, cows being the highest form of riches known, as i have often noticed from their asking "if queen victoria had many cows." the compact they enter into is mutually beneficial, but injustice and wrong are often perpetrated by one tribe of bechuanas going among the bakalahari of another tribe, and compelling them to deliver up the skins which they may be keeping for their friends. they are a timid race, and in bodily development often resemble the aborigines of australia. they have thin legs and arms, and large, protruding abdomens, caused by the coarse, indigestible food they eat. their children's eyes lack lustre. i never saw them at play. a few bechuanas may go into a village of bakalahari, and domineer over the whole with impunity; but when these same adventurers meet the bushmen, they are fain to change their manners to fawning sycophancy; they know that, if the request for tobacco is refused, these free sons of the desert may settle the point as to its possession by a poisoned arrow. the dread of visits from bechuanas of strange tribes causes the bakalahari to choose their residences far from water; and they not unfrequently hide their supplies by filling the pits with sand and making a fire over the spot. when they wish to draw water for use, the women come with twenty or thirty of their water-vessels in a bag or net on their backs. these water-vessels consist of ostrich egg-shells, with a hole in the end of each, such as would admit one's finger. the women tie a bunch of grass to one end of a reed about two feet long, and insert it in a hole dug as deep as the arm will reach; then ram down the wet sand firmly round it. applying the mouth to the free end of the reed, they form a vacuum in the grass beneath, in which the water collects, and in a short time rises into the mouth. an egg-shell is placed on the ground alongside the reed, some inches below the mouth of the sucker. a straw guides the water into the hole of the vessel, as she draws mouthful after mouthful from below. the water is made to pass along the outside, not through the straw. if any one will attempt to squirt water into a bottle placed some distance below his mouth, he will soon perceive the wisdom of the bushwoman's contrivance for giving the stream direction by means of a straw. the whole stock of water is thus passed through the woman's mouth as a pump, and, when taken home, is carefully buried. i have come into villages where, had we acted a domineering part, and rummaged every hut, we should have found nothing; but by sitting down quietly, and waiting with patience until the villagers were led to form a favorable opinion of us, a woman would bring out a shellful of the precious fluid from i know not where. the so-called desert, it may be observed, is by no means a useless tract of country. besides supporting multitudes of both small and large animals, it sends something to the market of the world, and has proved a refuge to many a fugitive tribe--to the bakalahari first, and to the other bechuanas in turn--as their lands were overrun by the tribe of true caffres, called matebele. the bakwains, the bangwaketze, and the bamangwato all fled thither; and the matebele marauders, who came from the well-watered east, perished by hundreds in their attempts to follow them. one of the bangwaketze chiefs, more wily than the rest, sent false guides to lead them on a track where, for hundreds of miles, not a drop of water could be found, and they perished in consequence. many bakwains perished too. their old men, who could have told us ancient stories, perished in these flights. an intelligent mokwain related to me how the bushmen effectually balked a party of his tribe which lighted on their village in a state of burning thirst. believing, as he said, that nothing human could subsist without water, they demanded some, but were coolly told by these bushmen that they had none, and never drank any. expecting to find them out, they resolved to watch them night and day. they persevered for some days, thinking that at last the water must come forth; but, notwithstanding their watchfulness, kept alive by most tormenting thirst, the bakwains were compelled to exclaim, "yak! yak! these are not men; let us go." probably the bushmen had been subsisting on a store hidden under ground, which had eluded the vigilance of their visitors. chapter . departure from kolobeng, st june, --companions--our route-- abundance of grass--serotli, a fountain in the desert--mode of digging wells--the eland--animals of the desert--the hyaena--the chief sekomi--dangers--the wandering guide--cross purposes--slow progress--want of water--capture of a bushwoman--the salt-pan at nchokotsa--the mirage--reach the river zouga--the quakers of africa--discovery of lake ngami, st august, --its extent--small depth of water--position as the reservoir of a great river system--the bamangwato and their chief--desire to visit sebituane, the chief of the makololo--refusal of lechulatebe to furnish us with guides--resolve to return to the cape--the banks of the zouga--pitfalls--trees of the district--elephants--new species of antelope--fish in the zouga. such was the desert which we were now preparing to cross--a region formerly of terror to the bechuanas from the numbers of serpents which infested it and fed on the different kinds of mice, and from the intense thirst which these people often endured when their water-vessels were insufficient for the distances to be traveled over before reaching the wells. just before the arrival of my companions, a party of the people of the lake came to kolobeng, stating that they were sent by lechulatebe, the chief, to ask me to visit that country. they brought such flaming accounts of the quantities of ivory to be found there (cattle-pens made of elephants' tusks of enormous size, &c.), that the guides of the bakwains were quite as eager to succeed in reaching the lake as any one of us could desire. this was fortunate, as we knew the way the strangers had come was impassable for wagons. messrs. oswell and murray came at the end of may, and we all made a fair start for the unknown region on the st of june, . proceeding northward, and passing through a range of tree-covered hills to shokuane, formerly the residence of the bakwains, we soon after entered on the high road to the bamangwato, which lies generally in the bed of an ancient river or wady that must formerly have flowed n. to s. the adjacent country is perfectly flat, but covered with open forest and bush, with abundance of grass; the trees generally are a kind of acacia called "monato", which appears a little to the south of this region, and is common as far as angola. a large caterpillar, called "nato", feeds by night on the leaves of these trees, and comes down by day to bury itself at the root in the sand, in order to escape the piercing rays of the sun. the people dig for it there, and are fond of it when roasted, on account of its pleasant vegetable taste. when about to pass into the chrysalis state, it buries itself in the soil, and is sometimes sought for as food even then. if left undisturbed, it comes forth as a beautiful butterfly: the transmutation was sometimes employed by me with good effect when speaking with the natives, as an illustration of our own great change and resurrection. the soil is sandy, and there are here and there indications that at spots which now afford no water whatever there were formerly wells and cattle stations. boatlanama, our next station, is a lovely spot in the otherwise dry region. the wells from which we had to lift out the water for our cattle are deep, but they were well filled. a few villages of bakalahari were found near them, and great numbers of pallahs, springbucks, guinea-fowl, and small monkeys. lopepe came next. this place afforded another proof of the desiccation of the country. the first time i passed it, lopepe was a large pool with a stream flowing out of it to the south; now it was with difficulty we could get our cattle watered by digging down in the bottom of a well. at mashue--where we found a never-failing supply of pure water in a sandstone rocky hollow--we left the road to the bamangwato hills, and struck away to the north into the desert. having watered the cattle at a well called lobotani, about n.w. of bamangwato, we next proceeded to a real kalahari fountain, called serotli. the country around is covered with bushes and trees of a kind of leguminosae, with lilac flowers. the soil is soft white sand, very trying to the strength of the oxen, as the wheels sink into it over the felloes and drag heavily. at serotli we found only a few hollows like those made by the buffalo and rhinoceros when they roll themselves in the mud. in a corner of one of these there appeared water, which would have been quickly lapped up by our dogs, had we not driven them away. and yet this was all the apparent supply for some eighty oxen, twenty horses, and about a score of men. our guide, ramotobi, who had spent his youth in the desert, declared that, though appearances were against us, there was plenty of water at hand. we had our misgivings, for the spades were soon produced; but our guides, despising such new-fangled aid, began in good earnest to scrape out the sand with their hands. the only water we had any promise of for the next seventy miles--that is, for a journey of three days with the wagons--was to be got here. by the aid of both spades and fingers two of the holes were cleared out, so as to form pits six feet deep and about as many broad. our guides were especially earnest in their injunctions to us not to break through the hard stratum of sand at the bottom, because they knew, if it were broken through, "the water would go away." they are quite correct, for the water seems to lie on this flooring of incipient sandstone. the value of the advice was proved in the case of an englishman whose wits were none of the brightest, who, disregarding it, dug through the sandy stratum in the wells at mohotluani: the water immediately flowed away downward, and the well became useless. when we came to the stratum, we found that the water flowed in on all sides close to the line where the soft sand came in contact with it. allowing it to collect, we had enough for the horses that evening; but as there was not sufficient for the oxen, we sent them back to lobotani, where, after thirsting four full days (ninety-six hours), they got a good supply. the horses were kept by us as necessary to procure game for the sustenance of our numerous party. next morning we found the water had flowed in faster than at first, as it invariably does in these reservoirs, owing to the passages widening by the flow. large quantities of the sand come into the well with the water, and in the course of a few days the supply, which may be equal to the wants of a few men only, becomes sufficient for oxen as well. in these sucking-places the bakalahari get their supplies; and as they are generally in the hollows of ancient river-beds, they are probably the deposits from rains gravitating thither; in some cases they may be the actual fountains, which, though formerly supplying the river's flow, now no longer rise to the surface. here, though the water was perfectly inaccessible to elands, large numbers of these fine animals fed around us; and, when killed, they were not only in good condition, but their stomachs actually contained considerable quantities of water. i examined carefully the whole alimentary canal, in order to see if there were any peculiarity which might account for the fact that this animal can subsist for months together without drinking, but found nothing. other animals, such as the duiker ('cephalopus mergens') or puti (of the bechuanas), the steinbuck ('tragulus rupestris') or puruhuru, the gemsbuck ('oryx capensis') or kukama, and the porcupine ('hystrix cristata'), are all able to subsist without water for many months at a time by living on bulbs and tubers containing moisture. they have sharp-pointed hoofs well adapted for digging, and there is little difficulty in comprehending their mode of subsistence. some animals, on the other hand, are never seen but in the vicinity of water. the presence of the rhinoceros, of the buffalo and gnu ('catoblepas gnu'), of the giraffe, the zebra, and pallah ('antilope melampus'), is always a certain indication of water being within a distance of seven or eight miles; but one may see hundreds of elands ('boselaphus oreas'), gemsbuck, the tolo or koodoo ('strepsiceros capensis'), also springbucks ('gazella euchore') and ostriches, without being warranted thereby in inferring the presence of water within thirty or forty miles. indeed, the sleek, fat condition of the eland in such circumstances would not remove the apprehension of perishing by thirst from the mind of even a native. i believe, however, that these animals can subsist only where there is some moisture in the vegetation on which they feed; for in one year of unusual drought we saw herds of elands and flocks of ostriches crowding to the zouga from the desert, and very many of the latter were killed in pitfalls on the banks. as long as there is any sap in the pasturage they seldom need water. but should a traveler see the "spoor" of a rhinoceros, or buffalo, or zebra, he would at once follow it up, well assured that before he had gone many miles he would certainly reach water. in the evening of our second day at serotli, a hyaena, appearing suddenly among the grass, succeeded in raising a panic among our cattle. this false mode of attack is the plan which this cowardly animal always adopts. his courage resembles closely that of a turkey-cock. he will bite, if an animal is running away; but if the animal stand still, so does he. seventeen of our draught oxen ran away, and in their flight went right into the hands of sekomi, whom, from his being unfriendly to our success, we had no particular wish to see. cattle-stealing, such as in the circumstances might have occurred in caffraria, is here unknown; so sekomi sent back our oxen, and a message strongly dissuading us against attempting the desert. "where are you going? you will be killed by the sun and thirst, and then all the white men will blame me for not saving you." this was backed by a private message from his mother. "why do you pass me? i always made the people collect to hear the word that you have got. what guilt have i, that you pass without looking at me?" we replied by assuring the messengers that the white men would attribute our deaths to our own stupidity and "hard-headedness" (tlogo, e thata), "as we did not intend to allow our companions and guides to return till they had put us into our graves." we sent a handsome present to sekomi, and a promise that, if he allowed the bakalahari to keep the wells open for us, we would repeat the gift on our return. after exhausting all his eloquence in fruitless attempts to persuade us to return, the under-chief, who headed the party of sekomi's messengers, inquired, "who is taking them?" looking round, he exclaimed, with a face expressive of the most unfeigned disgust, "it is ramotobi!" our guide belonged to sekomi's tribe, but had fled to sechele; as fugitives in this country are always well received, and may even afterward visit the tribe from which they had escaped, ramotobi was in no danger, though doing that which he knew to be directly opposed to the interests of his own chief and tribe. all around serotli the country is perfectly flat, and composed of soft white sand. there is a peculiar glare of bright sunlight from a cloudless sky over the whole scene; and one clump of trees and bushes, with open spaces between, looks so exactly like another, that if you leave the wells, and walk a quarter of a mile in any direction, it is difficult to return. oswell and murray went out on one occasion to get an eland, and were accompanied by one of the bakalahari. the perfect sameness of the country caused even this son of the desert to lose his way; a most puzzling conversation forthwith ensued between them and their guide. one of the most common phrases of the people is "kia itumela", i thank you, or i am pleased; and the gentlemen were both quite familiar with it, and with the word "metse", water. but there is a word very similar in sound, "kia timela", i am wandering; its perfect is "ki timetse", i have wandered. the party had been roaming about, perfectly lost, till the sun went down; and, through their mistaking the verb "wander" for "to be pleased", and "water", the colloquy went on at intervals during the whole bitterly cold night in somewhat the following style: "where are the wagons?" real answer. "i don't know. i have wandered. i never wandered before. i am quite lost." supposed answer. "i don't know. i want water. i am glad, i am quite pleased. i am thankful to you." "take us to the wagons, and you will get plenty of water." real answer (looking vacantly around). "how did i wander? perhaps the well is there, perhaps not. i don't know. i have wandered." supposed answer. "something about thanks; he says he is pleased, and mentions water again." the guide's vacant stare while trying to remember is thought to indicate mental imbecility, and the repeated thanks were supposed to indicate a wish to deprecate their wrath. "well, livingstone has played us a pretty trick, giving us in charge of an idiot. catch us trusting him again. what can this fellow mean by his thanks and talk about water? oh, you born fool! take us to the wagons, and you will get both meat and water. wouldn't a thrashing bring him to his senses again?" "no, no, for then he will run away, and we shall be worse off than we are now." the hunters regained the wagons next day by their own sagacity, which becomes wonderfully quickened by a sojourn in the desert; and we enjoyed a hearty laugh on the explanation of their midnight colloquies. frequent mistakes of this kind occur. a man may tell his interpreter to say that he is a member of the family of the chief of the white men; "yes, you speak like a chief," is the reply, meaning, as they explain it, that a chief may talk nonsense without any one daring to contradict him. they probably have ascertained, from that same interpreter, that this relative of the white chief is very poor, having scarcely any thing in his wagon. i sometimes felt annoyed at the low estimation in which some of my hunting friends were held; for, believing that the chase is eminently conducive to the formation of a brave and noble character, and that the contest with wild beasts is well adapted for fostering that coolness in emergencies, and active presence of mind, which we all admire, i was naturally anxious that a higher estimate of my countrymen should be formed in the native mind. "have these hunters, who come so far and work so hard, no meat at home?"--"why, these men are rich, and could slaughter oxen every day of their lives."--"and yet they come here, and endure so much thirst for the sake of this dry meat, none of which is equal to beef?"--"yes, it is for the sake of play besides" (the idea of sport not being in the language). this produces a laugh, as much as to say, "ah! you know better;" or, "your friends are fools." when they can get a man to kill large quantities of game for them, whatever he may think of himself or of his achievements, they pride themselves in having adroitly turned to good account the folly of an itinerant butcher. the water having at last flowed into the wells we had dug in sufficient quantity to allow a good drink to all our cattle, we departed from serotli in the afternoon; but as the sun, even in winter, which it now was, is always very powerful by day, the wagons were dragged but slowly through the deep, heavy sand, and we advanced only six miles before sunset. we could only travel in the mornings and evenings, as a single day in the hot sun and heavy sand would have knocked up the oxen. next day we passed pepacheu (white tufa), a hollow lined with tufa, in which water sometimes stands, but it was now dry; and at night our trocheamer* showed that we had made but twenty-five miles from serotli. * this is an instrument which, when fastened on the wagon-wheel, records the number of revolutions made. by multiplying this number by the circumference of the wheel, the actual distance traveled over is at once ascertained. ramotobi was angry at the slowness of our progress, and told us that, as the next water was three days in front, if we traveled so slowly we should never get there at all. the utmost endeavors of the servants, cracking their whips, screaming and beating, got only nineteen miles out of the poor beasts. we had thus proceeded forty-four miles from serotli; and the oxen were more exhausted by the soft nature of the country, and the thirst, than if they had traveled double the distance over a hard road containing supplies of water: we had, as far as we could judge, still thirty miles more of the same dry work before us. at this season the grass becomes so dry as to crumble to powder in the hands; so the poor beasts stood wearily chewing, without taking a single fresh mouthful, and lowing painfully at the smell of water in our vessels in the wagons. we were all determined to succeed; so we endeavored to save the horses by sending them forward with the guide, as a means of making a desperate effort in case the oxen should fail. murray went forward with them, while oswell and i remained to bring the wagons on their trail as far as the cattle could drag them, intending then to send the oxen forward too. the horses walked quickly away from us; but, on the morning of the third day, when we imagined the steeds must be near the water, we discovered them just alongside the wagons. the guide, having come across the fresh footprints of some bushmen who had gone in an opposite direction to that which we wished to go, turned aside to follow them. an antelope had been ensnared in one of the bushmen's pitfalls. murray followed ramotobi most trustingly along the bushmen's spoor, though that led them away from the water we were in search of; witnessed the operation of slaughtering, skinning, and cutting up the antelope; and then, after a hard day's toil, found himself close upon the wagons! the knowledge still retained by ramotobi of the trackless waste of scrub, through which we were now passing, seemed admirable. for sixty or seventy miles beyond serotli, one clump of bushes and trees seemed exactly like another; but, as we walked together this morning, he remarked, "when we come to that hollow we shall light upon the highway of sekomi; and beyond that again lies the river mokoko;" which, though we passed along it, i could not perceive to be a river-bed at all. after breakfast, some of the men, who had gone forward on a little path with some footprints of water-loving animals upon it, returned with the joyful tidings of "metse", water, exhibiting the mud on their knees in confirmation of the news being true. it does one's heart good to see the thirsty oxen rush into a pool of delicious rain-water, as this was. in they dash until the water is deep enough to be nearly level with their throat, and then they stand drawing slowly in the long, refreshing mouthfuls, until their formerly collapsed sides distend as if they would burst. so much do they imbibe, that a sudden jerk, when they come out on the bank, makes some of the water run out again from their mouths; but, as they have been days without food too, they very soon commence to graze, and of grass there is always abundance every where. this pool was called mathuluani; and thankful we were to have obtained so welcome a supply of water. after giving the cattle a rest at this spot, we proceeded down the dry bed of the river mokoko. the name refers to the water-bearing stratum before alluded to; and in this ancient bed it bears enough of water to admit of permanent wells in several parts of it. we had now the assurance from ramotobi that we should suffer no more from thirst. twice we found rain-water in the mokoko before we reached mokokonyani, where the water, generally below ground elsewhere, comes to the surface in a bed of tufa. the adjacent country is all covered with low, thorny scrub, with grass, and here and there clumps of the "wait-a-bit thorn", or 'acacia detinens'. at lotlakani (a little reed), another spring three miles farther down, we met with the first palmyra trees which we had seen in south africa; they were twenty-six in number. the ancient mokoko must have been joined by other rivers below this, for it becomes very broad, and spreads out into a large lake, of which the lake we were now in search of formed but a very small part. we observed that, wherever an ant-eater had made his hole, shells were thrown out with the earth, identical with those now alive in the lake. when we left the mokoko, ramotobi seemed, for the first time, to be at a loss as to which direction to take. he had passed only once away to the west of the mokoko, the scenes of his boyhood. mr. oswell, while riding in front of the wagons, happened to spy a bushwoman running away in a bent position, in order to escape observation. thinking it to be a lion, he galloped up to her. she thought herself captured, and began to deliver up her poor little property, consisting of a few traps made of cords; but, when i explained that we only wanted water, and would pay her if she led us to it, she consented to conduct us to a spring. it was then late in the afternoon, but she walked briskly before our horses for eight miles, and showed us the water of nchokotsa. after leading us to the water, she wished to go away home, if indeed she had any--she had fled from a party of her countrymen, and was now living far from all others with her husband--but as it was now dark, we wished her to remain. as she believed herself still a captive, we thought she might slip away by night; so, in order that she should not go away with the impression that we were dishonest, we gave her a piece of meat and a good large bunch of beads; at the sight of the latter she burst into a merry laugh, and remained without suspicion. at nchokotsa we came upon the first of a great number of salt-pans, covered with an efflorescence of lime, probably the nitrate. a thick belt of mopane-trees (a 'bauhinia') hides this salt-pan, which is twenty miles in circumference, entirely from the view of a person coming from the southeast; and, at the time the pan burst upon our view, the setting sun was casting a beautiful blue haze over the white incrustations, making the whole look exactly like a lake. oswell threw his hat up in the air at the sight, and shouted out a huzza which made the poor bushwoman and the bakwains think him mad. i was a little behind him, and was as completely deceived by it as he; but, as we had agreed to allow each other to behold the lake at the same instant, i felt a little chagrined that he had, unintentionally, got the first glance. we had no idea that the long-looked-for lake was still more than three hundred miles distant. one reason of our mistake was, that the river zouga was often spoken of by the same name as the lake, viz., noka ea batletli ("river of the batletli"). the mirage on these salinas was marvelous. it is never, i believe, seen in perfection, except over such saline incrustations. here not a particle of imagination was necessary for realizing the exact picture of large collections of water; the waves danced along above, and the shadows of the trees were vividly reflected beneath the surface in such an admirable manner, that the loose cattle, whose thirst had not been slaked sufficiently by the very brackish water of nchokotsa, with the horses, dogs, and even the hottentots ran off toward the deceitful pools. a herd of zebras in the mirage looked so exactly like elephants that oswell began to saddle a horse in order to hunt them; but a sort of break in the haze dispelled the illusion. looking to the west and northwest from nchokotsa, we could see columns of black smoke, exactly like those from a steam-engine, rising to the clouds, and were assured that these arose from the burning reeds of the noka ea batletli. on the th of july we went forward on horseback toward what we supposed to be the lake, and again and again did we seem to see it; but at last we came to the veritable water of the zouga, and found it to be a river running to the n.e. a village of bakurutse lay on the opposite bank; these live among batletli, a tribe having a click in their language, and who were found by sebituane to possess large herds of the great horned cattle. they seem allied to the hottentot family. mr. oswell, in trying to cross the river, got his horse bogged in the swampy bank. two bakwains and i managed to get over by wading beside a fishing-weir. the people were friendly, and informed us that this water came out of the ngami. this news gladdened all our hearts, for we now felt certain of reaching our goal. we might, they said, be a moon on the way; but we had the river zouga at our feet, and by following it we should at last reach the broad water. next day, when we were quite disposed to be friendly with every one, two of the bamangwato, who had been sent on before us by sekomi to drive away all the bushmen and bakalahari from our path, so that they should not assist or guide us, came and sat down by our fire. we had seen their footsteps fresh in the way, and they had watched our slow movements forward, and wondered to see how we, without any bushmen, found our way to the waters. this was the first time they had seen ramotobi. "you have reached the river now," said they; and we, quite disposed to laugh at having won the game, felt no ill-will to any one. they seemed to feel no enmity to us either; but, after an apparently friendly conversation, proceeded to fulfill to the last the instructions of their chief. ascending the zouga in our front, they circulated the report that our object was to plunder all the tribes living on the river and lake; but when they had got half way up the river, the principal man sickened of fever, turned back some distance, and died. his death had a good effect, for the villagers connected it with the injury he was attempting to do to us. they all saw through sekomi's reasons for wishing us to fail in our attempt; and though they came to us at first armed, kind and fair treatment soon produced perfect confidence. when we had gone up the bank of this beautiful river about ninety-six miles from the point where we first struck it, and understood that we were still a considerable distance from the ngami, we left all the oxen and wagons, except mr. oswell's, which was the smallest, and one team, at ngabisane, in the hope that they would be recruited for the home journey, while we made a push for the lake. the bechuana chief of the lake region, who had sent men to sechele, now sent orders to all the people on the river to assist us, and we were received by the bakoba, whose language clearly shows that they bear an affinity to the tribes in the north. they call themselves bayeiye, i.e., men; but the bechuanas call them bakoba, which contains somewhat of the idea of slaves. they have never been known to fight, and, indeed, have a tradition that their forefathers, in their first essays at war, made their bows of the palma christi, and, when these broke, they gave up fighting altogether. they have invariably submitted to the rule of every horde which has overrun the countries adjacent to the rivers on which they specially love to dwell. they are thus the quakers of the body politic in africa. a long time after the period of our visit, the chief of the lake, thinking to make soldiers of them, took the trouble to furnish them with shields. "ah! we never had these before; that is the reason we have always succumbed. now we will fight." but a marauding party came from the makololo, and our "friends" at once paddled quickly, night and day, down the zouga, never daring to look behind them till they reached the end of the river, at the point where we first saw it. the canoes of these inland sailors are truly primitive craft: they are hollowed out of the trunks of single trees by means of iron adzes; and if the tree has a bend, so has the canoe. i liked the frank and manly bearing of these men, and, instead of sitting in the wagon, preferred a seat in one of the canoes. i found they regarded their rude vessels as the arab does his camel. they have always fires in them, and prefer sleeping in them while on a journey to spending the night on shore. "on land you have lions," say they, "serpents, hyaenas, and your enemies; but in your canoe, behind a bank of reed, nothing can harm you." their submissive disposition leads to their villages being frequently visited by hungry strangers. we had a pot on the fire in the canoe by the way, and when we drew near the villages devoured the contents. when fully satisfied ourselves, i found we could all look upon any intruders with perfect complacency, and show the pot in proof of having devoured the last morsel. while ascending in this way the beautifully-wooded river, we came to a large stream flowing into it. this was the river tamunak'le. i inquired whence it came. "oh, from a country full of rivers--so many no one can tell their number--and full of large trees." this was the first confirmation of statements i had heard from the bakwains who had been with sebituane, that the country beyond was not "the large sandy plateau" of the philosophers. the prospect of a highway capable of being traversed by boats to an entirely unexplored and very populous region, grew from that time forward stronger and stronger in my mind; so much so that, when we actually came to the lake, this idea occupied such a large portion of my mental vision that the actual discovery seemed of but little importance. i find i wrote, when the emotions caused by the magnificent prospects of the new country were first awakened in my breast, that they "might subject me to the charge of enthusiasm, a charge which i wished i deserved, as nothing good or great had ever been accomplished in the world without it."* * letters published by the royal geographical society. read th february and th april, . twelve days after our departure from the wagons at ngabisane we came to the northeast end of lake ngami; and on the st of august, , we went down together to the broad part, and, for the first time, this fine-looking sheet of water was beheld by europeans. the direction of the lake seemed to be n.n.e. and s.s.w. by compass. the southern portion is said to bend round to the west, and to receive the teoughe from the north at its northwest extremity. we could detect no horizon where we stood looking s.s.w., nor could we form any idea of the extent of the lake, except from the reports of the inhabitants of the district; and, as they professed to go round it in three days, allowing twenty-five miles a day would make it seventy-five, or less than seventy geographical miles in circumference. other guesses have been made since as to its circumference, ranging between seventy and one hundred miles. it is shallow, for i subsequently saw a native punting his canoe over seven or eight miles of the northeast end; it can never, therefore, be of much value as a commercial highway. in fact, during the months preceding the annual supply of water from the north, the lake is so shallow that it is with difficulty cattle can approach the water through the boggy, reedy banks. these are low on all sides, but on the west there is a space devoid of trees, showing that the waters have retired thence at no very ancient date. this is another of the proofs of desiccation met with so abundantly throughout the whole country. a number of dead trees lie on this space, some of them imbedded in the mud, right in the water. we were informed by the bayeiye, who live on the lake, that when the annual inundation begins, not only trees of great size, but antelopes, as the springbuck and tsessebe ('acronotus lunata'), are swept down by its rushing waters; the trees are gradually driven by the winds to the opposite side, and become imbedded in mud. the water of the lake is perfectly fresh when full, but brackish when low; and that coming down the tamunak'le we found to be so clear, cold, and soft, the higher we ascended, that the idea of melting snow was suggested to our minds. we found this region, with regard to that from which we had come, to be clearly a hollow, the lowest point being lake kumadau; the point of the ebullition of water, as shown by one of newman's barometric thermometers, was only between - / deg. and deg., giving an elevation of not much more than two thousand feet above the level of the sea. we had descended above two thousand feet in coming to it from kolobeng. it is the southern and lowest part of the great river system beyond, in which large tracts of country are inundated annually by tropical rains, hereafter to be described. a little of that water, which in the countries farther north produces inundation, comes as far south as d ', the latitude of the upper end of the lake, and instead of flooding the country, falls into the lake as into a reservoir. it begins to flow down the embarrah, which divides into the rivers tzo and teoughe. the tzo divides into the tamunak'le and mababe; the tamunak'le discharges itself into the zouga, and the teoughe into the lake. the flow begins either in march or april, and the descending waters find the channels of all these rivers dried out, except in certain pools in their beds, which have long dry spaces between them. the lake itself is very low. the zouga is but a prolongation of the tamunak'le, and an arm of the lake reaches up to the point where the one ends and the other begins. the last is narrow and shallow, while the zouga is broad and deep. the narrow arm of the lake, which on the map looks like a continuation of the zouga, has never been observed to flow either way. it is as stagnant as the lake itself. the teoughe and tamunak'le, being essentially the same river, and receiving their supplies from the same source (the embarrah or varra), can never outrun each other. if either could, or if the teoughe could fill the lake--a thing which has never happened in modern times--then this little arm would prove a convenient escapement to prevent inundation. if the lake ever becomes lower than the bed of the zouga, a little of the water of the tamunak'le might flow into it instead of down the zouga; we should then have the phenomenon of a river flowing two ways; but this has never been observed to take place here, and it is doubtful if it ever can occur in this locality. the zouga is broad and deep when it leaves the tamunak'le, but becomes gradually narrower as you descend about two hundred miles; there it flows into kumadau, a small lake about three or four miles broad and twelve long. the water, which higher up begins to flow in april, does not make much progress in filling this lake till the end of june. in september the rivers cease to flow. when the supply has been more than usually abundant, a little water flows beyond kumadau, in the bed first seen by us on the th of july; if the quantity were larger, it might go further in the dry rocky bed of the zouga, since seen still further to the east. the water supply of this part of the river system, as will be more fully explained further on, takes place in channels prepared for a much more copious flow. it resembles a deserted eastern garden, where all the embankments and canals for irrigation can be traced, but where, the main dam and sluices having been allowed to get out of repair, only a small portion can be laid under water. in the case of the zouga the channel is perfect, but water enough to fill the whole channel never comes down; and before it finds its way much beyond kumadau, the upper supply ceases to run and the rest becomes evaporated. the higher parts of its bed even are much broader and more capacious than the lower toward kumadau. the water is not absorbed so much as lost in filling up an empty channel, from which it is to be removed by the air and sun. there is, i am convinced, no such thing in the country as a river running into sand and becoming lost. the phenomenon, so convenient for geographers, haunted my fancy for years; but i have failed in discovering any thing except a most insignificant approach to it. my chief object in coming to the lake was to visit sebituane, the great chief of the makololo, who was reported to live some two hundred miles beyond. we had now come to a half-tribe of the bamangwato, called batauana. their chief was a young man named lechulatebe. sebituane had conquered his father moremi, and lechulatebe received part of his education while a captive among the bayeiye. his uncle, a sensible man, ransomed him; and, having collected a number of families together, abdicated the chieftainship in favor of his nephew. as lechulatebe had just come into power, he imagined that the proper way of showing his abilities was to act directly contrary to every thing that his uncle advised. when we came, the uncle recommended him to treat us handsomely, therefore the hopeful youth presented us with a goat only. it ought to have been an ox. so i proposed to my companions to loose the animal and let him go, as a hint to his master. they, however, did not wish to insult him. i, being more of a native, and familiar with their customs, knew that this shabby present was an insult to us. we wished to purchase some goats or oxen; lechulatebe offered us elephants' tusks. "no, we can not eat these; we want something to fill our stomachs." "neither can i; but i hear you white men are all very fond of these bones, so i offer them; i want to put the goats into my own stomach." a trader, who accompanied us, was then purchasing ivory at the rate of ten good large tusks for a musket worth thirteen shillings. they were called "bones"; and i myself saw eight instances in which the tusks had been left to rot with the other bones where the elephant fell. the batauana never had a chance of a market before; but, in less than two years after our discovery, not a man of them could be found who was not keenly alive to the great value of the article. on the day after our arrival at the lake, i applied to lechulatebe for guides to sebituane. as he was much afraid of that chief, he objected, fearing lest other white men should go thither also, and give sebituane guns; whereas, if the traders came to him alone, the possession of fire-arms would give him such a superiority that sebituane would be afraid of him. it was in vain to explain that i would inculcate peace between them--that sebituane had been a father to him and sechele, and was as anxious to see me as he, lechulatebe, had been. he offered to give me as much ivory as i needed without going to that chief; but when i refused to take any, he unwillingly consented to give me guides. next day, however, when oswell and i were prepared to start, with the horses only, we received a senseless refusal; and like sekomi, who had thrown obstacles in our way, he sent men to the bayeiye with orders to refuse us a passage across the river. trying hard to form a raft at a narrow part, i worked many hours in the water; but the dry wood was so worm-eaten it would not bear the weight of a single person. i was not then aware of the number of alligators which exist in the zouga, and never think of my labor in the water without feeling thankful that i escaped their jaws. the season was now far advanced; and as mr. oswell, with his wonted generous feelings, volunteered, on the spot, to go down to the cape and bring up a boat, we resolved to make our way south again. coming down the zouga, we had now time to look at its banks. these are very beautiful, resembling closely many parts of the river clyde above glasgow. the formation is soft calcareous tufa, such as forms the bottom of all this basin. the banks are perpendicular on the side to which the water swings, and sloping and grassy on the other. the slopes are selected for the pitfalls designed by the bayeiye to entrap the animals as they come to drink. these are about seven or eight feet deep, three or four feet wide at the mouth, and gradually decrease till they are only about a foot wide at the bottom. the mouth is an oblong square (the only square thing made by the bechuanas, for every thing else is round), and the long diameter at the surface is about equal to the depth. the decreasing width toward the bottom is intended to make the animal wedge himself more firmly in by his weight and struggles. the pitfalls are usually in pairs, with a wall a foot thick left uncut between the ends of each, so that if the beast, when it feels its fore legs descending, should try to save itself from going in altogether by striding the hind legs, he would spring forward and leap into the second with a force which insures the fall of his whole body into the trap. they are covered with great care. all the excavated earth is removed to a distance, so as not to excite suspicion in the minds of the animals. reeds and grass are laid across the top; above this the sand is thrown, and watered so as to appear exactly like the rest of the spot. some of our party plumped into these pitfalls more than once, even when in search of them, in order to open them to prevent the loss of our cattle. if an ox sees a hole, he carefully avoids it; and old elephants have been known to precede the herd and whisk off the coverings of the pitfalls on each side all the way down to the water. we have known instances in which the old among these sagacious animals have actually lifted the young out of the trap. the trees which adorn the banks are magnificent. two enormous baobabs ('adansonia digitata'), or mowanas, grow near its confluence with the lake where we took the observations for the latitude ( d ' s.). we were unable to ascertain the longitude of the lake, as our watches were useless; it may be between deg. and deg. e. the largest of the two baobabs was feet in girth. the palmyra appears here and there among trees not met with in the south. the mokuchong, or moshoma, bears an edible fruit of indifferent quality, but the tree itself would be a fine specimen of arboreal beauty in any part of the world. the trunk is often converted into canoes. the motsouri, which bears a pink plum containing a pleasant acid juice, resembles an orange-tree in its dark evergreen foliage, and a cypress in its form. it was now winter-time, and we saw nothing of the flora. the plants and bushes were dry; but wild indigo abounded, as indeed it does over large tracts of africa. it is called mohetolo, or the "changer", by the boys, who dye their ornaments of straw with the juice. there are two kinds of cotton in the country, and the mashona, who convert it into cloth, dye it blue with this plant. we found the elephants in prodigious numbers on the southern bank. they come to drink by night, and after having slaked their thirst--in doing which they throw large quantities of water over themselves, and are heard, while enjoying the refreshment, screaming with delight--they evince their horror of pitfalls by setting off in a straight line to the desert, and never diverge till they are eight or ten miles off. they are smaller here than in the countries farther south. at the limpopo, for instance, they are upward of twelve feet high; here, only eleven: farther north we shall find them nine feet only. the koodoo, or tolo, seemed smaller, too, than those we had been accustomed to see. we saw specimens of the kuabaoba, or straight-horned rhinoceros ('r. oswellii'), which is a variety of the white ('r. simus'); and we found that, from the horn being projected downward, it did not obstruct the line of vision, so that this species is able to be much more wary than its neighbors. we discovered an entirely new species of antelope, called leche or lechwi. it is a beautiful water-antelope of a light brownish-yellow color. its horns--exactly like those of the 'aigoceros ellipsiprimnus', the waterbuck, or tumogo, of the bechuanas--rise from the head with a slight bend backward, then curve forward at the points. the chest, belly, and orbits are nearly white, the front of the legs and ankles deep brown. from the horns, along the nape to the withers, the male has a small mane of the same yellowish color with the rest of the skin, and the tail has a tuft of black hair. it is never found a mile from water; islets in marshes and rivers are its favorite haunts, and it is quite unknown except in the central humid basin of africa. having a good deal of curiosity, it presents a noble appearance as it stands gazing, with head erect, at the approaching stranger. when it resolves to decamp, it lowers its head, and lays its horns down to a level with the withers; it then begins with a waddling trot, which ends in its galloping and springing over bushes like the pallahs. it invariably runs to the water, and crosses it by a succession of bounds, each of which appears to be from the bottom. we thought the flesh good at first, but soon got tired of it. great shoals of excellent fish come down annually with the access of waters. the mullet ('mugil africanus') is the most abundant. they are caught in nets. the 'glanis siluris', a large, broad-headed fish, without scales, and barbed--called by the natives "mosala"--attains an enormous size and fatness. they are caught so large that when a man carries one over his shoulder the tail reaches the ground. it is a vegetable feeder, and in many of its habits resembles the eel. like most lophoid fishes, it has the power of retaining a large quantity of water in a part of its great head, so that it can leave the river, and even be buried in the mud of dried-up pools, without being destroyed. another fish closely resembling this, and named 'clarias capensis' by dr. smith, is widely diffused throughout the interior, and often leaves the rivers for the sake of feeding in pools. as these dry up, large numbers of them are entrapped by the people. a water-snake, yellow-spotted and dark brown, is often seen swimming along with its head above the water: it is quite harmless, and is relished as food by the bayeiye. they mention ten kinds of fish in their river; and, in their songs of praise to the zouga, say, "the messenger sent in haste is always forced to spend the night on the way by the abundance of food you place before him." the bayeiye live much on fish, which is quite an abomination to the bechuanas of the south; and they catch them in large numbers by means of nets made of the fine, strong fibres of the hibiscus, which grows abundantly in all moist places. their float-ropes are made of the ife, or, as it is now called, the 'sanseviere angolensis', a flag-looking plant, having a very strong fibre, that abounds from kolobeng to angola; and the floats themselves are pieces of a water-plant containing valves at each joint, which retain the air in cells about an inch long. the mode of knotting the nets is identical with our own. they also spear the fish with javelins having a light handle, which readily floats on the surface. they show great dexterity in harpooning the hippopotamus; and, the barbed blade of the spear being attached to a rope made of the young leaves of the palmyra, the animal can not rid himself of the canoe, attached to him in whale fashion, except by smashing it, which he not unfrequently does by his teeth or by a stroke of his hind foot. on returning to the bakurutse, we found that their canoes for fishing were simply large bundles of reeds tied together. such a canoe would be a ready extemporaneous pontoon for crossing any river that had reedy banks. chapter . leave kolobeng again for the country of sebituane--reach the zouga-- the tsetse--a party of englishmen--death of mr. rider--obtain guides--children fall sick with fever--relinquish the attempt to reach sebituane--mr. oswell's elephant-hunting--return to kolobeng--make a third start thence--reach nchokotsa--salt-pans--"links", or springs--bushmen--our guide shobo--the banajoa--an ugly chief--the tsetse--bite fatal to domestic animals, but harmless to wild animals and man--operation of the poison--losses caused by it--the makololo-- our meeting with sebituane--sketch of his career--his courage and conquests--manoeuvres of the batoka--he outwits them--his wars with the matebele--predictions of a native prophet--successes of the makololo--renewed attacks of the matebele--the island of loyelo--defeat of the matebele--sebituane's policy--his kindness to strangers and to the poor--his sudden illness and death--succeeded by his daughter--her friendliness to us--discovery, in june, , of the zambesi flowing in the centre of the continent--its size--the mambari--the slave-trade--determine to send family to england--return to the cape in april, --safe transit through the caffre country during hostilities--need of a "special correspondent"--kindness of the london missionary society--assistance afforded by the astronomer royal at the cape. having returned to kolobeng, i remained there till april, , and then left in company with mrs. livingstone, our three children, and the chief sechele--who had now bought a wagon of his own--in order to go across the zouga at its lower end, with the intention of proceeding up the northern bank till we gained the tamunak'le, and of then ascending that river to visit sebituane in the north. sekomi had given orders to fill up the wells which we had dug with so much labor at serotli, so we took the more eastern route through the bamangwato town and by letloche. that chief asked why i had avoided him in our former journeys. i replied that my reason was that i knew he did not wish me to go to the lake, and i did not want to quarrel with him. "well," he said, "you beat me then, and i am content." parting with sechele at the ford, as he was eager to visit lechulatebe, we went along the northern woody bank of the zouga with great labor, having to cut down very many trees to allow the wagons to pass. our losses by oxen falling into pitfalls were very heavy. the bayeiye kindly opened the pits when they knew of our approach; but when that was not the case, we could blame no one on finding an established custom of the country inimical to our interests. on approaching the confluence of the tamunak'le we were informed that the fly called tsetse* abounded on its banks. this was a barrier we never expected to meet; and, as it might have brought our wagons to a complete stand-still in a wilderness, where no supplies for the children could be obtained, we were reluctantly compelled to recross the zouga. * 'glossina morsitans', the first specimens of which were brought to england in by my friend major vardon, from the banks of the limpopo. from the bayeiye we learned that a party of englishmen, who had come to the lake in search of ivory, were all laid low by fever, so we traveled hastily down about sixty miles to render what aid was in our power. we were grieved to find, as we came near, that mr. alfred rider, an enterprising young artist who had come to make sketches of this country and of the lake immediately after its discovery, had died of fever before our arrival; but by the aid of medicines and such comforts as could be made by the only english lady who ever visited the lake, the others happily recovered. the unfinished drawing of lake ngami was made by mr. rider just before his death, and has been kindly lent for this work by his bereaved mother. sechele used all his powers of eloquence with lechulatebe to induce him to furnish guides that i might be able to visit sebituane on ox-back, while mrs. livingstone and the children remained at lake ngami. he yielded at last. i had a very superior london-made gun, the gift of lieutenant arkwright, on which i placed the greatest value, both on account of the donor and the impossibility of my replacing it. lechulatebe fell violently in love with it, and offered whatever number of elephants' tusks i might ask for it. i too was enamored with sebituane; and as he promised in addition that he would furnish mrs. livingstone with meat all the time of my absence, his arguments made me part with the gun. though he had no ivory at the time to pay me, i felt the piece would be well spent on those terms, and delivered it to him. all being ready for our departure, i took mrs. livingstone about six miles from the town, that she might have a peep at the broad part of the lake. next morning we had other work to do than part, for our little boy and girl were seized with fever. on the day following, all our servants were down too with the same complaint. as nothing is better in these cases than change of place, i was forced to give up the hope of seeing sebituane that year; so, leaving my gun as part payment for guides next year, we started for the pure air of the desert. some mistake had happened in the arrangement with mr. oswell, for we met him on the zouga on our return, and he devoted the rest of this season to elephant-hunting, at which the natives universally declare he is the greatest adept that ever came into the country. he hunted without dogs. it is remarkable that this lordly animal is so completely harassed by the presence of a few yelping curs as to be quite incapable of attending to man. he makes awkward attempts to crush them by falling on his knees; and sometimes places his forehead against a tree ten inches in diameter; glancing on one side of the tree and then on the other, he pushes it down before him, as if he thought thereby to catch his enemies. the only danger the huntsman has to apprehend is the dogs running toward him, and thereby leading the elephant to their master. mr. oswell has been known to kill four large old male elephants a day. the value of the ivory in these cases would be one hundred guineas. we had reason to be proud of his success, for the inhabitants conceived from it a very high idea of english courage; and when they wished to flatter me would say, "if you were not a missionary you would just be like oswell; you would not hunt with dogs either." when, in , we came to the cape, my black coat eleven years out of fashion, and without a penny of salary to draw, we found that mr. oswell had most generously ordered an outfit for the half-naked children, which cost about pounds, and presented it to us, saying he thought mrs. livingstone had a right to the game of her own preserves. foiled in this second attempt to reach sebituane, we returned again to kolobeng, whither we were soon followed by a number of messengers from that chief himself. when he heard of our attempts to visit him, he dispatched three detachments of his men with thirteen brown cows to lechulatebe, thirteen white cows to sekomi, and thirteen black cows to sechele, with a request to each to assist the white men to reach him. their policy, however, was to keep him out of view, and act as his agents in purchasing with his ivory the goods he wanted. this is thoroughly african; and that continent being without friths and arms of the sea, the tribes in the centre have always been debarred from european intercourse by its universal prevalence among all the people around the coasts. before setting out on our third journey to sebituane, it was necessary to visit kuruman; and sechele, eager, for the sake of the commission thereon, to get the ivory of that chief into his own hands, allowed all the messengers to leave before our return. sekomi, however, was more than usually gracious, and even furnished us with a guide, but no one knew the path beyond nchokotsa which we intended to follow. when we reached that point, we found that the main spring of the gun of another of his men, who was well acquainted with the bushmen, through whose country we should pass, had opportunely broken. i never undertook to mend a gun with greater zest than this; for, under promise of his guidance, we went to the north instead of westward. all the other guides were most liberally rewarded by mr. oswell. we passed quickly over a hard country, which is perfectly flat. a little soil lying on calcareous tufa, over a tract of several hundreds of miles, supports a vegetation of fine sweet short grass, and mopane and baobab trees. on several parts of this we found large salt-pans, one of which, ntwetwe, is fifteen miles broad and one hundred long. the latitude might have been taken on its horizon as well as upon the sea. although these curious spots seem perfectly level, all those in this direction have a gentle slope to the northeast: thither the rain-water, which sometimes covers them, gently gravitates. this, it may be recollected, is the direction of the zouga. the salt dissolved in the water has by this means all been transferred to one pan in that direction, named chuantsa; on it we see a cake of salt and lime an inch and a half thick. all the others have an efflorescence of lime and one of the nitrates only, and some are covered thickly with shells. these shells are identical with those of the mollusca of lake ngami and the zouga. there are three varieties, spiral, univalve, and bivalve. in every salt-pan in the country there is a spring of water on one side. i can remember no exception to this rule. the water of these springs is brackish, and contains the nitrate of soda. in one instance there are two springs, and one more saltish than the other. if this supply came from beds of rock salt the water would not be drinkable, as it generally is, and in some instances, where the salt contained in the pan in which these springs appear has been removed by human agency, no fresh deposit occurs. it is therefore probable that these deposits of salt are the remains of the very slightly brackish lakes of antiquity, large portions of which must have been dried out in the general desiccation. we see an instance in lake ngami, which, when low, becomes brackish, and this view seems supported by the fact that the largest quantities of salt have been found in the deepest hollows or lowest valleys, which have no outlet or outgoing gorge; and a fountain, about thirty miles south of the bamangwato--the temperature of which is upward of deg.--while strongly impregnated with pure salt, being on a flat part of the country, is accompanied by no deposit. when these deposits occur in a flat tufaceous country like the present, a large space is devoid of vegetation, on account of the nitrates dissolving the tufa, and keeping it in a state unfavorable to the growth of plants. we found a great number of wells in this tufa. a place called matlomagan-yana, or the "links", is quite a chain of these never-failing springs. as they occasionally become full in seasons when no rain falls, and resemble somewhat in this respect the rivers we have already mentioned, it is probable they receive some water by percolation from the river system in the country beyond. among these links we found many families of bushmen; and, unlike those on the plains of the kalahari, who are generally of short stature and light yellow color, these were tall, strapping fellows, of dark complexion. heat alone does not produce blackness of skin, but heat with moisture seems to insure the deepest hue. one of these bushmen, named shobo, consented to be our guide over the waste between these springs and the country of sebituane. shobo gave us no hope of water in less than a month. providentially, however, we came sooner than we expected to some supplies of rain-water in a chain of pools. it is impossible to convey an idea of the dreary scene on which we entered after leaving this spot: the only vegetation was a low scrub in deep sand; not a bird or insect enlivened the landscape. it was, without exception, the most uninviting prospect i ever beheld; and, to make matters worse, our guide shobo wandered on the second day. we coaxed him on at night, but he went to all points of the compass on the trails of elephants which had been here in the rainy season, and then would sit down in the path, and in his broken sichuana say, "no water, all country only; shobo sleeps; he breaks down; country only;" and then coolly curl himself up and go to sleep. the oxen were terribly fatigued and thirsty; and on the morning of the fourth day, shobo, after professing ignorance of every thing, vanished altogether. we went on in the direction in which we last saw him, and about eleven o'clock began to see birds; then the trail of a rhinoceros. at this we unyoked the oxen, and they, apparently knowing the sign, rushed along to find the water in the river mahabe, which comes from the tamunak'le, and lay to the west of us. the supply of water in the wagons had been wasted by one of our servants, and by the afternoon only a small portion remained for the children. this was a bitterly anxious night; and next morning the less there was of water, the more thirsty the little rogues became. the idea of their perishing before our eyes was terrible. it would almost have been a relief to me to have been reproached with being the entire cause of the catastrophe; but not one syllable of upbraiding was uttered by their mother, though the tearful eye told the agony within. in the afternoon of the fifth day, to our inexpressible relief, some of the men returned with a supply of that fluid of which we had never before felt the true value. the cattle, in rushing along to the water in the mahabe, probably crossed a small patch of trees containing tsetse, an insect which was shortly to become a perfect pest to us. shobo had found his way to the bayeiye, and appeared, when we came up to the river, at the head of a party; and, as he wished to show his importance before his friends, he walked up boldly and commanded our whole cavalcade to stop, and to bring forth fire and tobacco, while he coolly sat down and smoked his pipe. it was such an inimitably natural way of showing off, that we all stopped to admire the acting, and, though he had left us previously in the lurch, we all liked shobo, a fine specimen of that wonderful people, the bushmen. next day we came to a village of banajoa, a tribe which extends far to the eastward. they were living on the borders of a marsh in which the mahabe terminates. they had lost their crop of corn ('holcus sorghum'), and now subsisted almost entirely on the root called "tsitla", a kind of aroidoea, which contains a very large quantity of sweet-tasted starch. when dried, pounded into meal, and allowed to ferment, it forms a not unpleasant article of food. the women shave all the hair off their heads, and seem darker than the bechuanas. their huts were built on poles, and a fire is made beneath by night, in order that the smoke may drive away the mosquitoes, which abound on the mababe and tamunak'le more than in any other part of the country. the head man of this village, majane, seemed a little wanting in ability, but had had wit enough to promote a younger member of the family to the office. this person, the most like the ugly negro of the tobacconists' shops i ever saw, was called moroa majane, or son of majane, and proved an active guide across the river sonta, and to the banks of the chobe, in the country of sebituane. we had come through another tsetse district by night, and at once passed our cattle over to the northern bank to preserve them from its ravages. a few remarks on the tsetse, or 'glossina morsitans', may here be appropriate. it is not much larger than the common house-fly, and is nearly of the same brown color as the common honey-bee; the after part of the body has three or four yellow bars across it; the wings project beyond this part considerably, and it is remarkably alert, avoiding most dexterously all attempts to capture it with the hand at common temperatures; in the cool of the mornings and evenings it is less agile. its peculiar buzz when once heard can never be forgotten by the traveler whose means of locomotion are domestic animals; for it is well known that the bite of this poisonous insect is certain death to the ox, horse, and dog. in this journey, though we were not aware of any great number having at any time lighted on our cattle, we lost forty-three fine oxen by its bite. we watched the animals carefully, and believe that not a score of flies were ever upon them. a most remarkable feature in the bite of the tsetse is its perfect harmlessness in man and wild animals, and even calves, so long as they continue to suck the cows. we never experienced the slightest injury from them ourselves, personally, although we lived two months in their habitat, which was in this case as sharply defined as in many others, for the south bank of the chobe was infested by them, and the northern bank, where our cattle were placed, only fifty yards distant, contained not a single specimen. this was the more remarkable, as we often saw natives carrying over raw meat to the opposite bank with many tsetse settled upon it. the poison does not seem to be injected by a sting, or by ova placed beneath the skin; for, when one is allowed to feed freely on the hand, it is seen to insert the middle prong of three portions, into which the proboscis divides, somewhat deeply into the true skin; it then draws it out a little way, and it assumes a crimson color as the mandibles come into brisk operation. the previously shrunken belly swells out, and, if left undisturbed, the fly quietly departs when it is full. a slight itching irritation follows, but not more than in the bite of a mosquito. in the ox this same bite produces no more immediate effects than in man. it does not startle him as the gad-fly does; but a few days afterward the following symptoms supervene: the eye and nose begin to run, the coat stares as if the animal were cold, a swelling appears under the jaw, and sometimes at the navel; and, though the animal continues to graze, emaciation commences, accompanied with a peculiar flaccidity of the muscles, and this proceeds unchecked until, perhaps months afterward, purging comes on, and the animal, no longer able to graze, perishes in a state of extreme exhaustion. those which are in good condition often perish soon after the bite is inflicted with staggering and blindness, as if the brain were affected by it. sudden changes of temperature produced by falls of rain seem to hasten the progress of the complaint; but, in general, the emaciation goes on uninterruptedly for months, and, do what we will, the poor animals perish miserably. when opened, the cellular tissue on the surface of the body beneath the skin is seen to be injected with air, as if a quantity of soap-bubbles were scattered over it, or a dishonest, awkward butcher had been trying to make it look fat. the fat is of a greenish-yellow color and of an oily consistence. all the muscles are flabby, and the heart often so soft that the fingers may be made to meet through it. the lungs and liver partake of the disease. the stomach and bowels are pale and empty, and the gall-bladder is distended with bile. these symptoms seem to indicate what is probably the case, a poison in the blood, the germ of which enters when the proboscis is inserted to draw blood. the poison-germ, contained in a bulb at the root of the proboscis, seems capable, although very minute in quantity, of reproducing itself, for the blood after death by tsetse is very small in quantity, and scarcely stains the hands in dissection. i shall have by-and-by to mention another insect, which by the same operation produces in the human subject both vomiting and purging. the mule, ass, and goat enjoy the same immunity from the tsetse as man and the game. many large tribes on the zambesi can keep no domestic animals except the goat, in consequence of the scourge existing in their country. our children were frequently bitten, yet suffered no harm; and we saw around us numbers of zebras, buffaloes, pigs, pallahs and other antelopes, feeding quietly in the very habitat of the tsetse, yet as undisturbed by its bite as oxen are when they first receive the fatal poison. there is not so much difference in the natures of the horse and zebra, the buffalo and ox, the sheep and antelope, as to afford any satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon. is a man not as much a domestic animal as a dog? the curious feature in the case, that dogs perish though fed on milk, whereas the calves escape so long as they continue sucking, made us imagine that the mischief might be produced by some plant in the locality, and not by tsetse; but major vardon, of the madras army, settled that point by riding a horse up to a small hill infested by the insect without allowing him time to graze, and, though he only remained long enough to take a view of the country and catch some specimens of tsetse on the animal, in ten days afterward the horse was dead. the well-known disgust which the tsetse shows to animal excreta, as exhibited when a village is placed in its habitat, has been observed and turned to account by some of the doctors. they mix droppings of animals, human milk, and some medicines together, and smear the animals that are about to pass through a tsetse district; but this, though it proves a preventive at the time, is not permanent. there is no cure yet known for the disease. a careless herdsman allowing a large number of cattle to wander into a tsetse district loses all except the calves; and sebituane once lost nearly the entire cattle of his tribe, very many thousands, by unwittingly coming under its influence. inoculation does not insure immunity, as animals which have been slightly bitten in one year may perish by a greater number of bites in the next; but it is probable that with the increase of guns the game will perish, as has happened in the south, and the tsetse, deprived of food, may become extinct simultaneously with the larger animals. the makololo whom we met on the chobe were delighted to see us; and as their chief sebituane was about twenty miles down the river, mr. oswell and i proceeded in canoes to his temporary residence. he had come from the barotse town of naliele down to sesheke as soon as he heard of white men being in search of him, and now came one hundred miles more to bid us welcome into his country. he was upon an island, with all his principal men around him, and engaged in singing when we arrived. it was more like church music than the sing-song ee ee ee, ae ae ae, of the bechuanas of the south, and they continued the tune for some seconds after we approached. we informed him of the difficulties we had encountered, and how glad we were that they were all at an end by at last reaching his presence. he signified his own joy, and added, "your cattle are all bitten by the tsetse, and will certainly die; but never mind, i have oxen, and will give you as many as you need." we, in our ignorance, then thought that as so few tsetse had bitten them no great mischief would follow. he then presented us with an ox and a jar of honey as food, and handed us over to the care of mahale, who had headed the party to kolobeng, and would now fain appropriate to himself the whole credit of our coming. prepared skins of oxen, as soft as cloth, were given to cover us through the night; and, as nothing could be returned to this chief, mahale became the owner of them. long before it was day sebituane came, and sitting down by the fire, which was lighted for our benefit behind the hedge where we lay, he narrated the difficulties he had himself experienced, when a young man, in crossing that same desert which we had mastered long afterward. as he has been most remarkable in his career, and was unquestionably the greatest man in all that country, a short sketch of his life may prove interesting to the reader. sebituane was about forty-five years of age; of a tall and wiry form, an olive or coffee-and-milk color, and slightly bald; in manner cool and collected, and more frank in his answers than any other chief i ever met. he was the greatest warrior ever heard of beyond the colony; for, unlike mosilikatse, dingaan, and others, he always led his men into battle himself. when he saw the enemy, he felt the edge of his battle-axe, and said, "aha! it is sharp, and whoever turns his back on the enemy will feel its edge." so fleet of foot was he, that all his people knew there was no escape for the coward, as any such would be cut down without mercy. in some instances of skulking he allowed the individual to return home; then calling him, he would say, "ah! you prefer dying at home to dying in the field, do you? you shall have your desire." this was the signal for his immediate execution. he came from the country near the sources of the likwa and namagari rivers in the south, so we met him eight hundred or nine hundred miles from his birth-place. he was not the son of a chief, though related closely to the reigning family of the basutu; and when, in an attack by sikonyele, the tribe was driven out of one part, sebituane was one in that immense horde of savages driven back by the griquas from kuruman in .* he then fled to the north with an insignificant party of men and cattle. at melita the bangwaketse collected the bakwains, bakatla, and bahurutse, to "eat them up". placing his men in front, and the women behind the cattle, he routed the whole of his enemies at one blow. having thus conquered makabe, the chief of the bangwaketse, he took immediate possession of his town and all his goods. * see an account of this affair in moffat's "missionary enterprise in africa". sebituane subsequently settled at the place called litubaruba, where sechele now dwells, and his people suffered severely in one of those unrecorded attacks by white men, in which murder is committed and materials laid up in the conscience for a future judgment. a great variety of fortune followed him in the northern part of the bechuana country; twice he lost all his cattle by the attacks of the matabele, but always kept his people together, and retook more than he lost. he then crossed the desert by nearly the same path that we did. he had captured a guide, and, as it was necessary to travel by night in order to reach water, the guide took advantage of this and gave him the slip. after marching till morning, and going as they thought right, they found themselves on the trail of the day before. many of his cattle burst away from him in the phrensy of thirst, and rushed back to serotli, then a large piece of water, and to mashue and lopepe, the habitations of their original owners. he stocked himself again among the batletli, on lake kumadau, whose herds were of the large-horned species of cattle.* conquering all around the lake, he heard of white men living at the west coast; and, haunted by what seems to have been the dream of his whole life, a desire to have intercourse with the white man, he passed away to the southwest, into the parts opened up lately by messrs. galton and andersson. there, suffering intensely from thirst, he and his party came to a small well. he decided that the men, not the cattle, should drink it, the former being of most value, as they could fight for more should these be lost. in the morning they found the cattle had escaped to the damaras. * we found the batauana in possession of this breed when we discovered lake ngami. one of these horns, brought to england by major vardon, will hold no less than twenty-one imperial pints of water; and a pair, brought by mr. oswell, and now in the possession of colonel steele, measures from tip to tip eight and a half feet. returning to the north poorer than he started, he ascended the teoughe to the hill sorila, and crossed over a swampy country to the eastward. pursuing his course onward to the low-lying basin of the leeambye, he saw that it presented no attraction to a pastoral tribe like his, so he moved down that river among the bashubia and batoka, who were then living in all their glory. his narrative resembled closely the "commentaries of caesar", and the history of the british in india. he was always forced to attack the different tribes, and to this day his men justify every step he took as perfectly just and right. the batoka lived on large islands in the leeambye or zambesi, and, feeling perfectly secure in their fastnesses, often allured fugitive or wandering tribes on to uninhabited islets on pretense of ferrying them across, and there left them to perish for the sake of their goods. sekomi, the chief of the bamangwato, was, when a child, in danger of meeting this fate; but a man still living had compassion on him, and enabled his mother to escape with him by night. the river is so large that the sharpest eye can not tell the difference between an island and the bend of the opposite bank; but sebituane, with his usual foresight, requested the island chief who ferried him across to take his seat in the canoe with him, and detained him by his side till all his people and cattle were safely landed. the whole batoka country was then densely peopled, and they had a curious taste for ornamenting their villages with the skulls of strangers. when sebituane appeared near the great falls, an immense army collected to make trophies of the makololo skulls; but, instead of succeeding in this, they gave him a good excuse for conquering them, and capturing so many cattle that his people were quite incapable of taking any note of the sheep and goats. he overran all the high lands toward the kafue, and settled in what is called a pastoral country, of gently undulating plains, covered with short grass and but little forest. the makololo have never lost their love for this fine, healthy region. but the matebele, a caffre or zulu tribe, under mosilikatse, crossed the zambesi, and, attacking sebituane in this choice spot, captured his cattle and women. rallying his men, he followed and recaptured the whole. a fresh attack was also repulsed, and sebituane thought of going farther down the zambesi, to the country of the white men. he had an idea, whence imbibed i never could learn, that if he had a cannon he might live in peace. he had led a life of war, yet no one apparently desired peace more than he did. a prophet induced him to turn his face again to the westward. this man, by name tlapane, was called a "senoga"--one who holds intercourse with the gods. he probably had a touch of insanity, for he was in the habit of retiring no one knew whither, but perhaps into some cave, to remain in a hypnotic or mesmeric state until the moon was full. then, returning to the tribe quite emaciated, he excited himself, as others do who pretend to the prophetic afflatus, until he was in a state of ecstasy. these pretended prophets commence their operations by violent action of the voluntary muscles. stamping, leaping, and shouting in a peculiarly violent manner, or beating the ground with a club, they induce a kind of fit, and while in it pretend that their utterances are unknown to themselves. tlapane, pointing eastward, said, "there, sebituane, i behold a fire: shun it; it is a fire which may scorch thee. the gods say, go not thither." then, turning to the west, he said, "i see a city and a nation of black men--men of the water; their cattle are red; thine own tribe, sebituane, is perishing, and will be all consumed; thou wilt govern black men, and, when thy warriors have captured red cattle, let not the owners be killed; they are thy future tribe--they are thy city; let them be spared to cause thee to build. and thou, ramosinii, thy village will perish utterly. if mokari removes from that village he will perish first, and thou, ramosinii, wilt be the last to die." concerning himself he added, "the gods have caused other men to drink water, but to me they have given bitter water of the chukuru (rhinoceros). they call me away myself. i can not stay much longer." this vaticination, which loses much in the translation, i have given rather fully, as it shows an observant mind. the policy recommended was wise, and the deaths of the "senoga" and of the two men he had named, added to the destruction of their village, having all happened soon after, it is not wonderful that sebituane followed implicitly the warning voice. the fire pointed to was evidently the portuguese fire-arms, of which he must have heard. the black men referred to were the barotse, or, as they term themselves, baloiana; and sebituane spared their chiefs, even though they attacked him first. he had ascended the barotse valley, but was pursued by the matebele, as mosilikatse never could forgive his former defeats. they came up the river in a very large body. sebituane placed some goats on one of the large islands of the zambesi as a bait to the warriors, and some men in canoes to co-operate in the manoeuvre. when they were all ferried over to the island, the canoes were removed, and the matebele found themselves completely in a trap, being perfectly unable to swim. they subsisted for some time on the roots of grass after the goats were eaten, but gradually became so emaciated that, when the makololo landed, they had only to perform the part of executioners on the adults, and to adopt the rest into their own tribe. afterward mosilikatse was goaded on by his warriors to revenge this loss; so he sent an immense army, carrying canoes with them, in order that no such mishap might occur again. sebituane had by this time incorporated the barotse, and taught his young men to manage canoes; so he went from island to island, and watched the matebele on the main land so closely that they could not use their canoes to cross the river any where without parting their forces. at last all the makololo and their cattle were collected on the island of loyelo, and lay all around, keeping watch night and day over the enemy. after some time spent in this way, sebituane went in a canoe toward them, and, addressing them by an interpreter, asked why they wished to kill him; he had never attacked them, never harmed their chief: "au!" he continued, "the guilt is on your side." the matebele made no reply; but the makololo next day saw the canoes they had carried so far lying smashed, and the owners gone. they returned toward their own country, and fever, famine, and the batoka completed their destruction; only five men returned to mosilikatse. sebituane had now not only conquered all the black tribes over an immense tract of country, but had made himself dreaded even by the terrible mosilikatse. he never could trust this ferocious chief, however; and, as the batoka on the islands had been guilty of ferrying his enemies across the zambesi, he made a rapid descent upon them, and swept them all out of their island fastnesses. he thus unwittingly performed a good service to the country by completely breaking down the old system which prevented trade from penetrating into the great central valley. of the chiefs who escaped, he said, "they love mosilikatse, let them live with him: the zambesi is my line of defense;" and men were placed all along it as sentinels. when he heard of our wish to visit him, he did all he could to assist our approach. sechele, sekomi, and lechulatebe owed their lives to his clemency; and the latter might have paid dearly for his obstructiveness. sebituane knew every thing that happened in the country, for he had the art of gaining the affections both of his own people and of strangers. when a party of poor men came to his town to sell their hoes or skins, no matter how ungainly they might be, he soon knew them all. a company of these indigent strangers, sitting far apart from the makololo gentlemen around the chief, would be surprised to see him come alone to them, and, sitting down, inquire if they were hungry. he would order an attendant to bring meal, milk, and honey, and, mixing them in their sight, in order to remove any suspicion from their minds, make them feast, perhaps for the first time in their lives, on a lordly dish. delighted beyond measure with his affability and liberality, they felt their hearts warm toward him, and gave him all the information in their power; and as he never allowed a party of strangers to go away without giving every one of them, servants and all, a present, his praises were sounded far and wide. "he has a heart! he is wise!" were the usual expressions we heard before we saw him. he was much pleased with the proof of confidence we had shown in bringing our children, and promised to take us to see his country, so that we might choose a part in which to locate ourselves. our plan was, that i should remain in the pursuit of my objects as a missionary, while mr. oswell explored the zambesi to the east. poor sebituane, however, just after realizing what he had so long ardently desired, fell sick of inflammation of the lungs, which originated in and extended from an old wound got at melita. i saw his danger, but, being a stranger, i feared to treat him medically, lest, in the event of his death, i should be blamed by his people. i mentioned this to one of his doctors, who said, "your fear is prudent and wise; this people would blame you." he had been cured of this complaint, during the year before, by the barotse making a large number of free incisions in the chest. the makololo doctors, on the other hand, now scarcely cut the skin. on the sunday afternoon in which he died, when our usual religious service was over, i visited him with my little boy robert. "come near," said sebituane, "and see if i am any longer a man. i am done." he was thus sensible of the dangerous nature of his disease, so i ventured to assent, and added a single sentence regarding hope after death. "why do you speak of death?" said one of a relay of fresh doctors; "sebituane will never die." if i had persisted, the impression would have been produced that by speaking about it i wished him to die. after sitting with him some time, and commending him to the mercy of god, i rose to depart, when the dying chieftain, raising himself up a little from his prone position, called a servant, and said, "take robert to maunku (one of his wives), and tell her to give him some milk." these were the last words of sebituane. we were not informed of his death until the next day. the burial of a bechuana chief takes place in his cattle-pen, and all the cattle are driven for an hour or two around and over the grave, so that it may be quite obliterated. we went and spoke to the people, advising them to keep together and support the heir. they took this kindly; and in turn told us not to be alarmed, for they would not think of ascribing the death of their chief to us; that sebituane had just gone the way of his fathers; and though the father had gone, he had left children, and they hoped that we would be as friendly to his children as we intended to have been to himself. he was decidedly the best specimen of a native chief i ever met. i never felt so much grieved by the loss of a black man before; and it was impossible not to follow him in thought into the world of which he had just heard before he was called away, and to realize somewhat of the feelings of those who pray for the dead. the deep, dark question of what is to become of such as he, must, however, be left where we find it, believing that, assuredly, the "judge of all the earth will do right." at sebituane's death the chieftainship devolved, as her father intended, on a daughter named ma-mochisane. he had promised to show us his country and to select a suitable locality for our residence. we had now to look to the daughter, who was living twelve days to the north, at naliele. we were obliged, therefore, to remain until a message came from her; and when it did, she gave us perfect liberty to visit any part of the country we chose. mr. oswell and i then proceeded one hundred and thirty miles to the northeast, to sesheke; and in the end of june, , we were rewarded by the discovery of the zambesi, in the centre of the continent. this was a most important point, for that river was not previously known to exist there at all. the portuguese maps all represent it as rising far to the east of where we now were; and if ever any thing like a chain of trading stations had existed across the country between the latitudes deg. and deg. south, this magnificent portion of the river must have been known before. we saw it at the end of the dry season, at the time when the river is about at its lowest, and yet there was a breadth of from three hundred to six hundred yards of deep flowing water. mr. oswell said he had never seen such a fine river, even in india. at the period of its annual inundation it rises fully twenty feet in perpendicular height, and floods fifteen or twenty miles of lands adjacent to its banks. the country over which we had traveled from the chobe was perfectly flat, except where there were large ant-hills, or the remains of former ones, which had left mounds a few feet high. these are generally covered with wild date-trees and palmyras, and in some parts there are forests of mimosae and mopane. occasionally the country between the chobe and zambesi is flooded, and there are large patches of swamps lying near the chobe or on its banks. the makololo were living among these swamps for the sake of the protection the deep reedy rivers afforded them against their enemies. now, in reference to a suitable locality for a settlement for myself, i could not conscientiously ask them to abandon their defenses for my convenience alone. the healthy districts were defenseless, and the safe localities were so deleterious to human life, that the original basutos had nearly all been cut off by the fever; i therefore feared to subject my family to the scourge. as we were the very first white men the inhabitants had ever seen, we were visited by prodigious numbers. among the first who came to see us was a gentleman who appeared in a gaudy dressing-gown of printed calico. many of the makololo, besides, had garments of blue, green, and red baize, and also of printed cottons; on inquiry, we learned that these had been purchased, in exchange for boys, from a tribe called mambari, which is situated near bihe. this tribe began the slave-trade with sebituane only in , and but for the unwillingness of lechulatebe to allow us to pass, we should have been with sebituane in time to have prevented it from commencing at all. the mambari visited in ancient times the chief of the barotse, whom sebituane conquered, and he refused to allow any one to sell a child. they never came back again till ; and as they had a number of old portuguese guns marked "legitimo de braga", which sebituane thought would be excellent in any future invasion of matebele, he offered to purchase them with cattle or ivory, but the mambari refused every thing except boys about fourteen years of age. the makololo declare they never heard of people being bought and sold till then, and disliked it, but the desire to possess the guns prevailed, and eight old guns were exchanged for as many boys; these were not their own children, but captives of the black races they had conquered. i have never known in africa an instance of a parent selling his own offspring. the makololo were afterward incited to make a foray against some tribes to the eastward; the mambari bargaining to use their guns in the attack for the captives they might take, and the makololo were to have all the cattle. they went off with at least two hundred slaves that year. during this foray the makololo met some arabs from zanzibar, who presented them with three english muskets, and in return received about thirty of their captives. in talking with my companions over these matters, the idea was suggested that, if the slave-market were supplied with articles of european manufacture by legitimate commerce, the trade in slaves would become impossible. it seemed more feasible to give the goods, for which the people now part with their servants, in exchange for ivory and other products of the country, and thus prevent the trade at the beginning, than to try to put a stop to it at any of the subsequent steps. this could only be effected by establishing a highway from the coast into the centre of the country. as there was no hope of the boers allowing the peaceable instruction of the natives at kolobeng, i at once resolved to save my family from exposure to this unhealthy region by sending them to england, and to return alone, with a view to exploring the country in search of a healthy district that might prove a centre of civilization, and open up the interior by a path to either the east or west coast. this resolution led me down to the cape in april, , being the first time during eleven years that i had visited the scenes of civilization. our route to cape town led us to pass through the centre of the colony during the twentieth month of a caffre war; and if those who periodically pay enormous sums for these inglorious affairs wish to know how our little unprotected party could quietly travel through the heart of the colony to the capital with as little sense or sign of danger as if we had been in england, they must engage a "'times' special correspondent" for the next outbreak to explain where the money goes, and who have been benefited by the blood and treasure expended. having placed my family on board a homeward-bound ship, and promised to rejoin them in two years, we parted, for, as it subsequently proved, nearly five years. the directors of the london missionary society signified their cordial approval of my project by leaving the matter entirely to my own discretion; and i have much pleasure in acknowledging my obligations to the gentlemen composing that body for always acting in an enlightened spirit, and with as much liberality as their constitution would allow. i have the like pleasure in confessing my thankfulness to the astronomer royal at the cape, thomas maclear, esq., for enabling me to recall the little astronomical knowledge which constant manual labor and the engrossing nature of missionary duties had effaced from my memory, and in adding much that i did not know before. the promise he made on parting, that he would examine and correct all my observations, had more effect in making me persevere in overcoming the difficulties of an unassisted solitary observer than any thing else; so whatever credit may be attached to the geographical positions laid down in my route must be attributed to the voluntary aid of the excellent and laborious astronomer of the cape observatory. having given the reader as rapid a sketch as possible of events which attracted notice between and , i now proceed to narrate the incidents of the last and longest journey of all, performed in - . chapter . start in june, , on the last and longest journey from cape town-- companions--wagon-traveling--physical divisions of africa--the eastern, central, and western zones--the kalahari desert--its vegetation--increasing value of the interior for colonization-- our route--dutch boers--their habits--sterile appearance of the district--failure of grass--succeeded by other plants-- vines--animals--the boers as farmers--migration of springbucks-- wariness of animals--the orange river--territory of the griquas and bechuanas--the griquas--the chief waterboer--his wise and energetic government--his fidelity--ill-considered measures of the colonial government in regard to supplies of gunpowder--success of the missionaries among the griquas and bechuanas--manifest improvement of the native character--dress of the natives--a full-dress costume--a native's description of the natives--articles of commerce in the country of the bechuanas--their unwillingness to learn, and readiness to criticise. having sent my family home to england, i started in the beginning of june, , on my last journey from cape town. this journey extended from the southern extremity of the continent to st. paul de loando, the capital of angola, on the west coast, and thence across south central africa in an oblique direction to kilimane (quilimane) in eastern africa. i proceeded in the usual conveyance of the country, the heavy, lumbering cape wagon drawn by ten oxen, and was accompanied by two christian bechuanas from kuruman--than whom i never saw better servants any where--by two bakwain men, and two young girls, who, having come as nurses with our children to the cape, were returning to their home at kolobeng. wagon-traveling in africa has been so often described that i need say no more than that it is a prolonged system of picnicking, excellent for the health, and agreeable to those who are not over-fastidious about trifles, and who delight in being in the open air. our route to the north lay near the centre of the cone-shaped mass of land which constitutes the promontory of the cape. if we suppose this cone to be divided into three zones or longitudinal bands, we find each presenting distinct peculiarities of climate, physical appearance and population. these are more marked beyond than within the colony. at some points one district seems to be continued in and to merge into the other, but the general dissimilarity warrants the division, as an aid to memory. the eastern zone is often furnished with mountains, well wooded with evergreen succulent trees, on which neither fire nor droughts can have the smallest effect ('strelitzia', 'zamia horrida', 'portulacaria afra', 'schotia speciosa', 'euphorbias', and 'aloes arborescens'); and its seaboard gorges are clad with gigantic timber. it is also comparatively well watered with streams and flowing rivers. the annual supply of rain is considerable, and the inhabitants (caffres or zulus) are tall, muscular, and well made; they are shrewd, energetic, and brave; altogether they merit the character given them by military authorities, of being "magnificent savages". their splendid physical development and form of skull show that, but for the black skin and woolly hair, they would take rank among the foremost europeans. the next division, that which embraces the centre of the continent, can scarcely be called hilly, for what hills there are are very low. it consists for the most part of extensive, slightly undulating plains. there are no lofty mountains, but few springs, and still fewer flowing streams. rain is far from abundant, and droughts may be expected every few years. without artificial irrigation no european grain can be raised, and the inhabitants (bechuanas), though evidently of the same stock, originally, with those already mentioned, and closely resembling them in being an agricultural as well as a pastoral people, are a comparatively timid race, and inferior to the caffres in physical development. the western division is still more level than the middle one, being rugged only near the coast. it includes the great plain called the kalahari desert, which is remarkable for little water and very considerable vegetation. the reason, probably, why so little rain falls on this extensive plain is that the prevailing winds of most of the interior country are easterly, with a little southing. the moisture taken up by the atmosphere from the indian ocean is deposited on the eastern hilly slope; and when the moving mass of air reaches its greatest elevation, it is then on the verge of the great valley, or, as in the case of the kalahari, the great heated inland plains; there, meeting with the rarefied air of that hot, dry surface, the ascending heat gives it greater capacity for retaining all its remaining humidity, and few showers can be given to the middle and western lands in consequence of the increased hygrometric power. this is the same phenomenon, on a gigantic scale, as that which takes place on table mountain, at the cape, in what is called the spreading of the "table-cloth". the southeast wind causes a mass of air, equal to the diameter of the mountain, suddenly to ascend at least three thousand feet; the dilatation produced by altitude, with its attendant cold, causes the immediate formation of a cloud on the summit; the water in the atmosphere becomes visible; successive masses of gliding-up and passing-over air cause the continual formation of clouds, but the top of the vapory mass, or "table-cloth", is level, and seemingly motionless; on the lee side, however, the thick volumes of vapor curl over and descend, but when they reach the point below, where greater density and higher temperature impart enlarged capacity for carrying water, they entirely disappear. now if, instead of a hollow on the lee side of table mountain, we had an elevated heated plain, the clouds which curl over that side, and disappear as they do at present when a "southeaster" is blowing, might deposit some moisture on the windward ascent and top; but the heat would then impart the increased capacity the air now receives at the lower level in its descent to leeward, and, instead of an extended country with a flora of the 'disa grandiflora', 'gladiolus', 'rushes', and 'lichens', which now appear on table mountain, we should have only the hardy vegetation of the kalahari. why there should be so much vegetation on the kalahari may be explained by the geological formation of the country. there is a rim or fringe of ancient rocks round a great central valley, which, dipping inward, form a basin, the bottom of which is composed of the oldest silurian rocks. this basin has been burst through and filled up in many parts by eruptive traps and breccias, which often bear in their substances angular fragments of the more ancient rocks, as shown in the fossils they contain. now, though large areas have been so dislocated that but little trace of the original valley formation appears, it is highly probable that the basin shape prevails over large tracts of the country; and as the strata on the slopes, where most of the rain falls, dip in toward the centre, they probably guide water beneath the plains but ill supplied with moisture from the clouds. the phenomenon of stagnant fountains becoming by a new and deeper outlet never-failing streams may be confirmatory of the view that water is conveyed from the sides of the country into the bottom of the central valley; and it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the wonderful river system in the north, which, if native information be correct, causes a considerable increase of water in the springs called matlomagan-yana (the links), extends its fertilizing influence beneath the plains of the kalahari. the peculiar formation of the country may explain why there is such a difference in the vegetation between the th and th parallels of latitude in south africa and the same latitudes in central australia. the want of vegetation is as true of some parts too in the centre of south america as of australia; and the cause of the difference holds out a probability for the success of artesian wells in extensive tracts of africa now unpeopled solely on account of the want of surface water. we may be allowed to speculate a little at least on the fact of much greater vegetation, which, from whatever source it comes, presents for south africa prospects of future greatness which we can not hope for in central australia. as the interior districts of the cape colony are daily becoming of higher value, offering to honest industry a fair remuneration for capital, and having a climate unequaled in salubrity for consumptive patients, i should unhesitatingly recommend any farmer at all afraid of that complaint in his family to try this colony. with the means of education already possessed, and the onward and upward movement of the cape population, he need entertain no apprehensions of his family sinking into barbarism. the route we at this time followed ran along the middle, or skirted the western zone before alluded to, until we reached the latitude of lake ngami, where a totally different country begins. while in the colony, we passed through districts inhabited by the descendants of dutch and french refugees who had fled from religious persecution. those living near the capital differ but little from the middle classes in english counties, and are distinguished by public spirit and general intelligence; while those situated far from the centres of civilization are less informed, but are a body of frugal, industrious, and hospitable peasantry. a most efficient system of public instruction was established in the time of governor sir george napier, on a plan drawn up in a great measure by that accomplished philosopher, sir john herschel. the system had to contend with less sectarian rancor than elsewhere; indeed, until quite recently, that spirit, except in a mild form, was unknown. the population here described ought not to be confounded with some boers who fled from british rule on account of the emancipation of their hottentot slaves, and perhaps never would have been so had not every now and then some rip van winkle started forth at the cape to justify in the public prints the deeds of blood and slave-hunting in the far interior. it is therefore not to be wondered at if the whole race is confounded and held in low estimation by those who do not know the real composition of the cape community. population among the boers increases rapidly; they marry soon, are seldom sterile, and continue to have children late. i once met a worthy matron whose husband thought it right to imitate the conduct of abraham while sarah was barren; she evidently agreed in the propriety of the measure, for she was pleased to hear the children by a mother of what has been thought an inferior race address her as their mother. orphans are never allowed to remain long destitute; and instances are frequent in which a tender-hearted farmer has adopted a fatherless child, and when it came of age portioned it as his own. two centuries of the south african climate have not had much effect upon the physical condition of the boers. they are a shade darker, or rather ruddier, than europeans, and are never cadaverous-looking, as descendants of europeans are said to be elsewhere. there is a tendency to the development of steatopyga, so characteristic of arabs and other african tribes; and it is probable that the interior boers in another century will become in color what the learned imagine our progenitors, adam and eve, to have been. the parts of the colony through which we passed were of sterile aspect; and, as the present winter had been preceded by a severe drought, many farmers had lost two thirds of their stock. the landscape was uninviting; the hills, destitute of trees, were of a dark brown color, and the scanty vegetation on the plains made me feel that they deserved the name of desert more than the kalahari. when first taken possession of, these parts are said to have been covered with a coating of grass, but that has disappeared with the antelopes which fed upon it, and a crop of mesembryanthemums and crassulas occupies its place. it is curious to observe how, in nature, organizations the most dissimilar are mutually dependent on each other for their perpetuation. here the original grasses were dependent for dissemination on the grass-feeding animals, which scattered the seeds. when, by the death of the antelopes, no fresh sowing was made, the african droughts proved too much for this form of vegetation. but even this contingency was foreseen by the omniscient one; for, as we may now observe in the kalahari desert, another family of plants, the mesembryanthemums, stood ready to neutralize the aridity which must otherwise have followed. this family of plants possesses seed-vessels which remain firmly shut on their contents while the soil is hot and dry, and thus preserve the vegetative power intact during the highest heat of the torrid sun; but when rain falls, the seed-vessel opens and sheds its contents just when there is the greatest probability of their vegetating. in other plants heat and drought cause the seed-vessels to burst and shed their charge. one of this family is edible ('mesembryanthemum edule'); another possesses a tuberous root, which may be eaten raw; and all are furnished with thick, fleshy leaves, having pores capable of imbibing and retaining moisture from a very dry atmosphere and soil, so that, if a leaf is broken during a period of the greatest drought, it shows abundant circulating sap. the plants of this family are found much farther north, but the great abundance of the grasses prevents them from making any show. there, however, they stand ready to fill up any gap which may occur in the present prevailing vegetation; and should the grasses disappear, animal life would not necessarily be destroyed, because a reserve supply, equivalent to a fresh act of creative power, has been provided. one of this family, 'm. turbiniforme', is so colored as to blend in well with the hue of the soil and stones around it; and a 'gryllus' of the same color feeds on it. in the case of the insect, the peculiar color is given as compensation for the deficiency of the powers of motion to enable it to elude the notice of birds. the continuation of the species is here the end in view. in the case of the plant the same device is adopted for a sort of double end, viz., perpetuation of the plant by hiding it from animals, with the view that ultimately its extensive appearance will sustain that race. as this new vegetation is better adapted for sheep and goats in a dry country than grass, the boers supplant the latter by imitating the process by which graminivorous antelopes have so abundantly disseminated the seed of grasses. a few wagon-loads of mesembryanthemum plants, in seed, are brought to a farm covered with a scanty crop of coarse grass, and placed on a spot to which the sheep have access in the evenings. as they eat a little every night, the seeds are dropped over the grazing grounds in this simple way, with a regularity which could not be matched except at the cost of an immense amount of labor. the place becomes in the course of a few years a sheep-farm, as these animals thrive on such herbage. as already mentioned, some plants of this family are furnished with an additional contrivance for withstanding droughts, viz., oblong tubers, which, buried deep enough beneath the soil for complete protection from the scorching sun, serve as reservoirs of sap and nutriment during those rainless periods which recur perpetually in even the most favored spots of africa. i have adverted to this peculiarity as often seen in the vegetation of the desert; and, though rather out of place, it may be well--while noticing a clever imitation of one process in nature by the cape farmers--to suggest another for their consideration. the country beyond south lat. deg. abounds in three varieties of grape-bearing vines, and one of these is furnished with oblong tubers every three or four inches along the horizontal root. they resemble closely those of the asparagus. this increase of power to withstand the effects of climate might prove of value in the more arid parts of the cape colony, grapes being well known to be an excellent restorative in the debility produced by heat: by ingrafting, or by some of those curious manipulations which we read of in books on gardening, a variety might be secured better adapted to the country than the foreign vines at present cultivated. the americans find that some of their native vines yield wines superior to those made from the very best imported vines from france and portugal. what a boon a vine of the sort contemplated would have been to a rhenish missionary i met at a part in the west of the colony called ebenezer, whose children had never seen flowers, though old enough to talk about them! the slow pace at which we wound our way through the colony made almost any subject interesting. the attention is attracted to the names of different places, because they indicate the former existence of buffaloes, elands, and elephants, which are now to be found only hundreds of miles beyond. a few blesbucks ('antilope pygarga'), gnus, bluebucks ('a. cerulea'), steinbucks, and the ostrich ('struthio camelus'), continue, like the bushmen, to maintain a precarious existence when all the rest are gone. the elephant, the most sagacious, flees the sound of fire-arms first; the gnu and ostrich, the most wary and the most stupid, last. the first emigrants found the hottentots in possession of prodigious herds of fine cattle, but no horses, asses, or camels. the original cattle, which may still be seen in some parts of the frontier, must have been brought south from the north-northeast, for from this point the natives universally ascribe their original migration. they brought cattle, sheep, goats, and dogs; why not the horse, the delight of savage hordes? horses thrive well in the cape colony when imported. naturalists point out certain mountain ranges as limiting the habitat of certain classes of animals; but there is no cordillera in africa to answer that purpose, there being no visible barrier between the northeastern arabs and the hottentot tribes to prevent the different hordes, as they felt their way southward, from indulging their taste for the possession of this noble animal. i am here led to notice an invisible barrier, more insurmountable than mountain ranges, but which is not opposed to the southern progress of cattle, goats, and sheep. the tsetse would prove a barrier only until its well-defined habitat was known, but the disease passing under the term of horse-sickness (peripneumonia) exists in such virulence over nearly seven degrees of latitude that no precaution would be sufficient to save these animals. the horse is so liable to this disease, that only by great care in stabling can he be kept any where between deg. and deg. s. during the time between december and april. the winter, beginning in the latter month, is the only period in which englishmen can hunt on horseback, and they are in danger of losing all their studs some months before december. to this disease the horse is especially exposed, and it is almost always fatal. one attack, however, seems to secure immunity from a second. cattle, too, are subject to it, but only at intervals of a few, sometimes many years; but it never makes a clean sweep of the whole cattle of a village, as it would do of a troop of fifty horses. this barrier, then, seems to explain the absence of the horse among the hottentots, though it is not opposed to the southern migration of cattle, sheep, and goats. when the flesh of animals that have died of this disease is eaten, it causes a malignant carbuncle, which, when it appears over any important organ, proves rapidly fatal. it is more especially dangerous over the pit of the stomach. the effects of the poison have been experienced by missionaries who had eaten properly cooked food, the flesh of sheep really but not visibly affected by the disease. the virus in the flesh of the animal is destroyed neither by boiling nor roasting. this fact, of which we have had innumerable examples, shows the superiority of experiments on a large scale to those of acute and able physiologists and chemists in the laboratory, for a well known physician of paris, after careful investigation, considered that the virus in such cases was completely neutralized by boiling. this disease attacks wild animals too. during our residence at chonuan great numbers of tolos, or koodoos, were attracted to the gardens of the bakwains, abandoned at the usual period of harvest because there was no prospect of the corn ('holcus sorghum') bearing that year. the koodoo is remarkably fond of the green stalks of this kind of millet. free feeding produced that state of fatness favorable for the development of this disease, and no fewer than twenty-five died on the hill opposite our house. great numbers of gnus and zebras perished from the same cause, but the mortality produced no sensible diminution in the numbers of the game, any more than the deaths of many of the bakwains who persisted, in spite of every remonstrance, in eating the dead meat, caused any sensible decrease in the strength of the tribe. the farms of the boers consist generally of a small patch of cultivated land in the midst of some miles of pasturage. they are thus less an agricultural than a pastoral people. each farm must have its fountain; and where no such supply of water exists, the government lands are unsalable. an acre in england is thus generally more valuable than a square mile in africa. but the country is prosperous, and capable of great improvement. the industry of the boers augurs well for the future formation of dams and tanks, and for the greater fruitfulness that would certainly follow. as cattle and sheep farmers the colonists are very successful. larger and larger quantities of wool are produced annually, and the value of colonial farms increases year by year. but the system requires that with the increase of the population there should be an extension of territory. wide as the country is, and thinly inhabited, the farmers feel it to be too limited, and they are gradually spreading to the north. this movement proves prejudicial to the country behind, for labor, which would be directed to the improvement of the colony, is withdrawn and expended in a mode of life little adapted to the exercise of industrial habits. that, however, does not much concern the rest of mankind. nor does it seem much of an evil for men who cultivate the soil to claim a right to appropriate lands for tillage which other men only hunt over, provided some compensation for the loss of sustenance be awarded. the original idea of a title seems to have been that "subduing" or cultivating gave that right. but this rather chartist principle must be received with limitations, for its recognition in england would lead to the seizure of all our broad ancestral acres by those who are willing to cultivate them. and, in the case under consideration, the encroachments lead at once to less land being put under the plow than is subjected to the native hoe, for it is a fact that the basutos and zulus, or caffres of natal, cultivate largely, and undersell our farmers wherever they have a fair field and no favor. before we came to the orange river we saw the last portion of a migration of springbucks ('gazella euchore', or tsepe). they come from the great kalahari desert, and, when first seen after crossing the colonial boundary, are said often to exceed forty thousand in number. i can not give an estimate of their numbers, for they appear spread over a vast expanse of country, and make a quivering motion as they feed, and move, and toss their graceful horns. they feed chiefly on grass; and as they come from the north about the time when the grass most abounds, it can not be want of food that prompts the movement. nor is it want of water, for this antelope is one of the most abstemious in that respect. their nature prompts them to seek as their favorite haunts level plains with short grass, where they may be able to watch the approach of an enemy. the bakalahari take advantage of this feeling, and burn off large patches of grass, not only to attract the game by the new crop when it comes up, but also to form bare spots for the springbuck to range over. it is not the springbuck alone that manifests this feeling. when oxen are taken into a country of high grass, they are much more ready to be startled; their sense of danger is increased by the increased power of concealment afforded to an enemy by such cover, and they will often start off in terror at the ill-defined outlines of each other. the springbuck, possessing this feeling in an intense degree, and being eminently gregarious, becomes uneasy as the grass of the kalahari becomes tall. the vegetation being more sparse in the more arid south, naturally induces the different herds to turn in that direction. as they advance and increase in numbers, the pasturage becomes more scarce; it is still more so the further they go, until they are at last obliged, in order to obtain the means of subsistence, to cross the orange river, and become the pest of the sheep-farmer in a country which contains scarcely any of their favorite grassy food. if they light on a field of wheat in their way, an army of locusts could not make a cleaner sweep of the whole than they will do. it is questionable whether they ever return, as they have never been seen as a returning body. many perish from want of food, the country to which they have migrated being unable to support them; the rest become scattered over the colony; and in such a wide country there is no lack of room for all. it is probable that, notwithstanding the continued destruction by fire-arms, they will continue long to hold their place. on crossing the orange river we come into independent territory inhabited by griquas and bechuanas. by griquas is meant any mixed race sprung from natives and europeans. those in question were of dutch extraction, through association with hottentot and bushwomen. half-castes of the first generation consider themselves superior to those of the second, and all possess in some degree the characteristics of both parents. they were governed for many years by an elected chief, named waterboer, who, by treaty, received a small sum per annum from the colonial government for the support of schools in his country, and proved a most efficient guard of our northwest boundary. cattle-stealing was totally unknown during the whole period of this able chief's reign; and he actually drove back, single-handed, a formidable force of marauding mantatees that threatened to invade the colony.* but for that brave christian man, waterboer, there is every human probability that the northwest would have given the colonists as much trouble as the eastern frontier; for large numbers among the original griquas had as little scruple about robbing farmers of cattle as the caffres are reputed to have. on the election of waterboer to the chieftainship, he distinctly declared that no marauding should be allowed. as the government of none of these tribes is despotic, some of his principal men, in spite of this declaration, plundered some villages of corannas living to the south of the orange river. he immediately seized six of the ringleaders, and, though the step put his own position in jeopardy, he summoned his council, tried, condemned, and publicly executed the whole six. this produced an insurrection, and the insurgents twice attacked his capital, griqua town, with the intention of deposing him; but he bravely defeated both attempts, and from that day forth, during his long reign of thirty years, not a single plundering expedition ever left his territory. having witnessed the deleterious effects of the introduction of ardent spirits among his people, he, with characteristic energy, decreed that any boer or griqua bringing brandy into the country should have his property in ardent spirits confiscated and poured out on the ground. the griqua chiefs living farther east were unable to carry this law into effect as he did, hence the greater facility with which boers in that direction got the griquas to part with their farms. * for an account of this, see moffat's "scenes and labors in south africa". ten years after he was firmly established in power he entered into a treaty with the colonial government, and during the twenty years which followed not a single charge was ever brought against either him or his people; on the contrary, his faithful adherence to the stipulated provisions elicited numerous expressions of approbation from successive governments. a late governor, however, of whom it is impossible to speak without respect, in a paroxysm of generalship which might have been good, had it not been totally inappropriate to the case, set about conciliating a band of rebellious british subjects (boers), who murdered the honorable captain murray, by proclaiming their independence while still in open rebellion, and not only abrogated the treaty with the griquas, but engaged to stop the long-accustomed supplies of gunpowder for the defense of the frontier, and even to prevent them from purchasing it for their own defense by lawful trade. if it had been necessary to prevent supplies of ammunition from finding their way into the country, as it probably was, one might imagine that the exception should not have been made in favor of either boers or caffres, our openly-avowed enemies; but, nevertheless, the exception was made, and is still continued in favor of the boers, while the bechuanas and griquas, our constant friends, are debarred from obtaining a single ounce for either defense or trade; indeed, such was the state of ignorance as to the relation of the border tribes with the english, even at cape town, that the magistrates, though willing to aid my researches, were sorely afraid to allow me to purchase more than ten pounds of gunpowder, lest the bechuanas should take it from me by force. as it turned out, i actually left more than that quantity for upward of two years in an open box in my wagon at linyanti. the lamented sir george cathcart, apparently unconscious of what he was doing, entered into a treaty with the transvaal boers, in which articles were introduced for the free passage of english traders to the north, and for the entire prohibition of slavery in the free state. then passed the "gunpowder ordinance", by which the bechuanas, whom alone the boers dare attempt to enslave, were rendered quite defenseless. the boers never attempt to fight with caffres, nor to settle in caffreland. we still continue to observe the treaty. the boers never did, and never intended to abide by its provisions; for, immediately on the proclamation of their independence, a slave-hunt was undertaken against the bechuanas of sechele by four hundred boers, under mr. peit scholz, and the plan was adopted which had been cherished in their hearts ever since the emancipation of the hottentots. thus, from unfortunate ignorance of the country he had to govern, an able and sagacious governor adopted a policy proper and wise had it been in front of our enemies, but altogether inappropriate for our friends against whom it has been applied. such an error could not have been committed by a man of local knowledge and experience, such as that noble of colonial birth, sir andries stockenstrom; and such instances of confounding friend and foe, in the innocent belief of thereby promoting colonial interests, will probably lead the cape community, the chief part of which by no means feels its interest to lie in the degradation of the native tribes, to assert the right of choosing their own governors. this, with colonial representation in the imperial parliament, in addition to the local self-government already so liberally conceded, would undoubtedly secure the perpetual union of the colony to the english crown. many hundreds of both griquas and bechuanas have become christians and partially civilized through the teaching of english missionaries. my first impressions of the progress made were that the accounts of the effects of the gospel among them had been too highly colored. i expected a higher degree of christian simplicity and purity than exists either among them or among ourselves. i was not anxious for a deeper insight in detecting shams than others, but i expected character, such as we imagine the primitive disciples had--and was disappointed.* when, however, i passed on to the true heathen in the countries beyond the sphere of missionary influence, and could compare the people there with the christian natives, i came to the conclusion that, if the question were examined in the most rigidly severe or scientific way, the change effected by the missionary movement would be considered unquestionably great. * the popular notion, however, of the primitive church is perhaps not very accurate. those societies especially which consisted of converted gentiles--men who had been accustomed to the vices and immoralities of heathenism--were certainly any thing but pure. in spite of their conversion, some of them carried the stains and vestiges of their former state with them when they passed from the temple to the church. if the instructed and civilized greek did not all at once rise out of his former self, and understand and realize the high ideal of his new faith, we should be careful, in judging of the work of missionaries among savage tribes, not to apply to their converts tests and standards of too great severity. if the scoffing lucian's account of the impostor peregrinus may be believed, we find a church probably planted by the apostles manifesting less intelligence even than modern missionary churches. peregrinus, a notoriously wicked man, was elected to the chief place among them, while romish priests, backed by the power of france, could not find a place at all in the mission churches of tahiti and madagascar. we can not fairly compare these poor people with ourselves, who have an atmosphere of christianity and enlightened public opinion, the growth of centuries, around us, to influence our deportment; but let any one from the natural and proper point of view behold the public morality of griqua town, kuruman, likatlong, and other villages, and remember what even london was a century ago, and he must confess that the christian mode of treating aborigines is incomparably the best. the griquas and bechuanas were in former times clad much like the caffres, if such a word may be used where there is scarcely any clothing at all. a bunch of leather strings about eighteen inches long hung from the lady's waist in front, and a prepared skin of a sheep or antelope covered the shoulders, leaving the breast and abdomen bare: the men wore a patch of skin, about the size of the crown of one's hat, which barely served for the purposes of decency, and a mantle exactly like that of the women. to assist in protecting the pores of the skin from the influence of the sun by day and of the cold by night, all smeared themselves with a mixture of fat and ochre; the head was anointed with pounded blue mica schist mixed with fat; and the fine particles of shining mica, falling on the body and on strings of beads and brass rings, were considered as highly ornamental, and fit for the most fastidious dandy. now these same people come to church in decent though poor clothing, and behave with a decorum certainly superior to what seems to have been the case in the time of mr. samuel pepys in london. sunday is well observed, and, even in localities where no missionary lives, religious meetings are regularly held, and children and adults taught to read by the more advanced of their own fellow-countrymen; and no one is allowed to make a profession of faith by baptism unless he knows how to read, and understands the nature of the christian religion. the bechuana mission has been so far successful that, when coming from the interior, we always felt, on reaching kuruman, that we had returned to civilized life. but i would not give any one to understand by this that they are model christians--we can not claim to be model christians ourselves--or even in any degree superior to the members of our country churches. they are more stingy and greedy than the poor at home; but in many respects the two are exactly alike. on asking an intelligent chief what he thought of them, he replied, "you white men have no idea of how wicked we are; we know each other better than you; some feign belief to ingratiate themselves with the missionaries; some profess christianity because they like the new system, which gives so much more importance to the poor, and desire that the old system may pass away; and the rest--a pretty large number--profess because they are really true believers." this testimony may be considered as very nearly correct. there is not much prospect of this country ever producing much of the materials of commerce except wool. at present the chief articles of trade are karosses or mantles--the skins of which they are composed come from the desert; next to them, ivory, the quantity of which can not now be great, inasmuch as the means of shooting elephants is sedulously debarred entrance into the country. a few skins and horns, and some cattle, make up the remainder of the exports. english goods, sugar, tea, and coffee are the articles received in exchange. all the natives of these parts soon become remarkably fond of coffee. the acme of respectability among the bechuanas is the possession of cattle and a wagon. it is remarkable that, though these latter require frequent repairs, none of the bechuanas have ever learned to mend them. forges and tools have been at their service, and teachers willing to aid them, but, beyond putting together a camp-stool, no effort has ever been made to acquire a knowledge of the trades. they observe most carefully a missionary at work until they understand whether a tire is well welded or not, and then pronounce upon its merits with great emphasis, but there their ambition rests satisfied. it is the same peculiarity among ourselves which leads us in other matters, such as book-making, to attain the excellence of fault-finding without the wit to indite a page. it was in vain i tried to indoctrinate the bechuanas with the idea that criticism did not imply any superiority over the workman, or even equality with him. chapter . kuruman--its fine fountain--vegetation of the district--remains of ancient forests--vegetable poison--the bible translated by mr. moffat--capabilities of the language--christianity among the natives--the missionaries should extend their labors more beyond the cape colony--model christians--disgraceful attack of the boers on the bakwains--letter from sechele--details of the attack--numbers of school-children carried away into slavery--destruction of house and property at kolobeng--the boers vow vengeance against me--consequent difficulty of getting servants to accompany me on my journey--start in november, --meet sechele on his way to england to obtain redress from the queen--he is unable to proceed beyond the cape--meet mr. macabe on his return from lake ngami--the hot wind of the desert--electric state of the atmosphere--flock of swifts--reach litubaruba--the cave lepelole--superstitions regarding it--impoverished state of the bakwains--retaliation on the boers--slavery--attachment of the bechuanas to children--hydrophobia unknown--diseases of the bakwains few in number--yearly epidemics--hasty burials--ophthalmia--native doctors--knowledge of surgery at a very low ebb--little attendance given to women at their confinements--the "child medicine"--salubrity of the climate well adapted for invalids suffering from pulmonary complaints. the permanence of the station called kuruman depends entirely on the fine ever-flowing fountain of that name. it comes from beneath the trap-rock, of which i shall have to speak when describing the geology of the entire country; and as it usually issues at a temperature of deg. fahr., it probably comes from the old silurian schists, which formed the bottom of the great primeval valley of the continent. i could not detect any diminution in the flow of this gushing fountain during my residence in the country; but when mr. moffat first attempted a settlement here, thirty-five years ago, he made a dam six or seven miles below the present one, and led out the stream for irrigation, where not a drop of the fountain-water ever now flows. other parts, fourteen miles below the kuruman gardens, are pointed out as having contained, within the memory of people now living, hippopotami, and pools sufficient to drown both men and cattle. this failure of water must be chiefly ascribed to the general desiccation of the country, but partly also to the amount of irrigation carried on along both banks of the stream at the mission station. this latter circumstance would have more weight were it not coincident with the failure of fountains over a wide extent of country. without at present entering minutely into this feature of the climate, it may be remarked that the kuruman district presents evidence of this dry southern region having, at no very distant date, been as well watered as the country north of lake ngami is now. ancient river-beds and water-courses abound, and the very eyes of fountains long since dried up may be seen, in which the flow of centuries has worn these orifices from a slit to an oval form, having on their sides the tufa so abundantly deposited from these primitive waters; and just where the splashings, made when the stream fell on the rock below, may be supposed to have reached and evaporated, the same phenomenon appears. many of these failing fountains no longer flow, because the brink over which they ran is now too high, or because the elevation of the western side of the country lifts the land away from the water supply below; but let a cutting be made from a lower level than the brink, and through it to a part below the surface of the water, and water flows perennially. several of these ancient fountains have been resuscitated by the bechuanas near kuruman, who occasionally show their feelings of self-esteem by laboring for months at deep cuttings, which, having once begun, they feel bound in honor to persevere in, though told by a missionary that they can never force water to run up hill. it is interesting to observe the industry of many boers in this region in making long and deep canals from lower levels up to spots destitute of the slightest indication of water existing beneath except a few rushes and a peculiar kind of coarse, reddish-colored grass growing in a hollow, which anciently must have been the eye of a fountain, but is now filled up with soft tufa. in other instances, the indication of water below consists of the rushes growing on a long, sandy ridge a foot or two in height instead of in a furrow. a deep transverse cutting made through the higher part of this is rewarded by a stream of running water. the reason why the ground covering this water is higher than the rest of the locality is that the winds carry quantities of fine dust and sand about the country, and hedges, bushes, and trees cause its deposit. the rushes in this case perform the part of the hedges, and the moisture rising as dew by night fixes the sand securely among the roots, and a height, instead of a hollow, is the result. while on this subject it may be added that there is no perennial fountain in this part of the country except those that come from beneath the quartzose trap, which constitutes the "filling up" of the ancient valley; and as the water supply seems to rest on the old silurian schists which form its bottom, it is highly probable that artesian wells would in several places perform the part which these deep cuttings now do. the aspect of this part of the country during most of the year is of a light yellow color; for some months during the rainy season it is of a pleasant green mixed with yellow. ranges of hills appear in the west, but east of them we find hundreds of miles of grass-covered plains. large patches of these flats are covered with white calcareous tufa resting on perfectly horizontal strata of trap. there the vegetation consists of fine grass growing in tufts among low bushes of the "wait-a-bit" thorn ('acacia detinens'), with its annoying fish-hook-like spines. where these rocks do not appear on the surface, the soil consists of yellow sand and tall, coarse grasses, growing among berry-yielding bushes, named moretloa ('grewia flava') and mohatla ('tarchonanthus'), which has enough of aromatic resinous matter to burn brightly, though perfectly green. in more sheltered spots we come on clumps of the white-thorned mimosa ('acacia horrida', also 'a. atomiphylla'), and great abundance of wild sage ('salvia africana'), and various leguminosae, ixias, and large-flowering bulbs: the 'amaryllis toxicaria' and 'a. brunsvigia multiflora' (the former a poisonous bulb) yield in the decayed lamellae a soft, silky down, a good material for stuffing mattresses. in some few parts of the country the remains of ancient forests of wild olive-trees ('olea similis') and of the camel-thorn ('acacia giraffe') are still to be met with; but when these are leveled in the proximity of a bechuana village, no young trees spring up to take their places. this is not because the wood has a growth so slow as not to be appreciable in its increase during the short period that it can be observed by man, which might be supposed from its being so excessively hard; for having measured a young tree of this species growing in the corner of mr. moffat's garden near the water, i found that it increased at the rate of a quarter of an inch in diameter annually during a number of years. moreover, the larger specimens, which now find few or no successors, if they had more rain in their youth, can not be above two or three hundred years old. it is probable that this is the tree of which the ark of the covenant and the tabernacle were constructed, as it is reported to be found where the israelites were at the time these were made. it is an imperishable wood, while that usually pointed out as the "shittim" (or 'acacia nilotica') soon decays and wants beauty. in association with it we always observe a curious plant, named ngotuane, which bears such a profusion of fine yellow strong-scented flowers as quite to perfume the air. this plant forms a remarkable exception to the general rule, that nearly all the plants in the dry parts of africa are scentless, or emit only a disagreeable odor. it, moreover, contains an active poison; a french gentleman, having imbibed a mouthful or two of an infusion of its flowers as tea, found himself rendered nearly powerless. vinegar has the peculiar property of rendering this poison perfectly inert, whether in or out of the body. when mixed with vinegar, the poison may be drunk with safety, while, if only tasted by itself, it causes a burning sensation in the throat. this gentleman described the action of the vinegar, when he was nearly deprived of power by the poison imbibed, to have been as if electricity had run along his nerves as soon as he had taken a single glassful. the cure was instantaneous and complete. i had always to regret want of opportunity for investigating this remarkable and yet controllable agent on the nervous system. its usual proximity to camel-thorn-trees may be accounted for by the probability that the giraffe, which feeds on this tree, may make use of the plant as a medicine. during the period of my visit at kuruman, mr. moffat, who has been a missionary in africa during upward of forty years, and is well known by his interesting work, "scenes and labors in south africa", was busily engaged in carrying through the press, with which his station is furnished, the bible in the language of the bechuanas, which is called sichuana. this has been a work of immense labor; and as he was the first to reduce their speech to a written form, and has had his attention directed to the study for at least thirty years, he may be supposed to be better adapted for the task than any man living. some idea of the copiousness of the language may be formed from the fact that even he never spends a week at his work without discovering new words; the phenomenon, therefore, of any man who, after a few months' or years' study of a native tongue, cackles forth a torrent of vocables, may well be wondered at, if it is meant to convey instruction. in my own case, though i have had as much intercourse with the purest idiom as most englishmen, and have studied the language carefully, yet i can never utter an important statement without doing so very slowly, and repeating it too, lest the foreign accent, which is distinctly perceptible in all europeans, should render the sense unintelligible. in this i follow the example of the bechuana orators, who, on important matters, always speak slowly, deliberately, and with reiteration. the capabilities of this language may be inferred from the fact that the pentateuch is fully expressed in mr. moffat's translation in fewer words than in the greek septuagint, and in a very considerably smaller number than in our own english version. the language is, however, so simple in its construction, that its copiousness by no means requires the explanation that the people have fallen from a former state of civilization and culture. language seems to be an attribute of the human mind and thought; and the inflections, various as they are in the most barbarous tongues, as that of the bushmen, are probably only proofs of the race being human, and endowed with the power of thinking; the fuller development of language taking place as the improvement of our other faculties goes on. it is fortunate that the translation of the bible has been effected before the language became adulterated with half-uttered foreign words, and while those who have heard the eloquence of the native assemblies are still living; for the young, who are brought up in our schools, know less of the language than the missionaries; and europeans born in the country, while possessed of the idiom perfectly, if not otherwise educated, can not be referred to for explanation of any uncommon word. a person who acted as interpreter to sir george cathcart actually told his excellency that the language of the basutos was not capable of expressing the substance of a chief's diplomatic paper, while every one acquainted with moshesh, the chief who sent it, well knows that he could in his own tongue have expressed it without study all over again in three or four different ways. the interpreter could scarcely have done as much in english. this language both rich and poor speak correctly; there is no vulgar style; but children have a 'patois' of their own, using many words in their play which men would scorn to repeat. the bamapela have adopted a click into their dialect, and a large infusion of the ringing "ny", which seems to have been for the purpose of preventing others from understanding them. the fact of the complete translation of the bible at a station seven hundred miles inland from the cape naturally suggests the question whether it is likely to be permanently useful, and whether christianity, as planted by modern missions, is likely to retain its vitality without constant supplies of foreign teaching? it would certainly be no cause for congratulation if the bechuana bible seemed at all likely to meet the fate of elliot's choctaw version, a specimen of which may be seen in the library of one of the american colleges--as god's word in a language which no living tongue can articulate, nor living mortal understand; but a better destiny seems in store for this, for the sichuana language has been introduced into the new country beyond lake ngami. there it is the court language, and will take a stranger any where through a district larger than france. the bechuanas, moreover, in all probability possess that imperishability which forms so remarkable a feature in the entire african race. when converts are made from heathenism by modern missionaries, it becomes an interesting question whether their faith possesses the elements of permanence, or is only an exotic too tender for self-propagation when the fostering care of the foreign cultivators is withdrawn. if neither habits of self-reliance are cultivated, nor opportunities given for the exercise of that virtue, the most promising converts are apt to become like spoiled children. in madagascar, a few christians were left with nothing but the bible in their hands; and though exposed to persecution, and even death itself, as the penalty of adherence to their profession, they increased ten-fold in numbers, and are, if possible, more decided believers now than they were when, by an edict of the queen of that island, the missionaries ceased their teaching. in south africa such an experiment could not be made, for such a variety of christian sects have followed the footsteps of the london missionary society's successful career, that converts of one denomination, if left to their own resources, are eagerly adopted by another, and are thus more likely to become spoiled than trained to the manly christian virtues. another element of weakness in this part of the missionary field is the fact of the missionary societies considering the cape colony itself as a proper sphere for their peculiar operations. in addition to a well-organized and efficient dutch reformed established church, and schools for secular instruction, maintained by government, in every village of any extent in the colony, we have a number of other sects, as the wesleyans, episcopalians, moravians, all piously laboring at the same good work. now it is deeply to be regretted that so much honest zeal should be so lavishly expended in a district wherein there is so little scope for success. when we hear an agent of one sect urging his friends at home to aid him quickly to occupy some unimportant nook, because, if it is not speedily laid hold of, he will "not have room for the sole of his foot," one can not help longing that both he and his friends would direct their noble aspirations to the millions of untaught heathen in the regions beyond, and no longer continue to convert the extremity of the continent into, as it were, a dam of benevolence. i would earnestly recommend all young missionaries to go at once to the real heathen, and never to be content with what has been made ready to their hands by men of greater enterprise. the idea of making model christians of the young need not be entertained by any one who is secretly convinced, as most men who know their own hearts are, that he is not a model christian himself. the israelitish slaves brought out of egypt by moses were not converted and elevated in one generation, though under the direct teaching of god himself. notwithstanding the numbers of miracles he wrought, a generation had to be cut off because of unbelief. our own elevation, also, has been the work of centuries, and, remembering this, we should not indulge in overwrought expectations as to the elevation which those who have inherited the degradation of ages may attain in our day. the principle might even be adopted by missionary societies, that one ordinary missionary's lifetime of teaching should be considered an ample supply of foreign teaching for any tribe in a thinly-peopled country, for some never will receive the gospel at all, while in other parts, when christianity is once planted, the work is sure to go on. a missionary is soon known to be supported by his friends at home; and though the salary is but a bare subsistence, to africans it seems an enormous sum; and, being unable to appreciate the motives by which he is actuated, they consider themselves entitled to various services at his hands, and defrauded if these are not duly rendered. this feeling is all the stronger when a young man, instead of going boldly to the real heathen, settles down in a comfortable house and garden prepared by those into whose labors he has entered. a remedy for this evil might be found in appropriating the houses and gardens raised by the missionaries' hands to their own families. it is ridiculous to call such places as kuruman, for instance, "missionary society's property". this beautiful station was made what it is, not by english money, but by the sweat and toil of fathers whose children have, notwithstanding, no place on earth which they can call a home. the society's operations may be transferred to the north, and then the strong-built mission premises become the home of a boer, and the stately stone church his cattle-pen. this place has been what the monasteries of europe are said to have been when pure. the monks did not disdain to hold the plow. they introduced fruit-trees, flowers, and vegetables, in addition to teaching and emancipating the serfs. their monasteries were mission stations, which resembled ours in being dispensaries for the sick, almshouses for the poor, and nurseries of learning. can we learn nothing from them in their prosperity as the schools of europe, and see naught in their history but the pollution and laziness of their decay? can our wise men tell us why the former mission stations (primitive monasteries) were self-supporting, rich, and flourishing as pioneers of civilization and agriculture, from which we even now reap benefits, and modern mission stations are mere pauper establishments, without that permanence or ability to be self-supporting which they possessed? protestant missionaries of every denomination in south africa all agree in one point, that no mere profession of christianity is sufficient to entitle the converts to the christian name. they are all anxious to place the bible in the hands of the natives, and, with ability to read that, there can be little doubt as to the future. we believe christianity to be divine, and equal to all it has to perform; then let the good seed be widely sown, and, no matter to what sect the converts may belong, the harvest will be glorious. let nothing that i have said be interpreted as indicative of feelings inimical to any body of christians, for i never, as a missionary, felt myself to be either presbyterian, episcopalian, or independent, or called upon in any way to love one denomination less than another. my earnest desire is, that those who really have the best interests of the heathen at heart should go to them; and assuredly, in africa at least, self-denying labors among real heathen will not fail to be appreciated. christians have never yet dealt fairly by the heathen and been disappointed. when sechele understood that we could no longer remain with him at kolobeng, he sent his children to mr. moffat, at kuruman, for instruction in all the knowledge of the white men. mr. moffat very liberally received at once an accession of five to his family, with their attendants. having been detained at kuruman about a fortnight by the breaking of a wagon-wheel, i was thus providentially prevented from being present at the attack of the boers on the bakwains, news of which was brought, about the end of that time, by masebele, the wife of sechele. she had herself been hidden in a cleft of a rock, over which a number of boers were firing. her infant began to cry, and, terrified lest this should attract the attention of the men, the muzzles of whose guns appeared at every discharge over her head, she took off her armlets as playthings to quiet the child. she brought mr. moffat a letter, which tells its own tale. nearly literally translated it was as follows: "friend of my heart's love, and of all the confidence of my heart, i am sechele. i am undone by the boers, who attacked me, though i had no guilt with them. they demanded that i should be in their kingdom, and i refused. they demanded that i should prevent the english and griquas from passing (northward). i replied, these are my friends, and i can prevent no one (of them). they came on saturday, and i besought them not to fight on sunday, and they assented. they began on monday morning at twilight, and fired with all their might, and burned the town with fire, and scattered us. they killed sixty of my people, and captured women, and children, and men. and the mother of baleriling (a former wife of sechele) they also took prisoner. they took all the cattle and all the goods of the bakwains; and the house of livingstone they plundered, taking away all his goods. the number of wagons they had was eighty-five, and a cannon; and after they had stolen my own wagon and that of macabe, then the number of their wagons (counting the cannon as one) was eighty-eight. all the goods of the hunters (certain english gentlemen hunting and exploring in the north) were burned in the town; and of the boers were killed twenty-eight. yes, my beloved friend, now my wife goes to see the children, and kobus hae will convey her to you. i am, sechele, the son of mochoasele." this statement is in exact accordance with the account given by the native teacher mebalwe, and also that sent by some of the boers themselves to the public colonial papers. the crime of cattle-stealing, of which we hear so much near caffreland, was never alleged against these people, and, if a single case had occurred when i was in the country, i must have heard of it, and would at once say so. but the only crime imputed in the papers was that "sechele was getting too saucy." the demand made for his subjection and service in preventing the english traders passing to the north was kept out of view. very soon after pretorius had sent the marauding party against kolobeng, he was called away to the tribunal of infinite justice. his policy is justified by the boers generally from the instructions given to the jewish warriors in deuteronomy : - . hence, when he died, the obituary notice ended with "blessed are the dead who die in the lord." i wish he had not "forbidden us to preach unto the gentiles that they may be saved." the report of this outrage on the bakwains, coupled with denunciations against myself for having, as it was alleged, taught them to kill boers, produced such a panic in the country, that i could not engage a single servant to accompany me to the north. i have already alluded to their mode of warfare, and in all previous boerish forays the killing had all been on one side; now, however, that a tribe where an englishman had lived had begun to shed their blood as well, it was considered the strongest presumptive evidence against me. loud vows of vengeance were uttered against my head, and threats of instant pursuit by a large party on horseback, should i dare to go into or beyond their country; and as these were coupled with the declaration that the english government had given over the whole of the native tribes to their rule, and would assist in their entire subjection by preventing fire-arms and ammunition from entering the country, except for the use of the boers, it was not to be wondered at that i was detained for months at kuruman from sheer inability to get wagon-drivers. the english name, from being honored and respected all over the country, had become somewhat more than suspected; and as the policy of depriving those friendly tribes of the means of defense was represented by the boers as proof positive of the wish of the english that they should be subjugated, the conduct of a government which these tribes always thought the paragon of justice and friendship was rendered totally incomprehensible to them; they could neither defend themselves against their enemies, nor shoot the animals in the produce of which we wished them to trade. at last i found three servants willing to risk a journey to the north; and a man of color named george fleming, who had generously been assisted by mr. h. e. rutherford, a mercantile gentleman of cape town, to endeavor to establish a trade with the makololo, had also managed to get a similar number; we accordingly left kuruman on the th of november, and proceeded on our journey. our servants were the worst possible specimens of those who imbibe the vices without the virtues of europeans, but we had no choice, and were glad to get away on any terms. when we reached motito, forty miles off, we met sechele on his way, as he said, "to the queen of england." two of his own children, and their mother, a former wife, were among the captives seized by the boers; and being strongly imbued with the then very prevalent notion of england's justice and generosity, he thought that in consequence of the violated treaty he had a fair case to lay before her majesty. he employed all his eloquence and powers of persuasion to induce me to accompany him, but i excused myself on the ground that my arrangements were already made for exploring the north. on explaining the difficulties of the way, and endeavoring to dissuade him from the attempt, on account of the knowledge i possessed of the governor's policy, he put the pointed question, "will the queen not listen to me, supposing i should reach her?" i replied, "i believe she would listen, but the difficulty is to get to her." "well, i shall reach her," expressed his final determination. others explained the difficulties more fully, but nothing could shake his resolution. when he reached bloemfontein he found the english army just returning from a battle with the basutos, in which both parties claimed the victory, and both were glad that a second engagement was not tried. our officers invited sechele to dine with them, heard his story, and collected a handsome sum of money to enable him to pursue his journey to england. the commander refrained from noticing him, as a single word in favor of the restoration of the children of sechele would have been a virtual confession of the failure of his own policy at the very outset. sechele proceeded as far as the cape; but his resources being there expended, he was obliged to return to his own country, one thousand miles distant, without accomplishing the object of his journey. on his return he adopted a mode of punishment which he had seen in the colony, namely, making criminals work on the public roads. and he has since, i am informed, made himself the missionary to his own people. he is tall, rather corpulent, and has more of the negro feature than common, but has large eyes. he is very dark, and his people swear by "black sechele". he has great intelligence, reads well, and is a fluent speaker. great numbers of the tribes formerly living under the boers have taken refuge under his sway, and he is now greater in power than he was before the attack on kolobeng. having parted with sechele, we skirted along the kalahari desert, and sometimes within its borders, giving the boers a wide berth. a larger fall of rain than usual had occurred in , and that was the completion of a cycle of eleven or twelve years, at which the same phenomenon is reported to have happened on three occasions. an unusually large crop of melons had appeared in consequence. we had the pleasure of meeting with mr. j. macabe returning from lake ngami, which he had succeeded in reaching by going right across the desert from a point a little to the south of kolobeng. the accounts of the abundance of watermelons were amply confirmed by this energetic traveler; for, having these in vast quantities, his cattle subsisted on the fluid contained in them for a period of no less than twenty-one days; and when at last they reached a supply of water, they did not seem to care much about it. coming to the lake from the southeast, he crossed the teoughe, and went round the northern part of it, and is the only european traveler who had actually seen it all. his estimate of the extent of the lake is higher than that given by mr. oswell and myself, or from about ninety to one hundred miles in circumference. before the lake was discovered, macabe wrote a letter in one of the cape papers recommending a certain route as likely to lead to it. the transvaal boers fined him dollars for writing about "ouze felt", our country, and imprisoned him, too, till the fine was paid. i now learned from his own lips that the public report of this is true. mr. macabe's companion, mahar, was mistaken by a tribe of barolongs for a boer, and shot as he approached their village. when macabe came up and explained that he was an englishman, they expressed the utmost regret, and helped to bury him. this was the first case in recent times of an englishman being slain by the bechuanas. we afterward heard that there had been some fighting between these barolongs and the boers, and that there had been capturing of cattle on both sides. if this was true, i can only say that it was the first time that i ever heard of cattle being taken by bechuanas. this was a caffre war in stage the second; the third stage in the development is when both sides are equally well armed and afraid of each other; the fourth, when the english take up a quarrel not their own, and the boers slip out of the fray. two other english gentlemen crossed and recrossed the desert about the same time, and nearly in the same direction. on returning, one of them, captain shelley, while riding forward on horseback, lost himself, and was obliged to find his way alone to kuruman, some hundreds of miles distant. reaching that station shirtless, and as brown as a griqua, he was taken for one by mrs. moffat, and was received by her with a salutation in dutch, that being the language spoken by this people. his sufferings must have been far more severe than any we endured. the result of the exertions of both shelley and macabe is to prove that the general view of the desert always given by the natives has been substantially correct. occasionally, during the very dry seasons which succeed our winter and precede our rains, a hot wind blows over the desert from north to south. it feels somewhat as if it came from an oven, and seldom blows longer at a time than three days. it resembles in its effects the harmattan of the north of africa, and at the time the missionaries first settled in the country, thirty-five years ago, it came loaded with fine reddish-colored sand. though no longer accompanied by sand, it is so devoid of moisture as to cause the wood of the best seasoned english boxes and furniture to shrink, so that every wooden article not made in the country is warped. the verls of ramrods made in england are loosened, and on returning to europe fasten again. this wind is in such an electric state that a bunch of ostrich feathers held a few seconds against it becomes as strongly charged as if attached to a powerful electrical machine, and clasps the advancing hand with a sharp crackling sound. when this hot wind is blowing, and even at other times, the peculiarly strong electrical state of the atmosphere causes the movement of a native in his kaross to produce therein a stream of small sparks. the first time i noticed this appearance was while a chief was traveling with me in my wagon. seeing part of the fur of his mantle, which was exposed to slight friction by the movement of the wagon, assume quite a luminous appearance, i rubbed it smartly with the hand, and found it readily gave out bright sparks, accompanied with distinct cracks. "don't you see this?" said i. "the white men did not show us this," he replied; "we had it long before white men came into the country, we and our forefathers of old." unfortunately, i never inquired the name which they gave to this appearance, but i have no doubt there is one for it in the language. otto von guerrike is said, by baron humboldt, to have been the first that ever observed this effect in europe, but the phenomenon had been familiar to the bechuanas for ages. nothing came of that, however, for they viewed the sight as if with the eyes of an ox. the human mind has remained here as stagnant to the present day, in reference to the physical operations of the universe, as it once did in england. no science has been developed, and few questions are ever discussed except those which have an intimate connection with the wants of the stomach. very large flocks of swifts ('cypselus apus') were observed flying over the plains north of kuruman. i counted a stream of them, which, by the time it took to pass toward the reeds of that valley, must have numbered upward of four thousand. only a few of these birds breed at any time in this country. i have often observed them, and noticed that there was no appearance of their having paired; there was no chasing of each other, nor any playing together. there are several other birds which continue in flocks, and move about like wandering gipsies, even during the breeding season, which in this country happens in the intervals between the cold and hot seasons, cold acting somewhat in the same way here as the genial warmth of spring does in europe. are these the migratory birds of europe, which return there to breed and rear their young? on the st of december, , we reached the town of sechele, called, from the part of the range on which it is situated, litubaruba. near the village there exists a cave named lepelole; it is an interesting evidence of the former existence of a gushing fountain. no one dared to enter the lohaheng, or cave, for it was the common belief that it was the habitation of the deity. as we never had a holiday from january to december, and our sundays were the periods of our greatest exertions in teaching, i projected an excursion into the cave on a week-day to see the god of the bakwains. the old men said that every one who went in remained there forever, adding, "if the teacher is so mad as to kill himself, let him do so alone, we shall not be to blame." the declaration of sechele, that he would follow where i led, produced the greatest consternation. it is curious that in all their pretended dreams or visions of their god he has always a crooked leg, like the egyptian thau. supposing that those who were reported to have perished in this cave had fallen over some precipice, we went well provided with lights, ladder, lines, &c.; but it turned out to be only an open cave, with an entrance about ten feet square, which contracts into two water-worn branches, ending in round orifices through which the water once flowed. the only inhabitants it seems ever to have had were baboons. i left at the end of the upper branch one of father mathew's leaden teetotal tickets. i never saw the bakwains looking so haggard and lean as at this time. most of their cattle had been swept away by the boers, together with about eighty fine draught oxen; and much provision left with them by two officers, captains codrington and webb, to serve for their return journey south, had been carried off also. on their return these officers found the skeletons of the bakwains where they expected to find their own goods. all the corn, clothing, and furniture of the people, too, had been consumed in the flames which the boers had forced the subject tribes to apply to the town during the fight, so that its inhabitants were now literally starving. sechele had given orders to his people not to commit any act of revenge pending his visit to the queen of england; but some of the young men ventured to go to meet a party of boers returning from hunting, and, as the boers became terrified and ran off, they brought their wagons to litubaruba. this seems to have given the main body of boers an idea that the bakwains meant to begin a guerrilla war upon them. this "caffre war" was, however, only in embryo, and not near that stage of development in which the natives have found out that the hide-and-seek system is the most successful. the boers, in alarm, sent four of their number to ask for peace! i, being present, heard the condition: "sechele's children must be restored to him." i never saw men so completely and unconsciously in a trap as these four boers were. strong parties of armed bakwains occupied every pass in the hills and gorges around; and had they not promised much more than they intended, or did perform, that day would have been their last. the commandant scholz had appropriated the children of sechele to be his own domestic slaves. i was present when one little boy, khari, son of sechele, was returned to his mother; the child had been allowed to roll into the fire, and there were three large unbound open sores on different parts of his body. his mother and the women received him with a flood of silent tears. slavery is said to be mild and tender-hearted in some places. the boers assert that they are the best of masters, and that, if the english had possessed the hottentot slaves, they would have received much worse treatment than they did: what that would have been it is difficult to imagine. i took down the names of some scores of boys and girls, many of whom i knew as our scholars; but i could not comfort the weeping mothers by any hope of their ever returning from slavery. the bechuanas are universally much attached to children. a little child toddling near a party of men while they are eating is sure to get a handful of the food. this love of children may arise, in a great measure, from the patriarchal system under which they dwell. every little stranger forms an increase of property to the whole community, and is duly reported to the chief--boys being more welcome than girls. the parents take the name of the child, and often address their children as ma (mother), or ra (father). our eldest boy being named robert, mrs. livingstone was, after his birth, always addressed as ma-robert, instead of mary, her christian name. i have examined several cases in which a grandmother has taken upon herself to suckle a grandchild. masina of kuruman had no children after the birth of her daughter sina, and had no milk after sina was weaned, an event which usually is deferred till the child is two or three years old. sina married when she was seventeen or eighteen, and had twins; masina, after at least fifteen years' interval since she had suckled a child, took possession of one of them, applied it to her breast, and milk flowed, so that she was able to nurse the child entirely. masina was at this time at least forty years of age. i have witnessed several other cases analogous to this. a grandmother of forty, or even less, for they become withered at an early age, when left at home with a young child, applies it to her own shriveled breast, and milk soon follows. in some cases, as that of ma-bogosing, the chief wife of mahure, who was about thirty-five years of age, the child was not entirely dependent on the grandmother's breast, as the mother suckled it too. i had witnessed the production of milk so frequently by the simple application of the lips of the child, that i was not therefore surprised when told by the portuguese in eastern africa of a native doctor who, by applying a poultice of the pounded larvae of hornets to the breast of a woman, aided by the attempts of the child, could bring back the milk. is it not possible that the story in the "cloud of witnesses" of a man, during the time of persecution in scotland, putting his child to his own breast, and finding, to the astonishment of the whole country, that milk followed the act, may have been literally true? it was regarded and is quoted as a miracle; but the feelings of the father toward the child of a murdered mother must have been as nearly as possible analogous to the maternal feeling; and, as anatomists declare the structure of both male and female breasts to be identical, there is nothing physically impossible in the alleged result. the illustrious baron humboldt quotes an instance of the male breast yielding milk; and, though i am not conscious of being over-credulous, the strange instances i have examined in the opposite sex make me believe that there is no error in that philosopher's statement. the boers know from experience that adult captives may as well be left alone, for escape is so easy in a wild country that no fugitive-slave-law can come into operation; they therefore adopt the system of seizing only the youngest children, in order that these may forget their parents and remain in perpetual bondage. i have seen mere infants in their houses repeatedly. this fact was formerly denied; and the only thing which was wanting to make the previous denial of the practice of slavery and slave-hunting by the transvaal boers no longer necessary was the declaration of their independence. in conversation with some of my friends here i learned that maleke, a chief of the bakwains, who formerly lived on the hill litubaruba, had been killed by the bite of a mad dog. my curiosity was strongly excited by this statement, as rabies is so rare in this country. i never heard of another case, and could not satisfy myself that even this was real hydrophobia. while i was at mabotsa, some dogs became affected by a disease which led them to run about in an incoherent state; but i doubt whether it was any thing but an affection of the brain. no individual or animal got the complaint by inoculation from the animals' teeth; and from all that i could hear, the prevailing idea of hydrophobia not existing within the tropics seems to be quite correct. the diseases known among the bakwains are remarkably few. there is no consumption nor scrofula, and insanity and hydrocephalus are rare. cancer and cholera are quite unknown. small-pox and measles passed through the country about twenty years ago, and committed great ravages; but, though the former has since broken out on the coast repeatedly, neither disease has since traveled inland. for small-pox, the natives employed, in some parts, inoculation in the forehead with some animal deposit; in other parts, they employed the matter of the small-pox itself; and in one village they seem to have selected a virulent case for the matter used in the operation, for nearly all the village was swept off by the disease in a malignant confluent form. where the idea came from i can not conceive. it was practiced by the bakwains at a time when they had no intercourse, direct or indirect, with the southern missionaries. they all adopt readily the use of vaccine virus when it is brought within their reach. a certain loathsome disease, which decimates the north american indians, and threatens extirpation to the south sea islanders, dies out in the interior of africa without the aid of medicine; and the bangwaketse, who brought it from the west coast, lost it when they came into their own land southwest of kolobeng. it seems incapable of permanence in any form in persons of pure african blood any where in the centre of the country. in persons of mixed blood it is otherwise; and the virulence of the secondary symptoms seemed to be, in all the cases that came under my care, in exact proportion to the greater or less amount of european blood in the patient. among the corannas and griquas of mixed breed it produces the same ravages as in europe; among half-blood portuguese it is equally frightful in its inroads on the system; but in the pure negro of the central parts it is quite incapable of permanence. among the barotse i found a disease called manassah, which closely resembles that of the 'foeda mulier' of history. equally unknown is stone in the bladder and gravel. i never met with a case, though the waters are often so strongly impregnated with sulphate of lime that kettles quickly become incrusted internally with the salt; and some of my patients, who were troubled with indigestion, believed that their stomachs had got into the same condition. this freedom from calculi would appear to be remarkable in the negro race, even in the united states; for seldom indeed have the most famed lithotomists there ever operated on a negro. the diseases most prevalent are the following: pneumonia, produced by sudden changes of temperature, and other inflammations, as of the bowels, stomach, and pleura; rheumatism; disease of the heart--but these become rare as the people adopt the european dress--various forms of indigestion and ophthalmia; hooping-cough comes frequently; and every year the period preceding the rains is marked by some sort of epidemic. sometimes it is general ophthalmia, resembling closely the egyptian. in another year it is a kind of diarrhoea, which nothing will cure until there is a fall of rain, and any thing acts as a charm after that. one year the epidemic period was marked by a disease which looked like pneumonia, but had the peculiar symptom strongly developed of great pain in the seventh cervical process. many persons died of it, after being in a comatose state for many hours or days before their decease. no inspection of the body being ever allowed by these people, and the place of sepulture being carefully concealed, i had to rest satisfied with conjecture. frequently the bakwains buried their dead in the huts where they died, for fear lest the witches (baloi) should disinter their friends, and use some part of the body in their fiendish arts. scarcely is the breath out of the body when the unfortunate patient is hurried away to be buried. an ant-eater's hole is often selected, in order to save the trouble of digging a grave. on two occasions while i was there this hasty burial was followed by the return home of the men, who had been buried alive, to their affrighted relatives. they had recovered, while in their graves, from prolonged swoons. in ophthalmia the doctors cup on the temples, and apply to the eyes the pungent smoke of certain roots, the patient, at the same time, taking strong draughts of it up his nostrils. we found the solution of nitrate of silver, two or three grains to the ounce of rain-water, answer the same end so much more effectually, that every morning numbers of patients crowded round our house for the collyrium. it is a good preventive of an acute attack when poured into the eyes as soon as the pain begins, and might prove valuable for travelers. cupping is performed with the horn of a goat or antelope, having a little hole pierced in the small end. in some cases a small piece of wax is attached, and a temporary hole made through it to the horn. when the air is well withdrawn, and kept out by touching the orifice, at every inspiration, with the point of the tongue, the wax is at last pressed together with the teeth, and the little hole in it closed up, leaving a vacuum within the horn for the blood to flow from the already scarified parts. the edges of the horn applied to the surface are wetted, and cupping is well performed, though the doctor occasionally, by separating the fibrine from the blood in a basin of water by his side, and exhibiting it, pretends that he has extracted something more than blood. he can thus explain the rationale of the cure by his own art, and the ocular demonstration given is well appreciated. those doctors who have inherited their profession as an heirloom from their fathers and grandfathers generally possess some valuable knowledge, the result of long and close observation; but if a man can not say that the medical art is in his family, he may be considered a quack. with the regular practitioners i always remained on the best terms, by refraining from appearing to doubt their skill in the presence of their patients. any explanation in private was thankfully received by them, and wrong treatment changed into something more reasonable with cordial good-will, if no one but the doctor and myself were present at the conversation. english medicines were eagerly asked for and accepted by all; and we always found medical knowledge an important aid in convincing the people that we were really anxious for their welfare. we can not accuse them of ingratitude; in fact, we shall remember the kindness of the bakwains to us as long as we live. the surgical knowledge of the native doctors is rather at a low ebb. no one ever attempted to remove a tumor except by external applications. those with which the natives are chiefly troubled are fatty and fibrous tumors; and as they all have the 'vis medicatrix naturae' in remarkable activity, i safely removed an immense number. in illustration of their want of surgical knowledge may be mentioned the case of a man who had a tumor as large as a child's head. this was situated on the nape of his neck, and prevented his walking straight. he applied to his chief, and he got some famous strange doctor from the east coast to cure him. he and his assistants attempted to dissolve it by kindling on it a little fire made of a few small pieces of medicinal roots. i removed it for him, and he always walked with his head much more erect than he needed to do ever afterward. both men and women submit to an operation without wincing, or any of that shouting which caused young students to faint in the operating theatre before the introduction of chloroform. the women pride themselves on their ability to bear pain. a mother will address her little girl, from whose foot a thorn is to be extracted, with, "now, ma, you are a woman; a woman does not cry." a man scorns to shed tears. when we were passing one of the deep wells in the kalahari, a boy, the son of an aged father, had been drowned in it while playing on its brink. when all hope was gone, the father uttered an exceedingly great and bitter cry. it was sorrow without hope. this was the only instance i ever met with of a man weeping in this country. their ideas on obstetrics are equally unscientific, and a medical man going near a woman at her confinement appeared to them more out of place than a female medical student appears to us in a dissecting-room. a case of twins, however, happening, and the ointment of all the doctors of the town proving utterly insufficient to effect the relief which a few seconds of english art afforded, the prejudice vanished at once. as it would have been out of the question for me to have entered upon this branch of the profession--as indeed it would be inexpedient for any medical man to devote himself exclusively, in a thinly-peopled country, to the practice of medicine--i thereafter reserved myself for the difficult cases only, and had the satisfaction of often conferring great benefits on poor women in their hour of sorrow. the poor creatures are often placed in a little hut built for the purpose, and are left without any assistance whatever, and the numbers of umbilical herniae which are met with in consequence is very great. the women suffer less at their confinement than is the case in civilized countries; perhaps from their treating it, not as a disease, but as an operation of nature, requiring no change of diet except a feast of meat and abundance of fresh air. the husband on these occasions is bound to slaughter for his lady an ox, or goat, or sheep, according to his means. my knowledge in the above line procured for me great fame in a department in which i could lay no claim to merit. a woman came a distance of one hundred miles for relief in a complaint which seemed to have baffled the native doctors; a complete cure was the result. some twelve months after she returned to her husband, she bore a son. her husband having previously reproached her for being barren, she sent me a handsome present, and proclaimed all over the country that i possessed a medicine for the cure of sterility. the consequence was, that i was teased with applications from husbands and wives from all parts of the country. some came upward of two hundred miles to purchase the great boon, and it was in vain for me to explain that i had only cured the disease of the other case. the more i denied, the higher their offers rose; they would give any money for the "child medicine"; and it was really heart-rending to hear the earnest entreaty, and see the tearful eye, which spoke the intense desire for offspring: "i am getting old; you see gray hairs here and there on my head, and i have no child; you know how bechuana husbands cast their old wives away; what can i do? i have no child to bring water to me when i am sick," etc. the whole of the country adjacent to the desert, from kuruman to kolobeng, or litubaruba, and beyond up to the latitude of lake ngami, is remarkable for its great salubrity of climate. not only the natives, but europeans whose constitutions have been impaired by an indian climate, find the tract of country indicated both healthy and restorative. the health and longevity of the missionaries have always been fair, though mission-work is not very conducive to either elsewhere. cases have been known in which patients have come from the coast with complaints closely resembling, if they were not actually, those of consumption; and they have recovered by the influence of the climate alone. it must always be borne in mind that the climate near the coast, from which we received such very favorable reports of the health of the british troops, is actually inferior for persons suffering from pulmonary complaints to that of any part not subjected to the influence of sea-air. i have never seen the beneficial effects of the inland climate on persons of shattered constitutions, nor heard their high praises of the benefit they have derived from traveling, without wishing that its bracing effects should become more extensively known in england. no one who has visited the region i have above mentioned fails to remember with pleasure the wild, healthful gipsy life of wagon-traveling. a considerable proportion of animal diet seems requisite here. independent of the want of salt, we required meat in as large quantity daily as we do in england, and no bad effects, in the way of biliousness, followed the free use of flesh, as in other hot climates. a vegetable diet causes acidity and heartburn. mr. oswell thought this climate much superior to that of peru, as far as pleasure is concerned; the want of instruments unfortunately prevented my obtaining accurate scientific data for the medical world on this subject; and were it not for the great expense of such a trip, i should have no hesitation in recommending the borders of the kalahari desert as admirably suited for all patients having pulmonary complaints. it is the complete antipodes to our cold, damp, english climate. the winter is perfectly dry; and as not a drop of rain falls during that period, namely, from the beginning of may to the end of august, damp and cold are never combined. however hot the day may have been at kolobeng--and the thermometer sometimes rose, previous to a fall of rain, up to deg. in the coolest part of our house--yet the atmosphere never has that steamy feeling nor those debilitating effects so well known in india and on the coast of africa itself. in the evenings the air becomes deliciously cool, and a pleasant refreshing night follows the hottest day. the greatest heat ever felt is not so oppressive as it is when there is much humidity in the air; and the great evaporation consequent on a fall of rain makes the rainy season the most agreeable for traveling. nothing can exceed the balmy feeling of the evenings and mornings during the whole year. you wish for an increase neither of cold nor heat; and you can sit out of doors till midnight without ever thinking of colds or rheumatism; or you may sleep out at night, looking up to the moon till you fall asleep, without a thought or sign of moon-blindness. indeed, during many months there is scarcely any dew. chapter . departure from the country of the bakwains--large black ant--land tortoises--diseases of wild animals--habits of old lions--cowardice of the lion--its dread of a snare--major vardon's note--the roar of the lion resembles the cry of the ostrich--seldom attacks full-grown animals--buffaloes and lions--mice--serpents--treading on one--venomous and harmless varieties--fascination--sekomi's ideas of honesty--ceremony of the sechu for boys--the boyale for young women--bamangwato hills--the unicorn's pass--the country beyond--grain--scarcity of water--honorable conduct of english gentlemen--gordon cumming's hunting adventures--a word of advice for young sportsmen--bushwomen drawing water--ostrich--silly habit--paces--eggs--food. having remained five days with the wretched bakwains, seeing the effects of war, of which only a very inadequate idea can ever be formed by those who have not been eye-witnesses of its miseries, we prepared to depart on the th of january, . several dogs, in better condition by far than any of the people, had taken up their residence at the water. no one would own them; there they had remained, and, coming on the trail of the people, long after their departure from the scene of conflict, it was plain they had "held o'er the dead their carnival." hence the disgust with which they were viewed. on our way from khopong, along the ancient river-bed which forms the pathway to boatlanama, i found a species of cactus, being the third i have seen in the country, namely, one in the colony with a bright red flower, one at lake ngami, the flower of which was liver-colored, and the present one, flower unknown. that the plant is uncommon may be inferred from the fact that the bakwains find so much difficulty in recognizing the plant again after having once seen it, that they believe it has the power of changing its locality. on the st of january we reached the wells of boatlanama, and found them for the first time empty. lopepe, which i had formerly seen a stream running from a large reedy pool, was also dry. the hot salt spring of serinane, east of lopepe, being undrinkable, we pushed on to mashue for its delicious waters. in traveling through this country, the olfactory nerves are frequently excited by a strong disagreeable odor. this is caused by a large jet-black ant named "leshonya". it is nearly an inch in length, and emits a pungent smell when alarmed, in the same manner as the skunk. the scent must be as volatile as ether, for, on irritating the insect with a stick six feet long, the odor is instantly perceptible. occasionally we lighted upon land tortoises, which, with their unlaid eggs, make a very agreeable dish. we saw many of their trails leading to the salt fountain; they must have come great distances for this health-giving article. in lieu thereof they often devour wood-ashes. it is wonderful how this reptile holds its place in the country. when seen, it never escapes. the young are taken for the sake of their shells; these are made into boxes, which, filled with sweet-smelling roots, the women hang around their persons. when older it is used as food, and the shell converted into a rude basin to hold food or water. it owes its continuance neither to speed nor cunning. its color, yellow and dark brown, is well adapted, by its similarity to the surrounding grass and brushwood, to render it indistinguishable; and, though it makes an awkward attempt to run on the approach of man, its trust is in its bony covering, from which even the teeth of a hyaena glance off foiled. when this long-lived creature is about to deposit her eggs, she lets herself into the ground by throwing the earth up round her shell, until only the top is visible; then covering up the eggs, she leaves them until the rains begin to fall and the fresh herbage appears; the young ones then come out, their shells still quite soft, and, unattended by their dam, begin the world for themselves. their food is tender grass and a plant named thotona, and they frequently resort to heaps of ashes and places containing efflorescence of the nitrates for the salts these contain. inquiries among the bushmen and bakalahari, who are intimately acquainted with the habits of the game, lead to the belief that many diseases prevail among wild animals. i have seen the kokong or gnu, kama or hartebeest, the tsessebe, kukama, and the giraffe, so mangy as to be uneatable even by the natives. reference has already been made to the peripneumonia which cuts off horses, tolos or koodoos. great numbers also of zebras are found dead with masses of foam at the nostrils, exactly as occurs in the common "horse-sickness". the production of the malignant carbuncle called kuatsi, or selonda, by the flesh when eaten, is another proof of the disease of the tame and wild being identical. i once found a buffalo blind from ophthalmia standing by the fountain otse; when he attempted to run he lifted up his feet in the manner peculiar to blind animals. the rhinoceros has often worms on the conjunction of his eyes; but these are not the cause of the dimness of vision which will make him charge past a man who has wounded him, if he stands perfectly still, in the belief that his enemy is a tree. it probably arises from the horn being in the line of vision, for the variety named kuabaoba, which has a straight horn directed downward away from that line, possesses acute eyesight, and is much more wary. all the wild animals are subject to intestinal worms besides. i have observed bunches of a tape-like thread and short worms of enlarged sizes in the rhinoceros. the zebra and elephants are seldom without them, and a thread-worm may often be seen under the peritoneum of these animals. short red larvae, which convey a stinging sensation to the hand, are seen clustering round the orifice of the windpipe (trachea) of this animal at the back of the throat; others are seen in the frontal sinus of antelopes; and curious flat, leech-like worms, with black eyes, are found in the stomachs of leches. the zebra, giraffe, eland, and kukama have been seen mere skeletons from decay of their teeth as well as from disease. the carnivora, too, become diseased and mangy; lions become lean and perish miserably by reason of the decay of the teeth. when a lion becomes too old to catch game, he frequently takes to killing goats in the villages; a woman or child happening to go out at night falls a prey too; and as this is his only source of subsistence now, he continues it. from this circumstance has arisen the idea that the lion, when he has once tasted human flesh, loves it better than any other. a man-eater is invariably an old lion; and when he overcomes his fear of man so far as to come to villages for goats, the people remark, "his teeth are worn, he will soon kill men." they at once acknowledge the necessity of instant action, and turn out to kill him. when living far away from population, or when, as is the case in some parts, he entertains a wholesome dread of the bushmen and bakalahari, as soon as either disease or old age overtakes him, he begins to catch mice and other small rodents, and even to eat grass; the natives, observing undigested vegetable matter in his droppings, follow up his trail in the certainty of finding him scarcely able to move under some tree, and dispatch him without difficulty. the grass may have been eaten as medicine, as is observed in dogs. that the fear of man often remains excessively strong in the carnivora is proved from well-authenticated cases in which the lioness, in the vicinity of towns where the large game had been unexpectedly driven away by fire-arms, has been known to assuage the paroxysms of hunger by devouring her own young. it must be added, that, though the effluvium which is left by the footsteps of man is in general sufficient to induce lions to avoid a village, there are exceptions; so many came about our half-deserted houses at chonuane while we were in the act of removing to kolobeng, that the natives who remained with mrs. livingstone were terrified to stir out of doors in the evenings. bitches, also, have been known to be guilty of the horridly unnatural act of eating their own young, probably from the great desire for animal food, which is experienced by the inhabitants as well. when a lion is met in the daytime, a circumstance by no means unfrequent to travelers in these parts, if preconceived notions do not lead them to expect something very "noble" or "majestic", they will see merely an animal somewhat larger than the biggest dog they ever saw, and partaking very strongly of the canine features; the face is not much like the usual drawings of a lion, the nose being prolonged like a dog's; not exactly such as our painters make it--though they might learn better at the zoological gardens--their ideas of majesty being usually shown by making their lions' faces like old women in nightcaps. when encountered in the daytime, the lion stands a second or two, gazing, then turns slowly round, and walks as slowly away for a dozen paces, looking over his shoulder; then begins to trot, and, when he thinks himself out of sight, bounds off like a greyhound. by day there is not, as a rule, the smallest danger of lions which are not molested attacking man, nor even on a clear moonlight night, except when they possess the breeding storgh* (natural affection); this makes them brave almost any danger; and if a man happens to cross to the windward of them, both lion and lioness will rush at him, in the manner of a bitch with whelps. this does not often happen, as i only became aware of two or three instances of it. in one case a man, passing where the wind blew from him to the animals, was bitten before he could climb a tree; and occasionally a man on horseback has been caught by the leg under the same circumstances. so general, however, is the sense of security on moonlight nights, that we seldom tied up our oxen, but let them lie loose by the wagons; while on a dark, rainy night, if a lion is in the neighborhood, he is almost sure to venture to kill an ox. his approach is always stealthy, except when wounded; and any appearance of a trap is enough to cause him to refrain from making the last spring. this seems characteristic of the feline species; when a goat is picketed in india for the purpose of enabling the huntsmen to shoot a tiger by night, if on a plain, he would whip off the animal so quickly by a stroke of the paw that no one could take aim; to obviate this, a small pit is dug, and the goat is picketed to a stake in the bottom; a small stone is tied in the ear of the goat, which makes him cry the whole night. when the tiger sees the appearance of a trap, he walks round and round the pit, and allows the hunter, who is lying in wait, to have a fair shot. * (greek) sigma-tau-omicron-rho-gamma-eta. when a lion is very hungry, and lying in wait, the sight of an animal may make him commence stalking it. in one case a man, while stealthily crawling towards a rhinoceros, happened to glance behind him, and found to his horror a lion stalking him; he only escaped by springing up a tree like a cat. at lopepe a lioness sprang on the after quarter of mr. oswell's horse, and when we came up to him we found the marks of the claws on the horse, and a scratch on mr. o.'s hand. the horse, on feeling the lion on him, sprang away, and the rider, caught by a wait-a-bit thorn, was brought to the ground and rendered insensible. his dogs saved him. another english gentleman (captain codrington) was surprised in the same way, though not hunting the lion at the time, but turning round he shot him dead in the neck. by accident a horse belonging to codrington ran away, but was stopped by the bridle catching a stump; there he remained a prisoner two days, and when found the whole space around was marked by the footprints of lions. they had evidently been afraid to attack the haltered horse from fear that it was a trap. two lions came up by night to within three yards of oxen tied to a wagon, and a sheep tied to a tree, and stood roaring, but afraid to make a spring. on another occasion one of our party was lying sound asleep and unconscious of danger between two natives behind a bush at mashue; the fire was nearly out at their feet in consequence of all being completely tired out by the fatigues of the previous day; a lion came up to within three yards of the fire, and there commenced roaring instead of making a spring: the fact of their riding-ox being tied to the bush was the only reason the lion had for not following his instinct, and making a meal of flesh. he then stood on a knoll three hundred yards distant, and roared all night, and continued his growling as the party moved off by daylight next morning. nothing that i ever learned of the lion would lead me to attribute to it either the ferocious or noble character ascribed to it elsewhere. it possesses none of the nobility of the newfoundland or st. bernard dogs. with respect to its great strength there can be no doubt. the immense masses of muscle around its jaws, shoulders, and forearms proclaim tremendous force. they would seem, however, to be inferior in power to those of the indian tiger. most of those feats of strength that i have seen performed by lions, such as the taking away of an ox, were not carrying, but dragging or trailing the carcass along the ground: they have sprung on some occasions on to the hind-quarters of a horse, but no one has ever seen them on the withers of a giraffe. they do not mount on the hind-quarters of an eland even, but try to tear him down with their claws. messrs. oswell and vardon once saw three lions endeavoring to drag down a buffalo, and they were unable to do so for a time, though he was then mortally wounded by a two-ounce ball.* * this singular encounter, in the words of an eye-witness, happened as follows: "my south african journal is now before me, and i have got hold of the account of the lion and buffalo affair; here it is: ' th september, . oswell and i were riding this afternoon along the banks of the limpopo, when a waterbuck started in front of us. i dismounted, and was following it through the jungle, when three buffaloes got up, and, after going a little distance, stood still, and the nearest bull turned round and looked at me. a ball from the two-ouncer crashed into his shoulder, and they all three made off. oswell and i followed as soon as i had reloaded, and when we were in sight of the buffalo, and gaining on him at every stride, three lions leaped on the unfortunate brute; he bellowed most lustily as he kept up a kind of running fight, but he was, of course, soon overpowered and pulled down. we had a fine view of the struggle, and saw the lions on their hind legs tearing away with teeth and claws in most ferocious style. we crept up within thirty yards, and, kneeling down, blazed away at the lions. my rifle was a single barrel, and i had no spare gun. one lion fell dead almost on the buffalo; he had merely time to turn toward us, seize a bush with his teeth, and drop dead with the stick in his jaws. the second made off immediately; and the third raised his head, coolly looked round for a moment, then went on tearing and biting at the carcass as hard as ever. we retired a short distance to load, then again advanced and fired. the lion made off, but a ball that he received ought to have stopped him, as it went clean through his shoulder-blade. he was followed up and killed, after having charged several times. both lions were males. it is not often that one bags a brace of lions and a bull buffalo in about ten minutes. it was an exciting adventure, and i shall never forget it.' "such, my dear livingstone, is the plain unvarnished account. the buffalo had, of course, gone close to where the lions were lying down for the day; and they, seeing him lame and bleeding, thought the opportunity too good a one to be lost. "ever yours, frank vardon." in general the lion seizes the animal he is attacking by the flank near the hind leg, or by the throat below the jaw. it is questionable whether he ever attempts to seize an animal by the withers. the flank is the most common point of attack, and that is the part he begins to feast on first. the natives and lions are very similar in their tastes in the selection of tit-bits: an eland may be seen disemboweled by a lion so completely that he scarcely seems cut up at all. the bowels and fatty parts form a full meal for even the largest lion. the jackal comes sniffing about, and sometimes suffers for his temerity by a stroke from the lion's paw laying him dead. when gorged, the lion falls fast asleep, and is then easily dispatched. hunting a lion with dogs involves very little danger as compared with hunting the indian tiger, because the dogs bring him out of cover and make him stand at bay, giving the hunter plenty of time for a good deliberate shot. where game is abundant, there you may expect lions in proportionately large numbers. they are never seen in herds, but six or eight, probably one family, occasionally hunt together. one is in much more danger of being run over when walking in the streets of london, than he is of being devoured by lions in africa, unless engaged in hunting the animal. indeed, nothing that i have seen or heard about lions would constitute a barrier in the way of men of ordinary courage and enterprise. the same feeling which has induced the modern painter to caricature the lion, has led the sentimentalist to consider the lion's roar the most terrific of all earthly sounds. we hear of the "majestic roar of the king of beasts." it is, indeed, well calculated to inspire fear if you hear it in combination with the tremendously loud thunder of that country, on a night so pitchy dark that every flash of the intensely vivid lightning leaves you with the impression of stone-blindness, while the rain pours down so fast that your fire goes out, leaving you without the protection of even a tree, or the chance of your gun going off. but when you are in a comfortable house or wagon, the case is very different, and you hear the roar of the lion without any awe or alarm. the silly ostrich makes a noise as loud, yet he never was feared by man. to talk of the majestic roar of the lion is mere majestic twaddle. on my mentioning this fact some years ago, the assertion was doubted, so i have been careful ever since to inquire the opinions of europeans, who have heard both, if they could detect any difference between the roar of a lion and that of an ostrich; the invariable answer was, that they could not when the animal was at any distance. the natives assert that they can detect a variation between the commencement of the noise of each. there is, it must be admitted, considerable difference between the singing noise of a lion when full, and his deep, gruff growl when hungry. in general the lion's voice seems to come deeper from the chest than that of the ostrich, but to this day i can distinguish between them with certainty only by knowing that the ostrich roars by day and the lion by night. the african lion is of a tawny color, like that of some mastiffs. the mane in the male is large, and gives the idea of great power. in some lions the ends of the hair of the mane are black; these go by the name of black-maned lions, though as a whole all look of the yellow tawny color. at the time of the discovery of the lake, messrs. oswell and wilson shot two specimens of another variety. one was an old lion, whose teeth were mere stumps, and his claws worn quite blunt; the other was full grown, in the prime of life, with white, perfect teeth; both were entirely destitute of mane. the lions in the country near the lake give tongue less than those further south. we scarcely ever heard them roar at all. the lion has other checks on inordinate increase besides man. he seldom attacks full-grown animals; but frequently, when a buffalo calf is caught by him, the cow rushes to the rescue, and a toss from her often kills him. one we found was killed thus; and on the leeambye another, which died near sesheke, had all the appearance of having received his death-blow from a buffalo. it is questionable if a single lion ever attacks a full-grown buffalo. the amount of roaring heard at night, on occasions when a buffalo is killed, seems to indicate there are always more than one lion engaged in the onslaught. on the plain, south of sebituane's ford, a herd of buffaloes kept a number of lions from their young by the males turning their heads to the enemy. the young and the cows were in the rear. one toss from a bull would kill the strongest lion that ever breathed. i have been informed that in one part of india even the tame buffaloes feel their superiority to some wild animals, for they have been seen to chase a tiger up the hills, bellowing as if they enjoyed the sport. lions never go near any elephants except the calves, which, when young, are sometimes torn by them; every living thing retires before the lordly elephant, yet a full-grown one would be an easier prey than the rhinoceros; the lion rushes off at the mere sight of this latter beast. in the country adjacent to mashue great numbers of different kinds of mice exist. the ground is often so undermined with their burrows that the foot sinks in at every step. little haycocks, about two feet high, and rather more than that in breadth, are made by one variety of these little creatures. the same thing is done in regions annually covered with snow for obvious purposes, but it is difficult here to divine the reason of the haymaking in the climate of africa.* * 'euryotis unisulcatus' (f. cuvier), 'mus pumelio' (spar.), and 'mus lehocla' (smith), all possess this habit in a greater or less degree. the first-named may be seen escaping danger with its young hanging to the after-part of its body. wherever mice abound, serpents may be expected, for the one preys on the other. a cat in a house is therefore a good preventive against the entrance of these noxious reptiles. occasionally, however, notwithstanding every precaution, they do find their way in, but even the most venomous sorts bite only when put in bodily fear themselves, or when trodden upon, or when the sexes come together. i once found a coil of serpents' skins, made by a number of them twisting together in the manner described by the druids of old. when in the country, one feels nothing of that alarm and loathing which we may experience when sitting in a comfortable english room reading about them; yet they are nasty things, and we seem to have an instinctive feeling against them. in making the door for our mabotsa house, i happened to leave a small hole at the corner below. early one morning a man came to call for some article i had promised. i at once went to the door, and, it being dark, trod on a serpent. the moment i felt the cold scaly skin twine round a part of my leg, my latent instinct was roused, and i jumped up higher than i ever did before or hope to do again, shaking the reptile off in the leap. i probably trod on it near the head, and so prevented it biting me, but did not stop to examine. some of the serpents are particularly venomous. one was killed at kolobeng of a dark brown, nearly black color, feet inches long. this species (picakholu) is so copiously supplied with poison that, when a number of dogs attack it, the first bitten dies almost instantaneously, the second in about five minutes, the third in an hour or so, while the fourth may live several hours. in a cattle-pen it produces great mischief in the same way. the one we killed at kolobeng continued to distill clear poison from the fangs for hours after its head was cut off. this was probably that which passes by the name of the "spitting serpent", which is believed to be able to eject its poison into the eyes when the wind favors its forcible expiration. they all require water, and come long distances to the zouga, and other rivers and pools, in search of it. we have another dangerous serpent, the puff adder, and several vipers. one, named by the inhabitants "noga-put-sane", or serpent of a kid, utters a cry by night exactly like the bleating of that animal. i heard one at a spot where no kid could possibly have been. it is supposed by the natives to lure travelers to itself by this bleating. several varieties, when alarmed, emit a peculiar odor, by which the people become aware of their presence in a house. we have also the cobra ('naia haje', smith) of several colors or varieties. when annoyed, they raise their heads up about a foot from the ground, and flatten the neck in a threatening manner, darting out the tongue and retracting it with great velocity, while their fixed glassy eyes glare as if in anger. there are also various species of the genus 'dendrophis', as the 'bucephalus viridis', or green tree-climber. they climb trees in search of birds and eggs, and are soon discovered by all the birds in the neighborhood collecting and sounding an alarm.* their fangs are formed not so much for injecting poison on external objects as for keeping in any animal or bird of which they have got hold. in the case of the 'dasypeltis inornatus' (smith), the teeth are small, and favorable for the passage of thin-shelled eggs without breaking. the egg is taken in unbroken till it is within the gullet, or about two inches behind the head. the gular teeth placed there break the shell without spilling the contents, as would be the case if the front teeth were large. the shell is then ejected. others appear to be harmless, and even edible. of the latter sort is the large python, metse pallah, or tari. the largest specimens of this are about or feet in length. they are perfectly harmless, and live on small animals, chiefly the rodentia; occasionally the steinbuck and pallah fall victims, and are sucked into its comparatively small mouth in boa-constrictor fashion. one we shot was feet inches long, and as thick as a man's leg. when shot through the spine, it was capable of lifting itself up about five feet high, and opened its mouth in a threatening manner, but the poor thing was more inclined to crawl away. the flesh is much relished by the bakalahari and bushmen. they carry away each his portion, like logs of wood, over their shoulders. * "as this snake, 'bucephalus capensis', in our opinion, is not provided with a poisonous fluid to instill into wounds which these fangs may inflict, they must consequently be intended for a purpose different to those which exist in poisonous reptiles. their use seems to be to offer obstacles to the retrogression of animals, such as birds, etc., while they are only partially within the mouth; and from the circumstance of these fangs being directed backward, and not admitting of being raised so as to form an angle with the edge of the jaw, they are well fitted to act as powerful holders when once they penetrate the skin and soft parts of the prey which their possessors may be in the act of swallowing. without such fangs escapes would be common; with such they are rare. "the natives of south africa regard the 'bucephalus capensis' as poisonous; but in their opinion we can not concur, as we have not been able to discover the existence of any glands manifestly organized for the secretion of poison. the fangs are inclosed in a soft, pulpy sheath, the inner surface of which is commonly coated with a thin glairy secretion. this secretion possibly may have something acrid and irritating in its qualities, which may, when it enters a wound, cause pain and even swelling, but nothing of greater importance. "the 'bucephalus capensis' is generally found on trees, to which it resorts for the purpose of catching birds, upon which it delights to feed. the presence of a specimen in a tree is generally soon discovered by the birds of the neighborhood, who collect around it and fly to and fro, uttering the most piercing cries, until some one, more terror-struck than the rest, actually scans its lips, and, almost without resistance, becomes a meal for its enemy. during such a proceeding the snake is generally observed with its head raised about ten or twelve inches above the branch round which its body and tail are entwined, with its mouth open and its neck inflated, as if anxiously endeavoring to increase the terror which it would almost appear it was aware would sooner or later bring within its grasp some one of the feathered group. "whatever may be said in ridicule of fascination, it is nevertheless true that birds, and even quadrupeds, are, under certain circumstances, unable to retire from the presence of certain of their enemies; and, what is even more extraordinary, unable to resist the propensity to advance from a situation of actual safety into one of the most imminent danger. this i have often seen exemplified in the case of birds and snakes; and i have heard of instances equally curious, in which antelopes and other quadrupeds have been so bewildered by the sudden appearance of crocodiles, and by the grimaces and contortions they practiced, as to be unable to fly or even move from the spot toward which they were approaching to seize them."--dr. andrew smith's "reptilia". in addition to these interesting statements of the most able naturalist from whom i have taken this note, it may be added that fire exercises a fascinating effect on some kinds of toads. they may be seen rushing into it in the evenings without ever starting back on feeling pain. contact with the hot embers rather increases the energy with which they strive to gain the hottest parts, and they never cease their struggles for the centre even when their juices are coagulating and their limbs stiffening in the roasting heat. various insects, also, are thus fascinated; but the scorpions may be seen coming away from the fire in fierce disgust, and they are so irritated as to inflict at that time their most painful stings. some of the bayeiye we met at sebituane's ford pretended to be unaffected by the bite of serpents, and showed the feat of lacerating their arms with the teeth of such as are unfurnished with the poison-fangs. they also swallow the poison, by way of gaining notoriety; but dr. andrew smith put the sincerity of such persons to the test by offering them the fangs of a really poisonous variety, and found they shrank from the experiment. when we reached the bamangwato, the chief, sekomi, was particularly friendly, collected all his people to the religious services we held, and explained his reasons for compelling some englishmen to pay him a horse. "they would not sell him any powder, though they had plenty; so he compelled them to give it and the horse for nothing. he would not deny the extortion to me; that would be 'boherehere' (swindling)." he thus thought extortion better than swindling. i could not detect any difference in the morality of the two transactions, but sekomi's ideas of honesty are the lowest i have met with in any bechuana chief, and this instance is mentioned as the only approach to demanding payment for leave to pass that i have met with in the south. in all other cases the difficulty has been to get a chief to give us men to show the way, and the payment has only been for guides. englishmen have always very properly avoided giving that idea to the native mind which we shall hereafter find prove troublesome, that payment ought to be made for passage through a country. all the bechuana and caffre tribes south of the zambesi practice circumcision ('boguera'), but the rites observed are carefully concealed. the initiated alone can approach, but in this town i was once a spectator of the second part of the ceremony of the circumcision, called "sechu". just at the dawn of day, a row of boys of nearly fourteen years of age stood naked in the kotla, each having a pair of sandals as a shield on his hands. facing them stood the men of the town in a similar state of nudity, all armed with long thin wands, of a tough, strong, supple bush called moretloa ('grewia flava'), and engaged in a dance named "koha", in which questions are put to the boys, as "will you guard the chief well?" "will you herd the cattle well?" and, while the latter give an affirmative response, the men rush forward to them, and each aims a full-weight blow at the back of one of the boys. shielding himself with the sandals above his head, he causes the supple wand to descend and bend into his back, and every stroke inflicted thus makes the blood squirt out of a wound a foot or eighteen inches long. at the end of the dance, the boys' backs are seamed with wounds and weals, the scars of which remain through life. this is intended to harden the young soldiers, and prepare them for the rank of men. after this ceremony, and after killing a rhinoceros, they may marry a wife. in the "koha" the same respect is shown to age as in many other of their customs. a younger man, rushing from the ranks to exercise his wand on the backs of the youths, may be himself the object of chastisement by the older, and, on the occasion referred to, sekomi received a severe cut on the leg from one of his gray-haired people. on my joking with some of the young men on their want of courage, notwithstanding all the beatings of which they bore marks, and hinting that our soldiers were brave without suffering so much, one rose up and said, "ask him if, when he and i were compelled by a lion to stop and make a fire, i did not lie down and sleep as well as himself." in other parts a challenge to try a race would have been given, and you may frequently see grown men adopting that means of testing superiority, like so many children. the sechu is practiced by three tribes only. boguera is observed by all the bechuanas and caffres, but not by the negro tribes beyond deg. south. the "boguera" is a civil rather than a religious rite. all the boys of an age between ten and fourteen or fifteen are selected to be the companions for life of one of the sons of the chief. they are taken out to some retired spot in the forest, and huts are erected for their accommodation; the old men go out and teach them to dance, initiating them, at the same time, into all the mysteries of african politics and government. each one is expected to compose an oration in praise of himself, called a "leina" or name, and to be able to repeat it with sufficient fluency. a good deal of beating is required to bring them up to the required excellency in different matters, so that, when they return from the close seclusion in which they are kept, they have generally a number of scars to show on their backs. these bands or regiments, named mepato in the plural and mopato in the singular, receive particular appellations; as, the matsatsi--the suns; the mabusa--the rulers; equivalent to our coldstreams or enniskillens; and, though living in different parts of the town, they turn out at the call, and act under the chief's son as their commander. they recognize a sort of equality and partial communism ever afterward, and address each other by the title of molekane or comrade. in cases of offence against their rules, as eating alone when any of their comrades are within call, or in cases of cowardice or dereliction of duty, they may strike one another, or any member of a younger mopato, but never any one of an older band; and when three or four companies have been made, the oldest no longer takes the field in time of war, but remains as a guard over the women and children. when a fugitive comes to a tribe, he is directed to the mopato analogous to that to which in his own tribe he belongs, and does duty as a member. no one of the natives knows how old he is. if asked his age, he answers by putting another question, "does a man remember when he was born?" age is reckoned by the number of mepato they have seen pass through the formulae of admission. when they see four or five mepato younger than themselves, they are no longer obliged to bear arms. the oldest individual i ever met boasted he had seen eleven sets of boys submit to the boguera. supposing him to have been fifteen when he saw his own, and fresh bands were added every six or seven years, he must have been about forty when he saw the fifth, and may have attained seventy-five or eighty years, which is no great age; but it seemed so to them, for he had now doubled the age for superannuation among them. it is an ingenious plan for attaching the members of the tribe to the chief's family, and for imparting a discipline which renders the tribe easy of command. on their return to the town from attendance on the ceremonies of initiation, a prize is given to the lad who can run fastest, the article being placed where all may see the winner run up to snatch it. they are then considered men (banona, viri), and can sit among the elders in the kotla. formerly they were only boys (basimane, pueri). the first missionaries set their faces against the boguera, on account of its connection with heathenism, and the fact that the youths learned much evil, and became disobedient to their parents. from the general success of these men, it is perhaps better that younger missionaries should tread in their footsteps; for so much evil may result from breaking down the authority on which, to those who can not read, the whole system of our influence appears to rest, that innovators ought to be made to propose their new measures as the locrians did new laws--with ropes around their necks. probably the "boguera" was only a sanitary and political measure; and there being no continuous chain of tribes practicing the rite between the arabs and the bechuanas, or caffres, and as it is not a religious ceremony, it can scarcely be traced, as is often done, to a mohammedan source. a somewhat analogous ceremony (boyale) takes place for young women, and the protegees appear abroad drilled under the surveillance of an old lady to the carrying of water. they are clad during the whole time in a dress composed of ropes made of alternate pumpkin-seeds and bits of reed strung together, and wound round the body in a figure-of-eight fashion. they are inured in this way to bear fatigue, and carry large pots of water under the guidance of the stern old hag. they have often scars from bits of burning charcoal having been applied to the forearm, which must have been done to test their power of bearing pain. the bamangwato hills are part of the range called bakaa. the bakaa tribe, however, removed to kolobeng, and is now joined to that of sechele. the range stands about or feet above the plains, and is composed of great masses of black basalt. it is probably part of the latest series of volcanic rocks in south africa. at the eastern end these hills have curious fungoid or cup-shaped hollows, of a size which suggests the idea of craters. within these are masses of the rock crystallized in the columnar form of this formation. the tops of the columns are quite distinct, of the hexagonal form, like the bottom of the cells of a honeycomb, but they are not parted from each other as in the cave of fingal. in many parts the lava-streams may be recognized, for there the rock is rent and split in every direction, but no soil is yet found in the interstices. when we were sitting in the evening, after a hot day, it was quite common to hear these masses of basalt split and fall among each other with the peculiar ringing sound which makes people believe that this rock contains much iron. several large masses, in splitting thus by the cold acting suddenly on parts expanded by the heat of the day, have slipped down the sides of the hills, and, impinging against each other, have formed cavities in which the bakaa took refuge against their enemies. the numerous chinks and crannies left by these huge fragments made it quite impossible for their enemies to smoke them out, as was done by the boers to the people of mankopane. this mass of basalt, about six miles long, has tilted up the rocks on both the east and west; these upheaved rocks are the ancient silurian schists which formed the bottom of the great primaeval valley, and, like all the recent volcanic rocks of this country, have a hot fountain in their vicinity, namely, that of serinane. in passing through these hills on our way north we enter a pass named manakalongwe, or unicorn's pass. the unicorn here is a large edible caterpillar, with an erect, horn-like tail. the pass was also called porapora (or gurgling of water), from a stream having run through it. the scene must have been very different in former times from what it is now. this is part of the river mahalapi, which so-called river scarcely merits the name, any more than the meadows of edinburgh deserve the title of north loch. these hills are the last we shall see for months. the country beyond consisted of large patches of trap-covered tufa, having little soil or vegetation except tufts of grass and wait-a-bit thorns, in the midst of extensive sandy, grass-covered plains. these yellow-colored, grassy plains, with moretloa and mahatla bushes, form quite a characteristic feature of the country. the yellow or dun-color prevails during a great part of the year. the bakwain hills are an exception to the usual flat surface, for they are covered with green trees to their tops, and the valleys are often of the most lovely green. the trees are larger too, and even the plains of the bakwain country contain trees instead of bushes. if you look north from the hills we are now leaving, the country partakes of this latter character. it appears as if it were a flat covered with a forest of ordinary-sized trees from to feet high, but when you travel over it they are not so closely planted but that a wagon with care may be guided among them. the grass grows in tufts of the size of one's hat, with bare soft sand between. nowhere here have we an approach to english lawns, or the pleasing appearance of english greensward. in no part of this country could european grain be cultivated without irrigation. the natives all cultivate the dourrha or holcus sorghum, maize, pumpkins, melons, cucumbers, and different kinds of beans; and they are entirely dependent for the growth of these on rains. their instrument of culture is the hoe, and the chief labor falls on the female portion of the community. in this respect the bechuanas closely resemble the caffres. the men engage in hunting, milk the cows, and have the entire control of the cattle; they prepare the skins, make the clothing, and in many respects may be considered a nation of tailors. when at sekomi's we generally have heard his praises sounded by a man who rises at break of day, and utters at the top of his voice the oration which that ruler is said to have composed at his boguera. this repetition of his "leina", or oration, is so pleasing to a chief, that he generally sends a handsome present to the man who does it. january th. passing on to letloche, about twenty miles beyond the bamangwato, we found a fine supply of water. this is a point of so much interest in that country that the first question we ask of passers by is, "have you had water?" the first inquiry a native puts to a fellow-countryman is, "where is the rain?" and, though they are by no means an untruthful nation, the answer generally is, "i don't know--there is none--we are killed with hunger and by the sun." if news is asked for, they commence with, "there is no news: i heard some lies only," and then tell all they know. this spot was mr. gordon cumming's furthest station north. our house at kolobeng having been quite in the hunting-country, rhinoceros and buffaloes several times rushed past, and i was able to shoot the latter twice from our own door. we were favored by visits from this famous hunter during each of the five years of his warfare with wild animals. many english gentlemen following the same pursuits paid their guides and assistants so punctually that in making arrangements for them we had to be careful that four did not go where two only were wanted: they knew so well that an englishman would pay that they depended implicitly on his word of honor, and not only would they go and hunt for five or six months in the north, enduring all the hardships of that trying mode of life, with little else but meat of game to subsist on, but they willingly went seven hundred or eight hundred miles to graham's town, receiving for wages only a musket worth fifteen shillings. no one ever deceived them except one man; and as i believed that he was afflicted with a slight degree of the insanity of greediness, i upheld the honor of the english name by paying his debts. as the guides of mr. cumming were furnished through my influence, and usually got some strict charges as to their behavior before parting, looking upon me in the light of a father, they always came to give me an account of their service, and told most of those hunting adventures which have since been given to the world, before we had the pleasure of hearing our friend relate them himself by our own fireside. i had thus a tolerably good opportunity of testing their accuracy, and i have no hesitation in saying that for those who love that sort of thing mr. cumming's book conveys a truthful idea of south african hunting. some things in it require explanation, but the numbers of animals said to have been met with and killed are by no means improbable, considering the amount of large game then in the country. two other gentlemen hunting in the same region destroyed in one season no fewer than seventy-eight rhinoceroses alone. sportsmen, however, would not now find an equal number, for as guns are introduced among the tribes all these fine animals melt away like snow in spring. in the more remote districts, where fire-arms have not yet been introduced, with the single exception of the rhinoceros, the game is to be found in numbers much greater than mr. cumming ever saw. the tsetse is, however, an insuperable barrier to hunting with horses there, and europeans can do nothing on foot. the step of the elephant when charging the hunter, though apparently not quick, is so long that the pace equals the speed of a good horse at a canter. a young sportsman, no matter how great among pheasants, foxes, and hounds, would do well to pause before resolving to brave fever for the excitement of risking such a terrific charge; the scream or trumpeting of this enormous brute when infuriated is more like what the shriek of a french steam-whistle would be to a man standing on the dangerous part of a rail-road than any other earthly sound: a horse unused to it will sometimes stand shivering instead of taking his rider out of danger. it has happened often that the poor animal's legs do their duty so badly that he falls and causes his rider to be trodden into a mummy; or, losing his presence of mind, the rider may allow the horse to dash under a tree and crack his cranium against a branch. as one charge from an elephant has made embryo nimrods bid a final adieu to the chase, incipient gordon cummings might try their nerves by standing on railways till the engines were within a few yards of them. hunting elephants on foot would be not less dangerous,* unless the ceylon mode of killing them by one shot could be followed: it has never been tried in africa. * since writing the above statement, it has received confirmation in the reported death of mr. wahlberg while hunting elephants on foot at lake ngami. advancing to some wells beyond letloche, at a spot named kanne, we found them carefully hedged round by the people of a bakalahari village situated near the spot. we had then sixty miles of country in front without water, and very distressing for the oxen, as it is generally deep soft sand. there is one sucking-place, around which were congregated great numbers of bushwomen with their egg-shells and reeds. mathuluane now contained no water, and motlatsa only a small supply, so we sent the oxen across the country to the deep well nkauane, and half were lost on the way. when found at last they had been five whole days without water. very large numbers of elands were met with as usual, though they seldom can get a sip of drink. many of the plains here have large expanses of grass without trees, but you seldom see a treeless horizon. the ostrich is generally seen quietly feeding on some spot where no one can approach him without being detected by his wary eye. as the wagon moves along far to the windward he thinks it is intending to circumvent him, so he rushes up a mile or so from the leeward, and so near to the front oxen that one sometimes gets a shot at the silly bird. when he begins to run all the game in sight follow his example. i have seen this folly taken advantage of when he was feeding quietly in a valley open at both ends. a number of men would commence running, as if to cut off his retreat from the end through which the wind came; and although he had the whole country hundreds of miles before him by going to the other end, on he madly rushed to get past the men, and so was speared. he never swerves from the course he once adopts, but only increases his speed. when the ostrich is feeding his pace is from twenty to twenty-two inches; when walking, but not feeding, it is twenty-six inches; and when terrified, as in the case noticed, it is from eleven and a half to thirteen and even fourteen feet in length. only in one case was i at all satisfied of being able to count the rate of speed by a stop-watch, and, if i am not mistaken, there were thirty in ten seconds; generally one's eye can no more follow the legs than it can the spokes of a carriage-wheel in rapid motion. if we take the above number, and twelve feet stride as the average pace, we have a speed of twenty-six miles an hour. it can not be very much above that, and is therefore slower than a railway locomotive. they are sometimes shot by the horseman making a cross cut to their undeviating course, but few englishmen ever succeed in killing them. the ostrich begins to lay her eggs before she has fixed on a spot for a nest, which is only a hollow a few inches deep in the sand, and about a yard in diameter. solitary eggs, named by the bechuanas "lesetla", are thus found lying forsaken all over the country, and become a prey to the jackal. she seems averse to risking a spot for a nest, and often lays her eggs in that of another ostrich, so that as many as forty-five have been found in one nest. some eggs contain small concretions of the matter which forms the shell, as occurs also in the egg of the common fowl: this has given rise to the idea of stones in the eggs. both male and female assist in the incubations; but the numbers of females being always greatest, it is probable that cases occur in which the females have the entire charge. several eggs lie out of the nest, and are thought to be intended as food for the first of the newly-hatched brood till the rest come out and enable the whole to start in quest of food. i have several times seen newly-hatched young in charge of the cock, who made a very good attempt at appearing lame in the plover fashion, in order to draw off the attention of pursuers. the young squat down and remain immovable when too small to run far, but attain a wonderful degree of speed when about the size of common fowls. it can not be asserted that ostriches are polygamous, though they often appear to be so. when caught they are easily tamed, but are of no use in their domesticated state. the egg is possessed of very great vital power. one kept in a room during more than three months, in a temperature about deg., when broken was found to have a partially-developed live chick in it. the bushmen carefully avoid touching the eggs, or leaving marks of human feet near them, when they find a nest. they go up the wind to the spot, and with a long stick remove some of them occasionally, and, by preventing any suspicion, keep the hen laying on for months, as we do with fowls. the eggs have a strong, disagreeable flavor, which only the keen appetite of the desert can reconcile one to. the hottentots use their trowsers to carry home the twenty or twenty-five eggs usually found in a nest; and it has happened that an englishman, intending to imitate this knowing dodge, comes to the wagons with blistered legs, and, after great toil, finds all the eggs uneatable, from having been some time sat upon. our countrymen invariably do best when they continue to think, speak, and act in their own proper character. the food of the ostrich consists of pods and seeds of different kinds of leguminous plants, with leaves of various plants; and, as these are often hard and dry, he picks up a great quantity of pebbles, many of which are as large as marbles. he picks up also some small bulbs, and occasionally a wild melon to afford moisture, for one was found with a melon which had choked him by sticking in his throat. it requires the utmost address of the bushmen, crawling for miles on their stomachs, to stalk them successfully; yet the quantity of feathers collected annually shows that the numbers slain must be considerable, as each bird has only a few in the wings and tail. the male bird is of a jet black glossy color, with the single exception of the white feathers, which are objects of trade. nothing can be finer than the adaptation of those flossy feathers for the climate of the kalahari, where these birds abound; for they afford a perfect shade to the body, with free ventilation beneath them. the hen ostrich is of a dark brownish-gray color, and so are the half-grown cocks. the organs of vision in this bird are placed so high that he can detect an enemy at a great distance, but the lion sometimes kills him. the flesh is white and coarse, though, when in good condition, it resembles in some degree that of a tough turkey. it seeks safety in flight; but when pursued by dogs it may be seen to turn upon them and inflict a kick, which is vigorously applied, and sometimes breaks the dog's back. chapter . effects of missionary efforts--belief in the deity--ideas of the bakwains on religion--departure from their country--salt-pans--sour curd--nchokotsa--bitter waters--thirst suffered by the wild animals--wanton cruelty in hunting--ntwetwe--mowana-trees--their extraordinary vitality--the mopane-tree--the morala--the bushmen--their superstitions--elephant-hunting--superiority of civilized over barbarous sportsmen--the chief kaisa--his fear of responsibility--beauty of the country at unku--the mohonono bush--severe labor in cutting our way--party seized with fever--escape of our cattle--bakwain mode of recapturing them--vagaries of sick servants-- discovery of grape-bearing vines--an ant-eater--difficulty of passing through the forest--sickness of my companion--the bushmen--their mode of destroying lions--poisons--the solitary hill--a picturesque valley--beauty of the country--arrive at the sanshureh river--the flooded prairies--a pontooning expedition--a night bivouac--the chobe-- arrive at the village of moremi--surprise of the makololo at our sudden appearance--cross the chobe on our way to linyanti. the bakalahari, who live at motlatsa wells, have always been very friendly to us, and listen attentively to instruction conveyed to them in their own tongue. it is, however, difficult to give an idea to a european of the little effect teaching produces, because no one can realize the degradation to which their minds have been sunk by centuries of barbarism and hard struggling for the necessaries of life: like most others, they listen with respect and attention, but, when we kneel down and address an unseen being, the position and the act often appear to them so ridiculous that they can not refrain from bursting into uncontrollable laughter. after a few services they get over this tendency. i was once present when a missionary attempted to sing among a wild heathen tribe of bechuanas, who had no music in their composition; the effect on the risible faculties of the audience was such that the tears actually ran down their cheeks. nearly all their thoughts are directed to the supply of their bodily wants, and this has been the case with the race for ages. if asked, then, what effect the preaching of the gospel has at the commencement on such individuals, i am unable to tell, except that some have confessed long afterward that they then first began to pray in secret. of the effects of a long-continued course of instruction there can be no reasonable doubt, as mere nominal belief has never been considered sufficient proof of conversion by any body of missionaries; and, after the change which has been brought about by this agency, we have good reason to hope well for the future--those i have myself witnessed behaving in the manner described, when kindly treated in sickness often utter imploring words to jesus, and i believe sometimes really do pray to him in their afflictions. as that great redeemer of the guilty seeks to save all he can, we may hope that they find mercy through his blood, though little able to appreciate the sacrifice he made. the indirect and scarcely appreciable blessings of christian missionaries going about doing good are thus probably not so despicable as some might imagine; there is no necessity for beginning to tell even the most degraded of these people of the existence of a god or of a future state, the facts being universally admitted. every thing that can not be accounted for by common causes is ascribed to the deity, as creation, sudden death, etc. "how curiously god made these things!" is a common expression; as is also, "he was not killed by disease, he was killed by god." and, when speaking of the departed--though there is naught in the physical appearance of the dead to justify the expression--they say, "he has gone to the gods," the phrase being identical with "abiit ad plures". on questioning intelligent men among the bakwains as to their former knowledge of good and evil, of god and the future state, they have scouted the idea of any of them ever having been without a tolerably clear conception on all these subjects. respecting their sense of right and wrong, they profess that nothing we indicate as sin ever appeared to them as otherwise, except the statement that it was wrong to have more wives than one; and they declare that they spoke in the same way of the direct influence exercised by god in giving rain in answer to prayers of the rain-makers, and in granting deliverances in times of danger, as they do now, before they ever heard of white men. the want, however, of any form of public worship, or of idols, or of formal prayers or sacrifice, make both caffres and bechuanas appear as among the most godless races of mortals known any where. but, though they all possess a distinct knowledge of a deity and of a future state, they show so little reverence, and feel so little connection with either, that it is not surprising that some have supposed them entirely ignorant on the subject. at lotlakani we met an old bushman who at first seemed to have no conception of morality whatever; when his heart was warmed by our presents of meat, he sat by the fire relating his early adventures: among these was killing five other bushmen. "two," said he, counting on his fingers, "were females, one a male, and the other two calves." "what a villain you are, to boast of killing women and children of your own nation! what will god say when you appear before him?" "he will say," replied he, "that i was a very clever fellow." this man now appeared to me as without any conscience, and, of course, responsibility; but, on trying to enlighten him by further conversation, i discovered that, though he was employing the word that is used among the bakwains when speaking of the deity, he had only the idea of a chief, and was all the while referring to sekomi, while his victims were a party of rebel bushmen against whom he had been sent. if i had known the name of god in the bushman tongue the mistake could scarcely have occurred. it must, however, be recollected, while reflecting on the degradation of the natives of south africa, that the farther north, the more distinct do the native ideas on religious subjects become, and i have not had any intercourse with either caffres or bushmen in their own tongues. leaving motlatsa on the th of february, , we passed down the mokoko, which, in the memory of persons now living, was a flowing stream. we ourselves once saw a heavy thunder-shower make it assume its ancient appearance of running to the north. between lotlakani and nchokotsa we passed the small well named orapa; and another called thutsa lay a little to our right--its water is salt and purgative; the salt-pan chuantsa, having a cake of salt one inch and a half in thickness, is about ten miles to the northeast of orapa. this deposit contains a bitter salt in addition, probably the nitrate of lime; the natives, in order to render it palatable and wholesome, mix the salt with the juice of a gummy plant, then place it in the sand and bake it by making a fire over it; the lime then becomes insoluble and tasteless. the bamangwato keep large flocks of sheep and goats at various spots on this side of the desert. they thrive wonderfully well wherever salt and bushes are to be found. the milk of goats does not coagulate with facility, like that of cows, on account of its richness; but the natives have discovered that the infusion of the fruit of a solanaceous plant, toluane, quickly produces the effect. the bechuanas put their milk into sacks made of untanned hide, with the hair taken off. hung in the sun, it soon coagulates; the whey is then drawn off by a plug at the bottom, and fresh milk added, until the sack is full of a thick, sour curd, which, when one becomes used to it, is delicious. the rich mix this in the porridge into which they convert their meal, and, as it is thus rendered nutritious and strength-giving, an expression of scorn is sometimes heard respecting the poor or weak, to the effect that "they are water-porridge men." it occupies the place of our roast beef. at nchokotsa, the rainy season having this year been delayed beyond the usual time, we found during the day the thermometer stand at deg. in the coolest possible shade. this height at kolobeng always portended rain at hand. at kuruman, when it rises above deg., the same phenomenon may be considered near; while farther north it rises above deg. before the cooling influence of the evaporation from rain may be expected. here the bulb of the thermometer, placed two inches beneath the soil, stood at deg. all around nchokotsa the country looked parched, and the glare from the white efflorescence which covers the extensive pans on all sides was most distressing to the eyes. the water of nchokotsa was bitter, and presented indications not to be mistaken of having passed through animal systems before. all these waters contain nitrates, which stimulate the kidneys and increase the thirst. the fresh additions of water required in cooking meat, each imparting its own portion of salt, make one grumble at the cook for putting too much seasoning in, while in fact he has put in none at all, except that contained in the water. of bitter, bad, disgusting waters i have drunk not a few nauseous draughts; you may try alum, vitriol, boiling, etc., etc., to convince yourself that you are not more stupid than travelers you will meet at home, but the ammonia and other salts are there still; and the only remedy is to get away as quickly as possible to the north. we dug out several wells; and as we had on each occasion to wait till the water flowed in again, and then allow our cattle to feed a day or two and slake their thirst thoroughly, as far as that could be done, before starting, our progress was but slow. at koobe there was such a mass of mud in the pond, worked up by the wallowing rhinoceros to the consistency of mortar, that only by great labor could we get a space cleared at one side for the water to ooze through and collect in for the oxen. should the rhinoceros come back, a single roll in the great mass we had thrown on one side would have rendered all our labor vain. it was therefore necessary for us to guard the spot at night. on these great flats all around we saw in the white sultry glare herds of zebras, gnus, and occasionally buffaloes, standing for days, looking wistfully toward the wells for a share of the nasty water. it is mere wanton cruelty to take advantage of the necessities of these poor animals, and shoot them down one after another, without intending to make the smallest use of either the flesh, skins, or horns. in shooting by night, animals are more frequently wounded than killed; the flowing life-stream increases the thirst, so that in desperation they come slowly up to drink in spite of the danger, "i must drink, though i die." the ostrich, even when not wounded, can not, with all his wariness, resist the excessive desire to slake his burning thirst. it is bushman-like practice to take advantage of its piteous necessities, for most of the feathers they obtain are procured in this way; but they eat the flesh, and are so far justifiable. i could not order my men to do what i would not do myself, but, though i tried to justify myself on the plea of necessity, i could not adopt this mode of hunting. if your object is to secure the best specimens for a museum, it may be allowable, and even deserving of commendation, as evincing a desire to kill only those really wanted; but if, as has been practiced by some griquas and others who came into the country after mr. cumming, and fired away indiscriminately, great numbers of animals are wounded and allowed to perish miserably, or are killed on the spot and left to be preyed on by vultures and hyenas, and all for the sole purpose of making a "bag", then i take it to be evident that such sportsmen are pretty far gone in the hunting form of insanity. my men shot a black rhinoceros in this way, and i felt glad to get away from the only place in which i ever had any share in night-hunting. we passed over the immense pan ntwetwe, on which the latitude could be taken as at sea. great tracts of this part of the country are of calcareous tufa, with only a thin coating of soil; numbers of "baobab" and "mopane" trees abound all over this hard, smooth surface. about two miles beyond the northern bank of the pan we unyoked under a fine specimen of the baobab, here called, in the language of bechuanas, mowana; it consisted of six branches united into one trunk. at three feet from the ground it was eighty-five feet in circumference. these mowana-trees are the most wonderful examples of vitality in the country; it was therefore with surprise that we came upon a dead one at tlomtla, a few miles beyond this spot. it is the same as those which adamson and others believed, from specimens seen in western africa, to have been alive before the flood. arguing with a peculiar mental idiosyncracy resembling color-blindness, common among the french of the time, these savans came to the conclusion that "therefore there never was any flood at all." i would back a true mowana against a dozen floods, provided you do not boil it in hot sea-water; but i can not believe that any of those now alive had a chance of being subjected to the experiment of even the noachian deluge. the natives make a strong cord from the fibres contained in the pounded bark. the whole of the trunk, as high as they can reach, is consequently often quite denuded of its covering, which in the case of almost any other tree would cause its death, but this has no effect on the mowana except to make it throw out a new bark, which is done in the way of granulation. this stripping of the bark is repeated frequently, so that it is common to see the lower five or six feet an inch or two less in diameter than the parts above; even portions of the bark which have broken in the process of being taken off, but remain separated from the parts below, though still connected with the tree above, continue to grow, and resemble closely marks made in the necks of the cattle of the island of mull and of caffre oxen, where a piece of skin is detached and allowed to hang down. no external injury, not even a fire, can destroy this tree from without; nor can any injury be done from within, as it is quite common to find it hollow; and i have seen one in which twenty or thirty men could lie down and sleep as in a hut. nor does cutting down exterminate it, for i saw instances in angola in which it continued to grow in length after it was lying on the ground. those trees called exogenous grow by means of successive layers on the outside. the inside may be dead, or even removed altogether, without affecting the life of the tree. this is the case with most of the trees of our climate. the other class is called endogenous, and increases by layers applied to the inside; and when the hollow there is full, the growth is stopped--the tree must die. any injury is felt most severely by the first class on the bark; by the second on the inside; while the inside of the exogenous may be removed, and the outside of the endogenous may be cut, without stopping the growth in the least. the mowana possesses the powers of both. the reason is that each of the laminae possesses its own independent vitality; in fact, the baobab is rather a gigantic bulb run up to seed than a tree. each of eighty-four concentric rings had, in the case mentioned, grown an inch after the tree had been blown over. the roots, which may often be observed extending along the surface of the ground forty or fifty yards from the trunk, also retain their vitality after the tree is laid low; and the portuguese now know that the best way to treat them is to let them alone, for they occupy much more room when cut down than when growing. the wood is so spongy and soft that an axe can be struck in so far with a good blow that there is great difficulty in pulling it out again. in the dead mowana mentioned the concentric rings were well seen. the average for a foot at three different places was eighty-one and a half of these rings. each of the laminae can be seen to be composed of two, three, or four layers of ligneous tubes; but supposing each ring the growth of one year, and the semidiameter of a mowana of one hundred feet in circumference about seventeen feet, if the central point were in the centre of the tree, then its age would lack some centuries of being as old as the christian era ( ). though it possesses amazing vitality, it is difficult to believe that this great baby-looking bulb or tree is as old as the pyramids. the mopane-tree ('bauhinia') is remarkable for the little shade its leaves afford. they fold together and stand nearly perpendicular during the heat of the day, so that only the shadow of their edges comes to the ground. on these leaves the small larvae of a winged insect appear covered over with a sweet, gummy substance. the people collect this in great quantities, and use it as food;* and the lopane--large caterpillars three inches long, which feed on the leaves, and are seen strung together--share the same fate. * i am favored with mr. westwood's remarks on this insect as follows: "taylor institution, oxford, july , . "the insect (and its secretion) on the leaves of the bauhinia, and which is eaten by the africans, proves to be a species of psylla, a genus of small, very active homoptera, of which we have one very common species in the box; but our species, psylla buxi, emits its secretion in the shape of very long, white, cotton-like filaments. but there is a species in new holland, found on the leaves of the eucalyptus, which emits a secretion very similar to that of dr. livingstone's species. this australian secretion (and its insect originator) is known by the name of wo-me-la, and, like dr. livingstone's, it is scraped off the leaves and eaten by the aborigines as a saccharine dainty. the insects found beneath the secretion, brought home by dr. livingstone, are in the pupa state, being flattened, with large scales at the sides of the body, inclosing the future wings of the insect. the body is pale yellowish-colored, with dark-brown spots. it will be impossible to describe the species technically until we receive the perfect insect. the secretion itself is flat and circular, apparently deposited in concentric rings, gradually increasing in size till the patches are about a quarter or a third of an inch in diameter. jno. o. westwood." in passing along we see every where the power of vegetation in breaking up the outer crust of tufa. a mopane-tree, growing in a small chink, as it increases in size rends and lifts up large fragments of the rock all around it, subjecting them to the disintegrating influence of the atmosphere. the wood is hard, and of a fine red color, and is named iron-wood by the portuguese. the inhabitants, observing that the mopane is more frequently struck by lightning than other trees, caution travelers never to seek its shade when a thunder-storm is near--"lightning hates it;" while another tree, the "morala", which has three spines opposite each other on the branches, and has never been known to be touched by lightning, is esteemed, even as far as angola, a protection against the electric fluid. branches of it may be seen placed on the houses of the portuguese for the same purpose. the natives, moreover, believe that a man is thoroughly protected from an enraged elephant if he can get into the shade of this tree. there may not be much in this, but there is frequently some foundation of truth in their observations. at rapesh we came among our old friends the bushmen, under horoye. this man, horoye, a good specimen of that tribe, and his son mokantsa and others, were at least six feet high, and of a darker color than the bushmen of the south. they have always plenty of food and water; and as they frequent the zouga as often as the game in company with which they live, their life is very different from that of the inhabitants of the thirsty plains of the kalahari. the animal they refrain from eating is the goat, which fact, taken in connection with the superstitious dread which exists in every tribe toward a particular animal, is significant of their feelings to the only animals they could have domesticated in their desert home. they are a merry laughing set, and do not tell lies wantonly. they have in their superstitious rites more appearance of worship than the bechuanas; and at a bushman's grave we once came to on the zouga, the observances showed distinctly that they regarded the dead as still in another state of being; for they addressed him, and requested him not to be offended even though they wished still to remain a little while longer in this world. those among whom we now were kill many elephants, and when the moon is full choose that time for the chase, on account of its coolness. hunting this animal is the best test of courage this country affords. the bushmen choose the moment succeeding a charge, when the elephant is out of breath, to run in and give him a stab with their long-bladed spears. in this case the uncivilized have the advantage over us, but i believe that with half their training englishmen would beat the bushmen. our present form of civilization does not necessarily produce effeminacy, though it unquestionably increases the beauty, courage, and physical powers of the race. when at kolobeng i took notes of the different numbers of elephants killed in the course of the season by the various parties which went past our dwelling, in order to form an idea of the probable annual destruction of this noble animal. there were parties of griquas, bechuanas, boers, and englishmen. all were eager to distinguish themselves, and success depended mainly on the courage which leads the huntsman to go close to the animal, and not waste the force of his shot on the air. it was noticeable that the average for the natives was under one per man, for the griquas one per man, for the boers two, and for the english officers twenty each. this was the more remarkable, as the griquas, boers, and bechuanas employed both dogs and natives to assist them, while the english hunters generally had no assistance from either. they approached to within thirty yards of the animal, while the others stood at a distance of a hundred yards, or even more, and of course spent all the force of their bullets on the air. one elephant was found by mr. oswell with quite a crowd of bullets in his side, all evidently fired in this style, and they had not gone near the vital parts. it would thus appear that our more barbarous neighbors do not possess half the courage of the civilized sportsman. and it is probable that in this respect, as well as in physical development, we are superior to our ancestors. the coats of mail and greaves of the knights of malta, and the armor from the tower exhibited at the eglinton tournament, may be considered decisive as to the greater size attained by modern civilized men. at maila we spent a sunday with kaisa, the head man of a village of mashona, who had fled from the iron sway of mosilikatse, whose country lies east of this. i wished him to take charge of a packet of letters for england, to be forwarded when, as is the custom of the bamangwato, the bechuanas come hither in search of skins and food among the bushmen; but he could not be made to comprehend that there was no danger in the consignment. he feared the responsibility and guilt if any thing should happen to them; so i had to bid adieu to all hope of letting my family hear of my welfare till i should reach the west coast. at unku we came into a tract of country which had been visited by refreshing showers long before, and every spot was covered with grass run up to seed, and the flowers of the forest were in full bloom. instead of the dreary prospect around koobe and nchokotsa, we had here a delightful scene, all the ponds full of water, and the birds twittering joyfully. as the game can now obtain water every where, they become very shy, and can not be found in their accustomed haunts. st march. the thermometer in the shade generally stood at degrees from to p.m., but it sank as low as deg. by night, so that the heat was by no means exhausting. at the surface of the ground, in the sun, the thermometer marked deg., and three inches below it deg. the hand can not be held on the ground, and even the horny soles of the feet of the natives must be protected by sandals of hide; yet the ants were busy working on it. the water in the ponds was as high as deg.; but as water does not conduct heat readily downward, deliciously cool water may be obtained by any one walking into the middle and lifting up the water from the bottom to the surface with his hands. proceeding to the north, from kama-kama, we entered into dense mohonono bush, which required the constant application of the axe by three of our party for two days. this bush has fine silvery leaves, and the bark has a sweet taste. the elephant, with his usual delicacy of taste, feeds much on it. on emerging into the plains beyond, we found a number of bushmen, who afterward proved very serviceable. the rains had been copious, but now great numbers of pools were drying up. lotus-plants abounded in them, and a low, sweet-scented plant covered their banks. breezes came occasionally to us from these drying-up pools, but the pleasant odor they carried caused sneezing in both myself and people; and on the th of march (when in lat. d ' " s., long. d ' e.) we were brought to a stand by four of the party being seized with fever. i had seen this disease before, but did not at once recognize it as the african fever; i imagined it was only a bilious attack, arising from full feeding on flesh, for, the large game having been very abundant, we always had a good supply; but instead of the first sufferers recovering soon, every man of our party was in a few days laid low, except a bakwain and myself. he managed the oxen, while i attended to the wants of the patients, and went out occasionally with the bushmen to get a zebra or buffalo, so as to induce them to remain with us. here for the first time i had leisure to follow the instructions of my kind teacher, mr. maclear, and calculated several longitudes from lunar distances. the hearty manner in which that eminent astronomer and frank, friendly man had promised to aid me in calculating and verifying my work, conduced more than any thing else to inspire me with perseverance in making astronomical observations throughout the journey. the grass here was so tall that the oxen became uneasy, and one night the sight of a hyaena made them rush away into the forest to the east of us. on rising on the morning of the th, i found that my bakwain lad had run away with them. this i have often seen with persons of this tribe, even when the cattle are startled by a lion. away go the young men in company with them, and dash through bush and brake for miles, till they think the panic is a little subsided; they then commence whistling to the cattle in the manner they do when milking the cows: having calmed them, they remain as a guard till the morning. the men generally return with their shins well peeled by the thorns. each comrade of the mopato would expect his fellow to act thus, without looking for any other reward than the brief praise of the chief. our lad, kibopechoe, had gone after the oxen, but had lost them in the rush through the flat, trackless forest. he remained on their trail all the next day and all the next night. on sunday morning, as i was setting off in search of him, i found him near the wagon. he had found the oxen late in the afternoon of saturday, and had been obliged to stand by them all night. it was wonderful how he managed without a compass, and in such a country, to find his way home at all, bringing about forty oxen with him. the bechuanas will keep on the sick-list as long as they feel any weakness; so i at last began to be anxious that they should make a little exertion to get forward on our way. one of them, however, happening to move a hundred yards from the wagon, fell down, and, being unobserved, remained the whole night in the pouring rain totally insensible; another was subjected to frequent swooning; but, making beds in the wagons for these our worst cases, with the help of the bakwain and the bushmen, we moved slowly on. we had to nurse the sick like children; and, like children recovering from illness, the better they became the more impudent they grew. this was seen in the peremptory orders they would give with their now piping voices. nothing that we did pleased them; and the laughter with which i received their ebullitions, though it was only the real expression of gladness at their recovery, and amusement at the ridiculous part they acted, only increased their chagrin. the want of power in the man who guided the two front oxen, or, as he was called, the "leader", caused us to be entangled with trees, both standing and fallen, and the labor of cutting them down was even more severe than ordinary; but, notwithstanding an immense amount of toil, my health continued good. we wished to avoid the tsetse of our former path, so kept a course on the magnetic meridian from lurilopepe. the necessity of making a new path much increased our toil. we were, however, rewarded in lat. degrees with a sight we had not enjoyed the year before, namely, large patches of grape-bearing vines. there they stood before my eyes; but the sight was so entirely unexpected that i stood some time gazing at the clusters of grapes with which they were loaded, with no more thought of plucking than if i had been beholding them in a dream. the bushmen know and eat them; but they are not well flavored on account of the great astringency of the seeds, which are in shape and size like split peas. the elephants are fond of the fruit, plant, and root alike. i here found an insect which preys on ants; it is about an inch and a quarter long, as thick as a crow-quill, and covered with black hair. it puts its head into a little hole in the ground, and quivers its tail rapidly; the ants come near to see it, and it snaps up each as he comes within the range of the forceps on its tail. as its head is beneath the ground, it becomes a question how it can guide its tail to the ants. it is probably a new species of ant-lion ('myrmeleon formicaleo'), great numbers of which, both in the larvae and complete state, are met with. the ground under every tree is dotted over with their ingenious pitfalls, and the perfect insect, the form of which most persons are familiar with in the dragon-fly, may be seen using its tail in the same active manner as this insect did. two may be often seen joined in their flight, the one holding on by the tail-forceps to the neck of the other. on first observing this imperfect insect, i imagined the forceps were on its head; but when the insect moved, their true position was seen. the forest, through which we were slowly toiling, daily became more dense, and we were kept almost constantly at work with the axe; there was much more leafiness in the trees here than farther south. the leaves are chiefly of the pinnate and bi-pinnate forms, and are exceedingly beautiful when seen against the sky; a great variety of the papilionaceous family grow in this part of the country. fleming had until this time always assisted to drive his own wagon, but about the end of march he knocked up, as well as his people. as i could not drive two wagons, i shared with him the remaining water, half a caskful, and went on, with the intention of coming back for him as soon as we should reach the next pool. heavy rain now commenced; i was employed the whole day in cutting down trees, and every stroke of the axe brought down a thick shower on my back, which in the hard work was very refreshing, as the water found its way down into my shoes. in the evening we met some bushmen, who volunteered to show us a pool; and having unyoked, i walked some miles in search of it. as it became dark they showed their politeness--a quality which is by no means confined entirely to the civilized--by walking in front, breaking the branches which hung across the path, and pointing out the fallen trees. on returning to the wagon, we found that being left alone had brought out some of fleming's energy, for he had managed to come up. as the water in this pond dried up, we were soon obliged to move again. one of the bushmen took out his dice, and, after throwing them, said that god told him to go home. he threw again in order to show me the command, but the opposite result followed; so he remained and was useful, for we lost the oxen again by a lion driving them off to a very great distance. the lions here are not often heard. they seem to have a wholesome dread of the bushmen, who, when they observe evidence of a lion's having made a full meal, follow up his spoor so quietly that his slumbers are not disturbed. one discharges a poisoned arrow from a distance of only a few feet, while his companion simultaneously throws his skin cloak on the beast's head. the sudden surprise makes the lion lose his presence of mind, and he bounds away in the greatest confusion and terror. our friends here showed me the poison which they use on these occasions. it is the entrails of a caterpillar called n'gwa, half an inch long. they squeeze out these, and place them all around the bottom of the barb, and allow the poison to dry in the sun. they are very careful in cleaning their nails after working with it, as a small portion introduced into a scratch acts like morbid matter in dissection wounds. the agony is so great that the person cuts himself, calls for his mother's breast as if he were returned in idea to his childhood again, or flies from human habitations a raging maniac. the effects on the lion are equally terrible. he is heard moaning in distress, and becomes furious, biting the trees and ground in rage. as the bushmen have the reputation of curing the wounds of this poison, i asked how this was effected. they said that they administer the caterpillar itself in combination with fat; they also rub fat into the wound, saying that "the n'gwa wants fat, and, when it does not find it in the body, kills the man: we give it what it wants, and it is content:" a reason which will commend itself to the enlightened among ourselves. the poison more generally employed is the milky juice of the tree euphorbia ('e. arborescens'). this is particularly obnoxious to the equine race. when a quantity is mixed with the water of a pond a whole herd of zebras will fall dead from the effects of the poison before they have moved away two miles. it does not, however, kill oxen or men. on them it acts as a drastic purgative only. this substance is used all over the country, though in some places the venom of serpents and a certain bulb, 'amaryllis toxicaria', are added, in order to increase the virulence. father pedro, a jesuit, who lived at zumbo, made a balsam, containing a number of plants and castor oil, as a remedy for poisoned arrow-wounds. it is probable that he derived his knowledge from the natives as i did, and that the reputed efficacy of the balsam is owing to its fatty constituent. in cases of the bites of serpents a small key ought to be pressed down firmly on the wound, the orifice of the key being applied to the puncture, until a cupping-glass can be got from one of the natives. a watch-key pressed firmly on the point stung by a scorpion extracts the poison, and a mixture of fat or oil and ipecacuanha relieves the pain. the bushmen of these districts are generally fine, well-made men, and are nearly independent of every one. we observed them to be fond of a root somewhat like a kidney potato, and the kernel of a nut, which fleming thought was a kind of betel; the tree is a fine, large-spreading one, and the leaves palmate. from the quantities of berries and the abundance of game in these parts, the bushmen can scarcely ever be badly off for food. as i could, without much difficulty, keep them well supplied with meat, and wished them to remain, i proposed that they should bring their wives to get a share, but they remarked that the women could always take care of themselves. none of the men of our party had died, but two seemed unlikely to recover; and kibopechoe, my willing mokwain, at last became troubled with boils, and then got all the symptoms of fever. as he lay down, the others began to move about, and complained of weakness only. believing that frequent change of place was conducive to their recovery, we moved along as much as we could, and came to the hill n'gwa (lat. d ' " s., long. d ' " e.). this being the only hill we had seen since leaving bamangwato, we felt inclined to take off our hats to it. it is three or four hundred feet high, and covered with trees. its geographical position is pretty accurately laid down from occultation and other observations. i may mention that the valley on its northern side, named kandehy or kandehai, is as picturesque a spot as is to be seen in this part of africa. the open glade, surrounded by forest trees of various hues, had a little stream meandering in the centre. a herd of reddish-colored antelopes (pallahs) stood on one side, near a large baobab, looking at us, and ready to run up the hill; while gnus, tsessebes, and zebras gazed in astonishment at the intruders. some fed carelessly, and others put on the peculiar air of displeasure which these animals sometimes assume before they resolve on flight. a large white rhinoceros came along the bottom of the valley with his slow sauntering gait without noticing us; he looked as if he meant to indulge in a mud bath. several buffaloes, with their dark visages, stood under the trees on the side opposite to the pallahs. it being sunday, all was peace, and, from the circumstances in which our party was placed, we could not but reflect on that second stage of our existence which we hope will lead us into scenes of perfect beauty. if pardoned in that free way the bible promises, death will be a glorious thing; but to be consigned to wait for the judgment-day, with nothing else to ponder on but sins we would rather forget, is a cheerless prospect. our bushmen wished to leave us, and, as there was no use in trying to thwart these independent gentlemen, i paid them, and allowed them to go. the payment, however, acted as a charm on some strangers who happened to be present, and induced them to volunteer their aid. the game hereabouts is very tame. koodoos and giraffes stood gazing at me as a strange apparition when i went out with the bushmen. on one occasion a lion came at daybreak, and went round and round the oxen. i could only get a glimpse of him occasionally from the wagon-box; but, though barely thirty yards off, i could not get a shot. he then began to roar at the top of his voice; but the oxen continuing to stand still, he was so disgusted that he went off, and continued to use his voice for a long time in the distance. i could not see that he had a mane; if he had not, then even the maneless variety can use their tongues. we heard others also roar; and, when they found they could not frighten the oxen, they became equally angry. this we could observe in their tones. as we went north the country became very lovely; many new trees appeared; the grass was green, and often higher than the wagons; the vines festooned the trees, among which appeared the real banian ('ficus indica'), with its drop-shoots, and the wild date and palmyra, and several other trees which were new to me; the hollows contained large patches of water. next came water-courses, now resembling small rivers, twenty yards broad and four feet deep. the further we went, the broader and deeper these became; their bottoms contained great numbers of deep holes, made by elephants wading in them; in these the oxen floundered desperately, so that our wagon-pole broke, compelling us to work up to the breast in water for three hours and a half; yet i suffered no harm. we at last came to the sanshureh, which presented an impassable barrier, so we drew up under a magnificent baobab-tree, (lat. d ' " s., long. d ' " e.), and resolved to explore the river for a ford. the great quantity of water we had passed through was part of the annual inundation of the chobe; and this, which appeared a large, deep river, filled in many parts with reeds, and having hippopotami in it, is only one of the branches by which it sends its superabundant water to the southeast. from the hill n'gwa a ridge of higher land runs to the northeast, and bounds its course in that direction. we, being ignorant of this, were in the valley, and the only gap in the whole country destitute of tsetse. in company with the bushmen i explored all the banks of the sanshureh to the west till we came into tsetse on that side. we waded a long way among the reeds in water breast deep, but always found a broad, deep space free from vegetation and unfordable. a peculiar kind of lichen, which grows on the surface of the soil, becomes detached and floats on the water, giving out a very disagreeable odor, like sulphureted hydrogen, in some of these stagnant waters. we made so many attempts to get over the sanshureh, both to the west and east of the wagon, in the hope of reaching some of the makololo on the chobe, that my bushmen friends became quite tired of the work. by means of presents i got them to remain some days; but at last they slipped away by night, and i was fain to take one of the strongest of my still weak companions and cross the river in a pontoon, the gift of captains codrington and webb. we each carried some provisions and a blanket, and penetrated about twenty miles to the westward, in the hope of striking the chobe. it was much nearer to us in a northerly direction, but this we did not then know. the plain, over which we splashed the whole of the first day, was covered with water ankle deep, and thick grass which reached above the knees. in the evening we came to an immense wall of reeds, six or eight feet high, without any opening admitting of a passage. when we tried to enter, the water always became so deep that we were fain to desist. we concluded that we had come to the banks of the river we were in search of, so we directed our course to some trees which appeared in the south, in order to get a bed and a view of the adjacent locality. having shot a leche, and made a glorious fire, we got a good cup of tea and had a comfortable night. while collecting wood that evening, i found a bird's nest consisting of live leaves sewn together with threads of the spider's web. nothing could exceed the airiness of this pretty contrivance; the threads had been pushed through small punctures and thickened to resemble a knot. i unfortunately lost it. this was the second nest i had seen resembling that of the tailor-bird of india. next morning, by climbing the highest trees, we could see a fine large sheet of water, but surrounded on all sides by the same impenetrable belt of reeds. this is the broad part of the river chobe, and is called zabesa. two tree-covered islands seemed to be much nearer to the water than the shore on which we were, so we made an attempt to get to them first. it was not the reeds alone we had to pass through; a peculiar serrated grass, which at certain angles cut the hands like a razor, was mingled with the reed, and the climbing convolvulus, with stalks which felt as strong as whipcord, bound the mass together. we felt like pigmies in it, and often the only way we could get on was by both of us leaning against a part and bending it down till we could stand upon it. the perspiration streamed off our bodies, and as the sun rose high, there being no ventilation among the reeds, the heat was stifling, and the water, which was up to the knees, felt agreeably refreshing. after some hours' toil we reached one of the islands. here we met an old friend, the bramble-bush. my strong moleskins were quite worn through at the knees, and the leather trowsers of my companion were torn and his legs bleeding. tearing my handkerchief in two, i tied the pieces round my knees, and then encountered another difficulty. we were still forty or fifty yards from the clear water, but now we were opposed by great masses of papyrus, which are like palms in miniature, eight or ten feet high, and an inch and a half in diameter. these were laced together by twining convolvulus, so strongly that the weight of both of us could not make way into the clear water. at last we fortunately found a passage prepared by a hippopotamus. eager as soon as we reached the island to look along the vista to clear water, i stepped in and found it took me at once up to the neck. returning nearly worn out, we proceeded up the bank of the chobe till we came to the point of departure of the branch sanshureh; we then went in the opposite direction, or down the chobe, though from the highest trees we could see nothing but one vast expanse of reed, with here and there a tree on the islands. this was a hard day's work; and when we came to a deserted bayeiye hut on an ant-hill, not a bit of wood or any thing else could be got for a fire except the grass and sticks of the dwelling itself. i dreaded the "tampans", so common in all old huts; but outside of it we had thousands of mosquitoes, and cold dew began to be deposited, so we were fain to crawl beneath its shelter. we were close to the reeds, and could listen to the strange sounds which are often heard there. by day i had seen water-snakes putting up their heads and swimming about. there were great numbers of otters ('lutra inunguis', f. cuvier), which have made little spoors all over the plains in search of the fishes, among the tall grass of these flooded prairies; curious birds, too, jerked and wriggled among these reedy masses, and we heard human-like voices and unearthly sounds, with splash, guggle, jupp, as if rare fun were going on in their uncouth haunts. at one time something came near us, making a splashing like that of a canoe or hippopotamus; thinking it to be the makololo, we got up, listened, and shouted; then discharged a gun several times; but the noise continued without intermission for an hour. after a damp, cold night we set to, early in the morning, at our work of exploring again, but left the pontoon in order to lighten our labor. the ant-hills are here very high, some thirty feet, and of a base so broad that trees grow on them; while the lands, annually flooded, bear nothing but grass. from one of these ant-hills we discovered an inlet to the chobe; and, having gone back for the pontoon, we launched ourselves on a deep river, here from eighty to one hundred yards wide. i gave my companion strict injunctions to stick by the pontoon in case a hippopotamus should look at us; nor was this caution unnecessary, for one came up at our side and made a desperate plunge off. we had passed over him. the wave he made caused the pontoon to glide quickly away from him. we paddled on from midday till sunset. there was nothing but a wall of reed on each bank, and we saw every prospect of spending a supperless night in our float; but just as the short twilight of these parts was commencing, we perceived on the north bank the village of moremi, one of the makololo, whose acquaintance i had made on our former visit, and who was now located on the island mahonta (lat. d ' s., long. d ' e.). the villagers looked as we may suppose people do who see a ghost, and in their figurative way of speaking said, "he has dropped among us from the clouds, yet came riding on the back of a hippopotamus! we makololo thought no one could cross the chobe without our knowledge, but here he drops among us like a bird." next day we returned in canoes across the flooded lands, and found that, in our absence, the men had allowed the cattle to wander into a very small patch of wood to the west containing the tsetse; this carelessness cost me ten fine large oxen. after remaining a few days, some of the head men of the makololo came down from linyanti, with a large party of barotse, to take us across the river. this they did in fine style, swimming and diving among the oxen more like alligators than men, and taking the wagons to pieces and carrying them across on a number of canoes lashed together. we were now among friends; so going about thirty miles to the north, in order to avoid the still flooded lands on the north of the chobe, we turned westward toward linyanti (lat. d ' " s., long. d ' " e.), where we arrived on the d of may, . this is the capital town of the makololo, and only a short distance from our wagon-stand of (lat. d ' s., long. d ' e.). chapter . reception at linyanti--the court herald--sekeletu obtains the chieftainship from his sister--mpepe's plot--slave-trading mambari --their sudden flight--sekeletu narrowly escapes assassination-- execution of mpepe--the courts of law--mode of trying offenses-- sekeletu's reason for not learning to read the bible--the disposition made of the wives of a deceased chief--makololo women--they work but little--employ serfs--their drink, dress, and ornaments--public religious services in the kotla--unfavorable associations of the place--native doctors--proposals to teach the makololo to read--sekeletu's present--reason for accepting it--trading in ivory--accidental fire--presents for sekeletu--two breeds of native cattle--ornamenting the cattle--the women and the looking-glass--mode of preparing the skins of oxen for mantles and for shields--throwing the spear. the whole population of linyanti, numbering between six and seven thousand souls, turned out en masse to see the wagons in motion. they had never witnessed the phenomenon before, we having on the former occasion departed by night. sekeletu, now in power, received us in what is considered royal style, setting before us a great number of pots of boyaloa, the beer of the country. these were brought by women, and each bearer takes a good draught of the beer when she sets it down, by way of "tasting", to show that there is no poison. the court herald, an old man who occupied the post also in sebituane's time, stood up, and after some antics, such as leaping, and shouting at the top of his voice, roared out some adulatory sentences, as, "don't i see the white man? don't i see the comrade of sebituane? don't i see the father of sekeletu?"--"we want sleep."--"give your son sleep, my lord," etc., etc. the perquisites of this man are the heads of all the cattle slaughtered by the chief, and he even takes a share of the tribute before it is distributed and taken out of the kotla. he is expected to utter all the proclamations, call assemblies, keep the kotla clean, and the fire burning every evening, and when a person is executed in public he drags away the body. i found sekeletu a young man of eighteen years of age, of that dark yellow or coffee-and-milk color, of which the makololo are so proud, because it distinguishes them considerably from the black tribes on the rivers. he is about five feet seven in height, and neither so good looking nor of so much ability as his father was, but is equally friendly to the english. sebituane installed his daughter mamochisane into the chieftainship long before his death, but, with all his acuteness, the idea of her having a husband who should not be her lord did not seem to enter his mind. he wished to make her his successor, probably in imitation of some of the negro tribes with whom he had come into contact; but, being of the bechuana race, he could not look upon the husband except as the woman's lord; so he told her all the men were hers--she might take any one, but ought to keep none. in fact, he thought she might do with the men what he could do with the women; but these men had other wives; and, according to a saying in the country, "the tongues of women can not be governed," they made her miserable by their remarks. one man whom she chose was even called her wife, and her son the child of mamochisane's wife; but the arrangement was so distasteful to mamochisane herself that, as soon as sebituane died, she said she never would consent to govern the makololo so long as she had a brother living. sekeletu, being afraid of another member of the family, mpepe, who had pretensions to the chieftainship, urged his sister strongly to remain as she had always been, and allow him to support her authority by leading the makololo when they went forth to war. three days were spent in public discussion on the point. mpepe insinuated that sekeletu was not the lawful son of sebituane, on account of his mother having been the wife of another chief before her marriage with sebituane; mamochisane, however, upheld sekeletu's claims, and at last stood up in the assembly and addressed him with a womanly gush of tears: "i have been a chief only because my father wished it. i always would have preferred to be married and have a family like other women. you, sekeletu, must be chief, and build up your father's house." this was a death-blow to the hopes of mpepe. as it will enable the reader to understand the social and political relations of these people, i will add a few more particulars respecting mpepe. sebituane, having no son to take the leadership of the "mopato" of the age of his daughter, chose him, as the nearest male relative, to occupy that post; and presuming from mpepe's connection with his family that he would attend to his interests and relieve him from care, he handed his cattle over to his custody. mpepe removed to the chief town, "naliele", and took such effectual charge of all the cattle that sebituane saw he could only set matters on their former footing by the severe measure of mpepe's execution. being unwilling to do this, and fearing the enchantments which, by means of a number of barotse doctors, mpepe now used in a hut built for the purpose, and longing for peaceful retirement after thirty years' fighting, he heard with pleasure of our arrival at the lake, and came down as far as sesheke to meet us. he had an idea, picked up from some of the numerous strangers who visited him, that white men had a "pot (a cannon) in their towns which would burn up any attacking party;" and he thought if he could only get this he would be able to "sleep" the remainder of his days in peace. this he hoped to obtain from the white men. hence the cry of the herald, "give us sleep." it is remarkable how anxious for peace those who have been fighting all their lives appear to be. when sekeletu was installed in the chieftainship, he felt his position rather insecure, for it was believed that the incantations of mpepe had an intimate connection with sebituane's death. indeed, the latter had said to his son, "that hut of incantation will prove fatal to either you or me." when the mambari, in , took home a favorable report of this new market to the west, a number of half-caste portuguese slave-traders were induced to come in ; and one, who resembled closely a real portuguese, came to linyanti while i was there. this man had no merchandise, and pretended to have come in order to inquire "what sort of goods were necessary for the market." he seemed much disconcerted by my presence there. sekeletu presented him with an elephant's tusk and an ox; and when he had departed about fifty miles to the westward, he carried off an entire village of the bakalahari belonging to the makololo. he had a number of armed slaves with him; and as all the villagers--men, women, and children--were removed, and the fact was unknown until a considerable time afterward, it is not certain whether his object was obtained by violence or by fair promises. in either case, slavery must have been the portion of these poor people. he was carried in a hammock, slung between two poles, which appearing to be a bag, the makololo named him "father of the bag". mpepe favored these slave-traders, and they, as is usual with them, founded all their hopes of influence on his successful rebellion. my arrival on the scene was felt to be so much weight in the scale against their interests. a large party of mambari had come to linyanti when i was floundering on the prairies south of the chobe. as the news of my being in the neighborhood reached them their countenances fell; and when some makololo, who had assisted us to cross the river, returned with hats which i had given them, the mambari betook themselves to precipitate flight. it is usual for visitors to ask formal permission before attempting to leave a chief, but the sight of the hats made the mambari pack up at once. the makololo inquired the cause of the hurry, and were told that, if i found them there, i should take all their slaves and goods from them; and, though assured by sekeletu that i was not a robber, but a man of peace, they fled by night, while i was still sixty miles off. they went to the north, where, under the protection of mpepe, they had erected a stockade of considerable size. there, several half-caste slave-traders, under the leadership of a native portuguese, carried on their traffic, without reference to the chief into whose country they had unceremoniously introduced themselves; while mpepe, feeding them with the cattle of sekeletu, formed a plan of raising himself, by means of their fire-arms, to be the head of the makololo. the usual course which the slave-traders adopt is to take a part in the political affairs of each tribe, and, siding with the strongest, get well paid by captures made from the weaker party. long secret conferences were held by the slave-traders and mpepe, and it was deemed advisable for him to strike the first blow; so he provided himself with a small battle-axe, with the intention of cutting sekeletu down the first time they met. my object being first of all to examine the country for a healthy locality, before attempting to make a path to either the east or west coast, i proposed to sekeletu the plan of ascending the great river which we had discovered in . he volunteered to accompany me, and, when we got about sixty miles away, on the road to sesheke, we encountered mpepe. the makololo, though possessing abundance of cattle, had never attempted to ride oxen until i advised it in . the bechuanas generally were in the same condition, until europeans came among them and imparted the idea of riding. all their journeys previously were performed on foot. sekeletu and his companions were mounted on oxen, though, having neither saddle nor bridle, they were perpetually falling off. mpepe, armed with his little axe, came along a path parallel to, but a quarter of a mile distant from, that of our party, and, when he saw sekeletu, he ran with all his might toward us; but sekeletu, being on his guard, galloped off to an adjacent village. he then withdrew somewhere till all our party came up. mpepe had given his own party to understand that he would cut down sekeletu, either on their first meeting, or at the breaking up of their first conference. the former intention having been thus frustrated, he then determined to effect his purpose after their first interview. i happened to sit down between the two in the hut where they met. being tired with riding all day in the sun, i soon asked sekeletu where i should sleep, and he replied, "come, i will show you." as we rose together, i unconsciously covered sekeletu's body with mine, and saved him from the blow of the assassin. i knew nothing of the plot, but remarked that all mpepe's men kept hold of their arms, even after we had sat down--a thing quite unusual in the presence of a chief; and when sekeletu showed me the hut in which i was to spend the night, he said to me, "that man wishes to kill me." i afterward learned that some of mpepe's attendants had divulged the secret; and, bearing in mind his father's instructions, sekeletu put mpepe to death that night. it was managed so quietly, that, although i was sleeping within a few yards of the scene, i knew nothing of it till the next day. nokuane went to the fire, at which mpepe sat, with a handful of snuff, as if he were about to sit down and regale himself therewith. mpepe said to him, "nsepisa" (cause me to take a pinch); and, as he held out his hand, nokuane caught hold of it, while another man seized the other hand, and, leading him out a mile, speared him. this is the common mode of executing criminals. they are not allowed to speak; though on one occasion a man, feeling his wrist held too tightly, said, "hold me gently, can't you? you will soon be led out in the same way yourselves." mpepe's men fled to the barotse, and, it being unadvisable for us to go thither during the commotion which followed on mpepe's death, we returned to linyanti. the foregoing may be considered as a characteristic specimen of their mode of dealing with grave political offenses. in common cases there is a greater show of deliberation. the complainant asks the man against whom he means to lodge his complaint to come with him to the chief. this is never refused. when both are in the kotla, the complainant stands up and states the whole case before the chief and the people usually assembled there. he stands a few seconds after he has done this, to recollect if he has forgotten any thing. the witnesses to whom he has referred then rise up and tell all they themselves have seen or heard, but not any thing that they have heard from others. the defendant, after allowing some minutes to elapse so that he may not interrupt any of the opposite party, slowly rises, folds his cloak around him, and, in the most quiet, deliberate way he can assume--yawning, blowing his nose, etc.--begins to explain the affair, denying the charge, or admitting it, as the case may be. sometimes, when galled by his remarks, the complainant utters a sentence of dissent; the accused turns quietly to him, and says, "be silent: i sat still while you were speaking; can't you do the same? do you want to have it all to yourself?" and as the audience acquiesce in this bantering, and enforce silence, he goes on till he has finished all he wishes to say in his defense. if he has any witnesses to the truth of the facts of his defense, they give their evidence. no oath is administered; but occasionally, when a statement is questioned, a man will say, "by my father," or "by the chief, it is so." their truthfulness among each other is quite remarkable; but their system of government is such that europeans are not in a position to realize it readily. a poor man will say, in his defense against a rich one, "i am astonished to hear a man so great as he make a false accusation;" as if the offense of falsehood were felt to be one against the society which the individual referred to had the greatest interest in upholding. if the case is one of no importance, the chief decides it at once; if frivolous, he may give the complainant a scolding, and put a stop to the case in the middle of the complaint, or he may allow it to go on without paying any attention to it whatever. family quarrels are often treated in this way, and then a man may be seen stating his case with great fluency, and not a soul listening to him. but if it is a case between influential men, or brought on by under-chiefs, then the greatest decorum prevails. if the chief does not see his way clearly to a decision, he remains silent; the elders then rise one by one and give their opinions, often in the way of advice rather than as decisions; and when the chief finds the general sentiment agreeing in one view, he delivers his judgment accordingly. he alone speaks sitting; all others stand. no one refuses to acquiesce in the decision of the chief, as he has the power of life and death in his hands, and can enforce the law to that extent if he chooses; but grumbling is allowed, and, when marked favoritism is shown to any relative of the chief, the people generally are not so astonished at the partiality as we would be in england. this system was found as well developed among the makololo as among the bakwains, or even better, and is no foreign importation. when at cassange, my men had a slight quarrel among themselves, and came to me, as to their chief, for judgment. this had occurred several times before, so without a thought i went out of the portuguese merchant's house in which i was a guest, sat down, and heard the complaint and defense in the usual way. when i had given my decision in the common admonitory form, they went off apparently satisfied. several portuguese, who had been viewing the proceedings with great interest, complimented me on the success of my teaching them how to act in litigation; but i could not take any credit to myself for the system which i had found ready-made to my hands. soon after our arrival at linyanti, sekeletu took me aside, and pressed me to mention those things i liked best and hoped to get from him. any thing, either in or out of his town, should be freely given if i would only mention it. i explained to him that my object was to elevate him and his people to be christians; but he replied he did not wish to learn to read the book, for he was afraid "it might change his heart, and make him content with only one wife, like sechele." it was of little use to urge that the change of heart implied a contentment with one wife equal to his present complacency in polygamy. such a preference after the change of mind could not now be understood by him any more than the real, unmistakable pleasure of religious services can by those who have not experienced what is known by the term the "new heart". i assured him that nothing was expected but by his own voluntary decision. "no, no; he wanted always to have five wives at least." i liked the frankness of sekeletu, for nothing is so wearying to the spirit as talking to those who agree with every thing advanced. sekeletu, according to the system of the bechuanas, became possessor of his father's wives, and adopted two of them; the children by these women are, however, in these cases, termed brothers. when an elder brother dies, the same thing occurs in respect of his wives; the brother next in age takes them, as among the jews, and the children that may be born of those women he calls brothers also. he thus raises up seed to his departed relative. an uncle of sekeletu, being a younger brother of sebituane, got that chieftain's head-wife or queen: there is always one who enjoys this title. her hut is called the great house, and her children inherit the chieftainship. if she dies, a new wife is selected for the same position, and enjoys the same privileges, though she may happen to be a much younger woman than the rest. the majority of the wives of sebituane were given to influential under-chiefs; and, in reference to their early casting off the widow's weeds, a song was sung, the tenor of which was that the men alone felt the loss of their father sebituane, the women were so soon supplied with new husbands that their hearts had not time to become sore with grief. the women complain because the proportions between the sexes are so changed now that they are not valued as they deserve. the majority of the real makololo have been cut off by fever. those who remain are a mere fragment of the people who came to the north with sebituane. migrating from a very healthy climate in the south, they were more subject to the febrile diseases of the valley in which we found them than the black tribes they conquered. in comparison with the barotse, batoka, and banyeti, the makololo have a sickly hue. they are of a light brownish-yellow color, while the tribes referred to are very dark, with a slight tinge of olive. the whole of the colored tribes consider that beauty and fairness are associated, and women long for children of light color so much, that they sometimes chew the bark of a certain tree in hopes of producing that effect. to my eye the dark color is much more agreeable than the tawny hue of the half-caste, which that of the makololo ladies closely resembles. the women generally escaped the fever, but they are less fruitful than formerly, and, to their complaint of being undervalued on account of the disproportion of the sexes, they now add their regrets at the want of children, of whom they are all excessively fond. the makololo women work but little. indeed, the families of that nation are spread over the country, one or two only in each village, as the lords of the land. they all have lordship over great numbers of subjected tribes, who pass by the general name makalaka, and who are forced to render certain services, and to aid in tilling the soil; but each has his own land under cultivation, and otherwise lives nearly independent. they are proud to be called makololo, but the other term is often used in reproach, as betokening inferiority. this species of servitude may be termed serfdom, as it has to be rendered in consequence of subjection by force of arms, but it is necessarily very mild. it is so easy for any one who is unkindly treated to make his escape to other tribes, that the makololo are compelled to treat them, to a great extent, rather as children than slaves. some masters, who fail from defect of temper or disposition to secure the affections of the conquered people, frequently find themselves left without a single servant, in consequence of the absence and impossibility of enforcing a fugitive-slave law, and the readiness with which those who are themselves subjected assist the fugitives across the rivers in canoes. the makololo ladies are liberal in their presents of milk and other food, and seldom require to labor, except in the way of beautifying their own huts and court-yards. they drink large quantities of boyaloa or o-alo, the buza of the arabs, which, being made of the grain called holcus sorghum or "durasaifi", in a minute state of subdivision, is very nutritious, and gives that plumpness of form which is considered beautiful. they dislike being seen at their potations by persons of the opposite sex. they cut their woolly hair quite short, and delight in having the whole person shining with butter. their dress is a kilt reaching to the knees; its material is ox-hide, made as soft as cloth. it is not ungraceful. a soft skin mantle is thrown across the shoulders when the lady is unemployed, but when engaged in any sort of labor she throws this aside, and works in the kilt alone. the ornaments most coveted are large brass anklets as thick as the little finger, and armlets of both brass and ivory, the latter often an inch broad. the rings are so heavy that the ankles are often blistered by the weight pressing down; but it is the fashion, and is borne as magnanimously as tight lacing and tight shoes among ourselves. strings of beads are hung around the neck, and the fashionable colors being light green and pink, a trader could get almost any thing he chose for beads of these colors. at our public religious services in the kotla, the makololo women always behaved with decorum from the first, except at the conclusion of the prayer. when all knelt down, many of those who had children, in following the example of the rest, bent over their little ones; the children, in terror of being crushed to death, set up a simultaneous yell, which so tickled the whole assembly there was often a subdued titter, to be turned into a hearty laugh as soon as they heard amen. this was not so difficult to overcome in them as similar peccadilloes were in the case of the women farther south. long after we had settled at mabotsa, when preaching on the most solemn subjects, a woman might be observed to look round, and, seeing a neighbor seated on her dress, give her a hunch with the elbow to make her move off; the other would return it with interest, and perhaps the remark, "take the nasty thing away, will you?" then three or four would begin to hustle the first offenders, and the men to swear at them all, by way of enforcing silence. great numbers of little trifling things like these occur, and would not be worth the mention but that one can not form a correct idea of missionary work except by examination of the minutiae. at the risk of appearing frivolous to some, i shall continue to descend to mere trifles. the numbers who attended at the summons of the herald, who acted as beadle, were often from five to seven hundred. the service consisted of reading a small portion of the bible and giving an explanatory address, usually short enough to prevent weariness or want of attention. so long as we continue to hold services in the kotla, the associations of the place are unfavorable to solemnity; hence it is always desirable to have a place of worship as soon as possible; and it is of importance, too, to treat such place with reverence, as an aid to secure that serious attention which religious subjects demand. this will appear more evident when it is recollected that, in the very spot where we had been engaged in acts of devotion, half an hour after a dance would be got up; and these habits can not be at first opposed without the appearance of assuming too much authority over them. it is always unwise to hurt their feelings of independence. much greater influence will be gained by studying how you may induce them to act aright, with the impression that they are doing it of their own free will. our services having necessarily been all in the open air, where it is most difficult to address large bodies of people, prevented my recovering so entirely from the effects of clergyman's sore throat as i expected, when my uvula was excised at the cape. to give an idea of the routine followed for months together, on other days as well as on sundays, i may advert to my habit of treating the sick for complaints which seemed to surmount the skill of their own doctors. i refrained from going to any one unless his own doctor wished it, or had given up the case. this led to my having a selection of the severer cases only, and prevented the doctors being offended at my taking their practice out of their hands. when attacked by fever myself, and wishing to ascertain what their practices were, i could safely intrust myself in their hands on account of their well-known friendly feelings. the plan of showing kindness to the natives in their bodily ailments secures their friendship; this is not the case to the same degree in old missions, where the people have learned to look upon relief as a right--a state of things which sometimes happens among ourselves at home. medical aid is therefore most valuable in young missions, though at all stages it is an extremely valuable adjunct to other operations. i proposed to teach the makololo to read, but, for the reasons mentioned, sekeletu at first declined; after some weeks, however, motibe, his father-in-law, and some others, determined to brave the mysterious book. to all who have not acquired it, the knowledge of letters is quite unfathomable; there is naught like it within the compass of their observation; and we have no comparison with any thing except pictures, to aid them in comprehending the idea of signs of words. it seems to them supernatural that we see in a book things taking place, or having occurred at a distance. no amount of explanation conveys the idea unless they learn to read. machinery is equally inexplicable, and money nearly as much so until they see it in actual use. they are familiar with barter alone; and in the centre of the country, where gold is totally unknown, if a button and sovereign were left to their choice, they would prefer the former on account of its having an eye. in beginning to learn, motibe seemed to himself in the position of the doctor, who was obliged to drink his potion before the patient, to show that it contained nothing detrimental; after he had mastered the alphabet, and reported the thing so far safe, sekeletu and his young companions came forward to try for themselves. he must have resolved to watch the effects of the book against his views on polygamy, and abstain whenever he perceived any tendency, in reading it, toward enforcing him to put his wives away. a number of men learned the alphabet in a short time and were set to teach others, but before much progress could be made i was on my way to loanda. as i had declined to name any thing as a present from sekeletu, except a canoe to take me up the river, he brought ten fine elephants' tusks and laid them down beside my wagon. he would take no denial, though i told him i should prefer to see him trading with fleming, a man of color from the west indies, who had come for the purpose. i had, during the eleven years of my previous course, invariably abstained from taking presents of ivory, from an idea that a religious instructor degraded himself by accepting gifts from those whose spiritual welfare he professed to seek. my precedence of all traders in the line of discovery put me often in the way of very handsome offers, but i always advised the donors to sell their ivory to traders, who would be sure to follow, and when at some future time they had become rich by barter, they might remember me or my children. when lake ngami was discovered i might have refused permission to a trader who accompanied us; but when he applied for leave to form part of our company, knowing that mr. oswell would no more trade than myself, and that the people of the lake would be disappointed if they could not dispose of their ivory, i willingly granted a sanction, without which his people would not at that time have ventured so far. this was surely preferring the interest of another to my own. the return i got for this was a notice in one of the cape papers that this "man was the true discoverer of the lake!" the conclusion i had come to was, that it is quite lawful, though perhaps not expedient, for missionaries to trade; but barter is the only means by which a missionary in the interior can pay his way, as money has no value. in all the journeys i had previously undertaken for wider diffusion of the gospel, the extra expenses were defrayed from my salary of pounds per annum. this sum is sufficient to enable a missionary to live in the interior of south africa, supposing he has a garden capable of yielding corn and vegetables; but should he not, and still consider that six or eight months can not lawfully be spent simply in getting goods at a lower price than they can be had from itinerant traders, the sum mentioned is barely sufficient for the poorest fare and plainest apparel. as we never felt ourselves justified in making journeys to the colony for the sake of securing bargains, the most frugal living was necessary to enable us to be a little charitable to others; but when to this were added extra traveling expenses, the wants of an increasing family, and liberal gifts to chiefs, it was difficult to make both ends meet. the pleasure of missionary labor would be enhanced if one could devote his life to the heathen, without drawing a salary from a society at all. the luxury of doing good from one's own private resources, without appearing to either natives or europeans to be making a gain of it, is far preferable, and an object worthy the ambition of the rich. but few men of fortune, however, now devote themselves to christian missions, as of old. presents were always given to the chiefs whom we visited, and nothing accepted in return; but when sebituane (in ) offered some ivory, i took it, and was able by its sale to present his son with a number of really useful articles of a higher value than i had ever been able to give before to any chief. in doing this, of course, i appeared to trade, but, feeling i had a right to do so, i felt perfectly easy in my mind; and, as i still held the view of the inexpediency of combining the two professions, i was glad of the proposal of one of the most honorable merchants of cape town, mr. h. e. rutherford, that he should risk a sum of money in fleming's hands for the purpose of attempting to develop a trade with the makololo. it was to this man i suggested sekeletu should sell the tusks which he had presented for my acceptance, but the chief refused to take them back from me. the goods which fleming had brought were ill adapted for the use of the natives, but he got a pretty good load of ivory in exchange; and though it was his first attempt at trading, and the distance traveled over made the expenses enormous, he was not a loser by the trip. other traders followed, who demanded lbs. of ivory for a musket. the makololo, knowing nothing of steelyards, but supposing that they were meant to cheat them, declined to trade except by exchanging one bull and one cow elephant's tusk for each gun. this would average lbs. of ivory, which sells at the cape for s. per pound, for a second-hand musket worth s. i, being sixty miles distant, did not witness this attempt at barter, but, anxious to enable my countrymen to drive a brisk trade, told the makololo to sell my ten tusks on their own account for whatever they would bring. seventy tusks were for sale, but, the parties not understanding each other's talk, no trade was established; and when i passed the spot some time afterward, i found that the whole of that ivory had been destroyed by an accidental fire, which broke out in the village when all the people were absent. success in trade is as much dependent on knowledge of the language as success in traveling. i had brought with me as presents an improved breed of goats, fowls, and a pair of cats. a superior bull was bought, also as a gift to sekeletu, but i was compelled to leave it on account of its having become foot-sore. as the makololo are very fond of improving the breed of their domestic animals, they were much pleased with my selection. i endeavored to bring the bull, in performance of a promise made to sebituane before he died. admiring a calf which we had with us, he proposed to give me a cow for it, which in the native estimation was offering three times its value. i presented it to him at once, and promised to bring him another and a better one. sekeletu was much gratified by my attempt to keep my word given to his father. they have two breeds of cattle among them. one, called the batoka, because captured from that tribe, is of diminutive size, but very beautiful, and closely resembles the short-horns of our own country. the little pair presented by the king of portugal to h.r.h. the prince consort, is of this breed. they are very tame, and remarkably playful; they may be seen lying on their sides by the fires in the evening; and, when the herd goes out, the herdsman often precedes them, and has only to commence capering to set them all a gamboling. the meat is superior to that of the large animal. the other, or barotse ox, is much larger, and comes from the fertile barotse valley. they stand high on their legs, often nearly six feet at the withers; and they have large horns. those of one of a similar breed that we brought from the lake measured from tip to tip eight and a half feet. the makololo are in the habit of shaving off a little from one side of the horns of these animals when still growing, in order to make them curve in that direction and assume fantastic shapes. the stranger the curvature, the more handsome the ox is considered to be, and the longer this ornament of the cattle-pen is spared to beautify the herd. this is a very ancient custom in africa, for the tributary tribes of ethiopia are seen, on some of the most ancient egyptian monuments, bringing contorted-horned cattle into egypt. all are remarkably fond of their cattle, and spend much time in ornamenting and adorning them. some are branded all over with a hot knife, so as to cause a permanent discoloration of the hair, in lines like the bands on the hide of a zebra. pieces of skin two or three inches long and broad are detached, and allowed to heal in a dependent position around the head--a strange style of ornament; indeed, it is difficult to conceive in what their notion of beauty consists. the women have somewhat the same ideas with ourselves of what constitutes comeliness. they came frequently and asked for the looking-glass; and the remarks they made--while i was engaged in reading, and apparently not attending to them--on first seeing themselves therein, were amusingly ridiculous. "is that me?" "what a big mouth i have!" "my ears are as big as pumpkin-leaves." "i have no chin at all." or, "i would have been pretty, but am spoiled by these high cheek-bones." "see how my head shoots up in the middle!" laughing vociferously all the time at their own jokes. they readily perceive any defect in each other, and give nicknames accordingly. one man came alone to have a quiet gaze at his own features once, when he thought i was asleep; after twisting his mouth about in various directions, he remarked to himself, "people say i am ugly, and how very ugly i am indeed!" the makololo use all the skins of their oxen for making either mantles or shields. for the former, the hide is stretched out by means of pegs, and dried. ten or a dozen men then collect round it with small adzes, which, when sharpened with an iron bodkin, are capable of shaving off the substance of the skin on the fleshy side until it is quite thin; when sufficiently thin, a quantity of brain is smeared over it, and some thick milk. then an instrument made of a number of iron spikes tied round a piece of wood, so that the points only project beyond it, is applied to it in a carding fashion, until the fibres of the bulk of it are quite loose. milk or butter is applied to it again, and it forms a garment nearly as soft as cloth. the shields are made of hides partially dried in the sun, and then beaten with hammers until they are stiff and dry. two broad belts of a differently-colored skin are sewed into them longitudinally, and sticks inserted to make them rigid and not liable to bend easily. the shield is a great protection in their way of fighting with spears, but they also trust largely to their agility in springing aside from the coming javelin. the shield assists when so many spears are thrown that it is impossible not to receive some of them. their spears are light javelins; and, judging from what i have seen them do in elephant-hunting, i believe, when they have room to make a run and discharge them with the aid of the jerk of stopping, they can throw them between forty and fifty yards. they give them an upward direction in the discharge, so that they come down on the object with accelerated force. i saw a man who in battle had received one in the shin; the excitement of the moment prevented his feeling any pain; but, when the battle was over, the blade was found to have split the bone, and become so impacted in the cleft that no force could extract it. it was necessary to take an axe and press the split bone asunder before the weapon could be taken out. chapter . the fever--its symptoms--remedies of the native doctors--hospitality of sekeletu and his people--one of their reasons for polygamy--they cultivate largely--the makalaka or subject tribes--sebituane's policy respecting them--their affection for him--products of the soil--instrument of culture--the tribute--distributed by the chief--a warlike demonstration--lechulatebe's provocations--the makololo determine to punish him--the bechuanas--meaning of the term--three divisions of the great family of south africans. on the th of may i was seized with fever for the first time. we reached the town of linyanti on the d; and as my habits were suddenly changed from great exertion to comparative inactivity, at the commencement of the cold season i suffered from a severe attack of stoppage of the secretions, closely resembling a common cold. warm baths and drinks relieved me, and i had no idea but that i was now recovering from the effects of a chill, got by leaving the warm wagon in the evening in order to conduct family worship at my people's fire. but on the d of june a relapse showed to the makololo, who knew the complaint, that my indisposition was no other than the fever, with which i have since made a more intimate acquaintance. cold east winds prevail at this time; and as they come over the extensive flats inundated by the chobe, as well as many other districts where pools of rain-water are now drying up, they may be supposed to be loaded with malaria and watery vapor, and many cases of fever follow. the usual symptoms of stopped secretion are manifested--shivering and a feeling of coldness, though the skin is quite hot to the touch of another. the heat in the axilla, over the heart and region of the stomach, was in my case deg.; but along the spine and at the nape of the neck deg. the internal processes were all, with the exception of the kidneys and liver, stopped; the latter, in its efforts to free the blood of noxious particles, often secretes enormous quantities of bile. there were pains along the spine, and frontal headache. anxious to ascertain whether the natives possessed the knowledge of any remedy of which we were ignorant, i requested the assistance of one of sekeletu's doctors. he put some roots into a pot with water, and, when it was boiling, placed it on a spot beneath a blanket thrown around both me and it. this produced no immediate effect; he then got a small bundle of different kinds of medicinal woods, and, burning them in a potsherd nearly to ashes, used the smoke and hot vapor arising from them as an auxiliary to the other in causing diaphoresis. i fondly hoped that they had a more potent remedy than our own medicines afford; but after being stewed in their vapor-baths, smoked like a red herring over green twigs, and charmed 'secundem artem', i concluded that i could cure the fever more quickly than they can. if we employ a wet sheet and a mild aperient in combination with quinine, in addition to the native remedies, they are an important aid in curing the fever, as they seem to have the same stimulating effects on the alimentary canal as these means have on the external surface. purgatives, general bleedings, or indeed any violent remedies, are injurious; and the appearance of a herpetic eruption near the mouth is regarded as an evidence that no internal organ is in danger. there is a good deal in not "giving in" to this disease. he who is low-spirited, and apt to despond at every attack, will die sooner than the man who is not of such a melancholic nature. the makololo had made a garden and planted maize for me, that, as they remarked when i was parting with them to proceed to the cape, i might have food to eat when i returned, as well as other people. the maize was now pounded by the women into fine meal. this they do in large wooden mortars, the counterpart of which may be seen depicted on the egyptian monuments.* sekeletu added to this good supply of meal ten or twelve jars of honey, each of which contained about two gallons. liberal supplies of ground-nuts ('arachis hypogoea') were also furnished every time the tributary tribes brought their dues to linyanti, and an ox was given for slaughter every week or two. sekeletu also appropriated two cows to be milked for us every morning and evening. this was in accordance with the acknowledged rule throughout this country, that the chief should feed all strangers who come on any special business to him and take up their abode in his kotla. a present is usually given in return for the hospitality, but, except in cases where their aboriginal customs have been modified, nothing would be asked. europeans spoil the feeling that hospitality is the sacred duty of the chiefs by what in other circumstances is laudable conduct. no sooner do they arrive than they offer to purchase food, and, instead of waiting till a meal is prepared for them in the evening, cook for themselves, and then often decline even to partake of that which has been made ready for their use. a present is also given, and before long the natives come to expect a gift without having offered any equivalent. * unfortunately, the illustration shown with this paragraph cannot be shown in this ascii file. it has the following caption: 'egyptian pestle and mortar, sieves, corn vessels, and kilt, identical with those in use by the makololo and makalaka.--from sir g. wilkinson's "ancient egyptians".'--a. l., . strangers frequently have acquaintances among the under-chiefs, to whose establishments they turn aside, and are treated on the same principle that others are when they are the guests of the chief. so generally is the duty admitted, that one of the most cogent arguments for polygamy is that a respectable man with only one wife could not entertain strangers as he ought. this reason has especial weight where the women are the chief cultivators of the soil, and have the control over the corn, as at kolobeng. the poor, however, who have no friends, often suffer much hunger, and the very kind attention sebituane lavished on all such was one of the reasons of his great popularity in the country. the makololo cultivate a large extent of land around their villages. those of them who are real basutos still retain the habits of that tribe, and may be seen going out with their wives with their hoes in hand--a state of things never witnessed at kolobeng, or among any other bechuana or caffre tribe. the great chief moshesh affords an example to his people annually by not only taking the hoe in hand, but working hard with it on certain public occasions. his basutos are of the same family with the makololo to whom i refer. the younger makololo, who have been accustomed from their infancy to lord it over the conquered makalaka, have unfortunately no desire to imitate the agricultural tastes of their fathers, and expect their subjects to perform all the manual labor. they are the aristocracy of the country, and once possessed almost unlimited power over their vassals. their privileges were, however, much abridged by sebituane himself. i have already mentioned that the tribes which sebituane subjected in this great country pass by the general name of makalaka. the makololo were composed of a great number of other tribes, as well as of these central negroes. the nucleus of the whole were basuto, who came with sebituane from a comparatively cold and hilly region in the south. when he conquered various tribes of the bechuanas, as bakwains, bangwaketze, bamangwato, batauana, etc., he incorporated the young of these tribes into his own. great mortality by fever having taken place in the original stock, he wisely adopted the same plan of absorption on a large scale with the makalaka. so we found him with even the sons of the chiefs of the barotse closely attached to his person; and they say to this day, if any thing else but natural death had assailed their father, every one of them would have laid down his life in his defense. one reason for their strong affection was their emancipation by the decree of sebituane, "all are children of the chief." the makalaka cultivate the 'holcus sorghum', or dura, as the principal grain, with maize, two kinds of beans, ground-nuts ('arachis hypogoea'), pumpkins, watermelons, and cucumbers. they depend for success entirely upon rain. those who live in the barotse valley cultivate in addition the sugar-cane, sweet potato, and manioc ('jatropha manihot'). the climate there, however, is warmer than at linyanti, and the makalaka increase the fertility of their gardens by rude attempts at artificial irrigation. the instrument of culture over all this region is a hoe, the iron of which the batoka and banyeti obtain from the ore by smelting. the amount of iron which they produce annually may be understood when it is known that most of the hoes in use at linyanti are the tribute imposed on the smiths of those subject tribes. sekeletu receives tribute from a great number of tribes in corn or dura, ground-nuts, hoes, spears, honey, canoes, paddles, wooden vessels, tobacco, mutokuane ('cannabis sativa'), various wild fruits (dried), prepared skins, and ivory. when these articles are brought into the kotla, sekeletu has the honor of dividing them among the loungers who usually congregate there. a small portion only is reserved for himself. the ivory belongs nominally to him too, but this is simply a way of making a fair distribution of the profits. the chief sells it only with the approbation of his counselors, and the proceeds are distributed in open day among the people as before. he has the choice of every thing; but if he is not more liberal to others than to himself, he loses in popularity. i have known instances in this and other tribes in which individuals aggrieved, because they had been overlooked, fled to other chiefs. one discontented person, having fled to lechulatebe, was encouraged to go to a village of the bapalleng, on the river cho or tso, and abstracted the tribute of ivory thence which ought to have come to sekeletu. this theft enraged the whole of the makololo, because they all felt it to be a personal loss. some of lechulatebe's people having come on a visit to linyanti, a demonstration was made, in which about five hundred makololo, armed, went through a mimic fight; the principal warriors pointed their spears toward the lake where lechulatebe lives, and every thrust in that direction was answered by all with the shout, "ho-o!" while every stab on the ground drew out a simultaneous "huzz!" on these occasions all capable of bearing arms, even the old, must turn out at the call. in the time of sebituane, any one remaining in his house was searched for and killed without mercy. this offense of lechulatebe was aggravated by repetition, and by a song sung in his town accompanying the dances, which manifested joy at the death of sebituane. he had enjoined his people to live in peace with those at the lake, and sekeletu felt disposed to follow his advice; but lechulatebe had now got possession of fire-arms, and considered himself more than a match for the makololo. his father had been dispossessed of many cattle by sebituane, and, as forgiveness is not considered among the virtues by the heathen, lechulatebe thought he had a right to recover what he could. as i had a good deal of influence with the makololo, i persuaded them that, before they could have peace, they must resolve to give the same blessing to others, and they never could do that without forgiving and forgetting ancient feuds. it is hard to make them feel that shedding of human blood is a great crime; they must be conscious that it is wrong, but, having been accustomed to bloodshed from infancy, they are remarkably callous to the enormity of the crime of destroying human life. i sent a message at the same time to lechulatebe advising him to give up the course he had adopted, and especially the song; because, though sebituane was dead, the arms with which he had fought were still alive and strong. sekeletu, in order to follow up his father's instructions and promote peace, sent ten cows to lechulatebe to be exchanged for sheep; these animals thrive well in a bushy country like that around the lake, but will scarcely live in the flat prairies between the net-work of waters north of the chobe. the men who took the cows carried a number of hoes to purchase goats besides. lechulatebe took the cows and sent back an equal number of sheep. now, according to the relative value of sheep and cows in these parts, he ought to have sent sixty or seventy. one of the men who had hoes was trying to purchase in a village without formal leave from lechulatebe; this chief punished him by making him sit some hours on the broiling hot sand (at least deg.). this farther offense put a stop to amicable relations between the two tribes altogether. it was a case in which a very small tribe, commanded by a weak and foolish chief, had got possession of fire-arms, and felt conscious of ability to cope with a numerous and warlike race. such cases are the only ones in which the possession of fire-arms does evil. the universal effect of the diffusion of the more potent instruments of warfare in africa is the same as among ourselves. fire-arms render wars less frequent and less bloody. it is indeed exceedingly rare to hear of two tribes having guns going to war with each other; and, as nearly all the feuds, in the south at least, have been about cattle, the risk which must be incurred from long shots generally proves a preventive to the foray. the makololo were prevailed upon to keep the peace during my residence with them, but it was easy to perceive that public opinion was against sparing a tribe of bechuanas for whom the makololo entertained the most sovereign contempt. the young men would remark, "lechulatebe is herding our cows for us; let us only go, we shall 'lift' the price of them in sheep," etc. as the makololo are the most northerly of the bechuanas, we may glance back at this family of africans before entering on the branch of the negro family which the makololo distinguish by the term makalaka. the name bechuana seems derived from the word chuana--alike, or equal--with the personal pronoun ba (they) prefixed, and therefore means fellows or equals. some have supposed the name to have arisen from a mistake of some traveler, who, on asking individuals of this nation concerning the tribes living beyond them, received the answer, bachuana, "they (are) alike"; meaning, "they are the same as we are"; and that this nameless traveler, who never wrote a word about them, managed to ingraft his mistake as a generic term on a nation extending from the orange river to deg. south latitude.* * the makololo have conquered the country as far as deg. south, but it is still peopled chiefly by the black tribes named makalaka. as the name was found in use among those who had no intercourse with europeans, before we can receive the above explanation we must believe that the unknown traveler knew the language sufficiently well to ask a question, but not to understand the answer. we may add, that the way in which they still continue to use the word seems to require no fanciful interpretation. when addressed with any degree of scorn, they reply, "we are bachuana, or equals--we are not inferior to any of our nation," in exactly the same sense as irishmen or scotchmen, in the same circumstances, would reply, "we are britons," or "we are englishmen." most other tribes are known by the terms applied to them by strangers only, as the caffres, hottentots, and bushmen. the bechuanas alone use the term to themselves as a generic one for the whole nation. they have managed, also, to give a comprehensive name to the whites, viz., makoa, though they can not explain the derivation of it any more than of their own. it seems to mean "handsome", from the manner in which they use it to indicate beauty; but there is a word so very like it meaning "infirm", or "weak", that burchell's conjecture is probably the right one. "the different hottentot tribes were known by names terminating in 'kua', which means 'man', and the bechuanas simply added the prefix ma, denoting a nation." they themselves were first known as briquas, or "goat-men". the language of the bechuanas is termed sichuana; that of the whites (or makoa) is called sekoa. the makololo, or basuto, have carried their powers of generalization still farther, and arranged the other parts of the same great family of south africans into three divisions: st. the matebele, or makonkobi--the caffre family living on the eastern side of the country; d. the bakoni, or basuto; and, d. the bakalahari, or bechuanas, living in the central parts, which includes all those tribes living in or adjacent to the great kalahari desert. st. the caffres are divided by themselves into various subdivisions, as amakosa, amapanda, and other well-known titles. they consider the name caffre as an insulting epithet. the zulus of natal belong to the same family, and they are as famed for their honesty as their brethren who live adjacent to our colonial frontier are renowned for cattle-lifting. the recorder of natal declared of them that history does not present another instance in which so much security for life and property has been enjoyed, as has been experienced, during the whole period of english occupation, by ten thousand colonists, in the midst of one hundred thousand zulus. the matebele of mosilikatse, living a short distance south of the zambesi, and other tribes living a little south of tete and senna, are members of this same family. they are not known beyond the zambesi river. this was the limit of the bechuana progress north too, until sebituane pushed his conquests farther. d. the bakoni and basuto division contains, in the south, all those tribes which acknowledge moshesh as their paramount chief. among them we find the batau, the baputi, makolokue, etc., and some mountaineers on the range maluti, who are believed, by those who have carefully sifted the evidence, to have been at one time guilty of cannibalism. this has been doubted, but their songs admit the fact to this day, and they ascribe their having left off the odious practice of entrapping human prey to moshesh having given them cattle. they are called marimo and mayabathu, men-eaters, by the rest of the basuto, who have various subdivisions, as makatla, bamakakana, matlapatlapa, etc. the bakoni farther north than the basuto are the batlou, baperi, bapo, and another tribe of bakuena, bamosetla, bamapela or balaka, babiriri, bapiri, bahukeng, batlokua, baakhahela, etc., etc.; the whole of which tribes are favored with abundance of rain, and, being much attached to agriculture, raise very large quantities of grain. it is on their industry that the more distant boers revel in slothful abundance, and follow their slave-hunting and cattle-stealing propensities quite beyond the range of english influence and law. the basuto under moshesh are equally fond of cultivating the soil. the chief labor of hoeing, driving away birds, reaping, and winnowing, falls to the willing arms of the hard-working women; but as the men, as well as their wives, as already stated, always work, many have followed the advice of the missionaries, and now use plows and oxen instead of the hoe. d. the bakalahari, or western branch of the bechuana family, consists of barolong, bahurutse, bakuena, bangwaketse, bakaa, bamangwato, bakurutse, batauana, bamatlaro, and batlapi. among the last the success of missionaries has been greatest. they were an insignificant and filthy people when first discovered; but, being nearest to the colony, they have had opportunities of trading; and the long-continued peace they have enjoyed, through the influence of religious teaching, has enabled them to amass great numbers of cattle. the young, however, who do not realize their former degradation, often consider their present superiority over the less-favored tribes in the interior to be entirely owing to their own greater wisdom and more intellectual development. chapter . departure from linyanti for sesheke--level country--ant-hills--wild date-trees--appearance of our attendants on the march--the chief's guard--they attempt to ride on ox-back--vast herds of the new antelopes, leches, and nakongs--the native way of hunting them--reception at the villages--presents of beer and milk--eating with the hand--the chief provides the oxen for slaughter--social mode of eating--the sugar-cane--sekeletu's novel test of character-- cleanliness of makololo huts--their construction and appearance--the beds--cross the leeambye--aspect of this part of the country--the small antelope tianyane unknown in the south--hunting on foot--an eland. having waited a month at linyanti (lat. d ' " s., long. d ' " e.), we again departed, for the purpose of ascending the river from sesheke (lat. d ' " s., long. d ' e.). to the barotse country, the capital of which is nariele or naliele (lat. d ' " s., long. d ' " e.), i went in company with sekeletu and about one hundred and sixty attendants. we had most of the young men with us, and many of the under-chiefs besides. the country between linyanti and sesheke is perfectly flat, except patches elevated only a few feet above the surrounding level. there are also many mounds where the gigantic ant-hills of the country have been situated or still appear: these mounds are evidently the work of the termites. no one who has not seen their gigantic structures can fancy the industry of these little laborers; they seem to impart fertility to the soil which has once passed through their mouths, for the makololo find the sides of ant-hills the choice spots for rearing early maize, tobacco, or any thing on which they wish to bestow especial care. in the parts through which we passed the mounds are generally covered with masses of wild date-trees; the fruit is small, and no tree is allowed to stand long, for, having abundance of food, the makololo have no inclination to preserve wild fruit-trees; accordingly, when a date shoots up to seed, as soon as the fruit is ripe they cut down the tree rather than be at the trouble of climbing it. the other parts of the more elevated land have the camel-thorn ('acacia giraffae'), white-thorned mimosa ('acacia horrida'), and baobabs. in sandy spots there are palmyras somewhat similar to the indian, but with a smaller seed. the soil on all the flat parts is a rich, dark, tenacious loam, known as the "cotton-ground" in india; it is covered with a dense matting of coarse grass, common on all damp spots in this country. we had the chobe on our right, with its scores of miles of reed occupying the horizon there. it was pleasant to look back on the long-extended line of our attendants, as it twisted and bent according to the curves of the footpath, or in and out behind the mounds, the ostrich feathers of the men waving in the wind. some had the white ends of ox-tails on their heads, hussar fashion, and others great bunches of black ostrich feathers, or caps made of lions' manes. some wore red tunics, or various-colored prints which the chief had bought from fleming; the common men carried burdens; the gentlemen walked with a small club of rhinoceros-horn in their hands, and had servants to carry their shields; while the "machaka", battle-axe men, carried their own, and were liable at any time to be sent off a hundred miles on an errand, and expected to run all the way. sekeletu is always accompanied by his own mopato, a number of young men of his own age. when he sits down they crowd around him; those who are nearest eat out of the same dish, for the makololo chiefs pride themselves on eating with their people. he eats a little, then beckons his neighbors to partake. when they have done so, he perhaps beckons to some one at a distance to take a share; that person starts forward, seizes the pot, and removes it to his own companions. the comrades of sekeletu, wishing to imitate him in riding on my old horse, leaped on the backs of a number of half-broken batoka oxen as they ran, but, having neither saddle nor bridle, the number of tumbles they met with was a source of much amusement to the rest. troops of leches, or, as they are here called, "lechwes", appeared feeding quite heedlessly all over the flats; they exist here in prodigious herds, although the numbers of them and of the "nakong" that are killed annually must be enormous. both are water antelopes, and, when the lands we now tread upon are flooded, they betake themselves to the mounds i have alluded to. the makalaka, who are most expert in the management of their small, thin, light canoes, come gently toward them; the men stand upright in the canoe, though it is not more than fifteen or eighteen inches wide and about fifteen feet long; their paddles, ten feet in height, are of a kind of wood called molompi, very light, yet as elastic as ash. with these they either punt or paddle, according to the shallowness or depth of the water. when they perceive the antelopes beginning to move they increase their speed, and pursue them with great velocity. they make the water dash away from the gunwale, and, though the leche goes off by a succession of prodigious bounds, its feet appearing to touch the bottom at each spring, they manage to spear great numbers of them. the nakong often shares a similar fate. this is a new species, rather smaller than the leche, and in shape has more of paunchiness than any antelope i ever saw. its gait closely resembles the gallop of a dog when tired. the hair is long and rather sparse, so that it is never sleek-looking. it is of a grayish-brown color, and has horns twisted in the manner of a koodoo, but much smaller, and with a double ridge winding round each of them. its habitat is the marsh and the muddy bogs; the great length of its foot between the point of the toe and supplemental hoofs enables it to make a print about a foot in length; it feeds by night, and lies hid among the reeds and rushes by day; when pursued, it dashes into sedgy places containing water, and immerses the whole body, leaving only the point of the nose and ends of the horns exposed. the hunters burn large patches of reed in order to drive the nakong out of his lair; occasionally the ends of the horns project above the water; but when it sees itself surrounded by enemies in canoes, it will rather allow its horns to be scorched in the burning reed than come forth from its hiding-place. when we arrived at any village the women all turned out to lulliloo their chief. their shrill voices, to which they give a tremulous sound by a quick motion of the tongue, peal forth, "great lion!" "great chief!" "sleep, my lord!" etc. the men utter similar salutations; and sekeletu receives all with becoming indifference. after a few minutes' conversation and telling the news, the head man of the village, who is almost always a makololo, rises, and brings forth a number of large pots of beer. calabashes, being used as drinking-cups, are handed round, and as many as can partake of the beverage do so, grasping the vessels so eagerly that they are in danger of being broken. they bring forth also large pots and bowls of thick milk; some contain six or eight gallons; and each of these, as well as of the beer, is given to a particular person, who has the power to divide it with whom he pleases. the head man of any section of the tribe is generally selected for this office. spoons not being generally in fashion, the milk is conveyed to the mouth with the hand. i often presented my friends with iron spoons, and it was curious to observe how their habit of hand-eating prevailed, though they were delighted with the spoons. they lifted out a little with the utensil, then put it on the left hand, and ate it out of that. as the makololo have great abundance of cattle, and the chief is expected to feed all who accompany him, he either selects an ox or two of his own from the numerous cattle stations that he possesses at different spots all over the country, or is presented by the head men of the villages he visits with as many as he needs by way of tribute. the animals are killed by a thrust from a small javelin in the region of the heart, the wound being purposely small in order to avoid any loss of blood, which, with the internal parts, are the perquisites of the men who perform the work of the butcher; hence all are eager to render service in that line. each tribe has its own way of cutting up and distributing an animal. among the makololo the hump and ribs belong to the chief; among the bakwains the breast is his perquisite. after the oxen are cut up, the different joints are placed before sekeletu, and he apportions them among the gentlemen of the party. the whole is rapidly divided by their attendants, cut into long strips, and so many of these are thrown into the fires at once that they are nearly put out. half broiled and burning hot, the meat is quickly handed round; every one gets a mouthful, but no one except the chief has time to masticate. it is not the enjoyment of eating they aim at, but to get as much of the food into the stomach as possible during the short time the others are cramming as well as themselves, for no one can eat more than a mouthful after the others have finished. they are eminently gregarious in their eating; and, as they despise any one who eats alone, i always poured out two cups of coffee at my own meals, so that the chief, or some one of the principal men, might partake along with me. they all soon become very fond of coffee; and, indeed, some of the tribes attribute greater fecundity to the daily use of this beverage. they were all well acquainted with the sugar-cane, as they cultivate it in the barotse country, but knew nothing of the method of extracting the sugar from it. they use the cane only for chewing. sekeletu, relishing the sweet coffee and biscuits, of which i then had a store, said "he knew my heart loved him by finding his own heart warming to my food." he had been visited during my absence at the cape by some traders and griquas, and "their coffee did not taste half so nice as mine, because they loved his ivory and not himself." this was certainly an original mode of discerning character. sekeletu and i had each a little gipsy-tent in which to sleep. the makololo huts are generally clean, while those of the makalaka are infested with vermin. the cleanliness of the former is owing to the habit of frequently smearing the floors with a plaster composed of cowdung and earth. if we slept in the tent in some villages, the mice ran over our faces and disturbed our sleep, or hungry prowling dogs would eat our shoes and leave only the soles. when they were guilty of this and other misdemeanors, we got the loan of a hut. the best sort of makololo huts consist of three circular walls, with small holes as doors, each similar to that in a dog-house; and it is necessary to bend down the body to get in, even when on all-fours. the roof is formed of reeds or straight sticks, in shape like a chinaman's hat, bound firmly together with circular bands, which are lashed with the strong inner bark of the mimosa-tree. when all prepared except the thatch, it is lifted on to the circular wall, the rim resting on a circle of poles, between each of which the third wall is built. the roof is thatched with fine grass, and sewed with the same material as the lashings; and, as it projects far beyond the walls, and reaches within four feet of the ground, the shade is the best to be found in the country. these huts are very cool in the hottest day, but are close and deficient in ventilation by night. the bed is a mat made of rushes sewn together with twine; the hip-bone soon becomes sore on the hard flat surface, as we are not allowed to make a hole in the floor to receive the prominent part called trochanter by anatomists, as we do when sleeping on grass or sand. our course at this time led us to a part above sesheke, called katonga, where there is a village belonging to a bashubia man named sekhosi--latitude d ' ", longitude d '. the river here is somewhat broader than at sesheke, and certainly not less than six hundred yards. it flows somewhat slowly in the first part of its eastern course. when the canoes came from sekhosi to take us over, one of the comrades of sebituane rose, and, looking to sekeletu, called out, "the elders of a host always take the lead in an attack." this was understood at once; and sekeletu, with all the young men, were obliged to give the elders the precedence, and remain on the southern bank and see that all went orderly into the canoes. it took a considerable time to ferry over the whole of our large party, as, even with quick paddling, from six to eight minutes were spent in the mere passage from bank to bank. several days were spent in collecting canoes from different villages on the river, which we now learned is called by the whole of the barotse the liambai or leeambye. this we could not ascertain on our first visit, and, consequently, called the river after the town "sesheke". this term sesheke means "white sand-banks", many of which exist at this part. there is another village in the valley of the barotse likewise called sesheke, and for the same reason; but the term leeambye means "the large river", or the river par excellence. luambeji, luambesi, ambezi, ojimbesi, and zambesi, etc., are names applied to it at different parts of its course, according to the dialect spoken, and all possess a similar signification, and express the native idea of this magnificent stream being the main drain of the country. in order to assist in the support of our large party, and at the same time to see the adjacent country, i went several times, during our stay, to the north of the village for game. the country is covered with clumps of beautiful trees, among which fine open glades stretch away in every direction; when the river is in flood these are inundated, but the tree-covered elevated spots are much more numerous here than in the country between the chobe and the leeambye. the soil is dark loam, as it is every where on spots reached by the inundation, while among the trees it is sandy, and not covered so densely with grass as elsewhere. a sandy ridge covered with trees, running parallel to, and about eight miles from the river, is the limit of the inundation on the north; there are large tracts of this sandy forest in that direction, till you come to other districts of alluvial soil and fewer trees. the latter soil is always found in the vicinity of rivers which either now overflow their banks annually, or formerly did so. the people enjoy rain in sufficient quantity to raise very large supplies of grain and ground-nuts. this district contains great numbers of a small antelope named tianyane, unknown in the south. it stands about eighteen inches high, is very graceful in its movements, and utters a cry of alarm not unlike that of the domestic fowl; it is of a brownish-red color on the sides and back, with the belly and lower part of the tail white; it is very timid, but the maternal affection that the little thing bears to its young will often induce it to offer battle even to a man approaching it. when the young one is too tender to run about with the dam, she puts one foot on the prominence about the seventh cervical vertebra, or withers; the instinct of the young enables it to understand that it is now required to kneel down, and to remain quite still till it hears the bleating of its dam. if you see an otherwise gregarious she-antelope separated from the herd, and going alone any where, you may be sure she has laid her little one to sleep in some cozy spot. the color of the hair in the young is better adapted for assimilating it with the ground than that of the older animals, which do not need to be screened from the observation of birds of prey. i observed the arabs at aden, when making their camels kneel down, press the thumb on the withers in exactly the same way the antelopes do with their young; probably they have been led to the custom by seeing this plan adopted by the gazelle of the desert. great numbers of buffaloes, zebras, tsessebes, tahaetsi, and eland, or pohu, grazed undisturbed on these plains, so that very little exertion was required to secure a fair supply of meat for the party during the necessary delay. hunting on foot, as all those who have engaged in it in this country will at once admit, is very hard work indeed. the heat of the sun by day is so great, even in winter, as it now was, that, had there been any one on whom i could have thrown the task, he would have been most welcome to all the sport the toil is supposed to impart. but the makololo shot so badly, that, in order to save my powder, i was obliged to go myself. we shot a beautiful cow-eland, standing in the shade of a fine tree. it was evident that she had lately had her calf killed by a lion, for there were five long deep scratches on both sides of her hind-quarters, as if she had run to the rescue of her calf, and the lion, leaving it, had attacked herself, but was unable to pull her down. when lying on the ground, the milk flowing from the large udder showed that she must have been seeking the shade, from the distress its non-removal in the natural manner caused. she was a beautiful creature, and lebeole, a makololo gentleman who accompanied me, speaking in reference to its size and beauty, said, "jesus ought to have given us these instead of cattle." it was a new, undescribed variety of this splendid antelope. it was marked with narrow white bands across the body, exactly like those of the koodoo, and had a black patch of more than a handbreadth on the outer side of the fore-arm. chapter . procure canoes and ascend the leeambye--beautiful islands--winter landscape--industry and skill of the banyeti--rapids--falls of gonye--tradition--annual inundations--fertility of the great barotse valley--execution of two conspirators--the slave-dealer's stockade--naliele, the capital, built on an artificial mound--santuru, a great hunter--the barotse method of commemorating any remarkable event--better treatment of women--more religious feeling--belief in a future state, and in the existence of spiritual beings--gardens--fish, fruit, and game--proceed to the limits of the barotse country-- sekeletu provides rowers and a herald--the river and vicinity-- hippopotamus-hunters--no healthy location--determine to go to loanda-- buffaloes, elands, and lions above libonta--interview with the mambari-- two arabs from zanzibar--their opinion of the portuguese and the english --reach the town of ma-sekeletu--joy of the people at the first visit of their chief--return to sesheke--heathenism. having at last procured a sufficient number of canoes, we began to ascend the river. i had the choice of the whole fleet, and selected the best, though not the largest; it was thirty-four feet long by twenty inches wide. i had six paddlers, and the larger canoe of sekeletu had ten. they stand upright, and keep the stroke with great precision, though they change from side to side as the course demands. the men at the head and stern are selected from the strongest and most expert of the whole. the canoes, being flat bottomed, can go into very shallow water; and whenever the men can feel the bottom they use the paddles, which are about eight feet long, as poles to punt with. our fleet consisted of thirty-three canoes, and about one hundred and sixty men. it was beautiful to see them skimming along so quickly, and keeping the time so well. on land the makalaka fear the makololo; on water the makololo fear them, and can not prevent them from racing with each other, dashing along at the top of their speed, and placing their masters' lives in danger. in the event of a capsize, many of the makololo would sink like stones. a case of this kind happened on the first day of our voyage up. the wind, blowing generally from the east, raises very large waves on the leeambye. an old doctor of the makololo had his canoe filled by one of these waves, and, being unable to swim, was lost. the barotse who were in the canoe with him saved themselves by swimming, and were afraid of being punished with death in the evening for not saving the doctor as well. had he been a man of more influence, they certainly would have suffered death. we proceeded rapidly up the river, and i felt the pleasure of looking on lands which had never been seen by a european before. the river is, indeed, a magnificent one, often more than a mile broad, and adorned with many islands of from three to five miles in length. both islands and banks are covered with forest, and most of the trees on the brink of the water send down roots from their branches like the banian, or 'ficus indica'. the islands at a little distance seem great rounded masses of sylvan vegetation reclining on the bosom of the glorious stream. the beauty of the scenery of some of the islands is greatly increased by the date-palm, with its gracefully curved fronds and refreshing light green color, near the bottom of the picture, and the lofty palmyra towering far above, and casting its feathery foliage against a cloudless sky. it being winter, we had the strange coloring on the banks which many parts of african landscape assume. the country adjacent to the river is rocky and undulating, abounding in elephants and all other large game, except leches and nakongs, which seem generally to avoid stony ground. the soil is of a reddish color, and very fertile, as is attested by the great quantity of grain raised annually by the banyeti. a great many villages of this poor and very industrious people are situated on both banks of the river: they are expert hunters of the hippopotami and other animals, and very proficient in the manufacture of articles of wood and iron. the whole of this part of the country being infested with the tsetse, they are unable to rear domestic animals. this may have led to their skill in handicraft works. some make large wooden vessels with very neat lids, and wooden bowls of all sizes; and since the idea of sitting on stools has entered the makololo mind, they have shown great taste in the different forms given to the legs of these pieces of furniture. other banyeti, or manyeti, as they are called, make neat and strong baskets of the split roots of a certain tree, while others excel in pottery and iron. i can not find that they have ever been warlike. indeed, the wars in the centre of the country, where no slave-trade existed, have seldom been about any thing else but cattle. so well known is this, that several tribes refuse to keep cattle because they tempt their enemies to come and steal. nevertheless, they have no objection to eat them when offered, and their country admits of being well stocked. i have heard of but one war having occurred from another cause. three brothers, barolongs, fought for the possession of a woman who was considered worth a battle, and the tribe has remained permanently divided ever since. from the bend up to the north, called katima-molelo (i quenched fire), the bed of the river is rocky, and the stream runs fast, forming a succession of rapids and cataracts, which prevent continuous navigation when the water is low. the rapids are not visible when the river is full, but the cataracts of nambwe, bombwe, and kale must always be dangerous. the fall at each of these is between four and six feet. but the falls of gonye present a much more serious obstacle. there we were obliged to take the canoes out of the water, and carry them more than a mile by land. the fall is about thirty feet. the main body of water, which comes over the ledge of rock when the river is low, is collected into a space seventy or eighty yards wide before it takes the leap, and, a mass of rock being thrust forward against the roaring torrent, a loud sound is produced. tradition reports the destruction in this place of two hippopotamus-hunters, who, over-eager in the pursuit of a wounded animal, were, with their intended prey, drawn down into the frightful gulf. there is also a tradition of a man, evidently of a superior mind, who left his own countrymen, the barotse, and came down the river, took advantage of the falls, and led out a portion of the water there for irrigation. such minds must have arisen from time to time in these regions, as well as in our own country, but, ignorant of the use of letters, they have left no memorial behind them. we dug out some of an inferior kind of potato ('sisinyane') from his garden, for when once planted it never dies out. this root is bitter and waxy, though it is cultivated. it was not in flower, so i can not say whether it is a solanaceous plant or not. one never expects to find a grave nor a stone of remembrance set up in africa; the very rocks are illiterate, they contain so few fossils. those here are of reddish variegated, hardened sandstone, with madrepore holes in it. this, and broad horizontal strata of trap, sometimes a hundred miles in extent, and each layer having an inch or so of black silicious matter on it, as if it had floated there while in a state of fusion, form a great part of the bottom of the central valley. these rocks, in the southern part of the country especially, are often covered with twelve or fifteen feet of soft calcareous tufa. at bombwe we have the same trap, with radiated zeolite, probably mesotype, and it again appears at the confluence of the chobe, farther down. as we passed up the river, the different villages of banyeti turned out to present sekeletu with food and skins, as their tribute. one large village is placed at gonye, the inhabitants of which are required to assist the makololo to carry their canoes past the falls. the tsetse here lighted on us even in the middle of the stream. this we crossed repeatedly, in order to make short cuts at bends of the river. the course is, however, remarkably straight among the rocks; and here the river is shallow, on account of the great breadth of surface which it covers. when we came to about d ' s. latitude, the high wooded banks seemed to leave the river, and no more tsetse appeared. viewed from the flat, reedy basin in which the river then flowed, the banks seemed prolonged into ridges, of the same wooded character, two or three hundred feet high, and stretched away to the n.n.e. and n.n.w. until they were twenty or thirty miles apart. the intervening space, nearly one hundred miles in length, with the leeambye winding gently near the middle, is the true barotse valley. it bears a close resemblance to the valley of the nile, and is inundated annually, not by rains, but by the leeambye, exactly as lower egypt is flooded by the nile. the villages of the barotse are built on mounds, some of which are said to have been raised artificially by santuru, a former chief of the barotse, and during the inundation the whole valley assumes the appearance of a large lake, with the villages on the mounds like islands, just as occurs in egypt with the villages of the egyptians. some portion of the waters of inundation comes from the northwest, where great floodings also occur, but more comes from the north and northeast, descending the bed of the leeambye itself. there are but few trees in this valley: those which stand on the mounds were nearly all transplanted by santuru for shade. the soil is extremely fertile, and the people are never in want of grain, for, by taking advantage of the moisture of the inundation, they can take two crops a year. the barotse are strongly attached to this fertile valley; they say, "here hunger is not known." there are so many things besides corn which a man can find in it for food, that it is no wonder they desert from linyanti to return to this place. the great valley is not put to a tithe of the use it might be. it is covered with coarse succulent grasses, which afford ample pasturage for large herds of cattle; these thrive wonderfully, and give milk copiously to their owners. when the valley is flooded, the cattle are compelled to leave it and go to the higher lands, where they fall off in condition; their return is a time of joy. it is impossible to say whether this valley, which contains so much moisture, would raise wheat as the valley of the nile does. it is probably too rich, and would make corn run entirely to straw, for one species of grass was observed twelve feet high, with a stem as thick as a man's thumb. at present the pasturage is never eaten off, though the makololo possess immense herds of cattle. there are no large towns, the mounds on which the towns and villages are built being all small, and the people require to live apart on account of their cattle. this visit was the first sekeletu had made to these parts since he attained the chieftainship. those who had taken part with mpepe were consequently in great terror. when we came to the town of mpepe's father, as he and another man had counseled mamochisane to put sekeletu to death and marry mpepe, the two were led forth and tossed into the river. nokuane was again one of the executioners. when i remonstrated against human blood being shed in the offhand way in which they were proceeding, the counselors justified their acts by the evidence given by mamochisane, and calmly added, "you see we are still boers; we are not yet taught." mpepe had given full permission to the mambari slave-dealers to trade in all the batoka and bashukulompo villages to the east of this. he had given them cattle, ivory, and children, and had received in return a large blunderbuss to be mounted as a cannon. when the slight circumstance of my having covered the body of the chief with my own deranged the whole conspiracy, the mambari, in their stockade, were placed in very awkward circumstances. it was proposed to attack them and drive them out of the country at once; but, dreading a commencement of hostilities, i urged the difficulties of that course, and showed that a stockade defended by perhaps forty muskets would be a very serious affair. "hunger is strong enough for that," said an under-chief; "a very great fellow is he." they thought of attacking them by starvation. as the chief sufferers in case of such an attack would have been the poor slaves chained in gangs, i interceded for them, and the result of an intercession of which they were ignorant was that they were allowed to depart in peace. naliele, the capital of the barotse, is built on a mound which was constructed artificially by santuru, and was his store-house for grain. his own capital stood about five hundred yards to the south of that, in what is now the bed of the river. all that remains of the largest mound in the valley are a few cubic yards of earth, to erect which cost the whole of the people of santuru the labor of many years. the same thing has happened to another ancient site of a town, linangelo, also on the left bank. it would seem, therefore, that the river in this part of the valley must be wearing eastward. no great rise of the river is required to submerge the whole valley; a rise of ten feet above the present low-water mark would reach the highest point it ever attains, as seen in the markings of the bank on which stood santuru's ancient capital, and two or three feet more would deluge all the villages. this never happens, though the water sometimes comes so near the foundations of the huts that the people can not move outside the walls of reeds which encircle their villages. when the river is compressed among the high rocky banks near gonye, it rises sixty feet. the influence of the partial obstruction it meets with there is seen in the more winding course of the river north of deg.; and when the swell gets past katima-molelo, it spreads out on the lands on both banks toward sesheke. santuru, at whose ancient granary we are staying, was a great hunter, and very fond of taming wild animals. his people, aware of his taste, brought to him every young antelope they could catch, and, among other things, two young hippopotami. these animals gamboled in the river by day, but never failed to remember to come up to naliele for their suppers of milk and meal. they were the wonder of the country, till a stranger, happening to come to visit santuru, saw them reclining in the sun, and speared one of them on the supposition that it was wild. the same unlucky accident happened to one of the cats i had brought to sekeletu. a stranger, seeing an animal he had never viewed before, killed it, and brought the trophy to the chief, thinking that he had made a very remarkable discovery; we thereby lost the breed of cats, of which, from the swarms of mice, we stood in great need. on making inquiries to ascertain whether santuru, the moloiana, had ever been visited by white men, i could find no vestige of any such visit;* there is no evidence of any of santuru's people having ever seen a white man before the arrival of mr. oswell and myself in . the people have, it is true, no written records; but any remarkable event here is commemorated in names, as was observed by park to be the case in the countries he traversed. the year of our arrival is dignified by the name of the year when the white men came, or of sebituane's death; but they prefer the former, as they avoid, if possible, any direct reference to the departed. after my wife's first visit, great numbers of children were named ma-robert, or mother of robert, her eldest child; others were named gun, horse, wagon, monare, jesus, etc.; but though our names, and those of the native portuguese who came in , were adopted, there is not a trace of any thing of the sort having happened previously among the barotse: the visit of a white man is such a remarkable event, that, had any taken place during the last three hundred years, there must have remained some tradition of it. * the barotse call themselves the baloiana or little baloi, as if they had been an offset from loi, or lui, as it is often spelt. as lui had been visited by portuguese, but its position not well ascertained, my inquiries referred to the identity of naliele with lui. on asking the head man of the mambari party, named porto, whether he had ever heard of naliele being visited previously, he replied in the negative, and stated that he "had himself attempted to come from bihe three times, but had always been prevented by the tribe called ganguellas." he nearly succeeded in , but was driven back. he now (in ) attempted to go eastward from naliele, but came back to the barotse on being unable to go beyond kainko's village, which is situated on the bashukulompo river, and eight days distant. the whole party was anxious to secure a reward believed to be promised by the portuguese government. their want of success confirmed my impression that i ought to go westward. porto kindly offered to aid me, if i would go with him to bihe; but when i declined, he preceded me to loanda, and was publishing his journal when i arrived at that city. ben habib told me that porto had sent letters to mozambique by the arab, ben chombo, whom i knew; and he has since asserted, in portugal, that he himself went to mozambique as well as his letters! but santuru was once visited by the mambari, and a distinct recollection of that visit is retained. they came to purchase slaves, and both santuru and his head men refused them permission to buy any of the people. the makololo quoted this precedent when speaking of the mambari, and said that they, as the present masters of the country, had as good a right to expel them as santuru. the mambari reside near bihe, under an ambonda chief named kangombe. they profess to use the slaves for domestic purposes alone. some of these mambari visited us while at naliele. they are of the ambonda family, which inhabits the country southeast of angola, and speak the bunda dialect, which is of the same family of languages with the barotse, bayeiye, etc., or those black tribes comprehended under the general term makalaka. they plait their hair in three-fold cords, and lay them carefully down around the sides of the head. they are quite as dark as the barotse, but have among them a number of half-castes, with their peculiar yellow sickly hue. on inquiring why they had fled on my approach to linyanti, they let me know that they had a vivid idea of the customs of english cruisers on the coast. they showed also their habits in their own country by digging up and eating, even here where large game abounds, the mice and moles which infest the country. the half-castes, or native portuguese, could all read and write, and the head of the party, if not a real portuguese, had european hair, and, influenced probably by the letter of recommendation which i held from the chevalier duprat, his most faithful majesty's arbitrator in the british and portuguese mixed commission at cape town, was evidently anxious to show me all the kindness in his power. these persons i feel assured were the first individuals of portuguese blood who ever saw the zambesi in the centre of the country, and they had reached it two years after our discovery in . the town or mound of santuru's mother was shown to me; this was the first symptom of an altered state of feeling with regard to the female sex that i had observed. there are few or no cases of women being elevated to the headships of towns further south. the barotse also showed some relics of their chief, which evinced a greater amount of the religious feeling than i had ever known displayed among bechuanas. his more recent capital, lilonda, built, too, on an artificial mound, is covered with different kinds of trees, transplanted when young by himself. they form a grove on the end of the mound, in which are to be seen various instruments of iron just in the state he left them. one looks like the guard of a basket-hilted sword; another has an upright stem of the metal, on which are placed branches worked at the ends into miniature axes, hoes, and spears; on these he was accustomed to present offerings, according as he desired favors to be conferred in undertaking hewing, agriculture, or fighting. the people still living there, in charge of these articles, were supported by presents from the chief; and the makololo sometimes follow the example. this was the nearest approach to a priesthood i met. when i asked them to part with one of these relics, they replied, "oh no, he refuses." "who refuses?" "santuru," was their reply, showing their belief in a future state of existence. after explaining to them, as i always did when opportunity offered, the nature of true worship, and praying with them in the simple form which needs no offering from the worshiper except that of the heart, and planting some fruit-tree seeds in the grove, we departed. another incident, which occurred at the confluence of the leeba and leeambye, may be mentioned here, as showing a more vivid perception of the existence of spiritual beings, and greater proneness to worship than among the bechuanas. having taken lunar observations in the morning, i was waiting for a meridian altitude of the sun for the latitude; my chief boatman was sitting by, in order to pack up the instruments as soon as i had finished; there was a large halo, about deg. in diameter, round the sun; thinking that the humidity of the atmosphere, which this indicated, might betoken rain, i asked him if his experience did not lead him to the same view. "oh no," replied he; "it is the barimo (gods or departed spirits), who have called a picho; don't you see they have the lord (sun) in the centre?" while still at naliele i walked out to katongo (lat. d ' "), on the ridge which bounds the valley of the barotse in that direction, and found it covered with trees. it is only the commencement of the lands which are never inundated; their gentle rise from the dead level of the valley much resembles the edge of the desert in the valley of the nile. but here the banyeti have fine gardens, and raise great quantities of maize, millet, and native corn ('holcus sorghum'), of large grain and beautifully white. they grow, also, yams, sugar-cane, the egyptian arum, sweet potato ('convolulus batata'), two kinds of manioc or cassava ('jatropha manihot' and 'j. utilissima', a variety containing scarcely any poison), besides pumpkins, melons, beans, and ground-nuts. these, with plenty of fish in the river, its branches and lagoons, wild fruits and water-fowl, always make the people refer to the barotse as the land of plenty. the scene from the ridge, on looking back, was beautiful. one can not see the western side of the valley in a cloudy day, such as that was when we visited the stockade, but we could see the great river glancing out at different points, and fine large herds of cattle quietly grazing on the green succulent herbage, among numbers of cattle-stations and villages which are dotted over the landscape. leches in hundreds fed securely beside them, for they have learned only to keep out of bow-shot, or two hundred yards. when guns come into a country the animals soon learn their longer range, and begin to run at a distance of five hundred yards. i imagined the slight elevation (katongo) might be healthy, but was informed that no part of this region is exempt from fever. when the waters begin to retire from this valley, such masses of decayed vegetation and mud are exposed to the torrid sun that even the natives suffer severely from attacks of fever. the grass is so rank in its growth that one can not see the black alluvial soil of the bottom of this periodical lake. even when the grass falls down in winter, or is "laid" by its own weight, one is obliged to lift the feet so high, to avoid being tripped up by it, as to make walking excessively fatiguing. young leches are hidden beneath it by their dams; and the makololo youth complain of being unable to run in the barotse land on this account. there was evidently no healthy spot in this quarter; and the current of the river being about four and a half miles per hour (one hundred yards in sixty seconds), i imagined we might find what we needed in the higher lands, from which the river seemed to come. i resolved, therefore, to go to the utmost limits of the barotse country before coming to a final conclusion. katongo was the best place we had seen; but, in order to accomplish a complete examination, i left sekeletu at naliele, and ascended the river. he furnished me with men, besides my rowers, and among the rest a herald, that i might enter his villages in what is considered a dignified manner. this, it was supposed, would be effected by the herald shouting out at the top of his voice, "here comes the lord; the great lion;" the latter phrase being "tau e tona", which, in his imperfect way of pronunciation, became "sau e tona", and so like "the great sow" that i could not receive the honor with becoming gravity, and had to entreat him, much to the annoyance of my party, to be silent. in our ascent we visited a number of makololo villages, and were always received with a hearty welcome, as messengers to them of peace, which they term "sleep". they behave well in public meetings, even on the first occasion of attendance, probably from the habit of commanding the makalaka, crowds of whom swarm in every village, and whom the makololo women seem to consider as especially under their charge. the river presents the same appearance of low banks without trees as we have remarked it had after we came to d ', until we arrive at libonta ( d ' s. lat.). twenty miles beyond that, we find forest down to the water's edge, and tsetse. here i might have turned back, as no locality can be inhabited by europeans where that scourge exists; but hearing that we were not far from the confluence of the river of londa or lunda, named leeba or loiba, and the chiefs of that country being reported to be friendly to strangers, and therefore likely to be of use to me on my return from the west coast, i still pushed on to latitude d ' " s. there the leeambye assumes the name kabompo, and seems to be coming from the east. it is a fine large river, about three hundred yards wide, and the leeba two hundred and fifty. the loeti, a branch of which is called langebongo, comes from w.n.w., through a level grassy plain named mango; it is about one hundred yards wide, and enters the leeambye from the west; the waters of the loeti are of a light color, and those of the leeba of a dark mossy hue. after the loeti joins the leeambye the different colored waters flow side by side for some distance unmixed. before reaching the loeti we came to a number of people from the lobale region, hunting hippopotami. they fled precipitately as soon as they saw the makololo, leaving their canoes and all their utensils and clothing. my own makalaka, who were accustomed to plunder wherever they went, rushed after them like furies, totally regardless of my shouting. as this proceeding would have destroyed my character entirely at lobale, i took my stand on a commanding position as they returned, and forced them to lay down all the plunder on a sand-bank, and leave it there for its lawful owners. it was now quite evident that no healthy location could be obtained in which the makololo would be allowed to live in peace. i had thus a fair excuse, if i had chosen to avail myself of it, of coming home and saying that the "door was shut", because the lord's time had not yet come. but believing that it was my duty to devote some portion of my life to these (to me at least) very confiding and affectionate makololo, i resolved to follow out the second part of my plan, though i had failed in accomplishing the first. the leeba seemed to come from the n. and by w., or n.n.w.; so, having an old portuguese map, which pointed out the coanza as rising from the middle of the continent in deg. s. lat., i thought it probable that, when we had ascended the leeba (from d ') two or three degrees, we should then be within one hundred and twenty miles of the coanza, and find no difficulty in following it down to the coast near loanda. this was the logical deduction; but, as is the case with many a plausible theory, one of the premises was decidedly defective. the coanza, as we afterward found, does not come from any where near the centre of the country. the numbers of large game above libonta are prodigious, and they proved remarkably tame. eighty-one buffaloes defiled in slow procession before our fire one evening, within gunshot; and herds of splendid elands stood by day, without fear, at two hundred yards distance. they were all of the striped variety, and with their forearm markings, large dewlaps, and sleek skins, were a beautiful sight to see. the lions here roar much more than in the country near the lake, zouga, and chobe. one evening we had a good opportunity of hearing the utmost exertions the animal can make in that line. we had made our beds on a large sand-bank, and could be easily seen from all sides. a lion on the opposite shore amused himself for hours by roaring as loudly as he could, putting, as is usual in such cases, his mouth near the ground, to make the sound reverberate. the river was too broad for a ball to reach him, so we let him enjoy himself, certain that he durst not have been guilty of the impertinence in the bushman country. wherever the game abounds, these animals exist in proportionate numbers. here they were very frequently seen, and two of the largest i ever saw seemed about as tall as common donkeys; but the mane made their bodies appear rather larger. a party of arabs from zanzibar were in the country at this time. sekeletu had gone from naliele to the town of his mother before we arrived from the north, but left an ox for our use, and instructions for us to follow him thither. we came down a branch of the leeambye called marile, which departs from the main river in latitude d ' " s., and is a fine deep stream about sixty yards wide. it makes the whole of the country around naliele an island. when sleeping at a village in the same latitude as naliele town, two of the arabs mentioned made their appearance. they were quite as dark as the makololo, but, having their heads shaved, i could not compare their hair with that of the inhabitants of the country. when we were about to leave they came to bid adieu, but i asked them to stay and help us to eat our ox. as they had scruples about eating an animal not blooded in their own way, i gained their good-will by saying i was quite of their opinion as to getting quit of the blood, and gave them two legs of an animal slaughtered by themselves. they professed the greatest detestation of the portuguese, "because they eat pigs;" and disliked the english, "because they thrash them for selling slaves." i was silent about pork; though, had they seen me at a hippopotamus two days afterward, they would have set me down as being as much a heretic as any of that nation; but i ventured to tell them that i agreed with the english, that it was better to let the children grow up and comfort their mothers when they became old, than to carry them away and sell them across the sea. this they never attempt to justify; "they want them only to cultivate the land, and take care of them as their children." it is the same old story, justifying a monstrous wrong on pretense of taking care of those degraded portions of humanity which can not take care of themselves; doing evil that good may come. these arabs, or moors, could read and write their own language readily; and, when speaking about our savior, i admired the boldness with which they informed me "that christ was a very good prophet, but mohammed was far greater." and with respect to their loathing of pork, it may have some foundation in their nature; for i have known bechuanas, who had no prejudice against the wild animal, and ate the tame without scruple, yet, unconscious of any cause of disgust, vomit it again. the bechuanas south of the lake have a prejudice against eating fish, and allege a disgust to eating any thing like a serpent. this may arise from the remnants of serpent-worship floating in their minds, as, in addition to this horror of eating such animals, they sometimes render a sort of obeisance to living serpents by clapping their hands to them, and refusing to destroy the reptiles; but in the case of the hog they are conscious of no superstitious feeling. having parted with our arab friends, we proceeded down the marile till we re-entered the leeambye, and went to the town of ma-sekeletu (mother of sekeletu), opposite the island of loyela. sekeletu had always supplied me most liberally with food, and, as soon as i arrived, presented me with a pot of boiled meat, while his mother handed me a large jar of butter, of which they make great quantities for the purpose of anointing their bodies. he had himself sometimes felt the benefit of my way of putting aside a quantity of the meat after a meal, and had now followed my example by ordering some to be kept for me. according to their habits, every particle of an ox is devoured at one meal; and as the chief can not, without a deviation from their customs, eat alone, he is often compelled to suffer severely from hunger before another meal is ready. we henceforth always worked into each other's hands by saving a little for each other; and when some of the sticklers for use and custom grumbled, i advised them to eat like men, and not like vultures. as this was the first visit which sekeletu had paid to this part of his dominions, it was to many a season of great joy. the head men of each village presented oxen, milk, and beer, more than the horde which accompanied him could devour, though their abilities in that line are something wonderful. the people usually show their joy and work off their excitement in dances and songs. the dance consists of the men standing nearly naked in a circle, with clubs or small battle-axes in their hands, and each roaring at the loudest pitch of his voice, while they simultaneously lift one leg, stamp heavily twice with it, then lift the other and give one stamp with that; this is the only movement in common. the arms and head are often thrown about also in every direction; and all this time the roaring is kept up with the utmost possible vigor; the continued stamping makes a cloud of dust ascend, and they leave a deep ring in the ground where they stood. if the scene were witnessed in a lunatic asylum it would be nothing out of the way, and quite appropriate even, as a means of letting off the excessive excitement of the brain; but here gray-headed men joined in the performance with as much zest as others whose youth might be an excuse for making the perspiration stream off their bodies with the exertion. motibe asked what i thought of the makololo dance. i replied, "it is very hard work, and brings but small profit." "it is," replied he, "but it is very nice, and sekeletu will give us an ox for dancing for him." he usually does slaughter an ox for the dancers when the work is over. the women stand by, clapping their hands, and occasionally one advances into the circle, composed of a hundred men, makes a few movements, and then retires. as i never tried it, and am unable to enter into the spirit of the thing, i can not recommend the makololo polka to the dancing world, but i have the authority of no less a person than motibe, sekeletu's father-in-law, for saying "it is very nice." they often asked if white people ever danced. i thought of the disease called st. vitus's dance, but could not say that all our dancers were affected by it, and gave an answer which, i ought to be ashamed to own, did not raise some of our young countrywomen in the estimation of the makololo. as sekeletu had been waiting for me at his mother's, we left the town as soon as i arrived, and proceeded down the river. our speed with the stream was very great, for in one day we went from litofe to gonye, a distance of forty-four miles of latitude; and if we add to this the windings of the river, in longitude the distance will not be much less than sixty geographical miles. at this rate we soon reached sesheke, and then the town of linyanti. i had been, during a nine weeks' tour, in closer contact with heathenism than i had ever been before; and though all, including the chief, were as kind and attentive to me as possible, and there was no want of food (oxen being slaughtered daily, sometimes ten at a time, more than sufficient for the wants of all), yet to endure the dancing, roaring, and singing, the jesting, anecdotes, grumbling, quarreling, and murdering of these children of nature, seemed more like a severe penance than any thing i had before met with in the course of my missionary duties. i took thence a more intense disgust at heathenism than i had before, and formed a greatly elevated opinion of the latent effects of missions in the south, among tribes which are reported to have been as savage as the makololo. the indirect benefits which, to a casual observer, lie beneath the surface and are inappreciable, in reference to the probable wide diffusion of christianity at some future time, are worth all the money and labor that have been expended to produce them. chapter . preliminary arrangements for the journey--a picho--twenty-seven men appointed to accompany me to the west--eagerness of the makololo for direct trade with the coast--effects of fever--a makololo question--the lost journal--reflections--the outfit for the journey-- th november, , leave linyanti, and embark on the chobe--dangerous hippopotami--banks of chobe--trees--the course of the river--the island mparia at the confluence of the chobe and the leeambye-- anecdote--ascend the leeambye--a makalaka mother defies the authority of the makololo head man at sesheke--punishment of thieves--observance of the new moon--public addresses at sesheke--attention of the people--results--proceed up the river--the fruit which yields 'nux vomica'--other fruits--the rapids--birds--fish--hippopotami and their young. linyanti, september, . the object proposed to the makololo seemed so desirable that it was resolved to proceed with it as soon as the cooling influence of the rains should be felt in november. the longitude and latitude of linyanti (lat. d ' " s., long. d ' " e.) showed that st. philip de benguela was much nearer to us than loanda; and i might have easily made arrangements with the mambari to allow me to accompany them as far as bihe, which is on the road to that port; but it is so undesirable to travel in a path once trodden by slave-traders that i preferred to find out another line of march. accordingly, men were sent at my suggestion to examine all the country to the west, to see if any belt of country free from tsetse could be found to afford us an outlet. the search was fruitless. the town and district of linyanti are surrounded by forests infested by this poisonous insect, except at a few points, as that by which we entered at sanshureh and another at sesheke. but the lands both east and west of the barotse valley are free from this insect plague. there, however, the slave-trade had defiled the path, and no one ought to follow in its wake unless well armed. the mambari had informed me that many english lived at loanda, so i prepared to go thither. the prospect of meeting with countrymen seemed to overbalance the toils of the longer march. a "picho" was called to deliberate on the steps proposed. in these assemblies great freedom of speech is allowed; and on this occasion one of the old diviners said, "where is he taking you to? this white man is throwing you away. your garments already smell of blood." it is curious to observe how much identity of character appears all over the world. this man was a noted croaker. he always dreamed something dreadful in every expedition, and was certain that an eclipse or comet betokened the propriety of flight. but sebituane formerly set his visions down to cowardice, and sekeletu only laughed at him now. the general voice was in my favor; so a band of twenty-seven were appointed to accompany me to the west. these men were not hired, but sent to enable me to accomplish an object as much desired by the chief and most of his people as by me. they were eager to obtain free and profitable trade with white men. the prices which the cape merchants could give, after defraying the great expenses of a long journey hither, being very small, made it scarce worth while for the natives to collect produce for that market; and the mambari, giving only a few bits of print and baize for elephants' tusks worth more pounds than they gave yards of cloth, had produced the belief that trade with them was throwing ivory away. the desire of the makololo for direct trade with the sea-coast coincided exactly with my own conviction that no permanent elevation of a people can be effected without commerce. neither could there be a permanent mission here, unless the missionaries should descend to the level of the makololo, for even at kolobeng we found that traders demanded three or four times the price of the articles we needed, and expected us to be grateful to them besides for letting us have them at all. the three men whom i had brought from kuruman had frequent relapses of the fever; so, finding that instead of serving me i had to wait on them, i decided that they should return to the south with fleming as soon as he had finished his trading. i was then entirely dependent on my twenty-seven men, whom i might name zambesians, for there were two makololo only, while the rest consisted of barotse, batoka, bashubia, and two of the ambonda. the fever had caused considerable weakness in my own frame, and a strange giddiness when i looked up suddenly to any celestial object, for every thing seemed to rush to the left, and if i did not catch hold of some object, i fell heavily on the ground: something resembling a gush of bile along the duct from the liver caused the same fit to occur at night, whenever i turned suddenly round. the makololo now put the question, "in the event of your death, will not the white people blame us for having allowed you to go away into an unhealthy, unknown country of enemies?" i replied that none of my friends would blame them, because i would leave a book with sekeletu, to be sent to mr. moffat in case i did not return, which would explain to him all that had happened until the time of my departure. the book was a volume of my journal; and, as i was detained longer than i expected at loanda, this book, with a letter, was delivered by sekeletu to a trader, and i have been unable to trace it. i regret this now, as it contained valuable notes on the habits of wild animals, and the request was made in the letter to convey the volume to my family. the prospect of passing away from this fair and beautiful world thus came before me in a pretty plain, matter-of-fact form, and it did seem a serious thing to leave wife and children--to break up all connection with earth, and enter on an untried state of existence; and i find myself in my journal pondering over that fearful migration which lands us in eternity, wondering whether an angel will soothe the fluttering soul, sadly flurried as it must be on entering the spirit world, and hoping that jesus might speak but one word of peace, for that would establish in the bosom an everlasting calm. but as i had always believed that, if we serve god at all, it ought to be done in a manly way, i wrote to my brother, commending our little girl to his care, as i was determined to "succeed or perish" in the attempt to open up this part of africa. the boers, by taking possession of all my goods, had saved me the trouble of making a will; and, considering the light heart now left in my bosom, and some faint efforts to perform the duty of christian forgiveness, i felt that it was better to be the plundered party than one of the plunderers. when i committed the wagon and remaining goods to the care of the makololo, they took all the articles except one box into their huts; and two warriors, ponuane and mahale, brought forward each a fine heifer calf. after performing a number of warlike evolutions, they asked the chief to witness the agreement made between them, that whoever of the two should kill a matebele warrior first, in defense of the wagon, should possess both the calves. i had three muskets for my people, a rifle and double-barreled smooth-bore for myself; and, having seen such great abundance of game in my visit to the leeba, i imagined that i could easily supply the wants of my party. wishing also to avoid the discouragement which would naturally be felt on meeting any obstacles if my companions were obliged to carry heavy loads, i took only a few biscuits, a few pounds of tea and sugar, and about twenty of coffee, which, as the arabs find, though used without either milk or sugar, is a most refreshing beverage after fatigue or exposure to the sun. we carried one small tin canister, about fifteen inches square, filled with spare shirting, trowsers, and shoes, to be used when we reached civilized life, and others in a bag, which were expected to wear out on the way; another of the same size for medicines; and a third for books, my stock being a nautical almanac, thomson's logarithm tables, and a bible; a fourth box contained a magic lantern, which we found of much use. the sextant and artificial horizon, thermometer, and compasses were carried apart. my ammunition was distributed in portions through the whole luggage, so that, if an accident should befall one part, we could still have others to fall back upon. our chief hopes for food were upon that; but in case of failure, i took about lbs. of beads, worth s., which still remained of the stock i brought from cape town, a small gipsy tent, just sufficient to sleep in, a sheep-skin mantle as a blanket, and a horse-rug as a bed. as i had always found that the art of successful travel consisted in taking as few "impedimenta" as possible, and not forgetting to carry my wits about me, the outfit was rather spare, and intended to be still more so when we should come to leave the canoes. some would consider it injudicious to adopt this plan, but i had a secret conviction that if i did not succeed, it would not be for want of the "knick-knacks" advertised as indispensable for travelers, but from want of "pluck", or because a large array of baggage excited the cupidity of the tribes through whose country we wished to pass. the instruments i carried, though few, were the best of their kind. a sextant, by the famed makers troughton and sims, of fleet street; a chronometer watch, with a stop to the seconds hand--an admirable contrivance for enabling a person to take the exact time of observations: it was constructed by dent, of the strand ( ), for the royal geographical society, and selected for the service by the president, admiral smythe, to whose judgment and kindness i am in this and other matters deeply indebted. it was pronounced by mr. maclear to equal most chronometers in performance. for these excellent instruments i have much pleasure in recording my obligations to my good friend colonel steele, and at the same time to mr. maclear for much of my ability to use them. besides these, i had a thermometer by dollond; a compass from the cape observatory, and a small pocket one in addition; a good small telescope with a stand capable of being screwed into a tree. th of november, . left the town of linyanti, accompanied by sekeletu and his principal men, to embark on the chobe. the chief came to the river in order to see that all was right at parting. we crossed five branches of the chobe before reaching the main stream: this ramification must be the reason why it appeared so small to mr. oswell and myself in . when all the departing branches re-enter, it is a large, deep river. the spot of embarkation was the identical island where we met sebituane, first known as the island of maunku, one of his wives. the chief lent me his own canoe, and, as it was broader than usual, i could turn about in it with ease. the chobe is much infested by hippopotami, and, as certain elderly males are expelled the herd, they become soured in their temper, and so misanthropic as to attack every canoe that passes near them. the herd is never dangerous, except when a canoe passes into the midst of it when all are asleep, and some of them may strike the canoe in terror. to avoid this, it is generally recommended to travel by day near the bank, and by night in the middle of the stream. as a rule, these animals flee the approach of man. the "solitaires", however, frequent certain localities well known to the inhabitants on the banks, and, like the rogue elephants, are extremely dangerous. we came, at this time, to a canoe which had been smashed to pieces by a blow from the hind foot of one of them. i was informed by my men that, in the event of a similar assault being made upon ours, the proper way was to dive to the bottom of the river, and hold on there for a few seconds, because the hippopotamus, after breaking a canoe, always looks for the people on the surface, and, if he sees none, he soon moves off. i have seen some frightful gashes made on the legs of the people who have had the misfortune to be attacked, and were unable to dive. this animal uses his teeth as an offensive weapon, though he is quite a herbivorous feeder. one of these "bachelors", living near the confluence, actually came out of his lair, and, putting his head down, ran after some of our men who were passing with very considerable speed. the part of the river called zabesa, or zabenza, is spread out like a little lake, surrounded on all sides by dense masses of tall reeds. the river below that is always one hundred or one hundred and twenty yards broad, deep, and never dries up so much as to become fordable. at certain parts, where the partial absence of reeds affords a view of the opposite banks, the makololo have placed villages of observation against their enemies the matebele. we visited all these in succession, and found here, as every where in the makololo country, orders had preceded us, "that nake (nyake means doctor) must not be allowed to become hungry." the banks of the chobe, like those of the zouga, are of soft calcareous tufa, and the river has cut out for itself a deep, perpendicular-sided bed. where the banks are high, as at the spot where the wagons stood in , they are covered with magnificent trees, the habitat of tsetse, and the retreat of various antelopes, wild hogs, zebras, buffaloes, and elephants. among the trees may be observed some species of the 'ficus indica', light-green colored acacias, the splendid motsintsela, and evergreen cypress-shaped motsouri. the fruit of the last-named was ripe, and the villagers presented many dishes of its beautiful pink-colored plums; they are used chiefly to form a pleasant acid drink. the motsintsela is a very lofty tree, yielding a wood of which good canoes are made; the fruit is nutritious and good, but, like many wild fruits of this country, the fleshy parts require to be enlarged by cultivation: it is nearly all stone. the course of the river we found to be extremely tortuous; so much so, indeed, as to carry us to all points of the compass every dozen miles. some of us walked from a bend at the village of moremi to another nearly due east of that point, in six hours, while the canoes, going at more than double our speed, took twelve to accomplish the voyage between the same two places. and though the river is from thirteen to fifteen feet in depth at its lowest ebb, and broad enough to allow a steamer to ply upon it, the suddenness of the bendings would prevent navigation; but, should the country ever become civilized, the chobe would be a convenient natural canal. we spent forty-two and a half hours, paddling at the rate of five miles an hour, in coming from linyanti to the confluence; there we found a dike of amygdaloid lying across the leeambye. this amygdaloid with analami and mesotype contains crystals, which the water gradually dissolves, leaving the rock with a worm-eaten appearance. it is curious to observe that the water flowing over certain rocks, as in this instance, imbibes an appreciable, though necessarily most minute, portion of the minerals they contain. the water of the chobe up to this point is of a dark mossy hue, but here it suddenly assumes a lighter tint; and wherever this light color shows a greater amount of mineral, there are not mosquitoes enough to cause serious annoyance to any except persons of very irritable temperaments. the large island called mparia stands at the confluence. this is composed of trap (zeolite, probably mesotype) of a younger age than the deep stratum of tufa in which the chobe has formed its bed, for, at the point where they come together, the tufa has been transformed into saccharoid limestone. the actual point of confluence of these two rivers, the chobe and the leeambye, is ill defined, on account of each dividing into several branches as they inosculate; but when the whole body of water collects into one bed, it is a goodly sight for one who has spent many years in the thirsty south. standing on one bank, even the keen eye of the natives can not detect whether two large islands, a few miles east of the junction, are main land or not. during a flight in former years, when the present chief sekomi was a child in his mother's arms, the bamangwato men were separated from their women, and inveigled on to one of these islands by the makalaka chief of mparia, on pretense of ferrying them across the leeambye. they were left to perish after seeing their wives taken prisoners by these cruel lords of the leeambye, and sekomi owed his life to the compassion of one of the bayeiye, who, pitying the young chieftain, enabled his mother to make her escape by night. after spending one night at the makololo village on mparia, we left the chobe, and, turning round, began to ascend the leeambye; on the th of november we again reached the town of sesheke. it stands on the north bank of the river, and contains a large population of makalaka, under moriantsane, brother-in-law of sebituane. there are parties of various tribes here, assembled under their respective head men, but a few makololo rule over all. their sway, though essentially despotic, is considerably modified by certain customs and laws. one of the makalaka had speared an ox belonging to one of the makololo, and, being unable to extract the spear, was thereby discovered to be the perpetrator of the deed. his object had been to get a share of the meat, as moriantsane is known to be liberal with any food that comes into his hands. the culprit was bound hand and foot, and placed in the sun to force him to pay a fine, but he continued to deny his guilt. his mother, believing in the innocence of her son, now came forward, with her hoe in hand, and, threatening to cut down any one who should dare to interfere, untied the cords with which he had been bound and took him home. this open defiance of authority was not resented by moriantsane, but referred to sekeletu at linyanti. the following circumstance, which happened here when i was present with sekeletu, shows that the simple mode of punishment, by forcing a criminal to work out a fine, did not strike the makololo mind until now. a stranger having visited sesheke for the purpose of barter, was robbed by one of the makalaka of most of his goods. the thief, when caught, confessed the theft, and that he had given the articles to a person who had removed to a distance. the makololo were much enraged at the idea of their good name being compromised by this treatment of a stranger. their customary mode of punishing a crime which causes much indignation is to throw the criminal into the river; but, as this would not restore the lost property, they were sorely puzzled how to act. the case was referred to me, and i solved the difficulty by paying for the loss myself, and sentencing the thief to work out an equivalent with his hoe in a garden. this system was immediately introduced, and thieves are now sentenced to raise an amount of corn proportioned to their offenses. among the bakwains, a woman who had stolen from the garden of another was obliged to part with her own entirely: it became the property of her whose field was injured by the crime. there is no stated day of rest in any part of this country, except the day after the appearance of the new moon, and the people then refrain only from going to their gardens. a curious custom, not to be found among the bechuanas, prevails among the black tribes beyond them. they watch most eagerly for the first glimpse of the new moon, and, when they perceive the faint outline after the sun has set deep in the west, they utter a loud shout of "kua!" and vociferate prayers to it. my men, for instance, called out, "let our journey with the white man be prosperous! let our enemies perish, and the children of nake become rich! may he have plenty of meat on this journey!" etc., etc. i gave many public addresses to the people of sesheke under the outspreading camel-thorn-tree, which serves as a shade to the kotla on the high bank of the river. it was pleasant to see the long lines of men, women, and children winding along from different quarters of the town, each party following behind their respective head men. they often amounted to between five and six hundred souls, and required an exertion of voice which brought back the complaint for which i had got the uvula excised at the cape. they were always very attentive; and moriantsane, in order, as he thought, to please me, on one occasion rose up in the middle of the discourse, and hurled his staff at the heads of some young fellows whom he saw working with a skin instead of listening. my hearers sometimes put very sensible questions on the subjects brought before them; at other times they introduced the most frivolous nonsense immediately after hearing the most solemn truths. some begin to pray to jesus in secret as soon as they hear of the white man's god, with but little idea of what they are about; and no doubt are heard by him who, like a father, pitieth his children. others, waking by night, recollect what has been said about the future world so clearly that they tell next day what a fright they got by it, and resolve not to listen to the teaching again; and not a few keep to the determination not to believe, as certain villagers in the south, who put all their cocks to death because they crowed the words, "tlang lo rapeleng"--"come along to prayers". on recovering partially from a severe attack of fever which remained upon me ever since our passing the village of moremi on the chobe, we made ready for our departure up the river by sending messages before us to the villages to prepare food. we took four elephants' tusks, belonging to sekeletu, with us, as a means of testing the difference of prices between the portuguese, whom we expected to reach, and the white traders from the south. moriantsane supplied us well with honey, milk, and meal. the rains were just commencing in this district; but, though showers sufficient to lay the dust had fallen, they had no influence whatever on the amount of water in the river, yet never was there less in any part than three hundred yards of a deep flowing stream. our progress up the river was rather slow; this was caused by waiting opposite different villages for supplies of food. we might have done with much less than we got; but my makololo man, pitsane, knew of the generous orders of sekeletu, and was not at all disposed to allow them to remain a dead letter. the villages of the banyeti contributed large quantities of mosibe, a bright red bean yielded by a large tree. the pulp inclosing the seed is not much thicker than a red wafer, and is the portion used. it requires the addition of honey to render it at all palatable. to these were added great numbers of the fruit which yields a variety of the nux vomica, from which we derive that virulent poison strychnia. the pulp between the nuts is the part eaten, and it is of a pleasant juicy nature, having a sweet acidulous taste. the fruit itself resembles a large yellow orange, but the rind is hard, and, with the pips and bark, contains much of the deadly poison. they evince their noxious qualities by an intensely bitter taste. the nuts, swallowed inadvertently, cause considerable pain, but not death; and to avoid this inconvenience, the people dry the pulp before the fire, in order to be able the more easily to get rid of the noxious seeds. a much better fruit, called mobola, was also presented to us. this bears, around a pretty large stone, as much of the fleshy part as the common date, and it is stripped off the seeds and preserved in bags in a similar manner to that fruit. besides sweetness, the mobola has the flavor of strawberries, with a touch of nauseousness. we carried some of them, dried as provisions, more than a hundred miles from this spot. the next fruit, named mamosho (mother of morning), is the most delicious of all. it is about the size of a walnut, and, unlike most of the other uncultivated fruits, has a seed no larger than that of a date. the fleshy part is juicy, and somewhat like the cashew-apple, with a pleasant acidity added. fruits similar to those which are here found on trees are found on the plains of the kalahari, growing on mere herbaceous plants. there are several other examples of a similar nature. shrubs, well known as such in the south, assume the rank of trees as we go to the north; and the change is quite gradual as our latitude decreases, the gradations being herbaceous plants, shrubs, bushes, small, then large trees. but it is questionable if, in the cases of mamosho, mobola, and mawa, the tree and shrub are identical, though the fruits so closely resemble each other; for i found both the dwarf and tree in the same latitude. there is also a difference in the leaves, and they bear at different seasons. the banks of the river were at this time appearing to greater advantage than before. many trees were putting on their fresh green leaves, though they had got no rain, their lighter green contrasting beautifully with the dark motsouri, or moyela, now covered with pink plums as large as cherries. the rapids, having comparatively little water in them, rendered our passage difficult. the canoes must never be allowed to come broadside on to the stream, for, being flat-bottomed, they would, in that case, be at once capsized, and every thing in them be lost. the men work admirably, and are always in good humor; they leap into the water without the least hesitation, to save the canoe from being caught by eddies or dashed against the rocks. many parts were now quite shallow, and it required great address and power in balancing themselves to keep the vessel free from rocks, which lay just beneath the surface. we might have got deeper water in the middle, but the boatmen always keep near the banks, on account of danger from the hippopotami. but, though we might have had deeper water farther out, i believe that no part of the rapids is very deep. the river is spread out more than a mile, and the water flows rapidly over the rocky bottom. the portions only three hundred yards wide are very deep, and contain large volumes of flowing water in narrow compass, which, when spread over the much larger surface at the rapids, must be shallow. still, remembering that this was the end of the dry season, when such rivers as the orange do not even contain a fifth part of the water of the chobe, the difference between the rivers of the north and south must be sufficiently obvious. the rapids are caused by rocks of dark brown trap, or of hardened sandstone, stretching across the stream. in some places they form miles of flat rocky bottom, with islets covered with trees. at the cataracts noted in the map, the fall is from four to six feet, and, in guiding up the canoe, the stem goes under the water, and takes in a quantity before it can attain the higher level. we lost many of our biscuits in the ascent through this. these rocks are covered with a small, hard aquatic plant, which, when the surface is exposed, becomes dry and crisp, crackling under the foot as if it contained much stony matter in its tissue. it probably assists in disintegrating the rocks; for, in parts so high as not to be much exposed to the action of the water or the influence of the plant, the rocks are covered with a thin black glaze. in passing along under the overhanging trees of the banks, we often saw the pretty turtle-doves sitting peacefully on their nests above the roaring torrent. an ibis* had perched her home on the end of a stump. her loud, harsh scream of "wa-wa-wa", and the piping of the fish-hawk, are sounds which can never be forgotten by any one who has sailed on the rivers north of deg. south. if we step on shore, the 'charadrius caruncula', a species of plover, a most plaguy sort of "public-spirited individual", follows you, flying overhead, and is most persevering in its attempts to give fair warning to all the animals within hearing to flee from the approaching danger. the alarm-note, "tinc-tinc-tinc", of another variety of the same family ('pluvianus armatus' of burchell) has so much of a metallic ring, that this bird is called "setula-tsipi", or hammering-iron. it is furnished with a sharp spur on its shoulder, much like that on the heel of a cock, but scarcely half an inch in length. conscious of power, it may be seen chasing the white-necked raven with great fury, and making even that comparatively large bird call out from fear. it is this bird which is famed for its friendship with the crocodile of the nile by the name 'siksak', and which mr. st. john actually saw performing the part of toothpicker to the ugly reptile. they are frequently seen on the sand-banks with the alligator, and, to one passing by, often appear as if on that reptile's back; but i never had the good fortune to witness the operation described not only by st. john and geoffrey st. hilaire, but also by herodotus. however, that which none of these authors knew my head boatman, mashauana, stopped the canoe to tell us, namely, that a water-turtle which, in trying to ascend a steep bank to lay her eggs, had toppled on her back, thus enabling us to capture her, was an infallible omen of good luck for our journey. * the 'hagidash', latham; or 'tantalus capensis' of lich. among the forest-trees which line the banks of the rocky parts of the leeambye several new birds were observed. some are musical, and the songs are pleasant in contrast with the harsh voice of the little green, yellow-shouldered parrots of the country. there are also great numbers of jet-black weavers, with yellowish-brown band on the shoulders. here we saw, for the first time, a pretty little bird, colored dark blue, except the wings and tail, which were of a chocolate hue. from the tail two feathers are prolonged beyond the rest six inches. also, little birds colored white and black, of great vivacity, and always in companies of six or eight together, and various others. from want of books of reference, i could not decide whether they were actually new to science. francolins and guinea-fowl abound along the banks; and on every dead tree and piece of rock may be seen one or two species of the web-footed 'plotus', darter, or snake-bird. they sit most of the day sunning themselves over the stream, sometimes standing erect with their wings outstretched; occasionally they may be seen engaged in fishing by diving, and, as they swim about, their bodies are so much submerged that hardly any thing appears above the water but their necks. the chief time of feeding is by night, and, as the sun declines, they may be seen in flocks flying from their roosting-places to the fishing-grounds. this is a most difficult bird to catch when disabled. it is thoroughly expert in diving--goes down so adroitly and comes up again in the most unlikely places, that the people, though most skillful in the management of the canoes, can rarely secure them. the rump of the darter is remarkably prolonged, and capable of being bent, so as to act both as a rudder in swimming, and as a lever to lift the bird high enough out of the water to give free scope to its wings. it can rise at will from the water by means of this appendage. the fine fish-hawk, with white head and neck, and reddish-chocolate colored body, may also frequently be seen perched on the trees, and fish are often found dead which have fallen victims to its talons. one most frequently seen in this condition is itself a destroyer of fish. it is a stout-bodied fish, about fifteen or eighteen inches long, of a light yellow color, and gayly ornamented with stripes and spots. it has a most imposing array of sharp, conical teeth outside the lips--objects of dread to the fisherman, for it can use them effectually. one which we picked up dead had killed itself by swallowing another fish, which, though too large for its stomach and throat, could not be disgorged. this fish-hawk generally kills more prey than it can devour. it eats a portion of the back of the fish, and leaves the rest for the barotse, who often had a race across the river when they saw an abandoned morsel lying on the opposite sand-banks. the hawk is, however, not always so generous, for, as i myself was a witness on the zouga, it sometimes plunders the purse of the pelican. soaring over head, and seeing this large, stupid bird fishing beneath, it watches till a fine fish is safe in the pelican's pouch; then descending, not very quickly, but with considerable noise of wing, the pelican looks up to see what is the matter, and, as the hawk comes near, he supposes that he is about to be killed, and roars out "murder!" the opening of his mouth enables the hawk to whisk the fish out of the pouch, upon which the pelican does not fly away, but commences fishing again, the fright having probably made him forget he had any thing in his purse. a fish called mosheba, about the size of a minnow, often skims along the surface for several yards, in order to get out of the way of the canoe. it uses the pectoral fins, as the flying-fish do, but never makes a clean flight. it is rather a succession of hops along the surface, made by the aid of the side fins. it never becomes large. numbers of iguanos (mpulu) sit sunning themselves on overhanging branches of the trees, and splash into the water as we approach. they are highly esteemed as an article of food, the flesh being tender and gelatinous. the chief boatman, who occupies the stem, has in consequence a light javelin always at hand to spear them if they are not quickly out of sight. these, and large alligators gliding in from the banks with a heavy plunge as we come round a sudden bend of the stream, were the occurrences of every hour as we sped up the river. the rapids in the part of the river between katima-molelo and nameta are relieved by several reaches of still, deep water, fifteen or twenty miles long. in these very large herds of hippopotami are seen, and the deep furrows they make, in ascending the banks to graze during the nights, are every where apparent. they are guided back to the water by the scent, but a long continued pouring rain makes it impossible for them to perceive, by that means, in which direction the river lies, and they are found bewildered on the land. the hunters take advantage of their helplessness on these occasions to kill them. it is impossible to judge of the numbers in a herd, for they are almost always hidden beneath the waters; but as they require to come up every few minutes to breathe, when there is a constant succession of heads thrown up, then the herd is supposed to be large. they love a still reach of the stream, as in the more rapid parts of the channel they are floated down so quickly that much exertion is necessary to regain the distance lost by frequently swimming up again: such constant exertion disturbs them in their nap. they prefer to remain by day in a drowsy, yawning state, and, though their eyes are open, they take little notice of things at a distance. the males utter a loud succession of snorting grunts, which may be heard a mile off. the canoe in which i was, in passing over a wounded one, elicited a distinct grunting, though the animal lay entirely under water. the young, when very little, take their stand on the neck of the dam, and the small head, rising above the large, comes soonest to the surface. the dam, knowing the more urgent need of her calf, comes more frequently to the surface when it is in her care. but in the rivers of londa, where they are much in danger of being shot, even the hippopotamus gains wit by experience; for, while those in the zambesi put up their heads openly to blow, those referred to keep their noses among water-plants, and breathe so quietly that one would not dream of their existence in the river except by footprints on the banks. chapter . increasing beauty of the country--mode of spending the day--the people and the falls of gonye--a makololo foray--a second prevented, and captives delivered up--politeness and liberality of the people-- the rains--present of oxen--the fugitive barotse--sekobinyane's misgovernment--bee-eaters and other birds--fresh-water sponges--current--death from a lion's bite at libonta--continued kindness--arrangements for spending the night during the journey--cooking and washing--abundance of animal life--different species of birds--water-fowl--egyptian geese--alligators--narrow escape of one of my men--superstitious feelings respecting the alligator--large game--the most vulnerable spot--gun medicine--a sunday--birds of song--depravity; its treatment--wild fruits--green pigeons--shoals of fish--hippopotami. th of november, . at gonye falls. no rain has fallen here, so it is excessively hot. the trees have put on their gayest dress, and many flowers adorn the landscape, yet the heat makes all the leaves droop at midday and look languid for want of rain. if the country increases as much in beauty in front as it has done within the last four degrees of latitude, it will be indeed a lovely land. we all felt great lassitude in traveling. the atmosphere is oppressive both in cloud and sunshine. the evaporation from the river must be excessively great, and i feel as if the fluids of the system joined in the general motion of watery vapor upward, as enormous quantities of water must be drunk to supply its place. when under way our usual procedure is this: we get up a little before five in the morning; it is then beginning to dawn. while i am dressing, coffee is made; and, having filled my pannikin, the remainder is handed to my companions, who eagerly partake of the refreshing beverage. the servants are busy loading the canoes, while the principal men are sipping the coffee, and, that being soon over, we embark. the next two hours are the most pleasant part of the day's sail. the men paddle away most vigorously; the barotse, being a tribe of boatmen, have large, deeply-developed chests and shoulders, with indifferent lower extremities. they often engage in loud scolding of each other in order to relieve the tedium of their work. about eleven we land, and eat any meat which may have remained from the previous evening meal, or a biscuit with honey, and drink water. after an hour's rest we again embark and cower under an umbrella. the heat is oppressive, and, being weak from the last attack of fever, i can not land and keep the camp supplied with flesh. the men, being quite uncovered in the sun, perspire profusely, and in the afternoon begin to stop, as if waiting for the canoes which have been left behind. sometimes we reach a sleeping-place two hours before sunset, and, all being troubled with languor, we gladly remain for the night. coffee again, and a biscuit, or a piece of coarse bread made of maize meal, or that of the native corn, make up the bill of fare for the evening, unless we have been fortunate enough to kill something, when we boil a potful of flesh. this is done by cutting it up into long strips and pouring in water till it is covered. when that is boiled dry, the meat is considered ready. the people at gonye carry the canoes over the space requisite to avoid the falls by slinging them on poles tied on diagonally. they place these on their shoulders, and, setting about the work with good humor, soon accomplish the task. they are a merry set of mortals; a feeble joke sets them off in a fit of laughter. here, as elsewhere, all petitioned for the magic lantern, and, as it is a good means of conveying instruction, i willingly complied. the falls of gonye have not been made by wearing back, like those of niagara, but are of a fissure form. for many miles below, the river is confined in a narrow space of not more than one hundred yards wide. the water goes boiling along, and gives the idea of great masses of it rolling over and over, so that even the most expert swimmer would find it difficult to keep on the surface. here it is that the river, when in flood, rises fifty or sixty feet in perpendicular height. the islands above the falls are covered with foliage as beautiful as can be seen any where. viewed from the mass of rock which overhangs the fall, the scenery was the loveliest i had seen. nothing worthy of note occurred on our way up to nameta. there we heard that a party of the makololo, headed by lerimo, had made a foray to the north and up the leeba, in the very direction in which we were about to proceed. mpololo, the uncle of sekeletu, is considered the head man of the barotse valley; and the perpetrators had his full sanction, because masiko, a son of santuru, the former chief of the barotse, had fled high up the leeambye, and, establishing himself there, had sent men down to the vicinity of naliele to draw away the remaining barotse from their allegiance. lerimo's party had taken some of this masiko's subjects prisoners, and destroyed several villages of the balonda, to whom we were going. this was in direct opposition to the policy of sekeletu, who wished to be at peace with these northern tribes; and pitsane, my head man, was the bearer of orders to mpololo to furnish us with presents for the very chiefs they had attacked. thus we were to get large pots of clarified butter and bunches of beads, in confirmation of the message of peace we were to deliver. when we reached litofe, we heard that a fresh foray was in contemplation, but i sent forward orders to disband the party immediately. at ma-sekeletu's town we found the head offender, mpololo himself, and i gave him a bit of my mind, to the effect that, as i was going with the full sanction of sekeletu, if any harm happened to me in consequence of his ill-advised expedition, the guilt would rest with him. ma-sekeletu, who was present, heartily approved all i said, and suggested that all the captives taken by lerimo should be returned by my hand, to show masiko that the guilt of the foray lay not with the superior persons of the makololo, but with a mere servant. her good sense appeared in other respects besides, and, as this was exactly what my own party had previously resolved to suggest, we were pleased to hear mpololo agree to do what he was advised. he asked me to lay the matter before the under-chiefs of naliele, and when we reached that place, on the th of december, i did so in a picho, called expressly for the purpose. lerimo was present, and felt rather crestfallen when his exploit was described by mohorisi, one of my companions, as one of extreme cowardice, he having made an attack upon the defenseless villagers of londa, while, as we had found on our former visit, a lion had actually killed eight people of naliele without his daring to encounter it. the makololo are cowardly in respect to animals, but brave against men. mpololo took all the guilt upon himself before the people, and delivered up a captive child whom his wife had in her possession; others followed his example, till we procured the release of five of the prisoners. some thought, as masiko had tried to take their children by stratagem, they ought to take his by force, as the two modes suited the genius of each people--the makalaka delight in cunning, and the makololo in fighting; and others thought, if sekeletu meant them to be at peace with masiko, he ought to have told them so. it is rather dangerous to tread in the footsteps of a marauding party with men of the same tribe as the aggressors, but my people were in good spirits, and several volunteers even offered to join our ranks. we, however, adhered strictly to the orders of sekeletu as to our companions, and refused all others. the people of every village treated us most liberally, presenting, besides oxen, butter, milk, and meal, more than we could stow away in our canoes. the cows in this valley are now yielding, as they frequently do, more milk than the people can use, and both men and women present butter in such quantity that i shall be able to refresh my men as we move along. anointing the skin prevents the excessive evaporation of the fluids of the body, and acts as clothing in both sun and shade. they always made their presents gracefully. when an ox was given, the owner would say, "here is a little bit of bread for you." this was pleasing, for i had been accustomed to the bechuanas presenting a miserable goat, with the pompous exclamation, "behold an ox!" the women persisted in giving me copious supplies of shrill praises, or "lullilooing"; but, though i frequently told them to modify their "great lords" and "great lions" to more humble expressions, they so evidently intended to do me honor that i could not help being pleased with the poor creatures' wishes for our success. the rains began while we were at naliele; this is much later than usual; but, though the barotse valley has been in need of rain, the people never lack abundance of food. the showers are refreshing, but the air feels hot and close; the thermometer, however, in a cool hut, stands only at deg. the access of the external air to any spot at once raises its temperature above deg. a new attack of fever here caused excessive languor; but, as i am already getting tired of quoting my fevers, and never liked to read travels myself where much was said about the illnesses of the traveler, i shall henceforth endeavor to say little about them. we here sent back the canoe of sekeletu, and got the loan of others from mpololo. eight riding oxen, and seven for slaughter, were, according to the orders of that chief, also furnished; some were intended for our own use, and others as presents to the chiefs of the balonda. mpololo was particularly liberal in giving all that sekeletu ordered, though, as he feeds on the cattle he has in charge, he might have felt it so much abstracted from his own perquisites. mpololo now acts the great man, and is followed every where by a crowd of toadies, who sing songs in disparagement of mpepe, of whom he always lived in fear. while mpepe was alive, he too was regaled with the same fulsome adulation, and now they curse him. they are very foul-tongued; equals, on meeting, often greet each other with a profusion of oaths, and end the volley with a laugh. in coming up the river to naliele we met a party of fugitive barotse returning to their homes, and, as the circumstance illustrates the social status of these subjects of the makololo, i introduce it here. the villagers in question were the children, or serfs, if we may use the term, of a young man of the same age and tribe as sekeletu, who, being of an irritable temper, went by the nickname of sekobinyane--a little slavish thing. his treatment of his servants was so bad that most of them had fled; and when the mambari came, and, contrary to the orders of sekeletu, purchased slaves, sekobinyane sold one or two of the barotse children of his village. the rest fled immediately to masiko, and were gladly received by that barotse chief as his subjects. when sekeletu and i first ascended the leeambye, we met sekobinyane coming down, on his way to linyanti. on being asked the news, he remained silent about the loss of his village, it being considered a crime among the makololo for any one to treat his people so ill as to cause them to run away from him. he then passed us, and, dreading the vengeance of sekeletu for his crime, secretly made his escape from linyanti to lake ngami. he was sent for, however, and the chief at the lake delivered him up, on sekeletu declaring that he had no intention of punishing him otherwise than by scolding. he did not even do that, as sekobinyane was evidently terrified enough, and also became ill through fear. the fugitive villagers remained only a few weeks with their new master masiko, and then fled back again, and were received as if they had done nothing wrong. all united in abusing the conduct of sekobinyane, and no one condemned the fugitives; and the cattle, the use of which they had previously enjoyed, never having been removed from their village, they re-established themselves with apparent gladness. this incident may give some idea of the serfdom of the subject tribes, and, except that they are sometimes punished for running away and other offenses, i can add nothing more by way of showing the true nature of this form of servitude. leaving naliele, amid abundance of good wishes for the success of our expedition, and hopes that we might return accompanied with white traders, we began again our ascent of the river. it was now beginning to rise, though the rains had but just commenced in the valley. the banks are low, but cleanly cut, and seldom sloping. at low water they are from four to eight feet high, and make the river always assume very much the aspect of a canal. they are in some parts of whitish, tenacious clay, with strata of black clay intermixed, and black loam in sand, or pure sand stratified. as the river rises it is always wearing to one side or the other, and is known to have cut across from one bend to another, and to form new channels. as we coast along the shore, pieces which are undermined often fall in with a splash like that caused by the plunge of an alligator, and endanger the canoe. these perpendicular banks afford building-places to a pretty bee-eater,* which loves to breed in society. the face of the sand-bank is perforated with hundreds of holes leading to their nests, each of which is about a foot apart from the other; and as we pass they pour out of their hiding-places, and float overhead. * 'merops apiaster' and 'm. bullockoides' (smith). a speckled kingfisher is seen nearly every hundred yards, which builds in similar spots, and attracts the attention of herd-boys, who dig out its nest for the sake of the young. this, and a most lovely little blue and orange kingfisher, are seen every where along the banks, dashing down like a shot into the water for their prey. a third, seen more rarely, is as large as a pigeon, and is of a slaty color. another inhabitant of the banks is the sand-martin, which also likes company in the work of raising a family. they never leave this part of the country. one may see them preening themselves in the very depth of winter, while the swallows, of which we shall yet speak, take winter trips. i saw sand-martins at the orange river during a period of winter frost; it is, therefore, probable that they do not migrate even from thence. around the reeds, which in some parts line the banks, we see fresh-water sponges. they usually encircle the stalk, and are hard and brittle, presenting numbers of small round grains near their circumference. the river was running at the rate of five miles an hour, and carried bunches of reed and decaying vegetable matter on its surface; yet the water was not discolored. it had, however, a slightly yellowish-green tinge, somewhat deeper than its natural color. this arose from the quantity of sand carried by the rising flood from sand-banks, which are annually shifted from one spot to another, and from the pieces falling in as the banks are worn; for when the water is allowed to stand in a glass, a few seconds suffice for its deposit at the bottom. this is considered an unhealthy period. when waiting, on one occasion, for the other canoes to come up, i felt no inclination to leave the one i was in; but my head boatman, mashauana, told me never to remain on board while so much vegetable matter was floating down the stream. th december. at libonta. we were detained for days together collecting contributions of fat and butter, according to the orders of sekeletu, as presents to the balonda chiefs. much fever prevailed, and ophthalmia was rife, as is generally the case before the rains begin. some of my own men required my assistance, as well as the people of libonta. a lion had done a good deal of mischief here, and when the people went to attack it two men were badly wounded; one of them had his thigh-bone quite broken, showing the prodigious power of this animal's jaws. the inflammation produced by the teeth-wounds proved fatal to one of them. here we demanded the remainder of the captives, and got our number increased to nineteen. they consisted of women and children, and one young man of twenty. one of the boys was smuggled away in the crowd as we embarked. the makololo under-chiefs often act in direct opposition to the will of the head chief, trusting to circumstances and brazenfacedness to screen themselves from his open displeasure; and as he does not always find it convenient to notice faults, they often go to considerable lengths in wrong-doing. libonta is the last town of the makololo; so, when we parted from it, we had only a few cattle-stations and outlying hamlets in front, and then an uninhabited border country till we came to londa or lunda. libonta is situated on a mound like the rest of the villages in the barotse valley, but here the tree-covered sides of the valley begin to approach nearer the river. the village itself belongs to two of the chief wives of sebituane, who furnished us with an ox and abundance of other food. the same kindness was manifested by all who could afford to give any thing; and as i glance over their deeds of generosity recorded in my journal, my heart glows with gratitude to them, and i hope and pray that god may spare me to make them some return. before leaving the villages entirely, we may glance at our way of spending the nights. as soon as we land, some of the men cut a little grass for my bed, while mashauana plants the poles of the little tent. these are used by day for carrying burdens, for the barotse fashion is exactly like that of the natives of india, only the burden is fastened near the ends of the pole, and not suspended by long cords. the bed is made, and boxes ranged on each side of it, and then the tent pitched over all. four or five feet in front of my tent is placed the principal or kotla fire, the wood for which must be collected by the man who occupies the post of herald, and takes as his perquisite the heads of all the oxen slaughtered, and of all the game too. each person knows the station he is to occupy, in reference to the post of honor at the fire in front of the door of the tent. the two makololo occupy my right and left, both in eating and sleeping, as long as the journey lasts. but mashauana, my head boatman, makes his bed at the door of the tent as soon as i retire. the rest, divided into small companies according to their tribes, make sheds all round the fire, leaving a horseshoe-shaped space in front sufficient for the cattle to stand in. the fire gives confidence to the oxen, so the men are always careful to keep them in sight of it. the sheds are formed by planting two stout forked poles in an inclined direction, and placing another over these in a horizontal position. a number of branches are then stuck in the ground in the direction to which the poles are inclined, the twigs drawn down to the horizontal pole and tied with strips of bark. long grass is then laid over the branches in sufficient quantity to draw off the rain, and we have sheds open to the fire in front, but secure from beasts behind. in less than an hour we were usually all under cover. we never lacked abundance of grass during the whole journey. it is a picturesque sight at night, when the clear bright moon of these climates glances on the sleeping forms around, to look out upon the attitudes of profound repose both men and beasts assume. there being no danger from wild animals in such a night, the fires are allowed almost to go out; and as there is no fear of hungry dogs coming over sleepers and devouring the food, or quietly eating up the poor fellows' blankets, which at best were but greasy skins, which sometimes happened in the villages, the picture was one of perfect peace. the cooking is usually done in the natives' own style, and, as they carefully wash the dishes, pots, and the hands before handling food, it is by no means despicable. sometimes alterations are made at my suggestion, and then they believe that they can cook in thorough white man's fashion. the cook always comes in for something left in the pot, so all are eager to obtain the office. i taught several of them to wash my shirts, and they did it well, though their teacher had never been taught that work himself. frequent changes of linen and sunning of my blanket kept me more comfortable than might have been anticipated, and i feel certain that the lessons of cleanliness rigidly instilled by my mother in childhood helped to maintain that respect which these people entertain for european ways. it is questionable if a descent to barbarous ways ever elevates a man in the eyes of savages. when quite beyond the inhabited parts, we found the country abounding in animal life of every form. there are upward of thirty species of birds on the river itself. hundreds of the 'ibis religiosa' come down the leeambye with the rising water, as they do on the nile; then large white pelicans, in flocks of three hundred at a time, following each other in long extending line, rising and falling as they fly so regularly all along as to look like an extended coil of birds; clouds of a black shell-eating bird, called linongolo ('anastomus lamelligerus'); also plovers, snipes, curlews, and herons without number. there are, besides the more common, some strange varieties. the pretty white 'ardetta' is seen in flocks, settling on the backs of large herds of buffaloes, and following them on the wing when they run; while the kala ('textor erythrorhynchus') is a better horseman, for it sits on the withers when the animal is at full speed. then those strange birds, the scissor-bills, with snow-white breast, jet-black coat, and red beak, sitting by day on the sand-banks, the very picture of comfort and repose. their nests are only little hollows made on these same sand-banks, without any attempt of concealment; they watch them closely, and frighten away the marabou and crows from their eggs by feigned attacks at their heads. when man approaches their nests, they change their tactics, and, like the lapwing and ostrich, let one wing drop and make one leg limp, as if lame. the upper mandible being so much shorter than the lower, the young are more helpless than the stork in the fable with the flat dishes, and must have every thing conveyed into the mouth by the parents till they are able to provide for themselves. the lower mandible, as thin as a paper-knife, is put into the water while the bird skims along the surface, and scoops up any little insects it meets. it has great length of wing, and can continue its flight with perfect ease, the wings acting, though kept above the level of the body. the wonder is, how this plowing of the surface of the water can be so well performed as to yield a meal, for it is usually done in the dark. like most aquatic feeders, they work by night, when insects and fishes rise to the surface. they have great affection for their young, its amount being increased in proportion to the helplessness of the offspring. there are also numbers of spoonbills, nearly white in plumage; the beautiful, stately flamingo; the numidian crane, or demoiselle, some of which, tamed at government house, cape town, struck every one as most graceful ornaments to a noble mansion, as they perched on its pillars. there are two cranes besides--one light blue, the other also light blue, but with a white neck; and gulls ('procellaria') of different sizes abound. one pretty little wader, an avoset, appears as if standing on stilts, its legs are so long; and its bill seems bent the wrong way, or upward. it is constantly seen wading in the shallows, digging up little slippery insects, the peculiar form of the bill enabling it to work them easily out of the sand. when feeding, it puts its head under the water to seize the insect at the bottom, then lifts it up quickly, making a rapid gobbling, as if swallowing a wriggling worm. the 'parra africana' runs about on the surface, as if walking on water, catching insects. it too has long, thin legs, and extremely long toes, for the purpose of enabling it to stand on the floating lotus-leaves and other aquatic plants. when it stands on a lotus-leaf five inches in diameter, the spread of the toes, acting on the principle of snow-shoes, occupies all the surface, and it never sinks, though it obtains a livelihood, not by swimming or flying, but by walking on the water. water-birds, whose prey or food requires a certain aim or action in one direction, have bills quite straight in form, as the heron and snipe; while those which are intended to come in contact with hard substances, as breaking shells, have the bills gently curved, in order that the shock may not be communicated to the brain. the barotse valley contains great numbers of large black geese.* they may be seen every where walking slowly about, feeding. they have a strong black spur on the shoulder, like the armed plover, and as strong as that on the heel of a cock, but are never seen to use them, except in defense of their young. they choose ant-hills for their nests, and in the time of laying the barotse consume vast quantities of their eggs. there are also two varieties of geese, of somewhat smaller size, but better eating. one of these, the egyptian goose, or vulpanser, can not rise from the water, and during the floods of the river great numbers are killed by being pursued in canoes. the third is furnished with a peculiar knob on the beak. these, with myriads of ducks of three varieties, abound every where on the leeambye. on one occasion the canoe neared a bank on which a large flock was sitting. two shots furnished our whole party with a supper, for we picked up seventeen ducks and a goose. no wonder the barotse always look back to this fruitful valley as the israelites did to the flesh-pots of egypt. the poorest persons are so well supplied with food from their gardens, fruits from the forest trees, and fish from the river, that their children, when taken into the service of the makololo, where they have only one large meal a day, become quite emaciated, and pine for a return to their parents. * 'anser leucagaster' and 'melanogaster'. part of our company marched along the banks with the oxen, and part went in the canoes, but our pace was regulated by the speed of the men on shore. their course was rather difficult, on account of the numbers of departing and re-entering branches of the leeambye, which they had to avoid or wait at till we ferried them over. the number of alligators is prodigious, and in this river they are more savage than in some others. many children are carried off annually at sesheke and other towns; for, notwithstanding the danger, when they go down for water they almost always must play a while. this reptile is said by the natives to strike the victim with its tail, then drag him in and drown him. when lying in the water watching for prey, the body never appears. many calves are lost also, and it is seldom that a number of cows can swim over at sesheke without some loss. i never could avoid shuddering on seeing my men swimming across these branches, after one of them had been caught by the thigh and taken below. he, however, retained, as nearly all of them in the most trying circumstances do, his full presence of mind, and, having a small, square, ragged-edged javelin with him, when dragged to the bottom gave the alligator a stab behind the shoulder. the alligator, writhing in pain, left him, and he came out with the deep marks of the reptile's teeth on his thigh. here the people have no antipathy to persons who have met with such an adventure, but, in the bamangwato and bakwain tribes, if a man is either bitten or even has had water splashed over him by the reptile's tail, he is expelled his tribe. when on the zouga we saw one of the bamangwato living among the bayeiye, who had the misfortune to have been bitten and driven out of his tribe in consequence. fearing that i would regard him with the same disgust which his countrymen profess to feel, he would not tell me the cause of his exile, but the bayeiye informed me of it, and the scars of the teeth were visible on his thigh. if the bakwains happened to go near an alligator they would spit on the ground, and indicate its presence by saying "boleo ki bo"--"there is sin". they imagine the mere sight of it would give inflammation of the eyes; and though they eat the zebra without hesitation, yet if one bites a man he is expelled the tribe, and obliged to take his wife and family away to the kalahari. these curious relics of the animal-worship of former times scarcely exist among the makololo. sebituane acted on the principle, "whatever is food for men is food for me;" so no man is here considered unclean. the barotse appear inclined to pray to alligators and eat them too, for when i wounded a water-antelope, called mochose, it took to the water; when near the other side of the river an alligator appeared at its tail, and then both sank together. mashauana, who was nearer to it than i, told me that, "though he had called to it to let his meat alone, it refused to listen." one day we passed some barotse lads who had speared an alligator, and were waiting in expectation of its floating soon after. the meat has a strong musky odor, not at all inviting for any one except the very hungry. when we had gone thirty or forty miles above libonta we sent eleven of our captives to the west, to the chief called makoma, with an explanatory message. this caused some delay; but as we were loaded with presents of food from the makololo, and the wild animals were in enormous herds, we fared sumptuously. it was grievous, however, to shoot the lovely creatures, they were so tame. with but little skill in stalking, one could easily get within fifty or sixty yards of them. there i lay, looking at the graceful forms and motions of beautiful pokus,* leches, and other antelopes, often till my men, wondering what was the matter, came up to see, and frightened them away. if we had been starving, i could have slaughtered them with as little hesitation as i should cut off a patient's leg; but i felt a doubt, and the antelopes got the benefit of it. have they a guardian spirit over them? i have repeatedly observed, when i approached a herd lying beyond an ant-hill with a tree on it, and viewed them with the greatest caution, they very soon showed symptoms of uneasiness. they did not sniff danger in the wind, for i was to leeward of them; but the almost invariable apprehension of danger which arose, while unconscious of the direction in which it lay, made me wonder whether each had what the ancient physicians thought we all possessed, an archon, or presiding spirit. * i propose to name this new species 'antilope vardonii', after the african traveler, major vardon. if we could ascertain the most fatal spot in an animal, we could dispatch it with the least possible amount of suffering; but as that is probably the part to which the greatest amount of nervous influence is directed at the moment of receiving the shot, if we can not be sure of the heart or brain, we are never certain of speedy death. antelopes, formed for a partially amphibious existence, and other animals of that class, are much more tenacious of life than those which are purely terrestrial. most antelopes, when in distress or pursued, make for the water. if hunted, they always do. a leche shot right through the body, and no limb-bone broken, is almost sure to get away, while a zebra, with a wound of no greater severity, will probably drop down dead. i have seen a rhinoceros, while standing apparently chewing the cud, drop down dead from a shot in the stomach, while others shot through one lung and the stomach go off as if little hurt. but if one should crawl up silently to within twenty yards either of the white or black rhinoceros, throwing up a pinch of dust every now and then, to find out that the anxiety to keep the body concealed by the bushes has not led him to the windward side, then sit down, rest the elbow on the knees, and aim, slanting a little upward, at a dark spot behind the shoulders, it falls stone dead. to show that a shock on the part of the system to which much nervous force is at the time directed will destroy life, it may be mentioned that an eland, when hunted, can be dispatched by a wound which does little more than injure the muscular system; its whole nervous force is then imbuing the organs of motion; and a giraffe, when pressed hard by a good horse only two or three hundred yards, has been known to drop down dead, without any wound being inflicted at all. a full gallop by an eland or giraffe quite dissipates its power, and the hunters, aware of this, always try to press them at once to it, knowing that they have but a short space to run before the animals are in their power. in doing this, the old sportsmen are careful not to go too close to the giraffe's tail, for this animal can swing his hind foot round in a way which would leave little to choose between a kick with it and a clap from the arm of a windmill. when the nervous force is entire, terrible wounds may be inflicted without killing; a tsessebe having been shot through the neck while quietly feeding, we went to him, and one of the men cut his throat deep enough to bleed him largely. he started up after this and ran more than a mile, and would have got clear off had not a dog brought him to bay under a tree, where we found him standing. my men, having never had fire-arms in their hands before, found it so difficult to hold the musket steady at the flash of fire in the pan, that they naturally expected me to furnish them with "gun medicine", without which, it is almost universally believed, no one can shoot straight. great expectations had been formed when i arrived among the makololo on this subject; but, having invariably declined to deceive them, as some for their own profit have done, my men now supposed that i would at last consent, and thereby relieve myself from the hard work of hunting by employing them after due medication. this i was most willing to do, if i could have done it honestly; for, having but little of the hunting 'furore' in my composition, i always preferred eating the game to killing it. sulphur is the remedy most admired, and i remember sechele giving a large price for a very small bit. he also gave some elephants' tusks, worth pounds, for another medicine which was to make him invulnerable to musket balls. as i uniformly recommended that these things should be tested by experiment, a calf was anointed with the charm and tied to a tree. it proved decisive, and sechele remarked it was "pleasanter to be deceived than undeceived." i offered sulphur for the same purpose, but that was declined, even though a person came to the town afterward and rubbed his hands with a little before a successful trial of shooting at a mark. i explained to my men the nature of a gun, and tried to teach them, but they would soon have expended all the ammunition in my possession. i was thus obliged to do all the shooting myself ever afterward. their inability was rather a misfortune; for, in consequence of working too soon after having been bitten by the lion, the bone of my left arm had not united well. continual hard manual labor, and some falls from ox-back, lengthened the ligament by which the ends of the bones were united, and a false joint was the consequence. the limb has never been painful, as those of my companions on the day of the rencounter with the lion have been, but, there being a joint too many, i could not steady the rifle, and was always obliged to shoot with the piece resting on the left shoulder. i wanted steadiness of aim, and it generally happened that the more hungry the party became, the more frequently i missed the animals. we spent a sunday on our way up to the confluence of the leeba and leeambye. rains had fallen here before we came, and the woods had put on their gayest hue. flowers of great beauty and curious forms grow every where; they are unlike those in the south, and so are the trees. many of the forest-tree leaves are palmated and largely developed; the trunks are covered with lichens, and the abundance of ferns which appear in the woods shows we are now in a more humid climate than any to the south of the barotse valley. the ground begins to swarm with insect life; and in the cool, pleasant mornings the welkin rings with the singing of birds, which is not so delightful as the notes of birds at home, because i have not been familiar with them from infancy. the notes here, however, strike the mind by their loudness and variety, as the wellings forth from joyous hearts of praise to him who fills them with overflowing gladness. all of us rise early to enjoy the luscious balmy air of the morning. we then have worship; but, amid all the beauty and loveliness with which we are surrounded, there is still a feeling of want in the soul in viewing one's poor companions, and hearing bitter, impure words jarring on the ear in the perfection of the scenes of nature, and a longing that both their hearts and ours might be brought into harmony with the great father of spirits. i pointed out, in, as usual, the simplest words i could employ, the remedy which god has presented to us, in the inexpressibly precious gift of his own son, on whom the lord "laid the iniquity of us all." the great difficulty in dealing with these people is to make the subject plain. the minds of the auditors can not be understood by one who has not mingled much with them. they readily pray for the forgiveness of sins, and then sin again; confess the evil of it, and there the matter ends. i shall not often advert to their depravity. my practice has always been to apply the remedy with all possible earnestness, but never allow my own mind to dwell on the dark shades of men's characters. i have never been able to draw pictures of guilt, as if that could awaken christian sympathy. the evil is there. but all around in this fair creation are scenes of beauty, and to turn from these to ponder on deeds of sin can not promote a healthy state of the faculties. i attribute much of the bodily health i enjoy to following the plan adopted by most physicians, who, while engaged in active, laborious efforts to assist the needy, at the same time follow the delightful studies of some department of natural history. the human misery and sin we endeavor to alleviate and cure may be likened to the sickness and impurity of some of the back slums of great cities. one contents himself by ministering to the sick and trying to remove the causes, without remaining longer in the filth than is necessary for his work; another, equally anxious for the public good, stirs up every cesspool, that he may describe its reeking vapors, and, by long contact with impurities, becomes himself infected, sickens, and dies. the men went about during the day, and brought back wild fruits of several varieties, which i had not hitherto seen. one, called mogametsa, is a bean with a little pulp round it, which tastes like sponge-cake; another, named mawa, grows abundantly on a low bush. there are many berries and edible bulbs almost every where. the mamosho or moshomosho, and milo (a medlar), were to be found near our encampment. these are both good, if indeed one can be a fair judge who felt quite disposed to pass a favorable verdict on every fruit which had the property of being eatable at all. many kinds are better than our crab-apple or sloe, and, had they the care and culture these have enjoyed, might take high rank among the fruits of the world. all that the africans have thought of has been present gratification; and now, as i sometimes deposit date-seeds in the soil, and tell them i have no hope whatever of seeing the fruit, it seems to them as the act of the south sea islanders appears to us, when they planted in their gardens iron nails received from captain cook. there are many fruits and berries in the forests, the uses of which are unknown to my companions. great numbers of a kind of palm i have never met with before were seen growing at and below the confluence of the loeti and leeambye; the seed probably came down the former river. it is nearly as tall as the palmyra. the fruit is larger than of that species; it is about four inches long, and has a soft yellow pulp round the kernel or seed; when ripe, it is fluid and stringy, like the wild mango, and not very pleasant to eat. before we came to the junction of the leeba and leeambye we found the banks twenty feet high, and composed of marly sandstone. they are covered with trees, and the left bank has the tsetse and elephants. i suspect the fly has some connection with this animal, and the portuguese in the district of tete must think so too, for they call it the 'musca da elephant' (the elephant fly). the water of inundation covers even these lofty banks, but does not stand long upon them; hence the crop of trees. where it remains for any length of time, trees can not live. on the right bank, or that in which the loeti flows, there is an extensive flat country called manga, which, though covered with grass, is destitute in a great measure of trees. flocks of green pigeons rose from the trees as we passed along the banks, and the notes of many birds told that we were now among strangers of the feathered tribe. the beautiful trogon, with bright scarlet breast and black back, uttered a most peculiar note, similar to that we read of as having once been emitted by memnon, and likened to the tuning of a lyre. the boatmen answered it by calling "nama, nama!"--meat, meat--as if they thought that a repetition of the note would be a good omen for our success in hunting. many more interesting birds were met; but i could make no collection, as i was proceeding on the plan of having as little luggage as possible, so as not to excite the cupidity of those through whose country we intended to pass. vast shoals of fish come down the leeambye with the rising waters, as we observed they also do in the zouga. they are probably induced to make this migration by the increased rapidity of the current dislodging them from their old pasture-grounds higher up the river. insects constitute but a small portion of the food of many fish. fine vegetable matter, like slender mosses, growing on the bottom, is devoured greedily; and as the fishes are dislodged from the main stream by the force of the current, and find abundant pasture on the flooded plains, the whole community becomes disturbed and wanders. the mosala ('clarias capensis' and 'glanis siluris'), the mullet ('mugil africanus'), and other fishes, spread over the barotse valley in such numbers that when the waters retire all the people are employed in cutting them up and drying them in the sun. the supply exceeds the demand, and the land in numerous places is said to emit a most offensive smell. wherever you see the zambesi in the centre of the country, it is remarkable for the abundance of animal life in and upon its waters, and on the adjacent banks. we passed great numbers of hippopotami. they are very numerous in the parts of the river where they are never hunted. the males appear of a dark color, the females of yellowish brown. there is not such a complete separation of the sexes among them as among elephants. they spend most of their time in the water, lolling about in a listless, dreamy manner. when they come out of the river by night, they crop off the soft succulent grasses very neatly. when they blow, they puff up the water about three feet high. chapter . message to masiko, the barotse chief, regarding the captives-- navigation of the leeambye--capabilities of this district--the leeba--flowers and bees--buffalo-hunt--field for a botanist--young alligators; their savage nature--suspicion of the balonda--sekelenke's present--a man and his two wives--hunters--message from manenko, a female chief--mambari traders--a dream--sheakondo and his people--teeth-filing--desire for butter--interview with nyamoana, another female chief--court etiquette--hair versus wool--increase of superstition--arrival of manenko; her appearance and husband--mode of salutation--anklets--embassy, with a present from masiko--roast beef--manioc--magic lantern--manenko an accomplished scold: compels us to wait--unsuccessful zebra-hunt. on the th of december we were at the confluence of the leeba and leeambye (lat. d ' " s., long. d ' " e.). masiko, the barotse chief, for whom we had some captives, lived nearly due east of this point. they were two little boys, a little girl, a young man, and two middle-aged women. one of these was a member of a babimpe tribe, who knock out both upper and lower front teeth as a distinction. as we had been informed by the captives on the previous sunday that masiko was in the habit of seizing all orphans, and those who have no powerful friend in the tribe whose protection they can claim, and selling them for clothing to the mambari, we thought the objection of the women to go first to his town before seeing their friends quite reasonable, and resolved to send a party of our own people to see them safely among their relatives. i told the captive young man to inform masiko that he was very unlike his father santuru, who had refused to sell his people to mambari. he will probably be afraid to deliver such a message himself, but it is meant for his people, and they will circulate it pretty widely, and masiko may yet feel a little pressure from without. we sent mosantu, a batoka man, and his companions, with the captives. the barotse whom we had were unwilling to go to masiko, since they owe him allegiance as the son of santuru, and while they continue with the makololo are considered rebels. the message by mosantu was, that "i was sorry to find that santuru had not borne a wiser son. santuru loved to govern men, but masiko wanted to govern wild beasts only, as he sold his people to the mambari;" adding an explanation of the return of the captives, and an injunction to him to live in peace, and prevent his people kidnapping the children and canoes of the makololo, as a continuance in these deeds would lead to war, which i wished to prevent. he was also instructed to say, if masiko wanted fuller explanation of my views, he must send a sensible man to talk with me at the first town of the balonda, to which i was about to proceed. we ferried mosantu over to the left bank of the leeba. the journey required five days, but it could not have been at a quicker rate than ten or twelve miles per day; the children were between seven and eight years of age, and unable to walk fast in a hot sun. leaving mosantu to pursue his course, we shall take but one glance down the river, which we are now about to leave, for it comes at this point from the eastward, and our course is to be directed to the northwest, as we mean to go to loanda in angola. from the confluence, where we now are, down to mosioatunya, there are many long reaches, where a vessel equal to the thames steamers plying between the bridges could run as freely as they do on the thames. it is often, even here, as broad as that river at london bridge, but, without accurate measurement of the depth, one could not say which contained most water. there are, however, many and serious obstacles to a continued navigation for hundreds of miles at a stretch. about ten miles below the confluence of the loeti, for instance, there are many large sand-banks in the stream; then you have a hundred miles to the river simah, where a thames steamer could ply at all times of the year; but, again, the space between simah and katima-molelo has five or six rapids with cataracts, one of which, gonye, could not be passed at any time without portage. between these rapids there are reaches of still, deep water, of several miles in length. beyond katima-molelo to the confluence of the chobe you have nearly a hundred miles again, of a river capable of being navigated in the same way as in the barotse valley. now i do not say that this part of the river presents a very inviting prospect for extemporaneous european enterprise; but when we have a pathway which requires only the formation of portages to make it equal to our canals for hundreds of miles, where the philosophers supposed there was naught but an extensive sandy desert, we must confess that the future partakes at least of the elements of hope. my deliberate conviction was and is that the part of the country indicated is as capable of supporting millions of inhabitants as it is of its thousands. the grass of the barotse valley, for instance, is such a densely-matted mass that, when "laid", the stalks bear each other up, so that one feels as if walking on the sheaves of a hay-stack, and the leches nestle under it to bring forth their young. the soil which produces this, if placed under the plow, instead of being mere pasturage, would yield grain sufficient to feed vast multitudes. we now began to ascend the leeba. the water is black in color as compared with the main stream, which here assumes the name of kabompo. the leeba flows placidly, and, unlike the parent river, receives numbers of little rivulets from both sides. it winds slowly through the most charming meadows, each of which has either a soft, sedgy centre, large pond, or trickling rill down the middle. the trees are now covered with a profusion of the freshest foliage, and seem planted in groups of such pleasant, graceful outline that art could give no additional charm. the grass, which had been burned off and was growing again after the rains, was short and green, and all the scenery so like that of a carefully-tended gentleman's park, that one is scarcely reminded that the surrounding region is in the hands of simple nature alone. i suspect that the level meadows are inundated annually, for the spots on which the trees stand are elevated three or four feet above them, and these elevations, being of different shapes, give the strange variety of outline of the park-like woods. numbers of a fresh-water shell are scattered all over these valleys. the elevations, as i have observed elsewhere, are of a soft, sandy soil, and the meadows of black, rich alluvial loam. there are many beautiful flowers, and many bees to sip their nectar. we found plenty of honey in the woods, and saw the stages on which the balonda dry their meat, when they come down to hunt and gather the produce of the wild hives. in one part we came upon groups of lofty trees as straight as masts, with festoons of orchilla-weed hanging from the branches. this, which is used as a dye-stuff, is found nowhere in the dry country to the south. it prefers the humid climate near the west coast. a large buffalo was wounded, and ran into the thickest part of the forest, bleeding profusely. the young men went on his trail; and, though the vegetation was so dense that no one could have run more than a few yards, most of them went along quite carelessly, picking and eating a fruit of the melon family called mponko. when the animal heard them approach he always fled, shifting his stand and doubling on his course in the most cunning manner. in other cases i have known them to turn back to a point a few yards from their own trail, and then lie down in a hollow waiting for the hunter to come up. though a heavy, lumbering-looking animal, his charge is then rapid and terrific. more accidents happen by the buffalo and the black rhinoceros than by the lion. though all are aware of the mischievous nature of the buffalo when wounded, our young men went after him quite carelessly. they never lose their presence of mind, but, as a buffalo charges back in a forest, dart dexterously out of his way behind a tree, and, wheeling round, stab him as he passes. a tree in flower brought the pleasant fragrance of hawthorn hedges back to memory; its leaves, flowers, perfumes, and fruit resembled those of the hawthorn, only the flowers were as large as dog-roses, and the "haws" like boys' marbles. here the flowers smell sweetly, while few in the south emit any scent at all, or only a nauseous odor. a botanist would find a rich harvest on the banks of the leeba. this would be his best season, for the flowers all run rapidly to seed, and then insects of every shape spring into existence to devour them. the climbing plants display great vigor of growth, being not only thick in the trunk, but also at the very point, in the manner of quickly-growing asparagus. the maroro or malolo now appears, and is abundant in many parts between this and angola. it is a small bush with a yellow fruit, and in its appearance a dwarf "anona". the taste is sweet, and the fruit is wholesome: it is full of seeds, like the custard-apple. on the th we slept at a spot on the right bank from which had just emerged two broods of alligators. we had seen many young ones as we came up, so this seems to be their time of coming forth from the nests, for we saw them sunning themselves on sand-banks in company with the old ones. we made our fire in one of the deserted nests, which were strewed all over with the broken shells. at the zouga we saw sixty eggs taken out of one such nest alone. they are about the size of those of a goose, only the eggs of the alligator are of the same diameter at both ends, and the white shell is partially elastic, from having a strong internal membrane and but little lime in its composition. the distance from the water was about ten feet, and there were evidences of the same place having been used for a similar purpose in former years. a broad path led up from the water to the nest, and the dam, it was said by my companions, after depositing the eggs, covers them up, and returns afterward to assist the young out of the place of confinement and out of the egg. she leads them to the edge of the water, and then leaves them to catch small fish for themselves. assistance to come forth seems necessary, for here, besides the tough membrane of the shell, they had four inches of earth upon them; but they do not require immediate aid for food, because they all retain a portion of yolk, equal to that of a hen's egg, in a membrane in the abdomen, as a stock of nutriment, while only beginning independent existence by catching fish. fish is the principal food of both small and large, and they are much assisted in catching them by their broad, scaly tails. sometimes an alligator, viewing a man in the water from the opposite bank, rushes across the stream with wonderful agility, as is seen by the high ripple he makes on the surface caused by his rapid motion at the bottom; but in general they act by stealth, sinking underneath as soon as they see man. they seldom leave the water to catch prey, but often come out by day to enjoy the pleasure of basking in the sun. in walking along the bank of the zouga once, a small one, about three feet long, made a dash at my feet, and caused me to rush quickly in another direction; but this is unusual, for i never heard of a similar case. a wounded leche, chased into any of the lagoons in the barotse valley, or a man or dog going in for the purpose of bringing out a dead one, is almost sure to be seized, though the alligators may not appear on the surface. when employed in looking for food they keep out of sight; they fish chiefly by night. when eating, they make a loud, champing noise, which when once heard is never forgotten. the young, which had come out of the nests where we spent the night, did not appear wary; they were about ten inches long, with yellow eyes, and pupil merely a perpendicular slit. they were all marked with transverse slips of pale green and brown, half an inch broad. when speared, they bit the weapon savagely, though their teeth were but partially developed, uttering at the same time a sharp bark like that of a whelp when it first begins to use its voice. i could not ascertain whether the dam devours them, as reported, or whether the ichneumon has the same reputation here as in egypt. probably the barotse and bayeiye would not look upon it as a benefactor; they prefer to eat the eggs themselves, and be their own ichneumons. the white of the egg does not coagulate, but the yolk does, and this is the only part eaten. as the population increases, the alligators will decrease, for their nests will be oftener found; the principal check on their inordinate multiplication seems to be man. they are more savage and commit more mischief in the leeambye than in any other river. after dancing long in the moonlight nights, young men run down to the water to wash off the dust and cool themselves before going to bed, and are thus often carried away. one wonders they are not afraid; but the fact is, they have as little sense of danger impending over them as the hare has when not actually pursued by the hound, and in many rencounters, in which they escape, they had not time to be afraid, and only laugh at the circumstance afterward: there is a want of calm reflection. in many cases, not referred to in this book, i feel more horror now in thinking on dangers i have run than i did at the time of their occurrence. when we reached the part of the river opposite to the village of manenko, the first female chief whom we encountered, two of the people called balunda, or balonda, came to us in their little canoe. from them we learned that kolimbota, one of our party, who had been in the habit of visiting these parts, was believed by the balonda to have acted as a guide to the marauders under lerimo, whose captives we were now returning. they very naturally suspected this, from the facility with which their villages had been found, and, as they had since removed them to some distance from the river, they were unwilling to lead us to their places of concealment. we were in bad repute, but, having a captive boy and girl to show in evidence of sekeletu and ourselves not being partakers in the guilt of inferior men, i could freely express my desire that all should live in peace. they evidently felt that i ought to have taught the makololo first, before coming to them, for they remarked that what i advanced was very good, but guilt lay at the door of the makololo for disturbing the previously existing peace. they then went away to report us to manenko. when the strangers visited us again in the evening, they were accompanied by a number of the people of an ambonda chief named sekelenke. the ambonda live far to the n.w.; their language, the bonda, is the common dialect in angola. sekelenke had fled, and was now living with his village as a vassal of masiko. as notices of such men will perhaps convey the best idea of the state of the inhabitants to the reader, i shall hereafter allude to the conduct of sekelenke, whom i at present only introduce. sekelenke had gone with his villagers to hunt elephants on the right bank of the leeba, and was now on his way back to masiko. he sent me a dish of boiled zebra's flesh, and a request that i should lend him a canoe to ferry his wives and family across the river to the bank on which we were encamped. many of sekelenke's people came to salute the first white man they ever had an opportunity of seeing; but sekelenke himself did not come near. we heard he was offended with some of his people for letting me know he was among the company. he said that i should be displeased with him for not coming and making some present. this was the only instance in which i was shunned in this quarter. as it would have been impolitic to pass manenko, or any chief, without at least showing so much respect as to call and explain the objects of our passing through the country, we waited two entire days for the return of the messengers to manenko; and as i could not hurry matters, i went into the adjacent country to search for meat for the camp. the country is furnished largely with forest, having occasionally open lawns covered with grass, not in tufts as in the south, but so closely planted that one can not see the soil. we came upon a man and his two wives and children, burning coarse rushes and the stalks of tsitla, growing in a brackish marsh, in order to extract a kind of salt from the ashes. they make a funnel of branches of trees, and line it with grass rope, twisted round until it is, as it were, a beehive-roof inverted. the ashes are put into water, in a calabash, and then it is allowed to percolate through the small hole in the bottom and through the grass. when this water is evaporated in the sun, it yields sufficient salt to form a relish with food. the women and children fled with precipitation, but we sat down at a distance, and allowed the man time to gain courage enough to speak. he, however, trembled excessively at the apparition before him; but when we explained that our object was to hunt game, and not men, he became calm, and called back his wives. we soon afterward came to another party on the same errand with ourselves. the man had a bow about six feet long, and iron-headed arrows about thirty inches in length; he had also wooden arrows neatly barbed, to shoot in cases where he might not be quite certain of recovering them again. we soon afterward got a zebra, and gave our hunting acquaintances such a liberal share that we soon became friends. all whom we saw that day then came with us to the encampment to beg a little meat; and as they have so little salt, i have no doubt they felt grateful for what we gave. sekelenke and his people, twenty-four in number, defiled past our camp carrying large bundles of dried elephants' meat. most of them came to say good-by, and sekelenke himself sent to say that he had gone to visit a wife living in the village of manenko. it was a mere african manoeuvre to gain information, and not commit himself to either one line of action or another with respect to our visit. as he was probably in the party before us, i replied that it was all right, and when my people came up from masiko i would go to my wife too. another zebra came to our camp, and, as we had friends near, it was shot. it was the 'equus montanus', though the country is perfectly flat, and was finely marked down to the feet, as all the zebras are in these parts. to our first message, offering a visit of explanation to manenko, we got an answer, with a basket of manioc roots, that we must remain where we were till she should visit us. having waited two days already for her, other messengers arrived with orders for me to come to her. after four days of rains and negotiation, i declined going at all, and proceeded up the river to the small stream makondo (lat. d ' " s.), which enters the leeba from the east, and is between twenty and thirty yards broad. january st, . we had heavy rains almost every day; indeed, the rainy season had fairly set in. baskets of the purple fruit called mawa were frequently brought to us by the villagers; not for sale, but from a belief that their chiefs would be pleased to hear that they had treated us well; we gave them pieces of meat in return. when crossing at the confluence of the leeba and makondo, one of my men picked up a bit of a steel watch-chain of english manufacture, and we were informed that this was the spot where the mambari cross in coming to masiko. their visits explain why sekelenke kept his tusks so carefully. these mambari are very enterprising merchants: when they mean to trade with a town, they deliberately begin the affair by building huts, as if they knew that little business could be transacted without a liberal allowance of time for palaver. they bring manchester goods into the heart of africa; these cotton prints look so wonderful that the makololo could not believe them to be the work of mortal hands. on questioning the mambari they were answered that english manufactures came out of the sea, and beads were gathered on its shore. to africans our cotton mills are fairy dreams. "how can the irons spin, weave, and print so beautifully?" our country is like what taprobane was to our ancestors--a strange realm of light, whence came the diamond, muslin, and peacocks; an attempt at explanation of our manufactures usually elicits the expression, "truly ye are gods!" when about to leave the makondo, one of my men had dreamed that mosantu was shut up a prisoner in a stockade: this dream depressed the spirits of the whole party, and when i came out of my little tent in the morning, they were sitting the pictures of abject sorrow. i asked if we were to be guided by dreams, or by the authority i derived from sekeletu, and ordered them to load the boats at once; they seemed ashamed to confess their fears; the makololo picked up courage and upbraided the others for having such superstitious views, and said this was always their way; if even a certain bird called to them, they would turn back from an enterprise, saying it was unlucky. they entered the canoes at last, and were the better of a little scolding for being inclined to put dreams before authority. it rained all the morning, but about eleven we reached the village of sheakondo, on a small stream named lonkonye. we sent a message to the head man, who soon appeared with two wives, bearing handsome presents of manioc: sheakondo could speak the language of the barotse well, and seemed awestruck when told some of the "words of god". he manifested no fear, always spoke frankly, and when he made an asseveration, did so by simply pointing up to the sky above him. the balonda cultivate the manioc or cassava extensively; also dura, ground-nuts, beans, maize, sweet potatoes, and yams, here called "lekoto", but as yet we see only the outlying villages. the people who came with sheakondo to our bivouac had their teeth filed to a point by way of beautifying them, though those which were left untouched were always the whitest; they are generally tattooed in various parts, but chiefly on the abdomen: the skin is raised in small elevated cicatrices, each nearly half an inch long and a quarter of an inch in diameter, so that a number of them may constitute a star, or other device. the dark color of the skin prevents any coloring matter being deposited in these figures, but they love much to have the whole surface of their bodies anointed with a comfortable varnish of oil. in their unassisted state they depend on supplies of oil from the palma christi, or castor-oil plant, or from various other oliferous seeds, but they are all excessively fond of clarified butter or ox fat. sheakondo's old wife presented some manioc roots, and then politely requested to be anointed with butter: as i had been bountifully supplied by the makololo, i gave her as much as would suffice, and as they have little clothing, i can readily believe that she felt her comfort greatly enhanced thereby. the favorite wife, who was also present, was equally anxious for butter. she had a profusion of iron rings on her ankles, to which were attached little pieces of sheet iron, to enable her to make a tinkling as she walked in her mincing african style; the same thing is thought pretty by our own dragoons in walking jauntingly. we had so much rain and cloud that i could not get a single observation for either longitude or latitude for a fortnight. yet the leeba does not show any great rise, nor is the water in the least discolored. it is slightly black, from the number of mossy rills which fall into it. it has remarkably few birds and fish, while the leeambye swarms with both. it is noticeable that alligators here possess more of the fear of man than in the leeambye. the balonda have taught them, by their poisoned arrows, to keep out of sight. we did not see one basking in the sun. the balonda set so many little traps for birds that few appear. i observed, however, many (to me) new small birds of song on its banks. more rain has been falling in the east than here, for the leeambye was rising fast and working against the sandy banks so vigorously that a slight yellow tinge was perceptible in it. one of our men was bitten by a non-venomous serpent, and of course felt no harm. the barotse concluded that this was owing to many of them being present and seeing it, as if the sight of human eyes could dissolve the poison and act as a charm. on the th of january we reached the village of another female chief, named nyamoana, who is said to be the mother of manenko, and sister of shinte or kabompo, the greatest balonda chief in this part of the country. her people had but recently come to the present locality, and had erected only twenty huts. her husband, samoana, was clothed in a kilt of green and red baize, and was armed with a spear and a broadsword of antique form, about eighteen inches long and three broad. the chief and her husband were sitting on skins placed in the middle of a circle thirty paces in diameter, a little raised above the ordinary level of the ground, and having a trench round it. outside the trench sat about a hundred persons of all ages and both sexes. the men were well armed with bows, arrows, spears, and broadswords. beside the husband sat a rather aged woman, having a bad outward squint in the left eye. we put down our arms about forty yards off, and i walked up to the centre of the circular bench, and saluted him in the usual way by clapping the hands together in their fashion. he pointed to his wife, as much as to say, the honor belongs to her. i saluted her in the same way, and a mat having been brought, i squatted down in front of them. the talker was then called, and i was asked who was my spokesman. having pointed to kolimbota, who knew their dialect best, the palaver began in due form. i explained the real objects i had in view, without any attempt to mystify or appear in any other character than my own, for i have always been satisfied that, even though there were no other considerations, the truthful way of dealing with the uncivilized is unquestionably the best. kolimbota repeated to nyamoana's talker what i had said to him. he delivered it all verbatim to her husband, who repeated it again to her. it was thus all rehearsed four times over, in a tone loud enough to be heard by the whole party of auditors. the response came back by the same roundabout route, beginning at the lady to her husband, etc. after explanations and re-explanations, i perceived that our new friends were mixing up my message of peace and friendship with makololo affairs, and stated that it was not delivered on the authority of any one less than that of their creator, and that if the makololo did again break his laws and attack the balonda, the guilt would rest with the makololo and not with me. the palaver then came to a close. by way of gaining their confidence, i showed them my hair, which is considered a curiosity in all this region. they said, "is that hair? it is the mane of a lion, and not hair at all." some thought that i had made a wig of lion's mane, as they sometimes do with fibres of the "ife", and dye it black, and twist it so as to resemble a mass of their own wool. i could not return the joke by telling them that theirs was not hair, but the wool of sheep, for they have none of these in the country; and even though they had, as herodotus remarked, "the african sheep are clothed with hair, and men's heads with wool." so i had to be content with asserting that mine was the real original hair, such as theirs would have been had it not been scorched and frizzled by the sun. in proof of what the sun could do, i compared my own bronzed face and hands, then about the same in complexion as the lighter-colored makololo, with the white skin of my chest. they readily believed that, as they go nearly naked and fully exposed to that influence, we might be of common origin after all. here, as every where, when heat and moisture are combined, the people are very dark, but not quite black. there is always a shade of brown in the most deeply colored. i showed my watch and pocket compass, which are considered great curiosities; but, though the lady was called on by her husband to look, she would not be persuaded to approach near enough. these people are more superstitious than any we had yet encountered; though still only building their village, they had found time to erect two little sheds at the chief dwelling in it, in which were placed two pots having charms in them. when asked what medicine they contained, they replied, "medicine for the barimo;" but when i rose and looked into them, they said they were medicine for the game. here we saw the first evidence of the existence of idolatry in the remains of an old idol at a deserted village. it was simply a human head carved on a block of wood. certain charms mixed with red ochre and white pipe-clay are dotted over them when they are in use; and a crooked stick is used in the same way for an idol when they have no professional carver. as the leeba seemed still to come from the direction in which we wished to go, i was desirous of proceeding farther up with the canoes; but nyamoana was anxious that we should allow her people to conduct us to her brother shinte; and when i explained the advantage of water-carriage, she represented that her brother did not live near the river, and, moreover, there was a cataract in front, over which it would be difficult to convey the canoes. she was afraid, too, that the balobale, whose country lies to the west of the river, not knowing the objects for which we had come, would kill us. to my reply that i had been so often threatened with death if i visited a new tribe that i was now more afraid of killing any one than of being killed, she rejoined that the balobale would not kill me, but the makololo would all be sacrificed as their enemies. this produced considerable effect on my companions, and inclined them to the plan of nyamoana, of going to the town of her brother rather than ascending the leeba. the arrival of manenko herself on the scene threw so much weight into the scale on their side that i was forced to yield the point. manenko was a tall, strapping woman about twenty, distinguished by a profusion of ornaments and medicines hung round her person; the latter are supposed to act as charms. her body was smeared all over with a mixture of fat and red ochre, as a protection against the weather; a necessary precaution, for, like most of the balonda ladies, she was otherwise in a state of frightful nudity. this was not from want of clothing, for, being a chief, she might have been as well clad as any of her subjects, but from her peculiar ideas of elegance in dress. when she arrived with her husband, sambanza, they listened for some time to the statements i was making to the people of nyamoana, after which the husband, acting as spokesman, commenced an oration, stating the reasons for their coming, and, during every two or three seconds of the delivery, he picked up a little sand, and rubbed it on the upper part of his arms and chest. this is a common mode of salutation in londa; and when they wish to be excessively polite, they bring a quantity of ashes or pipe-clay in a piece of skin, and, taking up handfuls, rub it on the chest and upper front part of each arm; others, in saluting, drum their ribs with their elbows; while others still touch the ground with one cheek after the other, and clap their hands. the chiefs go through the manoeuvre of rubbing the sand on the arms, but only make a feint at picking up some. when sambanza had finished his oration, he rose up, and showed his ankles ornamented with a bundle of copper rings; had they been very heavy, they would have made him adopt a straggling walk. some chiefs have really so many as to be forced, by the weight and size, to keep one foot apart from the other, the weight being a serious inconvenience in walking. the gentlemen like sambanza, who wish to imitate their betters, do so in their walk; so you see men, with only a few ounces of ornament on their legs, strutting along as if they had double the number of pounds. when i smiled at sambanza's walk, the people remarked, "that is the way in which they show off their lordship in these parts." manenko was quite decided in the adoption of the policy of friendship with the makololo which we recommended; and, by way of cementing the bond, she and her counselors proposed that kolimbota should take a wife among them. by this expedient she hoped to secure his friendship, and also accurate information as to the future intentions of the makololo. she thought that he would visit the balonda more frequently afterward, having the good excuse of going to see his wife; and the makololo would never, of course, kill the villagers among whom so near a relative of one of their own children dwells. kolimbota, i found, thought favorably of the proposition, and it afterward led to his desertion from us. on the evening of the day in which manenko arrived, we were delighted by the appearance of mosantu and an imposing embassy from masiko. it consisted of all his under-chiefs, and they brought a fine elephant's tusk, two calabashes of honey, and a large piece of blue baize, as a present. the last was intended perhaps to show me that he was a truly great chief, who had such stores of white men's goods at hand that he could afford to give presents of them; it might also be intended for mosantu, for chiefs usually remember the servants; i gave it to him. masiko expressed delight, by his principal men, at the return of the captives, and at the proposal of peace and alliance with the makololo. he stated that he never sold any of his own people to the mambari, but only captives whom his people kidnapped from small neighboring tribes. when the question was put whether his people had been in the habit of molesting the makololo by kidnapping their servants and stealing canoes, it was admitted that two of his men, when hunting, had gone to the makololo gardens, to see if any of their relatives were there. as the great object in all native disputes is to get both parties to turn over a new leaf, i explained the desirableness of forgetting past feuds, accepting the present makololo professions as genuine, and avoiding in future to give them any cause for marauding. i presented masiko with an ox, furnished by sekeletu as provision for ourselves. all these people are excessively fond of beef and butter, from having been accustomed to them in their youth, before the makololo deprived them of cattle. they have abundance of game, but i am quite of their opinion that, after all, there is naught in the world equal to roast beef, and that in their love for it the english show both good taste and sound sense. the ox was intended for masiko, but his men were very anxious to get my sanction for slaughtering it on the spot. i replied that when it went out of my hands i had no more to do with it. they, however, wished the responsibility of slaughtering it to rest with me; if i had said they might kill it, not many ounces would have remained in the morning. i would have given permission, but had nothing else to offer in return for masiko's generosity. we were now without any provisions except a small dole of manioc roots each evening from nyamoana, which, when eaten raw, produce poisonous effects. a small loaf, made from nearly the last morsel of maize-meal from libonta, was my stock, and our friends from masiko were still more destitute; yet we all rejoiced so much at their arrival that we resolved to spend a day with them. the barotse of our party, meeting with relatives and friends among the barotse of masiko, had many old tales to tell; and, after pleasant hungry converse by day, we regaled our friends with the magic lantern by night, and, in order to make the thing of use to all, we removed our camp up to the village of nyamoana. this is a good means of arresting the attention, and conveying important facts to the minds of these people. when erecting our sheds at the village, manenko fell upon our friends from masiko in a way that left no doubt on our minds but that she is a most accomplished scold. masiko had, on a former occasion, sent to samoana for a cloth, a common way of keeping up intercourse, and, after receiving it, sent it back, because it had the appearance of having had "witchcraft medicine" on it; this was a grave offense, and now manenko had a good excuse for venting her spleen, the embassadors having called at her village, and slept in one of the huts without leave. if her family was to be suspected of dealing in evil charms, why were masiko's people not to be thought guilty of leaving the same in her hut? she advanced and receded in true oratorical style, belaboring her own servants as well for allowing the offense, and, as usual in more civilized feminine lectures, she leaned over the objects of her ire, and screamed forth all their faults and failings ever since they were born, and her despair of ever seeing them become better, until they were all "killed by alligators". masiko's people followed the plan of receiving this torrent of abuse in silence, and, as neither we nor they had any thing to eat, we parted next morning. in reference to masiko selling slaves to the mambari, they promised to explain the relationship which exists between even the most abject of his people and our common father; and that no more kidnapping ought to be allowed, as he ought to give that peace and security to the smaller tribes on his eastern borders which he so much desired to obtain himself from the makololo. we promised to return through his town when we came back from the sea-coast. manenko gave us some manioc roots in the morning, and had determined to carry our baggage to her uncle's, kabompo or shinte. we had heard a sample of what she could do with her tongue; and as neither my men nor myself had much inclination to encounter a scolding from this black mrs. caudle, we made ready the packages; but she came and said the men whom she had ordered for the service had not yet come; they would arrive to-morrow. being on low and disagreeable diet, i felt annoyed at this further delay, and ordered the packages to be put into the canoes to proceed up the river without her servants; but manenko was not to be circumvented in this way; she came forward with her people, and said her uncle would be angry if she did not carry forward the tusks and goods of sekeletu, seized the luggage, and declared that she would carry it in spite of me. my men succumbed sooner to this petticoat government than i felt inclined to do, and left me no power; and, being unwilling to encounter her tongue, i was moving off to the canoes, when she gave me a kind explanation, and, with her hand on my shoulder, put on a motherly look, saying, "now, my little man, just do as the rest have done." my feelings of annoyance of course vanished, and i went out to try and get some meat. the only game to be found in these parts are the zebra, the kualata or tahetsi ('aigoceros equina'), kama ('bubalus caama'), buffaloes, and the small antelope hakitenwe ('philantomba'). the animals can be seen here only by following on their trail for many miles. urged on by hunger, we followed that of some zebras during the greater part of the day: when within fifty yards of them, in a dense thicket, i made sure of one, but, to my infinite disgust, the gun missed fire, and off they bounded. the climate is so very damp, from daily heavy rains, that every thing becomes loaded with moisture, and the powder in the gun-nipples can not be kept dry. it is curious to mark the intelligence of the game; in districts where they are much annoyed by fire-arms, they keep out on the most open spots of country they can find, in order to have a widely-extended range of vision, and a man armed is carefully shunned. from the frequency with which i have been allowed to approach nearer without than with a gun, i believe they know the difference between safety and danger in the two cases. but here, where they are killed by the arrows of the balonda, they select for safety the densest forest, where the arrow can not be easily shot. the variation in the selection of standing-spots during the day may, however, be owing partly to the greater heat of the sun, for here it is particularly sharp and penetrating. however accounted for, the wild animals here do select the forests by day, while those farther south generally shun these covers, and, on several occasions, i have observed there was no sunshine to cause them to seek for shade. chapter . nyamoana's present--charms--manenko's pedestrian powers--an idol-- balonda arms--rain--hunger--palisades--dense forests--artificial beehives--mushrooms--villagers lend the roofs of their houses --divination and idols--manenko's whims--a night alarm--shinte's messengers and present--the proper way to approach a village--a merman--enter shinte's town: its appearance--meet two half-caste slave-traders--the makololo scorn them--the balonda real negroes--grand reception from shinte--his kotla--ceremony of introduction--the orators--women--musicians and musical instruments--a disagreeable request--private interviews with shinte--give him an ox--fertility of soil--manenko's new hut--conversation with shinte--kolimbota's proposal--balonda's punctiliousness--selling children--kidnapping-- shinte's offer of a slave--magic lantern--alarm of women-- delay--sambanza returns intoxicated--the last and greatest proof of shinte's friendship. th of january, . on starting this morning, samoana (or rather nyamoana, for the ladies are the chiefs here) presented a string of beads, and a shell highly valued among them, as an atonement for having assisted manenko, as they thought, to vex me the day before. they seemed anxious to avert any evil which might arise from my displeasure; but having replied that i never kept my anger up all night, they were much pleased to see me satisfied. we had to cross, in a canoe, a stream which flows past the village of nyamoana. manenko's doctor waved some charms over her, and she took some in her hand and on her body before she ventured upon the water. one of my men spoke rather loudly when near the doctor's basket of medicines. the doctor reproved him, and always spoke in a whisper himself, glancing back to the basket as if afraid of being heard by something therein. so much superstition is quite unknown in the south, and is mentioned here to show the difference in the feelings of this new people, and the comparative want of reverence on these points among caffres and bechuanas. manenko was accompanied by her husband and her drummer; the latter continued to thump most vigorously until a heavy, drizzling mist set in and compelled him to desist. her husband used various incantations and vociferations to drive away the rain, but down it poured incessantly, and on our amazon went, in the very lightest marching order, and at a pace that few of the men could keep up with. being on ox-back, i kept pretty close to our leader, and asked her why she did not clothe herself during the rain, and learned that it is not considered proper for a chief to appear effeminate. he or she must always wear the appearance of robust youth, and bear vicissitudes without wincing. my men, in admiration of her pedestrian powers, every now and then remarked, "manenko is a soldier;" and thoroughly wet and cold, we were all glad when she proposed a halt to prepare our night's lodging on the banks of a stream. the country through which we were passing was the same succession of forest and open lawns as formerly mentioned: the trees were nearly all evergreens, and of good, though not very gigantic size. the lawns were covered with grass, which, in thickness of crop, looked like ordinary english hay. we passed two small hamlets surrounded by gardens of maize and manioc, and near each of these i observed, for the first time, an ugly idol common in londa--the figure of an animal, resembling an alligator, made of clay. it is formed of grass, plastered over with soft clay; two cowrie-shells are inserted as eyes, and numbers of the bristles from the tail of an elephant are stuck in about the neck. it is called a lion, though, if one were not told so, he would conclude it to be an alligator. it stood in a shed, and the balonda pray and beat drums before it all night in cases of sickness. some of the men of manenko's train had shields made of reeds, neatly woven into a square shape, about five feet long and three broad. with these, and short broadswords and sheaves of iron-headed arrows, they appeared rather ferocious. but the constant habit of wearing arms is probably only a substitute for the courage they do not possess. we always deposited our fire-arms and spears outside a village before entering it, while the balonda, on visiting us at our encampment, always came fully armed, until we ordered them either to lay down their weapons or be off. next day we passed through a piece of forest so dense that no one could have penetrated it without an axe. it was flooded, not by the river, but by the heavy rains which poured down every day, and kept those who had clothing constantly wet. i observed, in this piece of forest, a very strong smell of sulphureted hydrogen. this i had observed repeatedly in other parts before. i had attacks of fever of the intermittent type again and again, in consequence of repeated drenchings in these unhealthy spots. on the th and th we were detained by incessant rains, and so heavy i never saw the like in the south. i had a little tapioca and a small quantity of libonta meal, which i still reserved for worse times. the patience of my men under hunger was admirable; the actual want of the present is never so painful as the thought of getting nothing in the future. we thought the people of some large hamlets very niggardly and very independent of their chiefs, for they gave us and manenko nothing, though they had large fields of maize in an eatable state around them. when she went and kindly begged some for me, they gave her five ears only. they were subjects of her uncle; and, had they been makololo, would have been lavish in their gifts to the niece of their chief. i suspected that they were dependents of some of shinte's principal men, and had no power to part with the maize of their masters. each house of these hamlets has a palisade of thick stakes around it, and the door is made to resemble the rest of the stockade; the door is never seen open; when the owner wishes to enter, he removes a stake or two, squeezes his body in, then plants them again in their places, so that an enemy coming in the night would find it difficult to discover the entrance. these palisades seem to indicate a sense of insecurity in regard to their fellow-men, for there are no wild beasts to disturb them; the bows and arrows have been nearly as efficacious in clearing the country here as guns have in the country farther south. this was a disappointment to us, for we expected a continuance of the abundance of game in the north which we found when we first came up to the confluence of the leeba and leeambye. a species of the silver-tree of the cape ('leucodendron argenteum') is found in abundance in the parts through which we have traveled since leaving samoana's. as it grows at a height of between two and three thousand feet above the level of the sea, on the cape table mountain, and again on the northern slope of the cashan mountains, and here at considerably greater heights (four thousand feet), the difference of climate prevents the botanical range being considered as affording a good approximation to the altitude. the rapid flow of the leeambye, which once seemed to me evidence of much elevation of the country from which it comes, i now found, by the boiling point of water, was fallacious.* * on examining this subject when i returned to linyanti, i found that, according to dr. arnott, a declivity of three inches per mile gives a velocity in a smooth, straight channel of three miles an hour. the general velocity of the zambesi is three miles and three quarters per hour, though in the rocky parts it is sometimes as much as four and a half. if, however, we make allowances for roughness of bottom, bendings of channel, and sudden descents at cataracts, and say the declivity is even seven inches per mile, those miles between the east coast and the great falls would require less than feet to give the observed velocity, and the additional distance to this point would require but feet of altitude more. if my observation of this altitude may be depended on, we have a steeper declivity for the zambesi than for some other great rivers. the ganges, for instance, is said to be at miles from its mouth only feet above the level of the sea, and water requires a month to come that distance. but there are so many modifying circumstances, it is difficult to draw any reliable conclusion from the currents. the chobe is sometimes heard of as flooded, about miles above linyanti, a fortnight before the inundation reaches that point, but it is very tortuous. the great river magdalena falls only feet in a thousand miles; other rivers much more. the forests became more dense as we went north. we traveled much more in the deep gloom of the forest than in open sunlight. no passage existed on either side of the narrow path made by the axe. large climbing plants entwined themselves around the trunks and branches of gigantic trees like boa constrictors, and they often do constrict the trees by which they rise, and, killing them, stand erect themselves. the bark of a fine tree found in abundance here, and called "motuia", is used by the barotse for making fish-lines and nets, and the "molompi", so well adapted for paddles by its lightness and flexibility, was abundant. there were other trees quite new to my companions; many of them ran up to a height of fifty feet of one thickness, and without branches. in these forests we first encountered the artificial beehives so commonly met with all the way from this to angola. they consist of about five feet of the bark of a tree fifteen or eighteen inches in diameter. two incisions are made right round the tree at points five feet apart, then one longitudinal slit from one of these to the other; the workman next lifts up the bark on each side of this slit, and detaches it from the trunk, taking care not to break it, until the whole comes from the tree. the elasticity of the bark makes it assume the form it had before; the slit is sewed or pegged up with wooden pins, and ends made of coiled grass-rope are inserted, one of which has a hole for the ingress of the bees in the centre, and the hive is complete. these hives are placed in a horizontal position on high trees in different parts of the forest, and in this way all the wax exported from benguela and loanda is collected. it is all the produce of free labor. a "piece of medicine" is tied round the trunk of the tree, and proves sufficient protection against thieves. the natives seldom rob each other, for all believe that certain medicines can inflict disease and death; and though they consider that these are only known to a few, they act on the principle that it is best to let them all alone. the gloom of these forests strengthens the superstitious feelings of the people. in other quarters, where they are not subjected to this influence, i have heard the chiefs issue proclamations to the effect that real witchcraft medicines had been placed at certain gardens from which produce had been stolen, the thieves having risked the power of the ordinary charms previously placed there. this being the rainy season, great quantities of mushrooms were met with, and were eagerly devoured by my companions: the edible variety is always found growing out of ant-hills, and attains the diameter of the crown of a hat; they are quite white, and very good, even when eaten raw; they occupy an extensive region of the interior; some, not edible, are of a brilliant red, and others are of the same light blue as the paper used by apothecaries to put up their medicines. there was a considerable pleasure, in spite of rain and fever, in this new scenery. the deep gloom contrasted strongly with the shadeless glare of the kalahari, which had left an indelible impression on my memory. though drenched day by day at this time, and for months afterward, it was long before i could believe that we were getting too much of a good thing. nor could i look at water being thrown away without a slight, quick impression flitting across the mind that we were guilty of wasting it. every now and then we emerged from the deep gloom into a pretty little valley, having a damp portion in the middle; which, though now filled with water, at other times contains moisture enough for wells only. these wells have shades put over them in the form of little huts. we crossed, in canoes, a little never-failing stream, which passes by the name of lefuje, or "the rapid". it comes from a goodly high mountain, called monakadzi (the woman), which gladdened our eyes as it rose to our sight about twenty or thirty miles to the east of our course. it is of an oblong shape, and seemed at least eight hundred feet above the plains. the lefuje probably derives its name from the rapid descent of the short course it has to flow from monakadzi to the leeba. the number of little villages seemed about equal to the number of valleys. at some we stopped and rested, the people becoming more liberal as we advanced. others we found deserted, a sudden panic having seized the inhabitants, though the drum of manenko was kept beaten pretty constantly, in order to give notice of the approach of great people. when we had decided to remain for the night at any village, the inhabitants lent us the roofs of their huts, which in form resemble those of the makololo, or a chinaman's hat, and can be taken off the walls at pleasure. they lifted them off, and brought them to the spot we had selected as our lodging, and, when my men had propped them up with stakes, they were then safely housed for the night. every one who comes to salute either manenko or ourselves rubs the upper parts of the arms and chest with ashes; those who wish to show profounder reverence put some also on the face. we found that every village had its idols near it. this is the case all through the country of the balonda, so that, when we came to an idol in the woods, we always knew that we were within a quarter of an hour of human habitations. one very ugly idol we passed rested on a horizontal beam placed on two upright posts. this beam was furnished with two loops of cord, as of a chain, to suspend offerings before it. on remarking to my companions that these idols had ears, but that they heard not, etc., i learned that the balonda, and even the barotse, believe that divination may be performed by means of these blocks of wood and clay; and though the wood itself could not hear, the owners had medicines by which it could be made to hear and give responses, so that if an enemy were approaching they would have full information. manenko having brought us to a stand on account of slight indisposition and a desire to send forward notice of our approach to her uncle, i asked why it was necessary to send forward information of our movements, if shinte had idols who could tell him every thing. "she did it only,"* was the reply. it is seldom of much use to show one who worships idols the folly of idolatry without giving something else as an object of adoration instead. they do not love them. they fear them, and betake themselves to their idols only when in perplexity and danger. * this is a curious african idiom, by which a person implies he had no particular reason for his act. while delayed, by manenko's management, among the balonda villages, a little to the south of the town of shinte, we were well supplied by the villagers with sweet potatoes and green maize; sambanza went to his mother's village for supplies of other food. i was laboring under fever, and did not find it very difficult to exercise patience with her whims; but it being saturday, i thought we might as well go to the town for sunday ( th). "no; her messenger must return from her uncle first." being sure that the answer of the uncle would be favorable, i thought we might go on at once, and not lose two days in the same spot. "no, it is our custom;" and every thing else i could urge was answered in the genuine pertinacious lady style. she ground some meal for me with her own hands, and when she brought it told me she had actually gone to a village and begged corn for the purpose. she said this with an air as if the inference must be drawn by even a stupid white man: "i know how to manage, don't i?" it was refreshing to get food which could be eaten without producing the unpleasantness described by the rev. john newton, of st. mary's, woolnoth, london, when obliged to eat the same roots while a slave in the west indies. the day (january th), for a wonder, was fair, and the sun shone, so as to allow us to dry our clothing and other goods, many of which were mouldy and rotten from the long-continued damp. the guns rusted, in spite of being oiled every evening. during the night we were all awakened by a terrific shriek from one of manenko's ladies. she piped out so loud and long that we all imagined she had been seized by a lion, and my men snatched up their arms, which they always place so as to be ready at a moment's notice, and ran to the rescue; but we found the alarm had been caused by one of the oxen thrusting his head into her hut and smelling her: she had put her hand on his cold, wet nose, and thought it was all over with her. on sunday afternoon messengers arrived from shinte, expressing his approbation of the objects we had in view in our journey through the country, and that he was glad of the prospect of a way being opened by which white men might visit him, and allow him to purchase ornaments at pleasure. manenko now threatened in sport to go on, and i soon afterward perceived that what now seemed to me the dilly-dallying way of this lady was the proper mode of making acquaintance with the balonda; and much of the favor with which i was received in different places was owing to my sending forward messengers to state the object of our coming before entering each town and village. when we came in sight of a village we sat down under the shade of a tree and sent forward a man to give notice who we were and what were our objects. the head man of the village then sent out his principal men, as shinte now did, to bid us welcome and show us a tree under which we might sleep. before i had profited by the rather tedious teaching of manenko, i sometimes entered a village and created unintentional alarm. the villagers would continue to look upon us with suspicion as long as we remained. shinte sent us two large baskets of manioc and six dried fishes. his men had the skin of a monkey, called in their tongue "poluma" ('colobus guereza'), of a jet black color, except the long mane, which is pure white: it is said to be found in the north, in the country of matiamvo, the paramount chief of all the balonda. we learned from them that they are in the habit of praying to their idols when unsuccessful in killing game or in any other enterprise. they behaved with reverence at our religious services. this will appear important if the reader remembers the almost total want of prayer and reverence we encountered in the south. our friends informed us that shinte would be highly honored by the presence of three white men in his town at once. two others had sent forward notice of their approach from another quarter (the west); could it be barth or krapf? how pleasant to meet with europeans in such an out-of-the-way region! the rush of thoughts made me almost forget my fever. are they of the same color as i am? "yes; exactly so." and have the same hair? "is that hair? we thought it was a wig; we never saw the like before; this white man must be of the sort that lives in the sea." henceforth my men took the hint, and always sounded my praises as a true specimen of the variety of white men who live in the sea. "only look at his hair; it is made quite straight by the sea-water!" i explained to them again and again that, when it was said we came out of the sea, it did not mean that we came from beneath the water; but the fiction has been widely spread in the interior by the mambari that the real white men live in the sea, and the myth was too good not to be taken advantage of by my companions; so, notwithstanding my injunctions, i believe that, when i was out of hearing, my men always represented themselves as led by a genuine merman: "just see his hair!" if i returned from walking to a little distance, they would remark of some to whom they had been holding forth, "these people want to see your hair." as the strangers had woolly hair like themselves, i had to give up the idea of meeting any thing more european than two half-caste portuguese, engaged in trading for slaves, ivory, and bees'-wax. th. after a short march we came to a most lovely valley about a mile and a half wide, and stretching away eastward up to a low prolongation of monakadzi. a small stream meanders down the centre of this pleasant green glen; and on a little rill, which flows into it from the western side, stands the town of kabompo, or, as he likes best to be called, shinte. (lat. d ' " s., long. d ' e.) when manenko thought the sun was high enough for us to make a lucky entrance, we found the town embowered in banana and other tropical trees having great expansion of leaf; the streets are straight, and present a complete contrast to those of the bechuanas, which are all very tortuous. here, too, we first saw native huts with square walls and round roofs. the fences or walls of the courts which surround the huts are wonderfully straight, and made of upright poles a few inches apart, with strong grass or leafy bushes neatly woven between. in the courts were small plantations of tobacco, and a little solanaceous plant which the balonda use as a relish; also sugar-cane and bananas. many of the poles have grown again, and trees of the 'ficus indica' family have been planted around, in order to give to the inhabitants a grateful shade: they regard this tree with some sort of veneration as a medicine or charm. goats were browsing about, and, when we made our appearance, a crowd of negroes, all fully armed, ran toward us as if they would eat us up; some had guns, but the manner in which they were held showed that the owners were more accustomed to bows and arrows than to white men's weapons. after surrounding and staring at us for an hour, they began to disperse. the two native portuguese traders of whom we had heard had erected a little encampment opposite the place where ours was about to be made. one of them, whose spine had been injured in youth--a rare sight in this country--came and visited us. i returned the visit next morning. his tall companion had that sickly yellow hue which made him look fairer than myself, but his head was covered with a crop of unmistakable wool. they had a gang of young female slaves in a chain, hoeing the ground in front of their encampment to clear it of weeds and grass; these were purchased recently in lobale, whence the traders had now come. there were many mambari with them, and the establishment was conducted with that military order which pervades all the arrangements of the portuguese colonists. a drum was beaten and trumpet sounded at certain hours, quite in military fashion. it was the first time most of my men had seen slaves in chains. "they are not men," they exclaimed (meaning they are beasts), "who treat their children so." the balonda are real negroes, having much more wool on their heads and bodies than any of the bechuana or caffre tribes. they are generally very dark in color, but several are to be seen of a lighter hue; many of the slaves who have been exported to brazil have gone from this region; but while they have a general similarity to the typical negro, i never could, from my own observation, think that our ideal negro, as seen in tobacconists' shops, is the true type. a large proportion of the balonda, indeed, have heads somewhat elongated backward and upward, thick lips, flat noses, elongated 'ossa calces', etc., etc.; but there are also many good-looking, well-shaped heads and persons among them. th, tuesday. we were honored with a grand reception by shinte about eleven o'clock. sambanza claimed the honor of presenting us, manenko being slightly indisposed. the native portuguese and mambari went fully armed with guns, in order to give shinte a salute; their drummer and trumpeter making all the noise that very old instruments would produce. the kotla, or place of audience, was about a hundred yards square, and two graceful specimens of a species of banian stood near one end; under one of these sat shinte, on a sort of throne covered with a leopard's skin. he had on a checked jacket, and a kilt of scarlet baize edged with green; many strings of large beads hung from his neck, and his limbs were covered with iron and copper armlets and bracelets; on his head he wore a helmet made of beads woven neatly together, and crowned with a great bunch of goose-feathers. close to him sat three lads with large sheaves of arrows over their shoulders. when we entered the kotla, the whole of manenko's party saluted shinte by clapping their hands, and sambanza did obeisance by rubbing his chest and arms with ashes. one of the trees being unoccupied, i retreated to it for the sake of the shade, and my whole party did the same. we were now about forty yards from the chief, and could see the whole ceremony. the different sections of the tribe came forward in the same way that we did, the head man of each making obeisance with ashes which he carried with him for the purpose; then came the soldiers, all armed to the teeth, running and shouting toward us, with their swords drawn, and their faces screwed up so as to appear as savage as possible, for the purpose, i thought, of trying whether they could not make us take to our heels. as we did not, they turned round toward shinte and saluted him, then retired. when all had come and were seated, then began the curious capering usually seen in pichos. a man starts up, and imitates the most approved attitudes observed in actual fight, as throwing one javelin, receiving another on the shield, springing to one side to avoid a third, running backward or forward, leaping, etc. this over, sambanza and the spokesman of nyamoana stalked backward and forward in front of shinte, and gave forth, in a loud voice, all they had been able to learn, either from myself or people, of my past history and connection with the makololo; the return of the captives; the wish to open the country to trade; the bible as a word from heaven; the white man's desire for the tribes to live in peace: he ought to have taught the makololo that first, for the balonda never attacked them, yet they had assailed the balonda: perhaps he is fibbing, perhaps not; they rather thought he was; but as the balonda had good hearts, and shinte had never done harm to any one, he had better receive the white man well, and send him on his way. sambanza was gayly attired, and, besides a profusion of beads, had a cloth so long that a boy carried it after him as a train. behind shinte sat about a hundred women, clothed in their best, which happened to be a profusion of red baize. the chief wife of shinte, one of the matebele or zulus, sat in front with a curious red cap on her head. during the intervals between the speeches, these ladies burst forth into a sort of plaintive ditty; but it was impossible for any of us to catch whether it was in praise of the speaker, of shinte, or of themselves. this was the first time i had ever seen females present in a public assembly. in the south the women are not permitted to enter the kotla; and even when invited to come to a religious service there, would not enter until ordered to do so by the chief; but here they expressed approbation by clapping their hands, and laughing to different speakers; and shinte frequently turned round and spoke to them. a party of musicians, consisting of three drummers and four performers on the piano, went round the kotla several times, regaling us with their music. their drums are neatly carved from the trunk of a tree, and have a small hole in the side covered with a bit of spider's web: the ends are covered with the skin of an antelope pegged on; and when they wish to tighten it, they hold it to the fire to make it contract: the instruments are beaten with the hands. the piano, named "marimba", consists of two bars of wood placed side by side, here quite straight, but, farther north, bent round so as to resemble half the tire of a carriage-wheel; across these are placed about fifteen wooden keys, each of which is two or three inches broad, and fifteen or eighteen inches long; their thickness is regulated according to the deepness of the note required: each of the keys has a calabash beneath it; from the upper part of each a portion is cut off to enable them to embrace the bars, and form hollow sounding-boards to the keys, which also are of different sizes, according to the note required; and little drumsticks elicit the music. rapidity of execution seems much admired among them, and the music is pleasant to the ear. in angola the portuguese use the marimba in their dances. when nine speakers had concluded their orations, shinte stood up, and so did all the people. he had maintained true african dignity of manner all the while, but my people remarked that he scarcely ever took his eyes off me for a moment. about a thousand people were present, according to my calculation, and three hundred soldiers. the sun had now become hot; and the scene ended by the mambari discharging their guns. th. we were awakened during the night by a message from shinte, requesting a visit at a very unseasonable hour. as i was just in the sweating stage of an intermittent, and the path to the town lay through a wet valley, i declined going. kolimbota, who knows their customs best, urged me to go; but, independent of sickness, i hated words of the night and deeds of darkness. "i was neither a hyaena nor a witch." kolimbota thought that we ought to conform to their wishes in every thing: i thought we ought to have some choice in the matter as well, which put him into high dudgeon. however, at ten next morning we went, and were led into the courts of shinte, the walls of which were woven rods, all very neat and high. many trees stood within the inclosure and afforded a grateful shade. these had been planted, for we saw some recently put in, with grass wound round the trunk to protect them from the sun. the otherwise waste corners of the streets were planted with sugar-cane and bananas, which spread their large light leaves over the walls. the ficus indica tree, under which we now sat, had very large leaves, but showed its relationship to the indian banian by sending down shoots toward the ground. shinte soon came, and appeared a man of upward of fifty-five years of age, of frank and open countenance, and about the middle height. he seemed in good humor, and said he had expected yesterday "that a man who came from the gods would have approached and talked to him." that had been my own intention in going to the reception; but when we came and saw the formidable preparations, and all his own men keeping at least forty yards off from him, i yielded to the solicitations of my men, and remained by the tree opposite to that under which he sat. his remark confirmed my previous belief that a frank, open, fearless manner is the most winning with all these africans. i stated the object of my journey and mission, and to all i advanced the old gentleman clapped his hands in approbation. he replied through a spokesman; then all the company joined in the response by clapping of hands too. after the more serious business was over, i asked if he had ever seen a white man before. he replied, "never; you are the very first i have seen with a white skin and straight hair; your clothing, too, is different from any we have ever seen." they had been visited by native portuguese and mambari only. on learning from some of the people that "shinte's mouth was bitter for want of tasting ox-flesh," i presented him with an ox, to his great delight; and, as his country is so well adapted for cattle, i advised him to begin a trade in cows with the makololo. he was pleased with the idea, and when we returned from loanda, we found that he had profited by the hint, for he had got three, and one of them justified my opinion of the country, for it was more like a prize heifer for fatness than any we had seen in africa. he soon afterward sent us a basket of green maize boiled, another of manioc-meal, and a small fowl. the maize shows by its size the fertility of the black soil of all the valleys here, and so does the manioc, though no manure is ever applied. we saw manioc attain a height of six feet and upward, and this is a plant which requires the very best soil. during this time manenko had been extremely busy with all her people in getting up a very pretty hut and court-yard, to be, as she said, her residence always when white men were brought by her along the same path. when she heard that we had given an ox to her uncle, she came forward to us with the air of one wronged, and explained that "this white man belonged to her; she had brought him here, and therefore the ox was hers, not shinte's." she ordered her men to bring it, got it slaughtered by them, and presented her uncle with a leg only. shinte did not seem at all annoyed at the occurrence. th. i was awakened at an early hour by a messenger from shinte; but the thirst of a raging fever being just assuaged by the bursting forth of a copious perspiration, i declined going for a few hours. violent action of the heart all the way to the town did not predispose me to be patient with the delay which then occurred, probably on account of the divination being unfavorable: "they could not find shinte." when i returned to bed, another message was received, "shinte wished to say all he had to tell me at once." this was too tempting an offer, so we went, and he had a fowl ready in his hand to present, also a basket of manioc-meal, and a calabash of mead. referring to the constantly-recurring attacks of fever, he remarked that it was the only thing which would prevent a successful issue to my journey, for he had men to guide me who knew all the paths which led to the white men. he had himself traveled far when a young man. on asking what he would recommend for the fever, "drink plenty of the mead, and as it gets in, it will drive the fever out." it was rather strong, and i suspect he liked the remedy pretty well, even though he had no fever. he had always been a friend to sebituane, and, now that his son sekeletu was in his place, shinte was not merely a friend, but a father to him; and if a son asks a favor, the father must give it. he was highly pleased with the large calabashes of clarified butter and fat which sekeletu had sent him, and wished to detain kolimbota, that he might send a present back to sekeletu by his hands. this proposition we afterward discovered was kolimbota's own, as he had heard so much about the ferocity of the tribes through which we were to pass that he wished to save his skin. it will be seen farther on that he was the only one of our party who returned with a wound. we were particularly struck, in passing through the village, with the punctiliousness of manners shown by the balonda. the inferiors, on meeting their superiors in the street, at once drop on their knees and rub dust on their arms and chest; they continue the salutation of clapping the hands until the great ones have passed. sambanza knelt down in this manner till the son of shinte had passed him. we several times saw the woman who occupies the office of drawer of water for shinte; she rings a bell as she passes along to give warning to all to keep out of her way; it would be a grave offense for any one to come near her, and exercise an evil influence by his presence on the drink of the chief. i suspect that offenses of the slightest character among the poor are made the pretext for selling them or their children to the mambari. a young man of lobale had fled into the country of shinte, and located himself without showing himself to the chief. this was considered an offense sufficient to warrant his being seized and offered for sale while we were there. he had not reported himself, so they did not know the reason of his running away from his own chief, and that chief might accuse them of receiving a criminal. it was curious to notice the effect of the slave-trade in blunting the moral susceptibility: no chief in the south would treat a fugitive in this way. my men were horrified at the act, even though old shinte and his council had some show of reason on their side; and both the barotse and the makololo declared that, if the balonda only knew of the policy pursued by them to fugitives, but few of the discontented would remain long with shinte. my men excited the wonder of his people by stating that every one of them had one cow at least in his possession. another incident, which occurred while we were here, may be mentioned, as of a character totally unknown in the south. two children, of seven and eight years old, went out to collect firewood a short distance from their parents' home, which was a quarter of a mile from the village, and were kidnapped; the distracted parents could not find a trace of them. this happened so close to the town, where there are no beasts of prey, that we suspect some of the high men of shinte's court were the guilty parties: they can sell them by night. the mambari erect large huts of a square shape to stow these stolen ones in; they are well fed, but aired by night only. the frequent kidnapping from outlying hamlets explains the stockades we saw around them; the parents have no redress, for even shinte himself seems fond of working in the dark. one night he sent for me, though i always stated i liked all my dealings to be aboveboard. when i came he presented me with a slave girl about ten years old; he said he had always been in the habit of presenting his visitors with a child. on my thanking him, and saying that i thought it wrong to take away children from their parents, that i wished him to give up this system altogether, and trade in cattle, ivory, and bees'-wax, he urged that she was "to be a child" to bring me water, and that a great man ought to have a child for the purpose, yet i had none. as i replied that i had four children, and should be very sorry if my chief were to take my little girl and give her away, and that i would prefer this child to remain and carry water for her own mother, he thought i was dissatisfied with her size, and sent for one a head taller; after many explanations of our abhorrence of slavery, and how displeasing it must be to god to see his children selling one another, and giving each other so much grief as this child's mother must feel, i declined her also. if i could have taken her into my family for the purpose of instruction, and then returned her as a free woman, according to a promise i should have made to the parents, i might have done so; but to take her away, and probably never be able to secure her return, would have produced no good effect on the minds of the balonda; they would not then have seen evidence of our hatred to slavery, and the kind attentions of my friends would, as it almost always does in similar cases, have turned the poor thing's head. the difference in position between them and us is as great as between the lowest and highest in england, and we know the effects of sudden elevation on wiser heads than hers, whose owners had not been born to it. shinte was most anxious to see the pictures of the magic lantern; but fever had so weakening an effect, and i had such violent action of the heart, with buzzing in the ears, that i could not go for several days; when i did go for the purpose, he had his principal men and the same crowd of court beauties near him as at the reception. the first picture exhibited was abraham about to slaughter his son isaac; it was shown as large as life, and the uplifted knife was in the act of striking the lad; the balonda men remarked that the picture was much more like a god than the things of wood or clay they worshiped. i explained that this man was the first of a race to whom god had given the bible we now held, and that among his children our savior appeared. the ladies listened with silent awe; but, when i moved the slide, the uplifted dagger moving toward them, they thought it was to be sheathed in their bodies instead of isaac's. "mother! mother!" all shouted at once, and off they rushed helter-skelter, tumbling pell-mell over each other, and over the little idol-huts and tobacco-bushes: we could not get one of them back again. shinte, however, sat bravely through the whole, and afterward examined the instrument with interest. an explanation was always added after each time of showing its powers, so that no one should imagine there was aught supernatural in it; and had mr. murray, who kindly brought it from england, seen its popularity among both makololo and balonda, he would have been gratified with the direction his generosity then took. it was the only mode of instruction i was ever pressed to repeat. the people came long distances for the express purpose of seeing the objects and hearing the explanations. one can not get away quickly from these chiefs; they like to have the honor of strangers residing in their villages. here we had an additional cause of delay in frequent rains; twenty-four hours never elapsed without heavy showers; every thing is affected by the dampness; surgical instruments become all rusty, clothing mildewed, and shoes mouldy; my little tent was now so rotten and so full of small holes that every smart shower caused a fine mist to descend on my blanket, and made me fain to cover the head with it. heavy dews lay on every thing in the morning, even inside the tent; there is only a short time of sunshine in the afternoon, and even that is so interrupted by thunder-showers that we can not dry our bedding. the winds coming from the north always bring heavy clouds and rain; in the south, the only heavy rains noticed are those which come from the northeast or east. the thermometer falls as low as degrees when there is no sunshine, though, when the weather is fair, the protected thermometer generally rises as high as degrees, even in the mornings and evenings. th. we expected to have started to-day, but sambanza, who had been sent off early in the morning for guides, returned at midday without them, and drunk. this was the first case of real babbling intoxication we had seen in this region. the boyaloa, or beer of the country, has more of a stupefying than exciting nature; hence the beer-bibbers are great sleepers; they may frequently be seen lying on their faces sound asleep. this peculiarity of posture was ascribed, by no less an authority than aristotle, to wine, while those who were sent asleep by beer were believed "to lie upon their backs." sambanza had got into a state of inebriation from indulging in mead, similar to that which shinte presented to us, which is much more powerful than boyaloa. as far as we could collect from his incoherent sentences, shinte had said the rain was too heavy for our departure, and the guides still required time for preparation. shinte himself was busy getting some meal ready for my use in the journey. as it rained nearly all day, it was no sacrifice to submit to his advice and remain. sambanza staggered to manenko's hut; she, however, who had never promised "to love, honor, and obey him," had not been "nursing her wrath to keep it warm," so she coolly bundled him into the hut, and put him to bed. as the last proof of friendship, shinte came into my tent, though it could scarcely contain more than one person, looked at all the curiosities, the quicksilver, the looking-glass, books, hair-brushes, comb, watch, etc., etc., with the greatest interest; then closing the tent, so that none of his own people might see the extravagance of which he was about to be guilty, he drew out from his clothing a string of beads, and the end of a conical shell, which is considered, in regions far from the sea, of as great value as the lord mayor's badge is in london. he hung it round my neck, and said, "there, now you have a proof of my friendship." my men informed me that these shells are so highly valued in this quarter, as evidences of distinction, that for two of them a slave might be bought, and five would be considered a handsome price for an elephant's tusk worth ten pounds. at our last interview old shinte pointed out our principal guide, intemese, a man about fifty, who was, he said, ordered to remain by us till we should reach the sea; that i had now left sekeletu far behind, and must henceforth look to shinte alone for aid, and that it would always be most cheerfully rendered. this was only a polite way of expressing his wishes for my success. it was the good words only of the guides which were to aid me from the next chief, katema, on to the sea; they were to turn back on reaching him; but he gave a good supply of food for the journey before us, and, after mentioning as a reason for letting us go even now that no one could say we had been driven away from the town, since we had been several days with him, he gave a most hearty salutation, and we parted with the wish that god might bless him. chapter . leave shinte--manioc gardens--mode of preparing the poisonous kind--its general use--presents of food--punctiliousness of the balonda-- their idols and superstition--dress of the balonda--villages beyond lonaje--cazembe--our guides and the makololo--night rains--inquiries for english cotton goods--intemese's fiction--visit from an old man--theft--industry of our guide--loss of pontoon--plains covered with water--affection of the balonda for their mothers--a night on an island--the grass on the plains--source of the rivers--loan of the roofs of huts--a halt--fertility of the country through which the lokalueje flows--omnivorous fish--natives' mode of catching them-- the village of a half-brother of katema, his speech and present--our guide's perversity--mozenkwa's pleasant home and family--clear water of the flooded rivers--a messenger from katema--quendende's village: his kindness--crop of wool--meet people from the town of matiamvo--fireside talk--matiamvo's character and conduct--presentation at katema's court: his present, good sense, and appearance--interview on the following day--cattle--a feast and a makololo dance--arrest of a fugitive-- dignified old courtier--katema's lax government--cold wind from the north--canaries and other singing birds--spiders, their nests and webs--lake dilolo--tradition--sagacity of ants. th. leaving shinte, with eight of his men to aid in carrying our luggage, we passed, in a northerly direction, down the lovely valley on which the town stands, then went a little to the west through pretty open forest, and slept at a village of balonda. in the morning we had a fine range of green hills, called saloisho, on our right, and were informed that they were rather thickly inhabited by the people of shinte, who worked in iron, the ore of which abounds in these hills. the country through which we passed possessed the same general character of flatness and forest that we noticed before. the soil is dark, with a tinge of red--in some places it might be called red--and appeared very fertile. every valley contained villages of twenty or thirty huts, with gardens of manioc, which here is looked upon as the staff of life. very little labor is required for its cultivation. the earth is drawn up into oblong beds, about three feet broad and one in height, and in these are planted pieces of the manioc stalk, at four feet apart. a crop of beans or ground-nuts is sown between them, and when these are reaped the land around the manioc is cleared of weeds. in from ten to eighteen months after planting, according to the quality of the soil, the roots are fit for food. there is no necessity for reaping soon, as the roots do not become bitter and dry until after three years. when a woman takes up the roots, she thrusts a piece or two of the upper stalks into the hole she has made, draws back the soil, and a new crop is thereby begun. the plant grows to a height of six feet, and every part of it is useful: the leaves may be cooked as a vegetable. the roots are from three to four inches in diameter, and from twelve to eighteen inches long. there are two varieties of the manioc or cassava--one sweet and wholesome, the other bitter and containing poison, but much more speedy in its growth than the former. this last property causes its perpetuation. when we reached the village of kapende, on the banks of the rivulet lonaje, we were presented with so much of the poisonous kind that we were obliged to leave it. to get rid of the poison, the people place it four days in a pool of water. it then becomes partially decomposed, and is taken out, stripped of its skin, and exposed to the sun. when dried, it is easily pounded into a fine white meal, closely resembling starch, which has either a little of the peculiar taste arising from decomposition, or no more flavor than starch. when intended to be used as food, this meal is stirred into boiling water: they put in as much as can be moistened, one man holding the vessel and the other stirring the porridge with all his might. this is the common mess of the country. though hungry, we could just manage to swallow it with the aid of a little honey, which i shared with my men as long as it lasted. it is very unsavory (scottice: wersh); and no matter how much one may eat, two hours afterward he is as hungry as ever. when less meal is employed, the mess is exactly like a basin of starch in the hands of a laundress; and if the starch were made from diseased potatoes, some idea might be formed of the balonda porridge, which hunger alone forced us to eat. santuru forbade his nobles to eat it, as it caused coughing and expectoration. our chief guide, intemese, sent orders to all the villages around our route that shinte's friends must have abundance of provisions. our progress was impeded by the time requisite for communicating the chief's desire and consequent preparation of meal. we received far more food from shinte's people than from himself. kapende, for instance, presented two large baskets of meal, three of manioc roots steeped and dried in the sun and ready to be converted into flour, three fowls, and seven eggs, with three smoke-dried fishes; and others gave with similar liberality. i gave to the head men small bunches of my stock of beads, with an apology that we were now on our way to the market for these goods. the present was always politely received. we had an opportunity of observing that our guides had much more etiquette than any of the tribes farther south. they gave us food, but would not partake of it when we had cooked it, nor would they eat their own food in our presence. when it was cooked they retired into a thicket and ate their porridge; then all stood up, and clapped their hands, and praised intemese for it. the makololo, who are accustomed to the most free and easy manners, held out handfuls of what they had cooked to any of the balonda near, but they refused to taste. they are very punctilious in their manners to each other. each hut has its own fire, and when it goes out they make it afresh for themselves rather than take it from a neighbor. i believe much of this arises from superstitious fears. in the deep, dark forests near each village, as already mentioned, you see idols intended to represent the human head or a lion, or a crooked stick smeared with medicine, or simply a small pot of medicine in a little shed, or miniature huts with little mounds of earth in them. but in the darker recesses we meet with human faces cut in the bark of trees, the outlines of which, with the beards, closely resemble those seen on egyptian monuments. frequent cuts are made on the trees along all the paths, and offerings of small pieces of manioc roots or ears of maize are placed on branches. there are also to be seen every few miles heaps of sticks, which are treated in cairn fashion, by every one throwing a small branch to the heap in passing; or a few sticks are placed on the path, and each passer-by turns from his course, and forms a sudden bend in the road to one side. it seems as if their minds were ever in doubt and dread in these gloomy recesses of the forest, and that they were striving to propitiate, by their offerings, some superior beings residing there. the dress of the balonda men consists of the softened skins of small animals, as the jackal or wild cat, hung before and behind from a girdle round the loins. the dress of the women is of a nondescript character; but they were not immodest. they stood before us as perfectly unconscious of any indecorum as we could be with our clothes on. but, while ignorant of their own deficiency, they could not maintain their gravity at the sight of the nudity of my men behind. much to the annoyance of my companions, the young girls laughed outright whenever their backs were turned to them. after crossing the lonaje, we came to some pretty villages, embowered, as the negro villages usually are, in bananas, shrubs, and manioc, and near the banks of the leeba we formed our encampment in a nest of serpents, one of which bit one of our men, but the wound was harmless. the people of the surrounding villages presented us with large quantities of food, in obedience to the mandate of shinte, without expecting any equivalent. one village had lately been transferred hither from the country of matiamvo. they, of course, continue to acknowledge him as paramount chief; but the frequent instances which occur of people changing from one part of the country to another, show that the great chiefs possess only a limited power. the only peculiarity we observed in these people is the habit of plaiting the beard into a three-fold cord. the town of the balonda chief cazembe was pointed out to us as lying to the n.e. and by e. from the town of shinte, and great numbers of people in this quarter have gone thither for the purpose of purchasing copper anklets, made at cazembe's, and report the distance to be about five days' journey. i made inquiries of some of the oldest inhabitants of the villages at which we were staying respecting the visit of pereira and lacerda to that town. an old gray-headed man replied that they had often heard of white men before, but never had seen one, and added that one had come to cazembe when our informant was young, and returned again without entering this part of the country. the people of cazembe are balonda or baloi, and his country has been termed londa, lunda, or lui, by the portuguese. it was always difficult to get our guides to move away from a place. with the authority of the chief, they felt as comfortable as king's messengers could, and were not disposed to forego the pleasure of living at free quarters. my makololo friends were but ill drilled as yet; and since they had never left their own country before, except for purposes of plunder, they did not take readily to the peaceful system we now meant to follow. they either spoke too imperiously to strangers, or, when reproved for that, were disposed to follow the dictation of every one we met. when intemese, our guide, refused to stir toward the leeba on the st of january, they would make no effort to induce him to go; but, having ordered them to get ready, intemese saw the preparations, and soon followed the example. it took us about four hours to cross the leeba, which is considerably smaller here than where we left it--indeed, only about a hundred yards wide. it has the same dark mossy hue. the villagers lent us canoes to effect our passage; and, having gone to a village about two miles beyond the river, i had the satisfaction of getting observations for both longitude and latitude--for the former, the distance between saturn and the moon, and for the latter a meridian altitude of canopus. long. d ' e., lat. d ' " s. these were the only opportunities i had of ascertaining my whereabouts in this part of londa. again and again did i take out the instruments, and, just as all was right, the stars would be suddenly obscured by clouds. i had never observed so great an amount of cloudiness in any part of the south country; and as for the rains, i believe that years at kolobeng would not have made my little tent so rotten and thin as one month had done in londa. i never observed in the south the heavy night and early morning rains we had in this country. they often continued all night, then became heavier about an hour before dawn. or if fair during the night, as day drew nigh, an extremely heavy, still, pouring rain set in without warning. five out of every six days we had this pouring rain, at or near break of day, for months together; and it soon beat my tent so thin, that a mist fell through on my face and made every thing damp. the rains were occasionally, but not always, accompanied with very loud thunder. february st. this day we had a fine view of two hills called piri (peeri), meaning "two", on the side of the river we had left. the country there is named mokwankwa. and there intemese informed us one of shinte's children was born, when he was in his progress southward from the country of matiamvo. this part of the country would thus seem not to have been inhabited by the people of shinte at any very remote period. he told me himself that he had come into his present country by command of matiamvo. here we were surprised to hear english cotton cloth much more eagerly inquired after than beads and ornaments. they are more in need of clothing than the bechuana tribes living adjacent to the kalahari desert, who have plenty of skins for the purpose. animals of all kinds are rare here, and a very small piece of calico is of great value. in the midst of the heavy rain, which continued all the morning, intemese sent to say he was laid up with pains in the stomach, and must not be disturbed; but when it cleared up, about eleven, i saw our friend walking off to the village, and talking with a very loud voice. on reproaching him for telling an untruth, he turned it off with a laugh by saying he really had a complaint in his stomach, which i might cure by slaughtering one of the oxen and allowing him to eat beef. he was evidently reveling in the abundance of good food the chief's orders brought us; and he did not feel the shame i did when i gave a few beads only in return for large baskets of meal. a very old man visited us here with a present of maize: like the others, he had never before seen a white man, and, when conversing with him, some of the young men remarked that they were the true ancients, for they had now seen more wonderful things than their forefathers. one of intemese's men stole a fowl given me by a lady of the village. when charged with the theft, every one of intemese's party vociferated his innocence and indignation at being suspected, continuing their loud asseverations and gesticulations for some minutes. one of my men, loyanke, went off to the village, brought the lady who had presented the fowl to identify it, and then pointed to the hut in which it was hidden. the balonda collected round him, evincing great wrath; but loyanke seized his battle-axe in the proper manner for striking, and, placing himself on a little hillock, soon made them moderate their tones. intemese then called on me to send one of my people to search the huts if i suspected his people. the man sent soon found it, and brought it out, to the confusion of intemese and the laughter of our party. this incident is mentioned to show that the greater superstition which exists here does not lead to the practice of the virtues. we never met an instance like this of theft from a white man among the makololo, though they complain of the makalaka as addicted to pilfering. the honesty of the bakwains has been already noticed. probably the estimation in which i was held as a public benefactor, in which character i was not yet known to the balonda, may account for the sacredness with which my property was always treated before. but other incidents which happened subsequently showed, as well as this, that idolaters are not so virtuous as those who have no idols. as the people on the banks of the leeba were the last of shinte's tribe over which intemese had power, he was naturally anxious to remain as long as possible. he was not idle, but made a large wooden mortar and pestle for his wife during our journey. he also carved many wooden spoons and a bowl; then commenced a basket; but as what he considered good living was any thing but agreeable to us, who had been accustomed to milk and maize, we went forward on the d without him. he soon followed, but left our pontoon, saying it would be brought by the head man of the village. this was a great loss, as we afterward found; it remained at this village more than a year, and when we returned a mouse had eaten a hole in it. we entered on an extensive plain beyond the leeba, at least twenty miles broad, and covered with water, ankle deep in the shallowest parts. we deviated somewhat from our n.w. course by the direction of intemese, and kept the hills piri nearly on our right during a great part of the first day, in order to avoid the still more deeply flooded plains of lobale (luval?) on the west. these, according to intemese, are at present impassable on account of being thigh deep. the plains are so perfectly level that rain-water, which this was, stands upon them for months together. they were not flooded by the leeba, for that was still far within its banks. here and there, dotted over the surface, are little islands, on which grow stunted date-bushes and scraggy trees. the plains themselves are covered with a thick sward of grass, which conceals the water, and makes the flats appear like great pale yellow-colored prairie-lands, with a clear horizon, except where interrupted here and there by trees. the clear rain-water must have stood some time among the grass, for great numbers of lotus-flowers were seen in full blow; and the runs of water tortoises and crabs were observed; other animals also, which prey on the fish that find their way to the plains. the continual splashing of the oxen keeps the feet of the rider constantly wet, and my men complain of the perpetual moisture of the paths by which we have traveled in londa as softening their horny soles. the only information we can glean is from intemese, who points out the different localities as we pass along, and among the rest "mokala a mama", his "mamma's home". it was interesting to hear this tall gray-headed man recall the memories of boyhood. all the makalaka children cleave to the mother in cases of separation, or removal from one part of the country to another. this love for mothers does not argue superior morality in other respects, or else intemese has forgotten any injunctions his mamma may have given him not to tell lies. the respect, however, with which he spoke of her was quite characteristic of his race. the bechuanas, on the contrary, care nothing for their mothers, but cling to their fathers, especially if they have any expectation of becoming heirs to their cattle. our bakwain guide to the lake, rachosi, told me that his mother lived in the country of sebituane, but, though a good specimen of the bechuanas, he laughed at the idea of going so far as from the lake ngami to the chobe merely for the purpose of seeing her. had he been one of the makalaka, he never would have parted from her. we made our beds on one of the islands, and were wretchedly supplied with firewood. the booths constructed by the men were but sorry shelter, for the rain poured down without intermission till midday. there is no drainage for the prodigious masses of water on these plains, except slow percolation into the different feeders of the leeba, and into that river itself. the quantity of vegetation has prevented the country from becoming furrowed by many rivulets or "nullahs". were it not so remarkably flat, the drainage must have been effected by torrents, even in spite of the matted vegetation. that these extensive plains are covered with grasses only, and the little islands with but scraggy trees, may be accounted for by the fact, observable every where in this country, that, where water stands for any length of time, trees can not live. the want of speedy drainage destroys them, and injures the growth of those that are planted on the islands, for they have no depth of earth not subjected to the souring influence of the stagnant water. the plains of lobale, to the west of these, are said to be much more extensive than any we saw, and their vegetation possesses similar peculiarities. when the stagnant rain-water has all soaked in, as must happen during the months in which there is no rain, travelers are even put to straits for want of water. this is stated on native testimony; but i can very well believe that level plains, in which neither wells nor gullies are met with, may, after the dry season, present the opposite extreme to what we witnessed. water, however, could always be got by digging, a proof of which we had on our return when brought to a stand on this very plain by severe fever: about twelve miles from the kasai my men dug down a few feet, and found an abundant supply; and we saw on one of the islands the garden of a man who, in the dry season, had drunk water from a well in like manner. plains like these can not be inhabited while the present system of cultivation lasts. the population is not yet so very large as to need them. they find garden-ground enough on the gentle slopes at the sides of the rivulets, and possess no cattle to eat off the millions of acres of fine hay we were now wading through. any one who has visited the cape colony will understand me when i say that these immense crops resemble sown grasses more than the tufty vegetation of the south. i would here request the particular attention of the reader to the phenomena these periodically deluged plains present, because they have a most important bearing on the physical geography of a very large portion of this country. the plains of lobale, to the west of this, give rise to a great many streams, which unite, and form the deep, never-failing chobe. similar extensive flats give birth to the loeti and kasai, and, as we shall see further on, all the rivers of an extensive region owe their origin to oozing bogs, and not to fountains. when released from our island by the rain ceasing, we marched on till we came to a ridge of dry inhabited land in the n.w. the inhabitants, according to custom, lent us the roofs of some huts to save the men the trouble of booth-making. i suspect that the story in park's "travels", of the men lifting up the hut to place it on the lion, referred to the roof only. we leave them for the villagers to replace at their leisure. no payment is expected for the use of them. by night it rained so copiously that all our beds were flooded from below; and from this time forth we always made a furrow round each booth, and used the earth to raise our sleeping-places. my men turned out to work in the wet most willingly; indeed, they always did. i could not but contrast their conduct with that of intemese. he was thoroughly imbued with the slave spirit, and lied on all occasions without compunction. untruthfulness is a sort of refuge for the weak and oppressed. we expected to move on the th, but he declared that we were so near katema's, if we did not send forward to apprise that chief of our approach, he would certainly impose a fine. it rained the whole day, so we were reconciled to the delay; but on sunday, the th, he let us know that we were still two days distant from katema. we unfortunately could not manage without him, for the country was so deluged, we should have been brought to a halt before we went many miles by some deep valley, every one of which was full of water. intemese continued to plait his basket with all his might, and would not come to our religious service. he seemed to be afraid of our incantations, but was always merry and jocular. th. soon after starting we crossed a branch of the lokalueje by means of a canoe, and in the afternoon passed over the main stream by a like conveyance. the former, as is the case with all branches of rivers in this country, is called nyuana kalueje (child of the kalueje). hippopotami exist in the lokalueje, so it may be inferred to be perennial, as the inhabitants asserted. we can not judge of the size of the stream from what we now saw. it had about forty yards of deep, fast-flowing water, but probably not more than half that amount in the dry season. besides these, we crossed numerous feeders in our n.n.w. course, and, there being no canoes, got frequently wet in the course of the day. the oxen in some places had their heads only above water, and the stream, flowing over their backs, wetted our blankets, which we used as saddles. the arm-pit was the only safe spot for carrying the watch, for there it was preserved from rains above and waters below. the men on foot crossed these gullies holding up their burdens at arms' length. the lokalueje winds from northeast to southwest into the leeba. the country adjacent to its banks is extremely fine and fertile, with here and there patches of forest or clumps of magnificent trees. the villagers through whose gardens we passed continue to sow and reap all the year round. the grains, as maize, lotsa ('pennisetum typhoideum'), lokesh or millet, are to be seen at all stages of their growth--some just ripe, while at this time the makololo crops are not half grown. my companions, who have a good idea of the different qualities of soils, expressed the greatest admiration of the agricultural capabilities of the whole of londa, and here they were loud in their praises of the pasturage. they have an accurate idea of the varieties of grasses best adapted for different kinds of stock, and lament because here there are no cows to feed off the rich green crop, which at this time imparts special beauty to the landscape. great numbers of the omnivorous feeding fish, 'glanis siluris', or mosala, spread themselves over the flooded plains, and, as the waters retire, try to find their way back again to the rivers. the balonda make earthen dikes and hedges across the outlets of the retreating waters, leaving only small spaces through which the chief part of the water flows. in these open spaces they plant creels, similar in shape to our own, into which the fish can enter, but can not return. they secure large quantities of fish in this way, which, when smoke-dried, make a good relish for their otherwise insipid food. they use also a weir of mats made of reeds sewed together, with but half an inch between each. open spaces are left for the insertion of the creels as before. in still water, a fish-trap is employed of the same shape and plan as the common round wire mouse-trap, which has an opening surrounded with wires pointing inward. this is made of reeds and supple wands, and food is placed inside to attract the fish. besides these means of catching fish, they use a hook of iron without a barb; the point is bent inward instead, so as not to allow the fish to escape. nets are not so common as in the zouga and leeambye, but they kill large quantities of fishes by means of the bruised leaves of a shrub, which may be seen planted beside every village in the country. on the th we came to the village of soana molopo, a half-brother of katema, a few miles beyond the lokalueje. when we went to visit him, we found him sitting with about one hundred men. he called on intemese to give some account of us, though no doubt it had been done in private before. he then pronounced the following sentences: "the journey of the white man is very proper, but shinte has disturbed us by showing the path to the makololo who accompany him. he ought to have taken them through the country without showing them the towns. we are afraid of the makololo." he then gave us a handsome present of food, and seemed perplexed by my sitting down familiarly, and giving him a few of our ideas. when we left, intemese continued busily imparting an account of all we had given to shinte and masiko, and instilling the hope that soana molopo might obtain as much as they had received. accordingly, when we expected to move on the morning of the th, we got some hints about the ox which soana molopo expected to eat, but we recommended him to get the breed of cattle for himself, seeing his country was so well adapted for rearing stock. intemese also refused to move; he, moreover, tried to frighten us into parting with an ox by saying that soana molopo would send forward a message that we were a marauding party; but we packed up and went on without him. we did not absolutely need him, but he was useful in preventing the inhabitants of secluded villages from betaking themselves to flight. we wished to be on good terms with all, and therefore put up with our guide's peccadilloes. his good word respecting us had considerable influence, and he was always asked if we had behaved ourselves like men on the way. the makololo are viewed as great savages, but intemese could not justly look with scorn on them, for he has the mark of a large gash on his arm, got in fighting; and he would never tell the cause of battle, but boasted of his powers as the makololo do, till asked about a scar on his back, betokening any thing but bravery. intemese was useful in cases like that of monday, when we came upon a whole village in a forest enjoying their noonday nap. our sudden appearance in their midst so terrified them that one woman nearly went into convulsions from fear. when they saw and heard intemese, their terror subsided. as usual, we were caught by rains after leaving soana molopo's, and made our booths at the house of mozinkwa, a most intelligent and friendly man belonging to katema. he had a fine large garden in cultivation, and well hedged round. he had made the walls of his compound, or court-yard, of branches of the banian, which, taking root, had grown to be a live hedge of that tree. mozinkwa's wife had cotton growing all round her premises, and several plants used as relishes to the insipid porridge of the country. she cultivated also the common castor-oil plant, and a larger shrub ('jatropha curcas'), which also yields a purgative oil. here, however, the oil is used for anointing the heads and bodies alone. we saw in her garden likewise the indian bringalls, yams, and sweet potatoes. several trees were planted in the middle of the yard, and in the deep shade they gave stood the huts of his fine family. his children, all by one mother, very black, but comely to view, were the finest negro family i ever saw. we were much pleased with the frank friendship and liberality of this man and his wife. she asked me to bring her a cloth from the white man's country; but, when we returned, poor mozinkwa's wife was in her grave, and he, as is the custom, had abandoned trees, garden, and huts to ruin. they can not live on a spot where a favorite wife has died, probably because unable to bear the remembrance of the happy times they have spent there, or afraid to remain in a spot where death has once visited the establishment. if ever the place is revisited, it is to pray to her, or make some offering. this feeling renders any permanent village in the country impossible. we learned from mozinkwa that soana molopo was the elder brother of katema, but that he was wanting in wisdom; and katema, by purchasing cattle and receiving in a kind manner all the fugitives who came to him, had secured the birthright to himself, so far as influence in the country is concerned. soana's first address to us did not savor much of african wisdom. friday, th. on leaving mozinkwa's hospitable mansion we crossed another stream, about forty yards wide, in canoes. while this tedious process was going on, i was informed that it is called the mona-kalueje, or brother of kalueje, as it flows into that river; that both the kalueje and livoa flow into the leeba; and that the chifumadze, swollen by the lotembwa, is a feeder of that river also, below the point where we lately crossed it. it may be remarked here that these rivers were now in flood, and that the water was all perfectly clear. the vegetation on the banks is so thickly planted that the surface of the earth is not abraded by the torrents. the grass is laid flat, and forms a protection to the banks, which are generally a stiff black loam. the fact of canoes being upon them shows that, though not large, they are not like the southern rivulets, which dry up during most of the year, and render canoes unnecessary. as we were crossing the river we were joined by a messenger from katema, called shakatwala. this person was a sort of steward or factotum to his chief. every chief has one attached to his person, and, though generally poor, they are invariably men of great shrewdness and ability. they act the part of messengers on all important occasions, and possess considerable authority in the chief's household. shakatwala informed us that katema had not received precise information about us, but if we were peaceably disposed, as he loved strangers, we were to come to his town. we proceeded forthwith, but were turned aside, by the strategy of our friend intemese, to the village of quendende, the father-in-law of katema. this fine old man was so very polite that we did not regret being obliged to spend sunday at his village. he expressed his pleasure at having a share in the honor of a visit as well as katema, though it seemed to me that the conferring that pleasure required something like a pretty good stock of impudence, in leading twenty-seven men through the country without the means of purchasing food. my men did a little business for themselves in the begging line; they generally commenced every interview with new villagers by saying "i have come from afar; give me something to eat." i forbade this at first, believing that, as the makololo had a bad name, the villagers gave food from fear. but, after some time, it was evident that in many cases maize and manioc were given from pure generosity. the first time i came to this conclusion was at the house of mozinkwa; scarcely any one of my men returned from it without something in his hand; and as they protested they had not begged, i asked himself, and found that it was the case, and that he had given spontaneously. in other parts the chiefs attended to my wants, and the common people gave liberally to my men. i presented some of my razors and iron spoons to different head men, but my men had nothing to give; yet every one tried to appropriate an individual in each village as "molekane", or comrade, and the villagers often assented; so, if the reader remembers the molekane system of the mopato, he may perceive that those who presented food freely would expect the makololo to treat them in like manner, should they ever be placed in similar circumstances. their country is so fertile that they are in no want of food themselves; however, their generosity was remarkable; only one woman refused to give some of my men food, but her husband calling out to her to be more liberal, she obeyed, scolding all the while. in this part of the country, buffaloes, elands, koodoos, and various antelopes are to be found, but we did not get any, as they are exceedingly wary from being much hunted. we had the same woodland and meadow as before, with here and there pleasant negro villages; and being all in good health, could enjoy the fine green scenery. quendende's head was a good specimen of the greater crop of wool with which the negroes of londa are furnished. the front was parted in the middle, and plaited into two thick rolls, which, falling down behind the ears, reached the shoulders; the rest was collected into a large knot, which lay on the nape of the neck. as he was an intelligent man, we had much conversation together: he had just come from attending the funeral of one of his people, and i found that the great amount of drum-beating which takes place on these occasions was with the idea that the barimo, or spirits, could be drummed to sleep. there is a drum in every village, and we often hear it going from sunset to sunrise. they seem to look upon the departed as vindictive beings, and, i suspect, are more influenced by fear than by love. in beginning to speak on religious subjects with those who have never heard of christianity, the great fact of the son of god having come down from heaven to die for us is the prominent theme. no fact more striking can be mentioned. "he actually came to men. he himself told us about his father, and the dwelling-place whither he has gone. we have his words in this book, and he really endured punishment in our stead from pure love," etc. if this fails to interest them, nothing else will succeed. we here met with some people just arrived from the town of matiamvo (muata yanvo), who had been sent to announce the death of the late chieftain of that name. matiamvo is the hereditary title, muata meaning lord or chief. the late matiamvo seems, from the report of these men, to have become insane, for he is said to have sometimes indulged the whim of running a muck in the town and beheading whomsoever he met, until he had quite a heap of human heads. matiamvo explained this conduct by saying that his people were too many, and he wanted to diminish them. he had absolute power of life and death. on inquiring whether human sacrifices were still made, as in the time of pereira, at cazembe's, we were informed that these had never been so common as was represented to pereira, but that it occasionally happened, when certain charms were needed by the chief, that a man was slaughtered for the sake of some part of his body. he added that he hoped the present chief would not act like his (mad) predecessor, but kill only those who were guilty of witchcraft or theft. these men were very much astonished at the liberty enjoyed by the makololo; and when they found that all my people held cattle, we were told that matiamvo alone had a herd. one very intelligent man among them asked, "if he should make a canoe, and take it down the river to the makololo, would he get a cow for it?" this question, which my men answered in the affirmative, was important, as showing the knowledge of a water communication from the country of matiamvo to the makololo; and the river runs through a fertile country abounding in large timber. if the tribes have intercourse with each other, it exerts a good influence on their chiefs to hear what other tribes think of their deeds. the makololo have such a bad name, on account of their perpetual forays, that they have not been known in londa except as ruthless destroyers. the people in matiamvo's country submit to much wrong from their chiefs, and no voice can be raised against cruelty, because they are afraid to flee elsewhere. we left quendende's village in company with quendende himself, and the principal man of the embassadors of matiamvo, and after two or three miles' march to the n.w., came to the ford of the lotembwa, which flows southward. a canoe was waiting to ferry us over, but it was very tedious work; for, though the river itself was only eighty yards wide, the whole valley was flooded, and we were obliged to paddle more than half a mile to get free of the water. a fire was lit to warm old quendende, and enable him to dry his tobacco-leaves. the leaves are taken from the plant, and spread close to the fire until they are quite dry and crisp; they are then put into a snuff-box, which, with a little pestle, serves the purpose of a mill to grind them into powder; it is then used as snuff. as we sat by the fire, the embassadors communicated their thoughts freely respecting the customs of their race. when a chief dies, a number of servants are slaughtered with him to form his company in the other world. the barotse followed the same custom, and this and other usages show them to be genuine negroes, though neither they nor the balonda resemble closely the typical form of that people. quendende said if he were present on these occasions he would hide his people, so that they might not be slaughtered. as we go north, the people become more bloodily superstitious. we were assured that if the late matiamvo took a fancy to any thing, such, for instance, as my watch-chain, which was of silver wire, and was a great curiosity, as they had never seen metal plaited before, he would order a whole village to be brought up to buy it from a stranger. when a slave-trader visited him, he took possession of all his goods; then, after ten days or a fortnight, he would send out a party of men to pounce upon some considerable village, and, having killed the head man, would pay for all the goods by selling the inhabitants. this has frequently been the case, and nearly all the visitants he ever had were men of color. on asking if matiamvo did not know he was a man, and would be judged, in company with those he destroyed, by a lord who is no respector of persons? the embassador replied, "we do not go up to god, as you do; we are put into the ground." i could not ascertain that even those who have such a distinct perception of the continued existence of departed spirits had any notion of heaven; they appear to imagine the souls to be always near the place of sepulture. after crossing the river lotembwa we traveled about eight miles, and came to katema's straggling town (lat. d ' " s., long. d ' e.). it is more a collection of villages than a town. we were led out about half a mile from the houses, that we might make for ourselves the best lodging we could of the trees and grass, while intemese was taken to katema to undergo the usual process of pumping as to our past conduct and professions. katema soon afterward sent a handsome present of food. next morning we had a formal presentation, and found katema seated on a sort of throne, with about three hundred men on the ground around, and thirty women, who were said to be his wives, close behind him. the main body of the people were seated in a semicircle, at a distance of fifty yards. each party had its own head man stationed at a little distance in front, and, when beckoned by the chief, came near him as councilors. intemese gave our history, and katema placed sixteen large baskets of meal before us, half a dozen fowls, and a dozen eggs, and expressed regret that we had slept hungry: he did not like any stranger to suffer want in his town; and added, "go home, and cook and eat, and you will then be in a fit state to speak to me at an audience i will give you to-morrow." he was busily engaged in hearing the statements of a large body of fine young men who had fled from kangenke, chief of lobale, on account of his selling their relatives to the native portuguese who frequent his country. katema is a tall man, about forty years of age, and his head was ornamented with a helmet of beads and feathers. he had on a snuff-brown coat, with a broad band of tinsel down the arms, and carried in his hand a large tail made of the caudal extremities of a number of gnus. this has charms attached to it, and he continued waving it in front of himself all the time we were there. he seemed in good spirits, laughing heartily several times. this is a good sign, for a man who shakes his sides with mirth is seldom difficult to deal with. when we rose to take leave, all rose with us, as at shinte's. returning next morning, katema addressed me thus: "i am the great moene (lord) katema, the fellow of matiamvo. there is no one in the country equal to matiamvo and me. i have always lived here, and my forefathers too. there is the house in which my father lived. you found no human skulls near the place where you are encamped. i never killed any of the traders; they all come to me. i am the great moene katema, of whom you have heard." he looked as if he had fallen asleep tipsy, and dreamed of his greatness. on explaining my objects to him, he promptly pointed out three men who would be our guides, and explained that the northwest path was the most direct, and that by which all traders came, but that the water at present standing on the plains would reach up to the loins; he would therefore send us by a more northerly route, which no trader had yet traversed. this was more suited to our wishes, for we never found a path safe that had been trodden by slave-traders. we presented a few articles, which pleased him highly: a small shawl, a razor, three bunches of beads, some buttons, and a powder-horn. apologizing for the insignificance of the gift, i wished to know what i could bring him from loanda, saying, not a large thing, but something small. he laughed heartily at the limitation, and replied, "every thing of the white people would be acceptable, and he would receive any thing thankfully; but the coat he then had on was old, and he would like another." i introduced the subject of the bible, but one of the old councilors broke in, told all he had picked up from the mambari, and glided off into several other subjects. it is a misery to speak through an interpreter, as i was now forced to do. with a body of men like mine, composed as they were of six different tribes, and all speaking the language of the bechuanas, there was no difficulty in communicating on common subjects with any tribe we came to; but doling out a story in which they felt no interest, and which i understood only sufficiently well to perceive that a mere abridgment was given, was uncommonly slow work. neither could katema's attention be arrested, except by compliments, of which they have always plenty to bestow as well as receive. we were strangers, and knew that, as makololo, we had not the best of characters, yet his treatment of us was wonderfully good and liberal. i complimented him on the possession of cattle, and pleased him by telling him how he might milk the cows. he has a herd of about thirty, really splendid animals, all reared from two which he bought from the balobale when he was young. they are generally of a white color, and are quite wild, running off with graceful ease like a herd of elands on the approach of a stranger. they excited the unbounded admiration of the makololo, and clearly proved that the country was well adapted for them. when katema wishes to slaughter one, he is obliged to shoot it as if it were a buffalo. matiamvo is said to possess a herd of cattle in a similar state. i never could feel certain as to the reason why they do not all possess cattle in a country containing such splendid pasturage. as katema did not offer an ox, as would have been done by a makololo or caffre chief, we slaughtered one of our own, and all of us were delighted to get a meal of meat, after subsisting so long on the light porridge and green maize of londa. on occasions of slaughtering an animal, some pieces of it are in the fire before the skin is all removed from the body. a frying-pan full of these pieces having been got quickly ready, my men crowded about their father, and i handed some all round. it was a strange sight to the balonda, who were looking on, wondering. i offered portions to them too, but these were declined, though they are excessively fond of a little animal food to eat with their vegetable diet. they would not eat with us, but they would take the meat and cook it in their own way, and then use it. i thought at one time that they had imported something from the mohammedans, and the more especially as an exclamation of surprise, "allah", sounds like the illah of the arabs; but we found, a little farther on, another form of salutation, of christian (?) origin, "ave-rie" (ave marie). the salutations probably travel farther than the faith. my people, when satisfied with a meal like that which they enjoy so often at home, amused themselves by an uproarious dance. katema sent to ask what i had given them to produce so much excitement. intemese replied it was their custom, and they meant no harm. the companion of the ox we slaughtered refused food for two days, and went lowing about for him continually. he seemed inconsolable for his loss, and tried again and again to escape back to the makololo country. my men remarked, "he thinks they will kill me as well as my friend." katema thought it the result of art, and had fears of my skill in medicine, and of course witchcraft. he refused to see the magic lantern. one of the affairs which had been intrusted by shinte to intemese was the rescue of a wife who had eloped with a young man belonging to katema. as this was the only case i have met with in the interior in which a fugitive was sent back to a chief against his own will, i am anxious to mention it. on intemese claiming her as his master's wife, she protested loudly against it, saying "she knew she was not going back to be a wife again; she was going back to be sold to the mambari." my men formed many friendships with the people of katema, and some of the poorer classes said in confidence, "we wish our children could go back with you to the makololo country; here we are all in danger of being sold." my men were of opinion that it was only the want of knowledge of the southern country which prevented an exodus of all the lower portions of londa population thither. it is remarkable how little people living in a flat forest country like this know of distant tribes. an old man, who said he had been born about the same time as the late matiamvo, and had been his constant companion through life, visited us; and as i was sitting on some grass in front of the little gipsy tent mending my camp stool, i invited him to take a seat on the grass beside me. this was peremptorily refused: "he had never sat on the ground during the late chief's reign, and he was not going to degrade himself now." one of my men handed him a log of wood taken from the fire, and helped him out of the difficulty. when i offered him some cooked meat on a plate, he would not touch that either, but would take it home. so i humored him by sending a servant to bear a few ounces of meat to the town behind him. he mentioned the lolo (lulua) as the branch of the leeambye which flows southward or s.s.e.; but the people of matiamvo had never gone far down it, as their chief had always been afraid of encountering a tribe whom, from the description given, i could recognize as the makololo. he described five rivers as falling into the lolo, viz., the lishish, liss or lise, kalileme, ishidish, and molong. none of these are large, but when they are united in the lolo they form a considerable stream. the country through which the lolo flows is said to be flat, fertile, well peopled, and there are large patches of forest. in this report he agreed perfectly with the people of matiamvo, whom we had met at quendende's village. but we never could get him, or any one in this quarter, to draw a map on the ground, as people may readily be got to do in the south. katema promised us the aid of some of his people as carriers, but his rule is not very stringent or efficient, for they refused to turn out for the work. they were balobale; and he remarked on their disobedience that, though he received them as fugitives, they did not feel grateful enough to obey, and if they continued rebellious he must drive them back whence they came; but there is little fear of that, as all the chiefs are excessively anxious to collect men in great numbers around them. these balobale would not go, though our guide shakatwala ran after some of them with a drawn sword. this degree of liberty to rebel was very striking to us, as it occurred in a country where people may be sold, and often are so disposed of when guilty of any crime; and we well knew that open disobedience like this among the makololo would be punished with death without much ceremony. on sunday, the th, both i and several of our party were seized with fever, and i could do nothing but toss about in my little tent, with the thermometer above deg., though this was the beginning of winter, and my men made as much shade as possible by planting branches of trees all round and over it. we have, for the first time in my experience in africa, had a cold wind from the north. all the winds from that quarter are hot, and those from the south are cold, but they seldom blow from either direction. th. we were glad to get away, though not on account of any scarcity of food; for my men, by giving small presents of meat as an earnest of their sincerity, formed many friendships with the people of katema. we went about four or five miles in a n.n.w. direction, then two in a westerly one, and came round the small end of lake dilolo. it seemed, as far as we could at this time discern, to be like a river a quarter of a mile wide. it is abundantly supplied with fish and hippopotami; the broad part, which we did not this time see, is about three miles wide, and the lake is almost seven or eight long. if it be thought strange that i did not go a few miles to see the broad part, which, according to katema, had never been visited by any of the traders, it must be remembered that in consequence of fever i had eaten nothing for two entire days, and, instead of sleep, the whole of the nights were employed in incessant drinking of water, and i was now so glad to get on in the journey and see some of my fellow fever-patients crawling along, that i could not brook the delay, which astronomical observations for accurately determining the geographical position of this most interesting spot would have occasioned. we observed among the people of katema a love for singing-birds. one pretty little songster, named "cabazo", a species of canary, is kept in very neatly made cages, having traps on the top to entice its still free companions. on asking why they kept them in confinement, "because they sing sweetly," was the answer. they feed them on the lotsa ('pennisetum typhoideum'), of which great quantities are cultivated as food for man, and these canaries plague the gardeners here, very much in the same way as our sparrows do at home. i was pleased to hear the long-forgotten cry of alarm of the canaries in the woods, and observed one warbling forth its song, and keeping in motion from side to side, as these birds do in the cage. we saw also tame pigeons; and the barotse, who always take care to exalt santuru, reminded us that this chief had many doves, and kept canaries which had reddish heads when the birds attained maturity. those we now see have the real canary color on the breast, with a tinge of green; the back, yellowish green, with darker longitudinal bands meeting in the centre; a narrow dark band passes from the bill over the eye and back to the bill again. the birds of song here set up quite a merry chorus in the mornings, and abound most near the villages. some sing as loudly as our thrushes, and the king-hunter ('halcyon senegalensis') makes a clear whirring sound like that of a whistle with a pea in it. during the heat of the day all remain silent, and take their siesta in the shadiest parts of the trees, but in the cool of the evening they again exert themselves in the production of pleasant melody. it is remarkable that so many songbirds abound where there is a general paucity of other animal life. as we went forward we were struck by the comparative absence of game and the larger kind of fowls. the rivers contain very few fish. common flies are not troublesome, as they are wherever milk is abundant; they are seen in company with others of the same size and shape, but whose tiny feet do not tickle the skin, as is the case with their companions. mosquitoes are seldom so numerous as to disturb the slumbers of a weary man. but, though this region is free from common insect plagues, and from tsetse, it has others. feeling something running across my forehead as i was falling asleep, i put up the hand to wipe it off, and was sharply stung both on the hand and head; the pain was very acute. on obtaining a light, we found that it had been inflicted by a light-colored spider, about half an inch in length, and, one of the men having crushed it with his fingers, i had no opportunity of examining whether the pain had been produced by poison from a sting or from its mandibles. no remedy was applied, and the pain ceased in about two hours. the bechuanas believe that there is a small black spider in the country whose bite is fatal. i have not met with an instance in which death could be traced to this insect, though a very large black, hairy spider, an inch and a quarter long and three quarters of an inch broad, is frequently seen, having a process at the end of its front claws similar to that at the end of the scorpion's tail, and when the bulbous portion of it is pressed, the poison may be seen oozing out from the point. we have also spiders in the south which seize their prey by leaping upon it from a distance of several inches. when alarmed, they can spring about a foot away from the object of their own fear. of this kind there are several varieties. a large reddish spider ('mygale') obtains its food in a different manner than either patiently waiting in ambush or by catching it with a bound. it runs about with great velocity in and out, behind and around every object, searching for what it may devour, and, from its size and rapid motions, excites the horror of every stranger. i never knew it to do any harm except frightening the nervous, and i believe few could look upon it for the first time without feeling himself in danger. it is named by the natives "selali", and is believed to be the maker of a hinged cover for its nest. you see a door, about the size of a shilling, lying beside a deep hole of nearly similar diameter. the inside of the door lying upward, and which attracts your notice, is of a pure white silky substance, like paper. the outer side is coated over with earth, precisely like that in which the hole is made. if you try to lift it, you find it is fastened by a hinge on one side, and, if it is turned over upon the hole, it fits it exactly, and the earthy side being then uppermost, it is quite impossible to detect the situation of the nest. unfortunately, this cavity for breeding is never seen except when the owner is out, and has left the door open behind her. in some parts of the country there are great numbers of a large, beautiful yellow-spotted spider, the webs of which are about a yard in diameter. the lines on which these webs are spun are suspended from one tree to another, and are as thick as coarse thread. the fibres radiate from a central point, where the insect waits for its prey. the webs are placed perpendicularly, and a common occurrence in walking is to get the face enveloped in them as a lady is in a veil. another kind of spider lives in society, and forms so great a collection of webs placed at every angle, that the trunk of a tree surrounded by them can not be seen. a piece of hedge is often so hidden by this spider that the branches are invisible. another is seen on the inside of the walls of huts among the makololo in great abundance. it is round in shape, spotted, brown in color, and the body half an inch in diameter; the spread of the legs is an inch and a half. it makes a smooth spot for itself on the wall, covered with the above-mentioned white silky substance. there it is seen standing the whole day, and i never could ascertain how it fed. it has no web, but a carpet, and is a harmless, though an ugly neighbor. immediately beyond dilolo there is a large flat about twenty miles in breadth. here shakatwala insisted on our remaining to get supplies of food from katema's subjects, before entering the uninhabited watery plains. when asked the meaning of the name dilolo, shakatwala gave the following account of the formation of the lake. a female chief, called moene (lord) monenga, came one evening to the village of mosogo, a man who lived in the vicinity, but who had gone to hunt with his dogs. she asked for a supply of food, and mosogo's wife gave her a sufficient quantity. proceeding to another village standing on the spot now occupied by the water, she preferred the same demand, and was not only refused, but, when she uttered a threat for their niggardliness, was taunted with the question, "what could she do though she were thus treated?" in order to show what she could do, she began a song, in slow time, and uttered her own name, monenga-wo-o. as she prolonged the last note, the village, people, fowls, and dogs sank into the space now called dilolo. when kasimakate, the head man of this village, came home and found out the catastrophe, he cast himself into the lake, and is supposed to be in it still. the name is derived from "ilolo", despair, because this man gave up all hope when his family was destroyed. monenga was put to death. this may be a faint tradition of the deluge, and it is remarkable as the only one i have met with in this country. heavy rains prevented us from crossing the plain in front (n.n.w.) in one day, and the constant wading among the grass hurt the feet of the men. there is a footpath all the way across, but as this is worn down beneath the level of the rest of the plain, it is necessarily the deepest portion, and the men, avoiding it, make a new walk by its side. a path, however narrow, is a great convenience, as any one who has traveled on foot in africa will admit. the virtual want of it here caused us to make slow and painful progress. ants surely are wiser than some men, for they learn by experience. they have established themselves even on these plains, where water stands so long annually as to allow the lotus, and other aqueous plants, to come to maturity. when all the ant horizon is submerged a foot deep, they manage to exist by ascending to little houses built of black tenacious loam on stalks of grass, and placed higher than the line of inundation. this must have been the result of experience; for, if they had waited till the water actually invaded their terrestrial habitations, they would not have been able to procure materials for their aerial quarters, unless they dived down to the bottom for every mouthful of clay. some of these upper chambers are about the size of a bean, and others as large as a man's thumb. they must have built in anticipation, and if so, let us humbly hope that the sufferers by the late inundations in france may be possessed of as much common sense as the little black ants of the dilolo plains. chapter . the watershed between the northern and southern rivers--a deep valley-- rustic bridge--fountains on the slopes of the valleys--village of kabinje--good effects of the belief in the power of charms--demand for gunpowder and english calico--the kasai--vexatious trick--want of food--no game--katende's unreasonable demand--a grave offense--toll-bridge keeper--greedy guides--flooded valleys--swim the nyuana loke--prompt kindness of my men--makololo remarks on the rich uncultivated valleys--difference in the color of africans--reach a village of the chiboque--the head man's impudent message--surrounds our encampment with his warriors--the pretense--their demand--prospect of a fight--way in which it was averted--change our path--summer-- fever--beehives and the honey-guide--instinct of trees--climbers--the ox sinbad--absence of thorns in the forests--plant peculiar to a forsaken garden--bad guides--insubordination suppressed--beset by enemies--a robber party--more troubles--detained by ionga panza--his village--annoyed by bangala traders--my men discouraged--their determination and precaution. th of february. on reaching unflooded lands beyond the plain, we found the villages there acknowledged the authority of the chief named katende, and we discovered, also, to our surprise, that the almost level plain we had passed forms the watershed between the southern and northern rivers, for we had now entered a district in which the rivers flowed in a northerly direction into the kasai or loke, near to which we now were, while the rivers we had hitherto crossed were all running southward. having met with kind treatment and aid at the first village, katema's guides returned, and we were led to the n.n.w. by the inhabitants, and descended into the very first really deep valley we had seen since leaving kolobeng. a stream ran along the bottom of a slope of three or four hundred yards from the plains above. we crossed this by a rustic bridge at present submerged thigh-deep by the rains. the trees growing along the stream of this lovely valley were thickly planted and very high. many had sixty or eighty feet of clean straight trunk, and beautiful flowers adorned the ground beneath them. ascending the opposite side, we came, in two hours' time, to another valley, equally beautiful, and with a stream also in its centre. it may seem mere trifling to note such an unimportant thing as the occurrence of a valley, there being so many in every country under the sun; but as these were branches of that in which the kasai or loke flows, and both that river and its feeders derive their water in a singular manner from the valley sides, i may be excused for calling particular attention to the more furrowed nature of the country. at different points on the slopes of these valleys which we now for the first time entered, there are oozing fountains, surrounded by clumps of the same evergreen, straight, large-leaved trees we have noticed along the streams. these spots are generally covered with a mat of grassy vegetation, and possess more the character of bogs than of fountains. they slowly discharge into the stream below, and are so numerous along both banks as to give a peculiar character to the landscape. these groups of sylvan vegetation are generally of a rounded form, and the trunks of the trees are tall and straight, while those on the level plains above are low and scraggy in their growth. there can be little doubt but that the water, which stands for months on the plains, soaks in, and finds its way into the rivers and rivulets by percolating through the soil, and out by these oozing bogs; and the difference between the growth of these trees, though they be of different species, may be a proof that the stuntedness of those on the plains is owing to being, in the course of each year, more subjected to drought than moisture. reaching the village of kabinje, in the evening he sent us a present of tobacco, mutokuane or "bang" ('cannabis sativa'), and maize, by the man who went forward to announce our arrival, and a message expressing satisfaction at the prospect of having trade with the coast. the westing we were making brought us among people who are frequently visited by the mambari as slave-dealers. this trade causes bloodshed; for when a poor family is selected as the victims, it is necessary to get rid of the older members of it, because they are supposed to be able to give annoyance to the chief afterward by means of enchantments. the belief in the power of charms for good or evil produces not only honesty, but a great amount of gentle dealing. the powerful are often restrained in their despotism from a fear that the weak and helpless may injure them by their medical knowledge. they have many fears. a man at one of the villages we came to showed us the grave of his child, and, with much apparent feeling, told us she had been burned to death in her hut. he had come with all his family, and built huts around it in order to weep for her. he thought, if the grave were left unwatched, the witches would come and bewitch them by putting medicines on the body. they have a more decided belief in the continued existence of departed spirits than any of the more southerly tribes. even the barotse possess it in a strong degree, for one of my men of that tribe, on experiencing headache, said, with a sad and thoughtful countenance, "my father is scolding me because i do not give him any of the food i eat." i asked where his father was. "among the barimo," was the reply. when we wished to move on, kabinje refused a guide to the next village because he was at war with it; but, after much persuasion, he consented, provided that the guide should be allowed to return as soon as he came in sight of the enemy's village. this we felt to be a misfortune, as the people all suspect a man who comes telling his own tale; but there being no help for it, we went on, and found the head man of a village on the rivulet kalomba, called kangenke, a very different man from what his enemy represented. we found, too, that the idea of buying and selling took the place of giving for friendship. as i had nothing with which to purchase food except a parcel of beads which were preserved for worse times, i began to fear that we should soon be compelled to suffer more from hunger than we had done. the people demanded gunpowder for every thing. if we had possessed any quantity of that article, we should have got on well, for here it is of great value. on our return, near this spot we found a good-sized fowl was sold for a single charge of gunpowder. next to that, english calico was in great demand, and so were beads; but money was of no value whatever. gold is quite unknown; it is thought to be brass; trade is carried on by barter alone. the people know nothing of money. a purse-proud person would here feel the ground move from beneath his feet. occasionally a large piece of copper, in the shape of a st. andrew's cross, is offered for sale. february th. kangenke promptly furnished guides this morning, so we went briskly on a short distance, and came to a part of the kasye, kasai, or loke, where he had appointed two canoes to convey us across. this is a most beautiful river, and very much like the clyde in scotland. the slope of the valley down to the stream is about five hundred yards, and finely wooded. it is, perhaps, one hundred yards broad, and was winding slowly from side to side in the beautiful green glen, in a course to the north and northeast. in both the directions from which it came and to which it went it seemed to be alternately embowered in sylvan vegetation, or rich meadows covered with tall grass. the men pointed out its course, and said, "though you sail along it for months, you will turn without seeing the end of it." while at the ford of the kasai we were subjected to a trick, of which we had been forewarned by the people of shinte. a knife had been dropped by one of kangenke's people in order to entrap my men; it was put down near our encampment, as if lost, the owner in the mean time watching till one of my men picked it up. nothing was said until our party was divided, one half on this, and the other on that bank of the river. then the charge was made to me that one of my men had stolen a knife. certain of my people's honesty, i desired the man, who was making a great noise, to search the luggage for it; the unlucky lad who had taken the bait then came forward and confessed that he had the knife in a basket, which was already taken over the river. when it was returned, the owner would not receive it back unless accompanied with a fine. the lad offered beads, but these were refused with scorn. a shell hanging round his neck, similar to that which shinte had given me, was the object demanded, and the victim of the trick, as we all knew it to be, was obliged to part with his costly ornament. i could not save him from the loss, as all had been forewarned; and it is the universal custom among the makololo and many other tribes to show whatever they may find to the chief person of their company, and make a sort of offer of it to him. this lad ought to have done so to me; the rest of the party always observed this custom. i felt annoyed at the imposition, but the order we invariably followed in crossing a river forced me to submit. the head of the party remained to be ferried over last; so, if i had not come to terms, i would have been, as i always was in crossing rivers which we could not swim, completely in the power of the enemy. it was but rarely we could get a head man so witless as to cross a river with us, and remain on the opposite bank in a convenient position to be seized as a hostage in case of my being caught. this trick is but one of a number equally dishonorable which are practiced by tribes that lie adjacent to the more civilized settlements. the balonda farther east told us, by way of warning, that many parties of the more central tribes had at various periods set out, in order to trade with the white men themselves, instead of through the mambari, but had always been obliged to return without reaching their destination, in consequence of so many pretexts being invented by the tribes encountered in the way for fining them of their ivory. this ford was in d ' " s. latitude, but the weather was so excessively cloudy we got no observation for longitude. we were now in want of food, for, to the great surprise of my companions, the people of kangenke gave nothing except by way of sale, and charged the most exorbitant prices for the little meal and manioc they brought. the only article of barter my men had was a little fat saved from the ox we slaughtered at katema's, so i was obliged to give them a portion of the stock of beads. one day ( th) of westing brought us from the kasai to near the village of katende, and we saw that we were in a land where no hope could be entertained of getting supplies of animal food, for one of our guides caught a light-blue colored mole and two mice for his supper. the care with which he wrapped them up in a leaf and slung them on his spear told that we could not hope to enjoy any larger game. we saw no evidence of any animals besides; and, on coming to the villages beyond this, we often saw boys and girls engaged in digging up these tiny quadrupeds. katende sent for me on the day following our arrival, and, being quite willing to visit him, i walked, for this purpose, about three miles from our encampment. when we approached the village we were desired to enter a hut, and, as it was raining at the time, we did so. after a long time spent in giving and receiving messages from the great man, we were told that he wanted either a man, a tusk, beads, copper rings, or a shell, as payment for leave to pass through his country. no one, we were assured, was allowed that liberty, or even to behold him, without something of the sort being presented. having humbly explained our circumstances, and that he could not expect to "catch a humble cow by the horns"--a proverb similar to ours that "you can't draw milk out of a stone"--we were told to go home, and he would speak again to us next day. i could not avoid a hearty laugh at the cool impudence of the savage, and made the best of my way home in the still pouring rain. my men were rather nettled at this want of hospitality, but, after talking over the matter with one of katende's servants, he proposed that some small article should be given, and an attempt made to please katende. i turned out my shirts, and selected the worst one as a sop for him, and invited katende to come and choose any thing else i had, but added that, when i should reach my own chief naked, and was asked what i had done with my clothes, i should be obliged to confess that i had left them with katende. the shirt was dispatched to him, and some of my people went along with the servant; they soon returned, saying that the shirt had been accepted, and guides and food too would be sent to us next day. the chief had, moreover, expressed a hope to see me on my return. he is reported to be very corpulent. the traders who have come here seem to have been very timid, yielding to every demand made on the most frivolous pretenses. one of my men, seeing another much like an acquaintance at home, addressed him by the name of the latter in sport, telling him, at the same time, why he did so; this was pronounced to be a grave offense, and a large fine demanded; when the case came before me i could see no harm in what had been done, and told my people not to answer the young fellow. the latter felt himself disarmed, for it is chiefly in a brawl they have power; then words are spoken in anger which rouse the passions of the complainant's friends. in this case, after vociferating some time, the would-be offended party came and said to my man that, if they exchanged some small gift, all would be right, but, my man taking no notice of him, he went off rather crestfallen. my men were as much astonished as myself at the demand for payment for leave to pass, and the almost entire neglect of the rules of hospitality. katende gave us only a little meal and manioc, and a fowl. being detained two days by heavy rains, we felt that a good stock of patience was necessary in traveling through this country in the rainy season. passing onward without seeing katende, we crossed a small rivulet, the sengko, by which we had encamped, and after two hours came to another, the totelo, which was somewhat larger, and had a bridge over it. at the farther end of this structure stood a negro, who demanded fees. he said the bridge was his; the path his; the guides were his children; and if we did not pay him he would prevent farther progress. this piece of civilization i was not prepared to meet, and stood a few seconds looking at our bold toll-keeper, when one of my men took off three copper bracelets, which paid for the whole party. the negro was a better man than he at first seemed, for he immediately went to his garden and brought us some leaves of tobacco as a present. when we had got fairly away from the villages, the guides from kangenke sat down and told us that there were three paths in front, and, if we did not at once present them with a cloth, they would leave us to take whichever we might like best. as i had pointed out the direction in which loanda lay, and had only employed them for the sake of knowing the paths between villages which lay along our route, and always objected when they led us in any other than the loanda direction, i wished my men now to go on without the guides, trusting to ourselves to choose the path which would seem to lead us in the direction we had always followed. but mashauana, fearing lest we might wander, asked leave to give his own cloth, and when the guides saw that, they came forward shouting "averie, averie!" in the afternoon of this day we came to a valley about a mile wide, filled with clear, fast-flowing water. the men on foot were chin deep in crossing, and we three on ox-back got wet to the middle, the weight of the animals preventing them from swimming. a thunder-shower descending completed the partial drenching of the plain, and gave a cold, uncomfortable "packing in a wet blanket" that night. next day we found another flooded valley about half a mile wide, with a small and now deep rivulet in its middle, flowing rapidly to the s.s.e., or toward the kasai. the middle part of this flood, being the bed of what at other times is the rivulet, was so rapid that we crossed by holding on to the oxen, and the current soon dashed them to the opposite bank; we then jumped off, and, the oxen being relieved of their burdens, we could pull them on to the shallower part. the rest of the valley was thigh deep and boggy, but holding on by the belt which fastened the blanket to the ox, we each floundered through the nasty slough as well as we could. these boggy parts, lying parallel to the stream, were the most extensive we had come to: those mentioned already were mere circumscribed patches; these extended for miles along each bank; but even here, though the rapidity of the current was very considerable, the thick sward of grass was "laid" flat along the sides of the stream, and the soil was not abraded so much as to discolor the flood. when we came to the opposite side of this valley, some pieces of the ferruginous conglomerate, which forms the capping to all other rocks in a large district around and north of this, cropped out, and the oxen bit at them as if surprised by the appearance of stone as much as we were; or it may have contained some mineral of which they stood in need. we had not met with a stone since leaving shinte's. the country is covered with deep alluvial soil of a dark color and very fertile. in the afternoon we came to another stream, nyuana loke (or child of loke), with a bridge over it. the men had to swim off to each end of the bridge, and when on it were breast deep; some preferred holding on by the tails of the oxen the whole way across. i intended to do this too; but, riding to the deep part, before i could dismount and seize the helm the ox dashed off with his companions, and his body sank so deep that i failed in my attempt even to catch the blanket belt, and if i pulled the bridle the ox seemed as if he would come backward upon me, so i struck out for the opposite bank alone. my poor fellows were dreadfully alarmed when they saw me parted from the cattle, and about twenty of them made a simultaneous rush into the water for my rescue, and just as i reached the opposite bank one seized my arm, and another threw his around my body. when i stood up, it was most gratifying to see them all struggling toward me. some had leaped off the bridge, and allowed their cloaks to float down the stream. part of my goods, abandoned in the hurry, were brought up from the bottom after i was safe. great was the pleasure expressed when they found that i could swim, like themselves, without the aid of a tail, and i did and do feel grateful to these poor heathens for the promptitude with which they dashed in to save, as they thought, my life. i found my clothes cumbersome in the water; they could swim quicker from being naked. they swim like dogs, not frog-fashion, as we do. in the evening we crossed the small rivulet lozeze, and came to some villages of the kasabi, from whom we got some manioc in exchange for beads. they tried to frighten us by telling of the deep rivers we should have to cross in our way. i was drying my clothes by turning myself round and round before the fire. my men laughed at the idea of being frightened by rivers. "we can all swim: who carried the white man across the river but himself?" i felt proud of their praise. saturday, th march. came to the outskirts of the territory of the chiboque. we crossed the konde and kaluze rivulets. the former is a deep, small stream with a bridge, the latter insignificant; the valleys in which these rivulets run are beautifully fertile. my companions are continually lamenting over the uncultivated vales in such words as these: "what a fine country for cattle! my heart is sore to see such fruitful valleys for corn lying waste." at the time these words were put down i had come to the belief that the reason why the inhabitants of this fine country possess no herds of cattle was owing to the despotic sway of their chiefs, and that the common people would not be allowed to keep any domestic animals, even supposing they could acquire them; but on musing on the subject since, i have been led to the conjecture that the rich, fertile country of londa must formerly have been infested by the tsetse, but that, as the people killed off the game on which, in the absence of man, the tsetse must subsist, the insect was starved out of the country. it is now found only where wild animals abound, and the balonda, by the possession of guns, having cleared most of the country of all the large game, we may have happened to come just when it was possible to admit of cattle. hence the success of katema, shinte, and matiamvo with their herds. it would not be surprising, though they know nothing of the circumstance; a tribe on the zambesi, which i encountered, whose country was swarming with tsetse, believed that they could not keep any cattle, because "no one loved them well enough to give them the medicine of oxen;" and even the portuguese at loanda accounted for the death of the cattle brought from the interior to the sea-coast by the prejudicial influence of the sea air! one ox, which i took down to the sea from the interior, died at loanda, with all the symptoms of the poison injected by tsetse, which i saw myself in a district a hundred miles from the coast. while at the villages of the kasabi we saw no evidences of want of food among the people. our beads were very valuable, but cotton cloth would have been still more so; as we traveled along, men, women, and children came running after us, with meal and fowls for sale, which we would gladly have purchased had we possessed any english manufactures. when they heard that we had no cloth, they turned back much disappointed. the amount of population in the central parts of the country may be called large only as compared with the cape colony or the bechuana country. the cultivated land is as nothing compared with what might be brought under the plow. there are flowing streams in abundance, which, were it necessary, could be turned to the purpose of irrigation with but little labor. miles of fruitful country are now lying absolutely waste, for there is not even game to eat off the fine pasturage, and to recline under the evergreen, shady groves which we are ever passing in our progress. the people who inhabit the central region are not all quite black in color. many incline to that of bronze, and others are as light in hue as the bushmen, who, it may be remembered, afford a proof that heat alone does not cause blackness, but that heat and moisture combined do very materially deepen the color. wherever we find people who have continued for ages in a hot, humid district, they are deep black, but to this apparent law there are exceptions, caused by the migrations of both tribes and individuals; the makololo, for instance, among the tribes of the humid central basin, appear of a sickly sallow hue when compared with the aboriginal inhabitants; the batoka also, who lived in an elevated region, are, when seen in company with the batoka of the rivers, so much lighter in color, they might be taken for another tribe; but their language, and the very marked custom of knocking out the upper front teeth, leave no room for doubt that they are one people. apart from the influences of elevation, heat, humidity, and degradation, i have imagined that the lighter and darker colors observed in the native population run in five longitudinal bands along the southern portion of the continent. those on the seaboard of both the east and west are very dark; then two bands of lighter color lie about three hundred miles from each coast, of which the westerly one, bending round, embraces the kalahari desert and bechuana countries; and then the central basin is very dark again. this opinion is not given with any degree of positiveness. it is stated just as it struck my mind in passing across the country, and if incorrect, it is singular that the dialects spoken by the different tribes have arranged themselves in a fashion which seems to indicate migration along the lines of color. the dialects spoken in the extreme south, whether hottentot or caffre, bear a close affinity to those of the tribes living immediately on their northern borders; one glides into the other, and their affinities are so easily detected that they are at once recognized to be cognate. if the dialects of extreme points are compared, as that of the caffres and the tribes near the equator, it is more difficult to recognize the fact, which is really the case, that all the dialects belong to but two families of languages. examination of the roots of the words of the dialects, arranged in geographical order, shows that they merge into each other, and there is not nearly so much difference between the extremes of east and west as between those of north and south, the dialect spoken at tete resembling closely that in angola. having, on the afore-mentioned date, reached the village of njambi, one of the chiefs of the chiboque, we intended to pass a quiet sunday; and our provisions being quite spent, i ordered a tired riding-ox to be slaughtered. as we wished to be on good terms with all, we sent the hump and ribs to njambi, with the explanation that this was the customary tribute to chiefs in the part from which we had come, and that we always honored men in his position. he returned thanks, and promised to send food. next morning he sent an impudent message, with a very small present of meal; scorning the meat he had accepted, he demanded either a man, an ox, a gun, powder, cloth, or a shell; and in the event of refusal to comply with his demand, he intimated his intention to prevent our further progress. we replied, we should have thought ourselves fools if we had scorned his small present, and demanded other food instead; and even supposing we had possessed the articles named, no black man ought to impose a tribute on a party that did not trade in slaves. the servants who brought the message said that, when sent to the mambari, they had always got a quantity of cloth from them for their master, and now expected the same, or something else as an equivalent, from me. we heard some of the chiboque remark, "they have only five guns;" and about midday, njambi collected all his people, and surrounded our encampment. their object was evidently to plunder us of every thing. my men seized their javelins, and stood on the defensive, while the young chiboque had drawn their swords and brandished them with great fury. some even pointed their guns at me, and nodded to each other, as much as to say, "this is the way we shall do with him." i sat on my camp-stool, with my double-barreled gun across my knees, and invited the chief to be seated also. when he and his counselors had sat down on the ground in front of me, i asked what crime we had committed that he had come armed in that way. he replied that one of my men, pitsane, while sitting at the fire that morning, had, in spitting, allowed a small quantity of the saliva to fall on the leg of one of his men, and this "guilt" he wanted to be settled by the fine of a man, ox, or gun. pitsane admitted the fact of a little saliva having fallen on the chiboque, and in proof of its being a pure accident, mentioned that he had given the man a piece of meat, by way of making friends, just before it happened, and wiped it off with his hand as soon as it fell. in reference to a man being given, i declared that we were all ready to die rather than give up one of our number to be a slave; that my men might as well give me as i give one of them, for we were all free men. "then you can give the gun with which the ox was shot." as we heard some of his people remarking even now that we had only "five guns", we declined, on the ground that, as they were intent on plundering us, giving a gun would be helping them to do so. this they denied, saying they wanted the customary tribute only. i asked what right they had to demand payment for leave to tread on the ground of god, our common father. if we trod on their gardens, we would pay, but not for marching on land which was still god's, and not theirs. they did not attempt to controvert this, because it is in accordance with their own ideas, but reverted again to the pretended crime of the saliva. my men now entreated me to give something; and after asking the chief if he really thought the affair of the spitting a matter of guilt, and receiving an answer in the affirmative, i gave him one of my shirts. the young chiboque were dissatisfied, and began shouting and brandishing their swords for a greater fine. as pitsane felt that he had been the cause of this disagreeable affair, he asked me to add something else. i gave a bunch of beads, but the counselors objected this time, so i added a large handkerchief. the more i yielded, the more unreasonable their demands became, and at every fresh demand a shout was raised by the armed party, and a rush made around us with brandishing of arms. one young man made a charge at my head from behind, but i quickly brought round the muzzle of my gun to his mouth, and he retreated. i pointed him out to the chief, and he ordered him to retire a little. i felt anxious to avoid the effusion of blood; and though sure of being able, with my makololo, who had been drilled by sebituane, to drive off twice the number of our assailants, though now a large body, and well armed with spears, swords, arrows, and guns, i strove to avoid actual collision. my men were quite unprepared for this exhibition, but behaved with admirable coolness. the chief and counselors, by accepting my invitation to be seated, had placed themselves in a trap, for my men very quietly surrounded them, and made them feel that there was no chance of escaping their spears. i then said that, as one thing after another had failed to satisfy them, it was evident that they wanted to fight, while we only wanted to pass peaceably through the country; that they must begin first, and bear the guilt before god: we would not fight till they had struck the first blow. i then sat silent for some time. it was rather trying for me, because i knew that the chiboque would aim at the white man first; but i was careful not to appear flurried, and, having four barrels ready for instant action, looked quietly at the savage scene around. the chiboque countenance, by no means handsome, is not improved by the practice which they have adopted of filing the teeth to a point. the chief and counselors, seeing that they were in more danger than i, did not choose to follow our decision that they should begin by striking the first blow, and then see what we could do, and were perhaps influenced by seeing the air of cool preparation which some of my men displayed at the prospect of a work of blood. the chiboque at last put the matter before us in this way: "you come among us in a new way, and say you are quite friendly: how can we know it unless you give us some of your food, and you take some of ours? if you give us an ox, we will give you whatever you may wish, and then we shall be friends." in accordance with the entreaties of my men, i gave an ox; and when asked what i should like in return, mentioned food as the thing which we most needed. in the evening njambi sent us a very small basket of meal, and two or three pounds of the flesh of our own ox! with the apology that he had no fowls, and very little of any other food. it was impossible to avoid a laugh at the coolness of the generous creatures. i was truly thankful, nevertheless, that, though resolved to die rather than deliver up one of our number to be a slave, we had so far gained our point as to be allowed to pass on without having shed human blood. in the midst of the commotion, several chiboque stole pieces of meat out of the sheds of my people, and mohorisi, one of the makololo, went boldly into the crowd and took back a marrow-bone from one of them. a few of my batoka seemed afraid, and would perhaps have fled had the affray actually begun, but, upon the whole, i thought my men behaved admirably. they lamented having left their shields at home by command of sekeletu, who feared that, if they carried these, they might be more disposed to be overbearing in their demeanor to the tribes we should meet. we had proceeded on the principles of peace and conciliation, and the foregoing treatment shows in what light our conduct was viewed; in fact, we were taken for interlopers trying to cheat the revenue of the tribe. they had been accustomed to get a slave or two from every slave-trader who passed them, and now that we disputed the right, they viewed the infringement on what they considered lawfully due with most virtuous indignation. march th. we were informed that the people on the west of the chiboque of njambi were familiar with the visits of slave-traders; and it was the opinion of our guides from kangenke that so many of my companions would be demanded from me, in the same manner as the people of njambi had done, that i should reach the coast without a single attendant; i therefore resolved to alter our course and strike away to the n.n.e., in the hope that at some point farther north i might find an exit to the portuguese settlement of cassange. we proceeded at first due north, with the kasabi villages on our right, and the kasau on our left. during the first twenty miles we crossed many small, but now swollen streams, having the usual boggy banks, and wherever the water had stood for any length of time it was discolored with rust of iron. we saw a "nakong" antelope one day, a rare sight in this quarter; and many new and pretty flowers adorned the valleys. we could observe the difference in the seasons in our northing in company with the sun. summer was now nearly over at kuruman, and far advanced at linyanti, but here we were in the middle of it; fruits, which we had eaten ripe on the leeambye, were here quite green; but we were coming into the region where the inhabitants are favored with two rainy seasons and two crops, i.e., when the sun is going south, and when he comes back on his way to the north, as was the case at present. on the th, one of the men had left an ounce or two of powder at our sleeping-place, and went back several miles for it. my clothing being wet from crossing a stream, i was compelled to wait for him; had i been moving in the sun i should have felt no harm, but the inaction led to a violent fit of fever. the continuance of this attack was a source of much regret, for we went on next day to a small rivulet called chihune, in a lovely valley, and had, for a wonder, a clear sky and a clear moon; but such was the confusion produced in my mind by the state of my body, that i could scarcely manage, after some hours' trial, to get a lunar observation in which i could repose confidence. the chihune flows into the longe, and that into the chihombo, a feeder of the kasai. those who know the difficulties of taking altitudes, times, and distances, and committing all of them to paper, will sympathize with me in this and many similar instances. while at chihune, the men of a village brought wax for sale, and, on finding that we wished honey, went off and soon brought a hive. all the bees in the country are in possession of the natives, for they place hives sufficient for them all. after having ascertained this, we never attended the call of the honey-guide, for we were sure it would only lead us to a hive which we had no right to touch. the bird continues its habit of inviting attention to the honey, though its services in this district are never actually needed. my makololo lamented that they never knew before that wax could be sold for any thing of value. as we traverse a succession of open lawns and deep forests, it is interesting to observe something like instinct developed even in trees. one which, when cut, emits a milky juice, if met with on the open lawns, grows as an ordinary umbrageous tree, and shows no disposition to be a climber; when planted in a forest it still takes the same form, then sends out a climbing branch, which twines round another tree until it rises thirty or forty feet, or to the level of the other trees, and there spreads out a second crown where it can enjoy a fair share of the sun's rays. in parts of the forest still more dense than this, it assumes the form of a climber only, and at once avails itself of the assistance of a tall neighbor by winding vigorously round it, without attempting to form a lower head. it does not succeed so well as parasites proper, but where forced to contend for space it may be mistaken for one which is invariably a climber. the paths here were very narrow and very much encumbered with gigantic creepers, often as thick as a man's leg. there must be some reason why they prefer, in some districts, to go up trees in the common form of the thread of a screw rather than in any other. on the one bank of the chihune they appeared to a person standing opposite them to wind up from left to right, on the other bank from right to left. i imagined this was owing to the sun being at one season of the year on their north and at another on their south. but on the leeambye i observed creepers winding up on opposite sides of the same reed, and making a figure like the lacings of a sandal. in passing through these narrow paths i had an opportunity of observing the peculiarities of my ox "sinbad". he had a softer back than the others, but a much more intractable temper. his horns were bent downward and hung loosely, so he could do no harm with them; but as we wended our way slowly along the narrow path, he would suddenly dart aside. a string tied to a stick put through the cartilage of the nose serves instead of a bridle: if you jerk this back, it makes him run faster on; if you pull it to one side, he allows the nose and head to go, but keeps the opposite eye directed to the forbidden spot, and goes in spite of you. the only way he can be brought to a stand is by a stroke with a wand across the nose. when sinbad ran in below a climber stretched over the path so low that i could not stoop under it, i was dragged off and came down on the crown of my head; and he never allowed an opportunity of the kind to pass without trying to inflict a kick, as if i neither had nor deserved his love. a remarkable peculiarity in the forests of this country is the absence of thorns: there are but two exceptions; one a tree bearing a species of 'nux vomica', and a small shrub very like the plant of the sarsaparilla, bearing, in addition to its hooked thorns, bunches of yellow berries. the thornlessness of the vegetation is especially noticeable to those who have been in the south, where there is so great a variety of thorn-bearing plants and trees. we have thorns of every size and shape; thorns straight, thin and long, short and thick, or hooked, and so strong as to be able to cut even leather like a knife. seed-vessels are scattered every where by these appendages. one lies flat as a shilling with two thorns in its centre, ready to run into the foot of any animal that treads upon it, and stick there for days together. another (the 'uncaria procumbens', or grapple-plant) has so many hooked thorns as to cling most tenaciously to any animal to which it may become attached; when it happens to lay hold of the mouth of an ox, the animal stands and roars with pain and a sense of helplessness. whenever a part of the forest has been cleared for a garden, and afterward abandoned, a species of plant, with leaves like those of ginger, springs up, and contends for the possession of the soil with a great crop of ferns. this is the case all the way down to angola, and shows the great difference of climate between this and the bechuana country, where a fern, except one or two hardy species, is never seen. the plants above mentioned bear a pretty pink flower close to the ground, which is succeeded by a scarlet fruit full of seeds, yielding, as so many fruits in this country do, a pleasant acid juice, which, like the rest, is probably intended as a corrective to the fluids of the system in the hot climate. on leaving the chihune we crossed the longe, and, as the day was cloudy, our guides wandered in a forest away to the west till we came to the river chihombo, flowing to the e.n.e. my men depended so much on the sun for guidance that, having seen nothing of the luminary all day, they thought we had wandered back to the chiboque, and, as often happens when bewildered, they disputed as to the point where the sun should rise next morning. as soon as the rains would allow next day, we went off to the n.e. it would have been better to have traveled by compass alone, for the guides took advantage of any fears expressed by my people, and threatened to return if presents were not made at once. but my men had never left their own country before except for rapine and murder. when they formerly came to a village they were in the habit of killing numbers of the inhabitants, and then taking a few young men to serve as guides to the next place. as this was their first attempt at an opposite line of conduct, and as they were without their shields, they felt defenseless among the greedy chiboque, and some allowance must be made for them on that account. saturday, th. reached a small village on the banks of a narrow stream. i was too ill to go out of my little covering except to quell a mutiny which began to show itself among some of the batoka and ambonda of our party. they grumbled, as they often do against their chiefs, when they think them partial in their gifts, because they supposed that i had shown a preference in the distribution of the beads; but the beads i had given to my principal men were only sufficient to purchase a scanty meal, and i had hastened on to this village in order to slaughter a tired ox, and give them all a feast as well as a rest on sunday, as preparation for the journey before us. i explained this to them, and thought their grumbling was allayed. i soon sank into a state of stupor, which the fever sometimes produced, and was oblivious to all their noise in slaughtering. on sunday the mutineers were making a terrible din in preparing a skin they had procured. i requested them twice, by the man who attended me, to be more quiet, as the noise pained me; but as they paid no attention to this civil request, i put out my head, and, repeating it myself, was answered by an impudent laugh. knowing that discipline would be at an end if this mutiny were not quelled, and that our lives depended on vigorously upholding authority, i seized a double-barreled pistol, and darted forth from the domicile, looking, i suppose, so savage as to put them to a precipitate flight. as some remained within hearing, i told them that i must maintain discipline, though at the expense of some of their limbs; so long as we traveled together they must remember that i was master, and not they. there being but little room to doubt my determination, they immediately became very obedient, and never afterward gave me any trouble, or imagined that they had any right to my property. th. we went forward some miles, but were brought to a stand by the severity of my fever on the banks of a branch of the loajima, another tributary of the kasai. i was in a state of partial coma until late at night, when it became necessary for me to go out; and i was surprised to find that my men had built a little stockade, and some of them took their spears and acted as a guard. i found that we were surrounded by enemies, and a party of chiboque lay near the gateway, after having preferred the demand of "a man, an ox, a gun, or a tusk." my men had prepared for defense in case of a night attack, and when the chiboque wished to be shown where i lay sick, they very properly refused to point me out. in the morning i went out to the chiboque, and found that they answered me civilly regarding my intentions in opening the country, teaching them, etc., etc. they admitted that their chiefs would be pleased with the prospect of friendship, and now only wished to exchange tokens of good-will with me, and offered three pigs, which they hoped i would accept. the people here are in the habit of making a present, and then demanding whatever they choose in return. we had been forewarned of this by our guides, so i tried to decline, by asking if they would eat one of the pigs in company with us. to this proposition they said that they durst not accede. i then accepted the present in the hope that the blame of deficient friendly feeling might not rest with me, and presented a razor, two bunches of beads, and twelve copper rings, contributed by my men from their arms. they went off to report to their chief; and as i was quite unable to move from excessive giddiness, we continued in the same spot on tuesday evening, when they returned with a message couched in very plain terms, that a man, tusk, gun, or even an ox, alone would be acceptable; that he had every thing else in his possession but oxen, and that, whatever i should please to demand from him, he would gladly give it. as this was all said civilly, and there was no help for it if we refused but bloodshed, i gave a tired riding-ox. my late chief mutineer, an ambonda man, was now over-loyal, for he armed himself and stood at the gateway. he would rather die than see his father imposed on; but i ordered mosantu to take him out of the way, which he did promptly, and allowed the chiboque to march off well pleased with their booty. i told my men that i esteemed one of their lives of more value than all the oxen we had, and that the only cause which could induce me to fight would be to save the lives and liberties of the majority. in the propriety of this they all agreed, and said that, if the chiboque molested us who behaved so peaceably, the guilt would be on their heads. this is a favorite mode of expression throughout the whole country. all are anxious to give explanation of any acts they have performed, and conclude the narration with, "i have no guilt or blame" ("molatu"). "they have the guilt." i never could be positive whether the idea in their minds is guilt in the sight of the deity, or of mankind only. next morning the robber party came with about thirty yards of strong striped english calico, an axe, and two hoes for our acceptance, and returned the copper rings, as the chief was a great man, and did not need the ornaments of my men, but we noticed that they were taken back again. i divided the cloth among my men, and pleased them a little by thus compensating for the loss of the ox. i advised the chief, whose name we did not learn, as he did not deign to appear except under the alias matiamvo, to get cattle for his own use, and expressed sorrow that i had none wherewith to enable him to make a commencement. rains prevented our proceeding till thursday morning, and then messengers appeared to tell us that their chief had learned that all the cloth sent by him had not been presented; that the copper rings had been secreted by the persons ordered to restore them to us, and that he had stripped the thievish emissaries of their property as a punishment. our guides thought these were only spies of a larger party, concealed in the forest through which we were now about to pass. we prepared for defense by marching in a compact body, and allowing no one to straggle far behind the others. we marched through many miles of gloomy forest in gloomier silence, but nothing disturbed us. we came to a village, and found all the men absent, the guides thought, in the forest, with their countrymen. i was too ill to care much whether we were attacked or not. though a pouring rain came on, as we were all anxious to get away out of a bad neighborhood, we proceeded. the thick atmosphere prevented my seeing the creeping plants in time to avoid them; so pitsane, mohorisi, and i, who alone were mounted, were often caught; and as there is no stopping the oxen when they have the prospect of giving the rider a tumble, we came frequently to the ground. in addition to these mishaps, sinbad went off at a plunging gallop, the bridle broke, and i came down backward on the crown of my head. he gave me a kick on the thigh at the same time. i felt none the worse for this rough treatment, but would not recommend it to others as a palliative in cases of fever! this last attack of fever was so obstinate that it reduced me almost to a skeleton. the blanket which i used as a saddle on the back of the ox, being frequently wet, remained so beneath me even in the hot sun, and, aided by the heat of the ox, caused extensive abrasion of the skin, which was continually healing and getting sore again. to this inconvenience was now added the chafing of my projecting bones on the hard bed. on friday we came to a village of civil people on the banks of the loajima itself, and we were wet all day in consequence of crossing it. the bridges over it, and another stream which we crossed at midday, were submerged, as we have hitherto invariably found, by a flood of perfectly clear water. at the second ford we were met by a hostile party who refused us further passage. i ordered my men to proceed in the same direction we had been pursuing, but our enemies spread themselves out in front of us with loud cries. our numbers were about equal to theirs this time, so i moved on at the head of my men. some ran off to other villages, or back to their own village, on pretense of getting ammunition; others called out that all traders came to them, and that we must do the same. as these people had plenty of iron-headed arrows and some guns, when we came to the edge of the forest i ordered my men to put the luggage in our centre; and, if our enemies did not fire, to cut down some young trees and make a screen as quickly as possible, but do nothing to them except in case of actual attack. i then dismounted, and, advancing a little toward our principal opponent, showed him how easily i could kill him, but pointed upward, saying, "i fear god." he did the same, placing his hand on his heart, pointing upward, and saying, "i fear to kill; but come to our village; come--do come." at this juncture, the old head man, ionga panza, a venerable negro, came up, and i invited him and all to be seated, that we might talk the matter over. ionga panza soon let us know that he thought himself very ill treated in being passed by. as most skirmishes arise from misunderstanding, this might have been a serious one; for, like all the tribes near the portuguese settlements, people here imagine that they have a right to demand payment from every one who passes through the country; and now, though ionga panza was certainly no match for my men, yet they were determined not to forego their right without a struggle. i removed with my men to the vicinity of the village, thankful that no accident had as yet brought us into actual collision. the reason why the people have imbibed the idea so strongly that they have a right to demand payment for leave to pass through the country is probably this. they have seen no traders except those either engaged in purchasing slaves, or who have slaves in their employment. these slave-traders have always been very much at the mercy of the chiefs through whose country they have passed; for if they afforded a ready asylum for runaway slaves, the traders might be deserted at any moment, and stripped of their property altogether. they are thus obliged to curry favor with the chiefs, so as to get a safe conduct from them. the same system is adopted to induce the chiefs to part with their people, whom all feel to be the real source of their importance in the country. on the return of the traders from the interior with chains of slaves, it is so easy for a chief who may be so disposed to take away a chain of eight or ten unresisting slaves, that the merchant is fain to give any amount of presents in order to secure the good-will of the rulers. the independent chiefs, not knowing why their favor is so eagerly sought, become excessively proud and supercilious in their demands, and look upon white men with the greatest contempt. to such lengths did the bangala, a tribe near to which we had now approached, proceed a few years ago, that they compelled the portuguese traders to pay for water, wood, and even grass, and every possible pretext was invented for levying fines; and these were patiently submitted to so long as the slave-trade continued to flourish. we had unconsciously come in contact with a system which was quite unknown in the country from which my men had set out. an english trader may there hear a demand for payment of guides, but never, so far as i am aware, is he asked to pay for leave to traverse a country. the idea does not seem to have entered the native mind, except through slave-traders, for the aborigines all acknowledge that the untilled land, not needed for pasturage, belongs to god alone, and that no harm is done by people passing through it. i rather believe that, wherever the slave-trade has not penetrated, the visits of strangers are esteemed a real privilege. the village of old ionga panza (lat. d ' s., long. d ' e.) is small, and embowered in lofty evergreen trees, which were hung around with fine festoons of creepers. he sent us food immediately, and soon afterward a goat, which was considered a handsome gift, there being but few domestic animals, though the country is well adapted for them. i suspect this, like the country of shinte and katema, must have been a tsetse district, and only recently rendered capable of supporting other domestic animals besides the goat, by the destruction of the game through the extensive introduction of fire-arms. we might all have been as ignorant of the existence of this insect plague as the portuguese, had it not been for the numerous migrations of pastoral tribes which took place in the south in consequence of zulu irruptions. during these exciting scenes i always forgot my fever, but a terrible sense of sinking came back with the feeling of safety. the same demand of payment for leave to pass was made on the th by old ionga panza as by the other chiboque. i offered the shell presented by shinte, but ionga panza said he was too old for ornaments. we might have succeeded very well with him, for he was by no means unreasonable, and had but a very small village of supporters; but our two guides from kangenke complicated our difficulties by sending for a body of bangala traders, with a view to force us to sell the tusks of sekeletu, and pay them with the price. we offered to pay them handsomely if they would perform their promise of guiding us to cassange, but they knew no more of the paths than we did; and my men had paid them repeatedly, and tried to get rid of them, but could not. they now joined with our enemies, and so did the traders. two guns and some beads belonging to the latter were standing in our encampment, and the guides seized them and ran off. as my men knew that we should be called upon to replace them, they gave chase, and when the guides saw that they would be caught, they threw down the guns, directed their flight to the village, and rushed into a hut. the doorway is not much higher than that of a dog's kennel. one of the guides was reached by one of my men as he was in the act of stooping to get in, and a cut was inflicted on a projecting part of the body which would have made any one in that posture wince. the guns were restored, but the beads were lost in the flight. all i had remaining of my stock of beads could not replace those lost; and though we explained that we had no part in the guilt of the act, the traders replied that we had brought the thieves into the country; these were of the bangala, who had been accustomed to plague the portuguese in the most vexatious way. we were striving to get a passage through the country, and, feeling anxious that no crime whatever should be laid to our charge, tried the conciliatory plan here, though we were not, as in the other instances, likely to be overpowered by numbers. my men offered all their ornaments, and i offered all my beads and shirts; but, though we had come to the village against our will, and the guides had also followed us contrary to our desire, and had even sent for the bangala traders without our knowledge or consent, yet matters could not be arranged without our giving an ox and one of the tusks. we were all becoming disheartened, and could not wonder that native expeditions from the interior to the coast had generally failed to reach their destinations. my people were now so much discouraged that some proposed to return home; the prospect of being obliged to return when just on the threshold of the portuguese settlements distressed me exceedingly. after using all my powers of persuasion, i declared to them that if they returned i would go on alone, and went into my little tent with the mind directed to him who hears the sighing of the soul, and was soon followed by the head of mohorisi, saying, "we will never leave you. do not be disheartened. wherever you lead we will follow. our remarks were made only on account of the injustice of these people." others followed, and with the most artless simplicity of manner told me to be comforted--"they were all my children; they knew no one but sekeletu and me, and they would die for me; they had not fought because i did not wish it; they had just spoken in the bitterness of their spirit, and when feeling that they could do nothing; but if these enemies begin you will see what we can do." one of the oxen we offered to the chiboque had been rejected because he had lost part of his tail, as they thought that it had been cut off and witchcraft medicine inserted; and some mirth was excited by my proposing to raise a similar objection to all the oxen we still had in our possession. the remaining four soon presented a singular shortness of their caudal extremities, and though no one ever asked whether they had medicine in the stumps or no, we were no more troubled by the demand for an ox! we now slaughtered another ox, that the spectacle might not be seen of the owners of the cattle fasting while the chiboque were feasting. chapter . guides prepaid--bark canoes--deserted by guides--mistakes respecting the coanza--feelings of freed slaves--gardens and villages--native traders--a grave--valley of the quango--bamboo--white larvae used as food--bashinje insolence--a posing question--the chief sansawe--his hostility--pass him safely--the river quango--chief's mode of dressing his hair--opposition--opportune aid by cypriano--his generous hospitality--ability of half-castes to read and write--books and images--marauding party burned in the grass--arrive at cassange--a good supper--kindness of captain neves--portuguese curiosity and questions-- anniversary of the resurrection--no prejudice against color--country around cassange--sell sekeletu's ivory--makololo's surprise at the high price obtained--proposal to return home, and reasons-- soldier-guide--hill kasala--tala mungongo, village of--civility of basongo--true negroes--a field of wheat-- carriers--sleeping-places--fever--enter district of ambaca--good fruits of jesuit teaching--the 'tampan'; its bite--universal hospitality of the portuguese--a tale of the mambari--exhilarating effects of highland scenery--district of golungo alto--want of good roads--fertility--forests of gigantic timber--native carpenters--coffee estate--sterility of country near the coast--mosquitoes--fears of the makololo--welcome by mr. gabriel to loanda. th. ionga panza's sons agreed to act as guides into the territory of the portuguese if i would give them the shell given by shinte. i was strongly averse to this, and especially to give it beforehand, but yielded to the entreaty of my people to appear as if showing confidence in these hopeful youths. they urged that they wished to leave the shell with their wives, as a sort of payment to them for enduring their husbands' absence so long. having delivered the precious shell, we went west-by-north to the river chikapa, which here (lat. d ' s.) is forty or fifty yards wide, and at present was deep; it was seen flowing over a rocky, broken cataract with great noise about half a mile above our ford. we were ferried over in a canoe, made out of a single piece of bark sewed together at the ends, and having sticks placed in it at different parts to act as ribs. the word chikapa means bark or skin; and as this is the only river in which we saw this kind of canoe used, and we heard that this stream is so low during most of the year as to be easily fordable, it probably derives its name from the use made of the bark canoes when it is in flood. we now felt the loss of our pontoon, for the people to whom the canoe belonged made us pay once when we began to cross, then a second time when half of us were over, and a third time when all were over but my principal man pitsane and myself. loyanke took off his cloth and paid my passage with it. the makololo always ferried their visitors over rivers without pay, and now began to remark that they must in future fleece the mambari as these chiboque had done to us; they had all been loud in condemnation of the meanness, and when i asked if they could descend to be equally mean, i was answered that they would only do it in revenge. they like to have a plausible excuse for meanness. next morning our guides went only about a mile, and then told us they would return home. i expected this when paying them beforehand, in accordance with the entreaties of the makololo, who are rather ignorant of the world. very energetic remonstrances were addressed to the guides, but they slipped off one by one in the thick forest through which we were passing, and i was glad to hear my companions coming to the conclusion that, as we were now in parts visited by traders, we did not require the guides, whose chief use had been to prevent misapprehension of our objects in the minds of the villagers. the country was somewhat more undulating now than it had been, and several fine small streams flowed in deep woody dells. the trees are very tall and straight, and the forests gloomy and damp; the ground in these solitudes is quite covered with yellow and brown mosses, and light-colored lichens clothe all the trees. the soil is extremely fertile, being generally a black loam covered with a thick crop of tall grasses. we passed several villages too. the head man of a large one scolded us well for passing, when he intended to give us food. where slave-traders have been in the habit of coming, they present food, then demand three or four times its value as a custom. we were now rather glad to get past villages without intercourse with the inhabitants. we were traveling w.n.w., and all the rivulets we here crossed had a northerly course, and were reported to fall into the kasai or loke; most of them had the peculiar boggy banks of the country. as we were now in the alleged latitude of the coanza, i was much astonished at the entire absence of any knowledge of that river among the natives of this quarter. but i was then ignorant of the fact that the coanza rises considerably to the west of this, and has a comparatively short course from its source to the sea. the famous dr. lacerda seems to have labored under the same mistake as myself, for he recommended the government of angola to establish a chain of forts along the banks of that river, with a view to communication with the opposite coast. as a chain of forts along its course would lead southward instead of eastward, we may infer that the geographical data within reach of that eminent man were no better than those according to which i had directed my course to the coanza where it does not exist. th. we spent sunday on the banks of the quilo or kweelo, here a stream of about ten yards wide. it runs in a deep glen, the sides of which are almost five hundred yards of slope, and rocky, the rocks being hardened calcareous tufa lying on clay shale and sandstone below, with a capping of ferruginous conglomerate. the scenery would have been very pleasing, but fever took away much of the joy of life, and severe daily intermittents rendered me very weak and always glad to recline. as we were now in the slave-market, it struck me that the sense of insecurity felt by the natives might account for the circumstance that those who have been sold as slaves and freed again, when questioned, profess to like the new state better than their primitive one. they lived on rich, fertile plains, which seldom inspire that love of country which the mountains do. if they had been mountaineers, they would have pined for home. to one who has observed the hard toil of the poor in old civilized countries, the state in which the inhabitants here live is one of glorious ease. the country is full of little villages. food abounds, and very little labor is required for its cultivation; the soil is so rich that no manure is required; when a garden becomes too poor for good crops of maize, millet, etc., the owner removes a little farther into the forest, applies fire round the roots of the larger trees to kill them, cuts down the smaller, and a new, rich garden is ready for the seed. the gardens usually present the appearance of a large number of tall, dead trees standing without bark, and maize growing between them. the old gardens continue to yield manioc for years after the owners have removed to other spots for the sake of millet and maize. but, while vegetable aliment is abundant, there is a want of salt and animal food, so that numberless traps are seen, set for mice, in all the forests of londa. the vegetable diet leaves great craving for flesh, and i have no doubt but that, when an ordinary quantity of mixed food is supplied to freed slaves, they actually do feel more comfortable than they did at home. their assertions, however, mean but little, for they always try to give an answer to please, and if one showed them a nugget of gold, they would generally say that these abounded in their country. one could detect, in passing, the variety of character found among the owners of gardens and villages. some villages were the pictures of neatness. we entered others enveloped in a wilderness of weeds, so high that, when sitting on ox-back in the middle of the village, we could only see the tops of the huts. if we entered at midday, the owners would come lazily forth, pipe in hand, and leisurely puff away in dreamy indifference. in some villages weeds are not allowed to grow; cotton, tobacco, and different plants used as relishes are planted round the huts; fowls are kept in cages, and the gardens present the pleasant spectacle of different kinds of grain and pulse at various periods of their growth. i sometimes admired the one class, and at times wished i could have taken the world easy for a time like the other. every village swarms with children, who turn out to see the white man pass, and run along with strange cries and antics; some run up trees to get a good view: all are agile climbers throughout londa. at friendly villages they have scampered alongside our party for miles at a time. we usually made a little hedge around our sheds; crowds of women came to the entrance of it, with children on their backs, and long pipes in their mouths, gazing at us for hours. the men, rather than disturb them, crawled through a hole in the hedge, and it was common to hear a man in running off say to them, "i am going to tell my mamma to come and see the white man's oxen." in continuing our w.n.w. course, we met many parties of native traders, each carrying some pieces of cloth and salt, with a few beads to barter for bees'-wax. they are all armed with portuguese guns, and have cartridges with iron balls. when we meet we usually stand a few minutes. they present a little salt, and we give a bit of ox-hide, or some other trifle, and then part with mutual good wishes. the hide of the oxen we slaughtered had been a valuable addition to our resources, for we found it in so great repute for girdles all through loanda that we cut up every skin into strips about two inches broad, and sold them for meal and manioc as we went along. as we came nearer angola we found them of less value, as the people there possess cattle themselves. the village on the kweelo, at which we spent sunday, was that of a civil, lively old man, called sakandala, who offered no objections to our progress. we found we should soon enter on the territory of the bashinje (chinge of the portuguese), who are mixed with another tribe, named bangala, which have been at war with the babindele or portuguese. rains and fever, as usual, helped to impede our progress until we were put on the path which leads from cassange and bihe to matiamvo, by a head man named kamboela. this was a well-beaten footpath, and soon after entering upon it we met a party of half-caste traders from bihe, who confirmed the information we had already got of this path leading straight to cassange, through which they had come on their way from bihe to cabango. they kindly presented my men with some tobacco, and marveled greatly when they found that i had never been able to teach myself to smoke. on parting with them we came to a trader's grave. this was marked by a huge cone of sticks placed in the form of the roof of a hut, with a palisade around it. at an opening on the western side an ugly idol was placed: several strings of beads and bits of cloth were hung around. we learned that he had been a half-caste, who had died on his way back from matiamvo. as we were now alone, and sure of being on the way to the abodes of civilization, we went on briskly. on the th we came to a sudden descent from the high land, indented by deep, narrow valleys, over which we had lately been traveling. it is generally so steep that it can only be descended at particular points, and even there i was obliged to dismount, though so weak that i had to be led by my companions to prevent my toppling over in walking down. it was annoying to feel myself so helpless, for i never liked to see a man, either sick or well, giving in effeminately. below us lay the valley of the quango. if you sit on the spot where mary queen of scots viewed the battle of langside, and look down on the vale of clyde, you may see in miniature the glorious sight which a much greater and richer valley presented to our view. it is about a hundred miles broad, clothed with dark forest, except where the light green grass covers meadow-lands on the quango, which here and there glances out in the sun as it wends its way to the north. the opposite side of this great valley appears like a range of lofty mountains, and the descent into it about a mile, which, measured perpendicularly, may be from a thousand to twelve hundred feet. emerging from the gloomy forests of londa, this magnificent prospect made us all feel as if a weight had been lifted off our eyelids. a cloud was passing across the middle of the valley, from which rolling thunder pealed, while above all was glorious sunlight; and when we went down to the part where we saw it passing, we found that a very heavy thunder-shower had fallen under the path of the cloud; and the bottom of the valley, which from above seemed quite smooth, we discovered to be intersected and furrowed by great numbers of deep-cut streams. looking back from below, the descent appears as the edge of a table-land, with numerous indented dells and spurs jutting out all along, giving it a serrated appearance. both the top and sides of the sierra are covered with trees, but large patches of the more perpendicular parts are bare, and exhibit the red soil, which is general over the region we have now entered. the hollow affords a section of this part of the country; and we find that the uppermost stratum is the ferruginous conglomerate already mentioned. the matrix is rust of iron (or hydrous peroxide of iron and hematite), and in it are imbedded water-worn pebbles of sandstone and quartz. as this is the rock underlying the soil of a large part of londa, its formation must have preceded the work of denudation by an arm of the sea, which washed away the enormous mass of matter required before the valley of cassange could assume its present form. the strata under the conglomerate are all of red clay shale of different degrees of hardness, the most indurated being at the bottom. this red clay shale is named "keele" in scotland, and has always been considered as an indication of gold; but the only thing we discovered was that it had given rise to a very slippery clay soil, so different from that which we had just left that mashauana, who always prided himself on being an adept at balancing himself in the canoe on water, and so sure of foot on land that he could afford to express contempt for any one less gifted, came down in a very sudden and undignified manner, to the delight of all whom he had previously scolded for falling. here we met with the bamboo as thick as a man's arm, and many new trees. others, which we had lost sight of since leaving shinte, now reappeared; but nothing struck us more than the comparative scragginess of the trees in this hollow. those on the high lands we had left were tall and straight; here they were stunted, and not by any means so closely planted together. the only way i could account for this was by supposing, as the trees were of different species, that the greater altitude suited the nature of those above better than the lower altitude did the other species below. sunday, april d. we rested beside a small stream, and our hunger being now very severe, from having lived on manioc alone since leaving ionza panza's, we slaughtered one of our four remaining oxen. the people of this district seem to feel the craving for animal food as much as we did, for they spend much energy in digging large white larvae out of the damp soil adjacent to their streams, and use them as a relish to their vegetable diet. the bashinje refused to sell any food for the poor old ornaments my men had now to offer. we could get neither meal nor manioc, but should have been comfortable had not the bashinje chief sansawe pestered us for the customary present. the native traders informed us that a display of force was often necessary before they could pass this man. sansawe, the chief of a portion of the bashinje, having sent the usual formal demand for a man, an ox, or a tusk, spoke very contemptuously of the poor things we offered him instead. we told his messengers that the tusks were sekeletu's: every thing was gone except my instruments, which could be of no use to them whatever. one of them begged some meat, and, when it was refused, said to my men, "you may as well give it, for we shall take all after we have killed you to-morrow." the more humbly we spoke, the more insolent the bashinje became, till at last we were all feeling savage and sulky, but continued to speak as civilly as we could. they are fond of argument, and when i denied their right to demand tribute from a white man, who did not trade in slaves, an old white-headed negro put rather a posing question: "you know that god has placed chiefs among us whom we ought to support. how is it that you, who have a book that tells you about him, do not come forward at once to pay this chief tribute like every one else?" i replied by asking, "how could i know that this was a chief, who had allowed me to remain a day and a half near him without giving me any thing to eat?" this, which to the uninitiated may seem sophistry, was to the central africans quite a rational question, for he at once admitted that food ought to have been sent, and added that probably his chief was only making it ready for me, and that it would come soon. after being wearied by talking all day to different parties sent by sansawe, we were honored by a visit from himself: he is quite a young man, and of rather a pleasing countenance. there can not have been much intercourse between real portuguese and these people even here, so close to the quango, for sansawe asked me to show him my hair, on the ground that, though he had heard of it, and some white men had even passed through his country, he had never seen straight hair before. this is quite possible, as most of the slave-traders are not portuguese, but half-castes. the difference between their wool and our hair caused him to burst into a laugh, and the contrast between the exposed and unexposed parts of my skin, when exhibited in evidence of our all being made of one stock originally, and the children of one maker, seemed to strike him with wonder. i then showed him my watch, and wished to win my way into his confidence by conversation; but, when about to exhibit my pocket compass, he desired me to desist, as he was afraid of my wonderful things. i told him, if he knew my aims as the tribes in the interior did, and as i hoped he would yet know them and me, he would be glad to stay, and see also the pictures of the magic lantern; but, as it was now getting dark, he had evidently got enough of my witchery, and began to use some charms to dispel any kindly feelings he might have found stealing round his heart. he asked leave to go, and when his party moved off a little way, he sent for my spokesman, and told him that, "if we did not add a red jacket and a man to our gift of a few copper rings and a few pounds of meat, we must return by the way we had come." i said in reply "that we should certainly go forward next day, and if he commenced hostilities, the blame before god would be that of sansawe;" and my man added of his own accord, "how many white men have you killed in this path?" which might be interpreted into, "you have never killed any white man, and you will find ours more difficult to manage than you imagine." it expressed a determination, which we had often repeated to each other, to die rather than yield one of our party to be a slave. hunger has a powerful effect on the temper. when we had got a good meal of meat, we could all bear the petty annoyances of these borderers on the more civilized region in front with equanimity; but having suffered considerably of late, we were all rather soured in our feelings, and not unfrequently i overheard my companions remark in their own tongue, in answer to threats of attack, "that's what we want: only begin then;" or with clenched teeth they would exclaim to each other, "these things have never traveled, and do not know what men are." the worrying, of which i give only a slight sketch, had considerable influence on my own mind, and more especially as it was impossible to make any allowance for the bashinje, such as i was willing to award to the chiboque. they saw that we had nothing to give, nor would they be benefited in the least by enforcing the impudent order to return whence we had come. they were adding insult to injury, and this put us all into a fighting spirit, and, as nearly as we could judge, we expected to be obliged to cut our way through the bashinje next morning. d april. as soon as day dawned we were astir, and, setting off in a drizzling rain, passed close to the village. this rain probably damped the ardor of the robbers. we, however, expected to be fired upon from every clump of trees, or from some of the rocky hillocks among which we were passing; and it was only after two hours' march that we began to breathe freely, and my men remarked, in thankfulness, "we are children of jesus." we continued our course, notwithstanding the rain, across the bottom of the quango valley, which we found broken by clay shale rocks jutting out, though lying nearly horizontally. the grass in all the hollows, at this time quite green, was about two feet higher than my head while sitting on ox-back. this grass, wetted by the rain, acted as a shower-bath on one side of our bodies; and some deep gullies, full of discolored water, completed the cooling process. we passed many villages during this drenching, one of which possessed a flock of sheep; and after six hours we came to a stand near the river quango (lat. d ' s., long. d ' e.), which may be called the boundary of the portuguese claims to territory on the west. as i had now no change of clothing, i was glad to cower under the shelter of my blanket, thankful to god for his goodness in bringing us so far without losing one of the party. th april. we were now on the banks of the quango, a river one hundred and fifty yards wide, and very deep. the water was discolored--a circumstance which we had observed in no river in londa or in the makololo country. this fine river flows among extensive meadows clothed with gigantic grass and reeds, and in a direction nearly north. the quango is said by the natives to contain many venomous water-snakes, which congregate near the carcass of any hippopotamus that may be killed in it. if this is true, it may account for all the villages we saw being situated far from its banks. we were advised not to sleep near it; but, as we were anxious to cross to the western side, we tried to induce some of the bashinje to lend us canoes for the purpose. this brought out the chief of these parts, who informed us that all the canoe-men were his children, and nothing could be done without his authority. he then made the usual demand for a man, an ox, or a gun, adding that otherwise we must return to the country from which we had come. as i did not believe that this man had any power over the canoes of the other side, and suspected that if i gave him my blanket--the only thing i now had in reserve--he might leave us in the lurch after all, i tried to persuade my men to go at once to the bank, about two miles off, and obtain possession of the canoes before we gave up the blanket; but they thought that this chief might attack us in the act of crossing, should we do so. the chief came himself to our encampment and made his demand again. my men stripped off the last of their copper rings and gave them; but he was still intent on a man. he thought, as others did, that my men were slaves. he was a young man, with his woolly hair elaborately dressed: that behind was made up into a cone, about eight inches in diameter at the base, carefully swathed round with red and black thread. as i resisted the proposal to deliver up my blanket until they had placed us on the western bank, this chief continued to worry us with his demands till i was tired. my little tent was now in tatters, and having a wider hole behind than the door in front, i tried in vain to lie down out of sight of our persecutors. we were on a reedy flat, and could not follow our usual plan of a small stockade, in which we had time to think over and concoct our plans. as i was trying to persuade my men to move on to the bank in spite of these people, a young half-caste portuguese sergeant of militia, cypriano di abreu, made his appearance, and gave the same advice. he had come across the quango in search of bees'-wax. when we moved off from the chief who had been plaguing us, his people opened a fire from our sheds, and continued to blaze away some time in the direction we were going, but none of the bullets reached us. it is probable that they expected a demonstration of the abundance of ammunition they possessed would make us run; but when we continued to move quietly to the ford, they proceeded no farther than our sleeping-place. cypriano assisted us in making a more satisfactory arrangement with the ferrymen than parting with my blanket; and as soon as we reached the opposite bank we were in the territory of the bangala, who are subjects of the portuguese, and often spoken of as the cassanges or cassantse; and happily all our difficulties with the border tribes were at an end. passing with light hearts through the high grass by a narrow footpath for about three miles to the west of the river, we came to several neat square houses, with many cleanly-looking half-caste portuguese standing in front of them to salute us. they are all enrolled in the militia, and our friend cypriano is the commander of a division established here. the bangala were very troublesome to the portuguese traders, and at last proceeded so far as to kill one of them; the government of angola then sent an expedition against them, which being successful, the bangala were dispersed, and are now returning to their former abodes as vassals. the militia are quartered among them, and engage in trade and agriculture for their support, as no pay is given to this branch of the service by the government. we came to the dwelling of cypriano after dark, and i pitched my little tent in front of it for the night. we had the company of mosquitoes here. we never found them troublesome on the banks of the pure streams of londa. on the morning of the th cypriano generously supplied my men with pumpkins and maize, and then invited me to breakfast, which consisted of ground-nuts and roasted maize, then boiled manioc roots and ground-nuts, with guavas and honey as a dessert. i felt sincerely grateful for this magnificent breakfast. at dinner cypriano was equally bountiful, and several of his friends joined us in doing justice to his hospitality. before eating, all had water poured on the hands by a female slave to wash them. one of the guests cut up a fowl with a knife and fork. neither forks nor spoons were used in eating. the repast was partaken of with decency and good manners, and concluded by washing the hands as at first. all of them could read and write with ease. i examined the books they possessed, and found a small work on medicine, a small cyclopaedia, and a portuguese dictionary, in which the definition of a "priest" seemed strange to a protestant, namely, "one who takes care of the conscience." they had also a few tracts containing the lives of the saints, and cypriano had three small wax images of saints in his room. one of these was st. anthony, who, had he endured the privations he did in his cell in looking after these lost sheep, would have lived to better purpose. neither cypriano nor his companions knew what the bible was, but they had relics in german-silver cases hung round their necks, to act as charms and save them from danger by land or by water, in the same way as the heathen have medicines. it is a pity that the church to which they belong, when unable to attend to the wants of her children, does not give them the sacred writings in their own tongue; it would surely be better to see them good protestants, if these would lead them to be so, than entirely ignorant of god's message to man. for my part, i would much prefer to see the africans good roman catholics than idolatrous heathen. much of the civility shown to us here was, no doubt, owing to the flattering letters of recommendation i carried from the chevalier du prat, of cape town; but i am inclined to believe that my friend cypriano was influenced, too, by feelings of genuine kindness, for he quite bared his garden in feeding us during the few days which i remained, anxiously expecting the clouds to disperse, so far as to allow of my taking observations for the determination of the position of the quango. he slaughtered an ox for us, and furnished his mother and her maids with manioc roots, to prepare farina for the four or five days of our journey to cassange, and never even hinted at payment. my wretched appearance must have excited his compassion. the farina is prepared by washing the roots well, then rasping them down to a pulp. next, this is roasted slightly on a metal plate over a fire, and is then used with meat as a vegetable. it closely resembles wood-sawings, and on that account is named "wood-meal". it is insipid, and employed to lick up any gravy remaining on one's plate. those who have become accustomed to it relish it even after they have returned to europe. the manioc cultivated here is of the sweet variety; the bitter, to which we were accustomed in londa, is not to be found very extensively in this fertile valley. may is the beginning of winter, yet many of the inhabitants were busy planting maize; that which we were now eating was planted in the beginning of february. the soil is exceedingly fertile, of a dark red color, and covered with such a dense, heavy crop of coarse grass, that when a marauding party of ambonda once came for plunder while it was in a dried state, the bangala encircled the common enemy with a fire which completely destroyed them. this, which is related on the authority of portuguese who were then in the country, i can easily believe to be true, for the stalks of the grass are generally as thick as goose-quills, and no flight could be made through the mass of grass in any direction where a footpath does not exist. probably, in the case mentioned, the direction of the wind was such as to drive the flames across the paths, and prevent escape along them. on one occasion i nearly lost my wagon by fire, in a valley where the grass was only about three feet high. we were roused by the roar, as of a torrent, made by the fire coming from the windward. i immediately set fire to that on our leeward, and had just time to drag the wagon on to the bare space there before the windward flames reached the place where it had stood. we were detained by rains and a desire to ascertain our geographical position till monday, the th, and only got the latitude d ' s.; and, after three days' pretty hard traveling through the long grass, reached cassange, the farthest inland station of the portuguese in western africa. we crossed several fine little streams running into the quango; and as the grass continued to tower about two feet over our heads, it generally obstructed our view of the adjacent country, and sometimes hung over the path, making one side of the body wet with the dew every morning, or, when it rained, kept me wet during the whole day. i made my entrance in a somewhat forlorn state as to clothing among our portuguese allies. the first gentleman i met in the village asked if i had a passport, and said it was necessary to take me before the authorities. as i was in the same state of mind in which individuals are who commit a petty depredation in order to obtain the shelter and food of a prison, i gladly accompanied him to the house of the commandant or chefe, senhor de silva rego. having shown my passport to this gentleman, he politely asked me to supper, and, as we had eaten nothing except the farina of cypriano from the quango to this, i suspect i appeared particularly ravenous to the other gentlemen around the table. they seemed, however, to understand my position pretty well, from having all traveled extensively themselves; had they not been present, i might have put some in my pocket to eat by night; for, after fever, the appetite is excessively keen, and manioc is one of the most unsatisfying kinds of food. captain antonio rodrigues neves then kindly invited me to take up my abode in his house. next morning this generous man arrayed me in decent clothing, and continued during the whole period of my stay to treat me as if i had been his brother. i feel deeply grateful to him for his disinterested kindness. he not only attended to my wants, but also furnished food for my famishing party free of charge. the village of cassange (pronounced kassanje) is composed of thirty or forty traders' houses, scattered about without any regularity, on an elevated flat spot in the great quango or cassange valley. they are built of wattle and daub, and surrounded by plantations of manioc, maize, etc. behind them there are usually kitchen gardens, in which the common european vegetables, as potatoes, peas, cabbages, onions, tomatoes, etc., etc., grow. guavas and bananas appear, from the size and abundance of the trees, to have been introduced many years ago, while the land was still in the possession of the natives; but pine-apples, orange, fig, and cashew trees have but lately been tried. there are about forty portuguese traders in this district, all of whom are officers in the militia, and many of them have become rich from adopting the plan of sending out pombeiros, or native traders, with large quantities of goods, to trade in the more remote parts of the country. some of the governors of loanda, the capital of this, the kingdom of angola, have insisted on the observance of a law which, from motives of humanity, forbids the portuguese themselves from passing beyond the boundary. they seem to have taken it for granted that, in cases where the white trader was killed, the aggression had been made by him, and they wished to avoid the necessity of punishing those who had been provoked to shed portuguese blood. this indicates a much greater impartiality than has obtained in our own dealings with the caffres, for we have engaged in most expensive wars with them without once inquiring whether any of the fault lay with our frontier colonists. the cassange traders seem inclined to spread along the quango, in spite of the desire of their government to keep them on one spot, for mutual protection in case of war. if i might judge from the week of feasting i passed among them, they are generally prosperous. as i always preferred to appear in my own proper character, i was an object of curiosity to these hospitable portuguese. they evidently looked upon me as an agent of the english government, engaged in some new movement for the suppression of slavery. they could not divine what a "missionario" had to do with the latitudes and longitudes, which i was intent on observing. when we became a little familiar, the questions put were rather amusing: "is it common for missionaries to be doctors?" "are you a doctor of medicine and a 'doutor mathematico' too? you must be more than a missionary to know how to calculate the longitude! come, tell us at once what rank you hold in the english army." they may have given credit to my reason for wearing the mustache, as that explains why men have beards and women have none; but that which puzzled many besides my cassange friends was the anomaly of my being a "sacerdote", with a wife and four children! i usually got rid of the last question by putting another: "is it not better to have children with a wife, than to have children without a wife?" but all were most kind and hospitable; and as one of their festivals was near, they invited me to partake of the feast. the anniversary of the resurrection of our savior was observed on the th of april as a day of rejoicing, though the portuguese have no priests at cassange. the colored population dressed up a figure intended to represent judas iscariot, and paraded him on a riding-ox about the village; sneers and maledictions were freely bestowed on the poor wretch thus represented. the slaves and free colored population, dressed in their gayest clothing, made visits to all the principal merchants, and wishing them "a good feast", expected a present in return. this, though frequently granted in the shape of pieces of calico to make new dresses, was occasionally refused, but the rebuff did not much affect the petitioner. at ten a.m. we went to the residence of the commandant, and on a signal being given, two of the four brass guns belonging to the government commenced firing, and continued some time, to the great admiration of my men, whose ideas of the power of a cannon are very exalted. the portuguese flag was hoisted and trumpets sounded, as an expression of joy at the resurrection of our lord. captain neves invited all the principal inhabitants of the place, and did what he could to feast them in a princely style. all manner of foreign preserved fruits and wine from portugal, biscuits from america, butter from cork, and beer from england, were displayed, and no expense spared in rendering the entertainment joyous. after the feast was over they sat down to the common amusement of card-playing, which continued till eleven o'clock at night. as far as a mere traveler could judge, they seemed to be polite and willing to aid each other. they live in a febrile district, and many of them had enlarged spleens. they have neither doctor, apothecary, school, nor priest, and, when taken ill, trust to each other and to providence. as men left in such circumstances must think for themselves, they have all a good idea of what ought to be done in the common diseases of the country, and what they have of either medicine or skill they freely impart to each other. none of these gentlemen had portuguese wives. they usually come to africa in order to make a little money, and return to lisbon. hence they seldom bring their wives with them, and never can be successful colonists in consequence. it is common for them to have families by native women. it was particularly gratifying to me, who had been familiar with the stupid prejudice against color, entertained only by those who are themselves becoming tawny, to view the liberality with which people of color were treated by the portuguese. instances, so common in the south, in which half-caste children are abandoned, are here extremely rare. they are acknowledged at table, and provided for by their fathers as if european. the colored clerks of the merchants sit at the same table with their employers without any embarrassment. the civil manners of superiors to inferiors is probably the result of the position they occupy--a few whites among thousands of blacks; but nowhere else in africa is there so much good-will between europeans and natives as here. if some border colonists had the absolute certainty of our government declining to bear them out in their arrogance, we should probably hear less of caffre insolence. it is insolence which begets insolence. from the village of cassange we have a good view of the surrounding country: it is a gently undulating plain, covered with grass and patches of forest. the western edge of the quango valley appears, about twenty miles off, as if it were a range of lofty mountains, and passes by the name of tala mungongo, "behold the range". in the old portuguese map, to which i had been trusting in planning my route, it is indicated as talla mugongo, or "castle of rocks!" and the coanza is put down as rising therefrom; but here i was assured that the coanza had its source near bihe, far to the southwest of this, and we should not see that river till we came near pungo andonga. it is somewhat remarkable that more accurate information about this country has not been published. captain neves and others had a correct idea of the courses of the rivers, and communicated their knowledge freely; yet about this time maps were sent to europe from angola representing the quango and coanza as the same river, and cassange placed about one hundred miles from its true position. the frequent recurrence of the same name has probably helped to increase the confusion. i have crossed several quangos, but all insignificant, except that which drains this valley. the repetition of the favorite names of chiefs, as catende, is also perplexing, as one catende may be mistaken for another. to avoid this confusion as much as possible, i have refrained from introducing many names. numerous villages are studded all over the valley; but these possess no permanence, and many more existed previous to the portuguese expedition of to punish the bangala. this valley, as i have before remarked, is all fertile in the extreme. my men could never cease admiring its capability for raising their corn ('holcus sorghum'), and despising the comparatively limited cultivation of the inhabitants. the portuguese informed me that no manure is ever needed, but that, the more the ground is tilled, the better it yields. virgin soil does not give such a heavy crop as an old garden, and, judging from the size of the maize and manioc in the latter, i can readily believe the statement. cattle do well, too. viewing the valley as a whole, it may be said that its agricultural and pastoral riches are lying waste. both the portuguese and their descendants turn their attention almost exclusively to trade in wax and ivory, and though the country would yield any amount of corn and dairy produce, the native portuguese live chiefly on manioc, and the europeans purchase their flour, bread, butter, and cheese from the americans. as the traders of cassange were the first white men we had come to, we sold the tusks belonging to sekeletu, which had been brought to test the difference of prices in the makololo and white men's country. the result was highly satisfactory to my companions, as the portuguese give much larger prices for ivory than traders from the cape can possibly give, who labor under the disadvantage of considerable overland expenses and ruinous restrictions. two muskets, three small barrels of gunpowder, and english calico and baize sufficient to clothe my whole party, with large bunches of beads, all for one tusk, were quite delightful for those who had been accustomed to give two tusks for one gun. with another tusk we procured calico, which here is the chief currency, to pay our way down to the coast. the remaining two were sold for money to purchase a horse for sekeletu at loanda. the superiority of this new market was quite astounding to the makololo, and they began to abuse the traders by whom they had, while in their own country, been visited, and, as they now declared, "cheated". they had no idea of the value of time and carriage, and it was somewhat difficult for me to convince them that the reason of the difference of prices lay entirely in what they themselves had done in coming here, and that, if the portuguese should carry goods to their country, they would by no means be so liberal in their prices. they imagined that, if the cassange traders came to linyanti, they would continue to vend their goods at cassange prices. i believe i gave them at last a clear idea of the manner in which prices were regulated by the expenses incurred; and when we went to loanda, and saw goods delivered at a still cheaper rate, they concluded that it would be better for them to come to that city, than to turn homeward at cassange. it was interesting for me to observe the effects of the restrictive policy pursued by the cape government toward the bechuanas. like all other restrictions on trade, the law of preventing friendly tribes from purchasing arms and ammunition only injures the men who enforce it. the cape government, as already observed, in order to gratify a company of independent boers, whose well-known predilection for the practice of slavery caused them to stipulate that a number of peaceable, honest tribes should be kept defenseless, agreed to allow free trade in arms and ammunition to the boers, and prevent the same trade to the bechuanas. the cape government thereby unintentionally aided, and continues to aid, the boers to enslave the natives. but arms and ammunition flow in on all sides by new channels, and where formerly the price of a large tusk procured but one musket, one tusk of the same size now brings ten. the profits are reaped by other nations, and the only persons really the losers, in the long run, are our own cape merchants, and a few defenseless tribes of bechuanas on our immediate frontier. mr. rego, the commandant, very handsomely offered me a soldier as a guard to ambaca. my men told me that they had been thinking it would be better to turn back here, as they had been informed by the people of color at cassange that i was leading them down to the sea-coast only to sell them, and they would be taken on board ship, fattened, and eaten, as the white men were cannibals. i asked if they had ever heard of an englishman buying or selling people; if i had not refused to take a slave when she was offered to me by shinte; but, as i had always behaved as an english teacher, if they now doubted my intentions, they had better not go to the coast; i, however, who expected to meet some of my countrymen there, was determined to go on. they replied that they only thought it right to tell me what had been told to them, but they did not intend to leave me, and would follow wherever i should lead the way. this affair being disposed of for the time, the commandant gave them an ox, and me a friendly dinner before parting. all the merchants of cassange accompanied us, in their hammocks carried by slaves, to the edge of the plateau on which their village stands, and we parted with the feeling in my mind that i should never forget their disinterested kindness. they not only did every thing they could to make my men and me comfortable during our stay; but, there being no hotels in loanda, they furnished me with letters of recommendation to their friends in that city, requesting them to receive me into their houses, for without these a stranger might find himself a lodger in the streets. may god remember them in their day of need! the latitude and longitude of cassange, the most easterly station of the portuguese in western africa, is lat. d ' " s., and long. d ' e.; consequently we had still about miles to traverse before we could reach the coast. we had a black militia corporal as a guide. he was a native of ambaca, and, like nearly all the inhabitants of that district, known by the name of ambakistas, could both read and write. he had three slaves with him, and was carried by them in a "tipoia", or hammock slung to a pole. his slaves were young, and unable to convey him far at a time, but he was considerate enough to walk except when we came near to a village. he then mounted his tipoia and entered the village in state; his departure was made in the same manner, and he continued in the hammock till the village was out of sight. it was interesting to observe the manners of our soldier-guide. two slaves were always employed in carrying his tipoia, and the third carried a wooden box, about three feet long, containing his writing materials, dishes, and clothing. he was cleanly in all his ways, and, though quite black himself, when he scolded any one of his own color, abused him as a "negro". when he wanted to purchase any article from a village, he would sit down, mix a little gunpowder as ink, and write a note in a neat hand to ask the price, addressing it to the shopkeeper with the rather pompous title, "illustrissimo senhor" (most illustrious sir). this is the invariable mode of address throughout angola. the answer returned would be in the same style, and, if satisfactory, another note followed to conclude the bargain. there is so much of this note correspondence carried on in angola, that a very large quantity of paper is annually consumed. some other peculiarities of our guide were not so pleasing. a land of slaves is a bad school for even the free; and i was sorry to find less truthfulness and honesty in him than in my own people. we were often cheated through his connivance with the sellers of food, and could perceive that he got a share of the plunder from them. the food is very cheap, but it was generally made dear enough, until i refused to allow him to come near the place where we were bargaining. but he took us safely down to ambaca, and i was glad to see, on my return to cassange, that he was promoted to be sergeant-major of a company of militia. having left cassange on the st, we passed across the remaining portion of this excessively fertile valley to the foot of tala mungongo. we crossed a fine little stream called the lui on the d, and another named the luare on the th, then slept at the bottom of the height, which is from a thousand to fifteen hundred feet. the clouds came floating along the valley, and broke against the sides of the ascent, and the dripping rain on the tall grass made the slaps in the face it gave, when the hand or a stick was not held up before it, any thing but agreeable. this edge of the valley is exactly like the other; jutting spurs and defiles give the red ascent the same serrated appearance as that which we descended from the highlands of londa. the whole of this vast valley has been removed by denudation, for pieces of the plateau which once filled the now vacant space stand in it, and present the same structure of red horizontal strata of equal altitudes with those of the acclivity which we are now about to ascend. one of these insulated masses, named kasala, bore e.s.e. from the place where we made our exit from the valley, and about ten miles w.s.w. from the village of cassange. it is remarkable for its perpendicular sides; even the natives find it extremely difficult, almost impossible, to reach its summit, though there is the temptation of marabou-nests and feathers, which are highly prized. there is a small lake reported to exist on its southern end, and, during the rainy season, a sort of natural moat is formed around the bottom. what an acquisition this would have been in feudal times in england! there is land sufficient for considerable cultivation on the top, with almost perpendicular sides more than a thousand feet in height. we had not yet got a clear idea of the nature of tala mungongo. a gentleman of cassange described it as a range of very high mountains, which it would take four hours to climb; so, though the rain and grass had wetted us miserably, and i was suffering from an attack of fever got while observing by night for the position of cassange, i eagerly commenced the ascent. the path was steep and slippery; deep gorges appear on each side of it, leaving but a narrow path along certain spurs of the sierra for the traveler; but we accomplished the ascent in an hour, and when there, found we had just got on to a table-land similar to that we had left before we entered the great quango valley. we had come among lofty trees again. one of these, bearing a fruit about the size of a thirty-two pounder, is named mononga-zambi. we took a glance back to this valley, which equals that of the mississippi in fertility, and thought of the vast mass of material which had been scooped out and carried away in its formation. this naturally led to reflection on the countless ages required for the previous formation and deposition of that same material (clay shale), then of the rocks, whose abrasion formed that, until the mind grew giddy in attempting to ascend the steps which lead up through a portion of the eternity before man. the different epochs of geology are like landmarks in that otherwise shoreless sea. our own epoch, or creation, is but another added to the number of that wonderful series which presents a grand display of the mighty power of god: every stage of progress in the earth and its habitants is such a display. so far from this science having any tendency to make men undervalue the power or love of god, it leads to the probability that the exhibition of mercy we have in the gift of his son may possibly not be the only manifestation of grace which has taken place in the countless ages during which works of creation have been going on. situated a few miles from the edge of the descent, we found the village of tala mungongo, and were kindly accommodated with a house to sleep in, which was very welcome, as we were all both wet and cold. we found that the greater altitude and the approach of winter lowered the temperature so much that many of my men suffered severely from colds. at this, as at several other portuguese stations, they have been provident enough to erect travelers' houses on the same principle as khans or caravanserais of the east. they are built of the usual wattle and daub, and have benches of rods for the wayfarer to make his bed on; also chairs, and a table, and a large jar of water. these benches, though far from luxurious couches, were better than the ground under the rotten fragments of my gipsy-tent, for we had still showers occasionally, and the dews were very heavy. i continued to use them for the sake of the shelter they afforded, until i found that they were lodgings also for certain inconvenient bedfellows. th. five hours' ride through a pleasant country of forest and meadow, like those of londa, brought us to a village of basongo, a tribe living in subjection to the portuguese. we crossed several little streams, which were flowing in the westerly direction in which we were marching, and unite to form the quize, a feeder of the coanza. the basongo were very civil, as indeed all the tribes were who had been conquered by the portuguese. the basongo and bangala are yet only partially subdued. the farther west we go from this, the less independent we find the black population, until we reach the vicinity of loanda, where the free natives are nearly identical in their feelings toward the government with the slaves. but the governors of angola wisely accept the limited allegiance and tribute rendered by the more distant tribes as better than none. all the inhabitants of this region, as well as those of londa, may be called true negroes, if the limitations formerly made be borne in mind. the dark color, thick lips, heads elongated backward and upward and covered with wool, flat noses, with other negro peculiarities, are general; but, while these characteristics place them in the true negro family, the reader would imbibe a wrong idea if he supposed that all these features combined are often met with in one individual. all have a certain thickness and prominence of lip, but many are met with in every village in whom thickness and projection are not more marked than in europeans. all are dark, but the color is shaded off in different individuals from deep black to light yellow. as we go westward, we observe the light color predominating over the dark, and then again, when we come within the influence of damp from the sea air, we find the shade deepen into the general blackness of the coast population. the shape of the head, with its woolly crop, though general, is not universal. the tribes on the eastern side of the continent, as the caffres, have heads finely developed and strongly european. instances of this kind are frequently seen, and after i became so familiar with the dark color as to forget it in viewing the countenance, i was struck by the strong resemblance some natives bore to certain of our own notabilities. the bushmen and hottentots are exceptions to these remarks, for both the shape of their heads and growth of wool are peculiar; the latter, for instance, springs from the scalp in tufts with bare spaces between, and when the crop is short, resembles a number of black pepper-corns stuck on the skin, and very unlike the thick frizzly masses which cover the heads of the balonda and maravi. with every disposition to pay due deference to the opinions of those who have made ethnology their special study, i have felt myself unable to believe that the exaggerated features usually put forth as those of the typical negro characterize the majority of any nation of south central africa. the monuments of the ancient egyptians seem to me to embody the ideal of the inhabitants of londa better than the figures of any work of ethnology i have met with. passing through a fine, fertile, and well-peopled country to sanza, we found the quize river again touching our path, and here we had the pleasure of seeing a field of wheat growing luxuriantly without irrigation. the ears were upward of four inches long, an object of great curiosity to my companions, because they had tasted my bread at linyanti, but had never before seen wheat growing. this small field was cultivated by mr. miland, an agreeable portuguese merchant. his garden was interesting, as showing what the land at this elevation is capable of yielding; for, besides wheat, we saw european vegetables in a flourishing condition, and we afterward discovered that the coffee-plant has propagated itself on certain spots of this same district. it may be seen on the heights of tala mungongo, or nearly miles from the west coast, where it was first introduced by the jesuit missionaries. we spent sunday, the th of april, at ngio, close to the ford of the quize as it crosses our path to fall into the coanza. the country becomes more open, but is still abundantly fertile, with a thick crop of grass between two and three feet high. it is also well wooded and watered. villages of basongo are dotted over the landscape, and frequently a square house of wattle and daub, belonging to native portuguese, is placed beside them for the purposes of trade. the people here possess both cattle and pigs. the different sleeping-places on our path, from eight to ten miles apart, are marked by a cluster of sheds made of sticks and grass. there is a constant stream of people going and returning to and from the coast. the goods are carried on the head, or on one shoulder, in a sort of basket attached to the extremities of two poles between five and six feet long, and called motete. when the basket is placed on the head, the poles project forward horizontally, and when the carrier wishes to rest himself, he plants them on the ground and the burden against a tree, so he is not obliged to lift it up from the ground to the level of the head. it stands against the tree propped up by the poles at that level. the carrier frequently plants the poles on the ground, and stands holding the burden until he has taken breath, thus avoiding the trouble of placing the burden on the ground and lifting it up again. when a company of these carriers, or our own party, arrives at one of these sleeping-places, immediate possession is taken of the sheds. those who come late, and find all occupied, must then erect others for themselves; but this is not difficult, for there is no lack of long grass. no sooner do any strangers appear at the spot, than the women may be seen emerging from their villages bearing baskets of manioc-meal, roots, ground-nuts, yams, bird's-eye pepper, and garlic for sale. calico, of which we had brought some from cassange, is the chief medium of exchange. we found them all civil, and it was evident, from the amount of talking and laughing in bargaining, that the ladies enjoyed their occupation. they must cultivate largely, in order to be able to supply the constant succession of strangers. those, however, near to the great line of road, purchase also much of the food from the more distant villages for the sake of gain. pitsane and another of the men had violent attacks of fever, and it was no wonder, for the dampness and evaporation from the ground was excessive. when at any time i attempted to get an observation of a star, if the trough of mercury were placed on the ground, so much moisture was condensed on the inside of the glass roof over it that it was with difficulty the reflection of the star could be seen. when the trough was placed on a box to prevent the moisture entering from below, so much dew was deposited on the outside of the roof that it was soon necessary, for the sake of distinct vision, to wipe the glass. this would not have been of great consequence, but a short exposure to this dew was so sure to bring on a fresh fever, that i was obliged to give up observations by night altogether. the inside of the only covering i now had was not much better, but under the blanket one is not so liable to the chill which the dew produces. it would have afforded me pleasure to have cultivated a more intimate acquaintance with the inhabitants of this part of the country, but the vertigo produced by frequent fevers made it as much as i could do to stick on the ox and crawl along in misery. in crossing the lombe, my ox sinbad, in the indulgence of his propensity to strike out a new path for himself, plunged overhead into a deep hole, and so soused me that i was obliged to move on to dry my clothing, without calling on the europeans who live on the bank. this i regretted, for all the portuguese were very kind, and, like the boers placed in similar circumstances, feel it a slight to be passed without a word of salutation. but we went on to a spot where orange-trees had been planted by the natives themselves, and where abundance of that refreshing fruit was exposed for sale. on entering the district of ambaca, we found the landscape enlivened by the appearance of lofty mountains in the distance, the grass comparatively short, and the whole country at this time looking gay and verdant. on our left we saw certain rocks of the same nature with those of pungo andongo, and which closely resemble the stonehenge group on salisbury plain, only the stone pillars here are of gigantic size. this region is all wonderfully fertile, famed for raising cattle, and all kinds of agricultural produce, at a cheap rate. the soil contains sufficient ferruginous matter, to impart a red tinge to nearly the whole of it. it is supplied with a great number of little flowing streams which unite in the lucalla. this river drains ambaca, then falls into the coanza to the southwest at massangano. we crossed the lucalla by means of a large canoe kept there by a man who farms the ferry from the government, and charges about a penny per head. a few miles beyond the lucalla we came to the village of ambaca, an important place in former times, but now a mere paltry village, beautifully situated on a little elevation in a plain surrounded on all hands by lofty mountains. it has a jail, and a good house for the commandant, but neither fort nor church, though the ruins of a place of worship are still standing. we were most kindly received by the commandant of ambaca, arsenio de carpo, who spoke a little english. he recommended wine for my debility, and here i took the first glass of that beverage i had taken in africa. i felt much refreshed, and could then realize and meditate on the weakening effects of the fever. they were curious even to myself; for, though i had tried several times since we left ngio to take lunar observations, i could not avoid confusion of time and distance, neither could i hold the instrument steady, nor perform a simple calculation; hence many of the positions of this part of the route were left till my return from loanda. often, on getting up in the mornings, i found my clothing as wet from perspiration as if it had been dipped in water. in vain had i tried to learn or collect words of the bunda, or dialect spoken in angola. i forgot the days of the week and the names of my companions, and, had i been asked, i probably could not have told my own. the complaint itself occupied many of my thoughts. one day i supposed that i had got the true theory of it, and would certainly cure the next attack, whether in myself or companions; but some new symptoms would appear, and scatter all the fine speculations which had sprung up, with extraordinary fertility, in one department of my brain. this district is said to contain upward of , souls. some ten or twelve miles to the north of the village of ambaca there once stood the missionary station of cahenda, and it is now quite astonishing to observe the great numbers who can read and write in this district. this is the fruit of the labors of the jesuit and capuchin missionaries, for they taught the people of ambaca; and ever since the expulsion of the teachers by the marquis of pombal, the natives have continued to teach each other. these devoted men are still held in high estimation throughout the country to this day. all speak well of them (os padres jesuitas); and, now that they are gone from this lower sphere, i could not help wishing that these our roman catholic fellow-christians had felt it to be their duty to give the people the bible, to be a light to their feet when the good men themselves were gone. when sleeping in the house of the commandant, an insect, well known in the southern country by the name tampan, bit my foot. it is a kind of tick, and chooses by preference the parts between the fingers or toes for inflicting its bite. it is seen from the size of a pin's head to that of a pea, and is common in all the native huts in this country. it sucks the blood until quite full, and is then of a dark blue color, and its skin so tough and yielding that it is impossible to burst it by any amount of squeezing with the fingers. i had felt the effects of its bite in former years, and eschewed all native huts ever after; but as i was here again assailed in a european house, i shall detail the effects of the bite. these are a tingling sensation of mingled pain and itching, which commences ascending the limb until the poison imbibed reaches the abdomen, where it soon causes violent vomiting and purging. where these effects do not follow, as we found afterward at tete, fever sets in; and i was assured by intelligent portuguese there that death has sometimes been the result of this fever. the anxiety my friends at tete manifested to keep my men out of the reach of the tampans of the village made it evident that they had seen cause to dread this insignificant insect. the only inconvenience i afterward suffered from this bite was the continuance of the tingling sensation in the point bitten for about a week. may th. as we were about to start this morning, the commandant, senhor arsenio, provided bread and meat most bountifully for my use on the way to the next station, and sent two militia soldiers as guides, instead of our cassange corporal, who left us here. about midday we asked for shelter from the sun in the house of senhor mellot, at zangu, and, though i was unable to sit and engage in conversation, i found, on rising from his couch, that he had at once proceeded to cook a fowl for my use; and at parting he gave me a glass of wine, which prevented the violent fit of shivering i expected that afternoon. the universal hospitality of the portuguese was most gratifying, as it was quite unexpected; and even now, as i copy my journal, i remember it all with a glow of gratitude. we spent sunday, the th of may, at cabinda, which is one of the stations of the sub-commandants, who are placed at different points in each district of angola as assistants of the head-commandant, or chefe. it is situated in a beautiful glen, and surrounded by plantations of bananas and manioc. the country was gradually becoming more picturesque the farther we proceeded west. the ranges of lofty blue mountains of libollo, which, in coming toward ambaca, we had seen thirty or forty miles to our south, were now shut from our view by others nearer at hand, and the gray ranges of cahenda and kiwe, which, while we were in ambaca, stood clearly defined eight or ten miles off to the north, were now close upon our right. as we looked back toward the open pastoral country of ambaca, the broad green gently undulating plains seemed in a hollow surrounded on all sides by rugged mountains, and as we went westward we were entering upon quite a wild-looking mountainous district, called golungo alto. we met numbers of mambari on their way back to bihe. some of them had belonged to the parties which had penetrated as far as linyanti, and foolishly showed their displeasure at the prospect of the makololo preferring to go to the coast markets themselves to intrusting them with their ivory. the mambari repeated the tale of the mode in which the white men are said to trade. "the ivory is left on the shore in the evening, and next morning the seller finds a quantity of goods placed there in its stead by the white men who live in the sea." "now," added they to my men, "how can you makololo trade with these 'mermen'? can you enter into the sea, and tell them to come ashore?" it was remarkable to hear this idea repeated so near the sea as we now were. my men replied that they only wanted to see for themselves; and, as they were now getting some light on the nature of the trade carried on by the mambari, they were highly amused on perceiving the reasons why the mambari would rather have met them on the zambesi than so near the sea-coast. there is something so exhilarating to one of highland blood in being near or on high mountains, that i forgot my fever as we wended our way among the lofty tree-covered masses of mica schist which form the highlands around the romantic residence of the chefe of golungo alto. (lat. d ' " s., long. d ' e.) the whole district is extremely beautiful. the hills are all bedecked with trees of various hues of foliage, and among them towers the graceful palm, which yields the oil of commerce for making our soaps, and the intoxicating toddy. some clusters of hills look like the waves of the sea driven into a narrow open bay, and have assumed the same form as if, when all were chopping up perpendicularly, they had suddenly been congealed. the cottages of the natives, perched on the tops of many of the hillocks, looked as if the owners possessed an eye for the romantic, but they were probably influenced more by the desire to overlook their gardens, and keep their families out of the reach of the malaria, which is supposed to prevail most on the banks of the numerous little streams which run among the hills. we were most kindly received by the commandant, lieutenant antonio canto e castro, a young gentleman whose whole subsequent conduct will ever make me regard him with great affection. like every other person of intelligence whom i had met, he lamented deeply the neglect with which this fine country has been treated. this district contained by the last census , hearths or fires; and if to each hearth we reckon four souls, we have a population of , . the number of carregadores (carriers) who may be ordered out at the pleasure of government to convey merchandise to the coast is in this district alone about , yet there is no good road in existence. this system of compulsory carriage of merchandise was adopted in consequence of the increase in numbers and activity of our cruisers, which took place in . each trader who went, previous to that year, into the interior, in the pursuit of his calling, proceeded on the plan of purchasing ivory and beeswax, and a sufficient number of slaves to carry these commodities. the whole were intended for exportation as soon as the trader reached the coast. but when the more stringent measures of came into operation, and rendered the exportation of slaves almost impossible, there being no roads proper for the employment of wheel conveyances, this new system of compulsory carriage of ivory and beeswax to the coast was resorted to by the government of loanda. a trader who requires two or three hundred carriers to convey his merchandise to the coast now applies to the general government for aid. an order is sent to the commandant of a district to furnish the number required. each head man of the villages to whom the order is transmitted must furnish from five to twenty or thirty men, according to the proportion that his people bear to the entire population of the district. for this accommodation the trader must pay a tax to the government of reis, or about three shillings per load carried. the trader is obliged to pay the carrier also the sum of reis, or about twopence a day, for his sustenance. and as a day's journey is never more than from eight to ten miles, the expense which must be incurred for this compulsory labor is felt to be heavy by those who were accustomed to employ slave labor alone. yet no effort has been made to form a great line of road for wheel carriages. the first great want of a country has not been attended to, and no development of its vast resources has taken place. the fact, however, of a change from one system of carriage to another, taken in connection with the great depreciation in the price of slaves near this coast, proves the effectiveness of our efforts at repressing the slave-trade on the ocean. the latitude of golungo alto, as observed at the residence of the commandant, was d ' " s., longitude d ' e. a few days' rest with this excellent young man enabled me to regain much of my strength, and i could look with pleasure on the luxuriant scenery before his door. we were quite shut in among green hills, many of which were cultivated up to their tops with manioc, coffee, cotton, ground-nuts, bananas, pine-apples, guavas, papaws, custard-apples, pitangas, and jambos, fruits brought from south america by the former missionaries. the high hills all around, with towering palms on many points, made this spot appear more like the bay of rio de janeiro in miniature than any scene i ever saw; and all who have seen that confess it to be unequaled in the world beside. the fertility evident in every spot of this district was quite marvelous to behold, but i shall reserve further notices of this region till our return from loanda. we left golungo alto on the th of may, the winter in these parts. every evening clouds come rolling in great masses over the mountains in the west, and pealing thunder accompanies the fall of rain during the night or early in the morning. the clouds generally remain on the hills till the morning is well spent, so that we become familiar with morning mists, a thing we never once saw at kolobeng. the thermometer stands at degrees by day, but sinks as low as degrees by night. in going westward we crossed several fine little gushing streams which never dry. they unite in the luinha (pronounced lueenya) and lucalla. as they flow over many little cascades, they might easily be turned to good account, but they are all allowed to run on idly to the ocean. we passed through forests of gigantic timber, and at an open space named cambondo, about eight miles from golungo alto, found numbers of carpenters converting these lofty trees into planks, in exactly the same manner as was followed by the illustrious robinson crusoe. a tree of three or four feet in diameter, and forty or fifty feet up to the nearest branches, was felled. it was then cut into lengths of a few feet, and split into thick junks, which again were reduced to planks an inch thick by persevering labor with the axe. the object of the carpenters was to make little chests, and they drive a constant trade in them at cambondo. when finished with hinges, lock, and key, all of their own manufacture, one costs only a shilling and eightpence. my men were so delighted with them that they carried several of them on their heads all the way to linyanti. at trombeta we were pleased to observe a great deal of taste displayed by the sub-commandant in the laying out of his ground and adornment of his house with flowers. this trifling incident was the more pleasing, as it was the first attempt at neatness i had seen since leaving the establishment of mozinkwa in londa. rows of trees had been planted along each side of the road, with pine-apples and flowers between. this arrangement i had an opportunity of seeing in several other districts of this country, for there is no difficulty in raising any plant or tree if it is only kept from being choked by weeds. this gentleman had now a fine estate, which but a few years ago was a forest, and cost him only pounds. he had planted about coffee-trees upon it, and as these begin to yield in three years from being planted, and in six attain their maximum, i have no doubt but that ere now his pounds yields him sixty fold. all sorts of fruit-trees and grape-vines yield their fruit twice in each year, without any labor or irrigation being bestowed on them. all grains and vegetables, if only sown, do the same; and if advantage is taken of the mists of winter, even three crops of pulse may be raised. cotton was now standing in the pods in his fields, and he did not seem to care about it. i understood him to say that this last plant flourishes, but the wet of one of the two rainy seasons with which this country is favored sometimes proves troublesome to the grower. i am not aware whether wheat has ever been tried, but i saw both figs and grapes bearing well. the great complaint of all cultivators is the want of a good road to carry their produce to market. here all kinds of food are remarkably cheap. farther on we left the mountainous country, and, as we descended toward the west coast, saw the lands assuming a more sterile, uninviting aspect. on our right ran the river senza, which nearer the sea takes the name of bengo. it is about fifty yards broad, and navigable for canoes. the low plains adjacent to its banks are protected from inundation by embankments, and the population is entirely occupied in raising food and fruits for exportation to loanda by means of canoes. the banks are infested by myriads of the most ferocious mosquitoes i ever met. not one of our party could get a snatch of sleep. i was taken into the house of a portuguese, but was soon glad to make my escape and lie across the path on the lee side of the fire, where the smoke blew over my body. my host wondered at my want of taste, and i at his want of feeling; for, to our astonishment, he and the other inhabitants had actually become used to what was at least equal to a nail through the heel of one's boot, or the tooth-ache. as we were now drawing near to the sea, my companions were looking at every thing in a serious light. one of them asked me if we should all have an opportunity of watching each other at loanda. "suppose one went for water, would the others see if he were kidnapped?" i replied, "i see what you are driving at; and if you suspect me, you may return, for i am as ignorant of loanda as you are; but nothing will happen to you but what happens to myself. we have stood by each other hitherto, and will do so to the last." the plains adjacent to loanda are somewhat elevated and comparatively sterile. on coming across these we first beheld the sea: my companions looked upon the boundless ocean with awe. on describing their feelings afterward, they remarked that "we marched along with our father, believing that what the ancients had always told us was true, that the world has no end; but all at once the world said to us, 'i am finished; there is no more of me!'" they had always imagined that the world was one extended plain without limit. they were now somewhat apprehensive of suffering want, and i was unable to allay their fears with any promise of supply, for my own mind was depressed by disease and care. the fever had induced a state of chronic dysentery, so troublesome that i could not remain on the ox more than ten minutes at a time; and as we came down the declivity above the city of loanda on the st of may, i was laboring under great depression of spirits, as i understood that, in a population of twelve thousand souls, there was but one genuine english gentleman. i naturally felt anxious to know whether he were possessed of good-nature, or was one of those crusty mortals one would rather not meet at all. this gentleman, mr. gabriel, our commissioner for the suppression of the slave-trade, had kindly forwarded an invitation to meet me on the way from cassange, but, unfortunately, it crossed me on the road. when we entered his porch, i was delighted to see a number of flowers cultivated carefully, and inferred from this circumstance that he was, what i soon discovered him to be, a real whole-hearted englishman. seeing me ill, he benevolently offered me his bed. never shall i forget the luxurious pleasure i enjoyed in feeling myself again on a good english couch, after six months' sleeping on the ground. i was soon asleep; and mr. gabriel, coming in almost immediately, rejoiced at the soundness of my repose. chapter . continued sickness--kindness of the bishop of angola and her majesty's officers--mr. gabriel's unwearied hospitality--serious deportment of the makololo--they visit ships of war--politeness of the officers and men--the makololo attend mass in the cathedral--their remarks--find employment in collecting firewood and unloading coal--their superior judgment respecting goods--beneficial influence of the bishop of angola--the city of st. paul de loanda--the harbor--custom-house--no english merchants--sincerity of the portuguese government in suppressing the slave-trade--convict soldiers--presents from bishop and merchants for sekeletu--outfit--leave loanda th september, --accompanied by mr. gabriel as far as icollo i bengo--sugar manufactory--geology of this part of the country--women spinning cotton--its price--native weavers--market-places--cazengo; its coffee plantations--south american trees--ruins of iron foundry--native miners--the banks of the lucalla-- cottages with stages--tobacco-plants--town of massangano--sugar and rice--superior district for cotton--portuguese merchants and foreign enterprise--ruins--the fort and its ancient guns--former importance of massangano--fires--the tribe kisama--peculiar variety of domestic fowl--coffee plantations--return to golungo alto--self-complacency of the makololo--fever--jaundice--insanity. in the hope that a short enjoyment of mr. gabriel's generous hospitality would restore me to my wonted vigor, i continued under his roof; but my complaint having been caused by long exposure to malarious influences, i became much more reduced than ever, even while enjoying rest. several portuguese gentlemen called on me shortly after my arrival; and the bishop of angola, the right reverend joaquim moreira reis, then the acting governor of the province, sent his secretary to do the same, and likewise to offer the services of the government physician. some of her majesty's cruisers soon came into the port, and, seeing the emaciated condition to which i was reduced, offered to convey me to st. helena or homeward; but, though i had reached the coast, i had found that, in consequence of the great amount of forest, rivers, and marsh, there was no possibility of a highway for wagons, and i had brought a party of sekeletu's people with me, and found the tribes near the portuguese settlement so very unfriendly, that it would be altogether impossible for my men to return alone. i therefore resolved to decline the tempting offers of my naval friends, and take back my makololo companions to their chief, with a view of trying to make a path from his country to the east coast by means of the great river zambesi or leeambye. i, however, gladly availed myself of the medical assistance of mr. cockin, the surgeon of the "polyphemus", at the suggestion of his commander, captain phillips. mr. cockin's treatment, aided by the exhilarating presence of the warm-hearted naval officers, and mr. gabriel's unwearied hospitality and care, soon brought me round again. on the th i was so far well as to call on the bishop, in company with my party, who were arrayed in new robes of striped cotton cloth and red caps, all presented to them by mr. gabriel. he received us, as head of the provisional government, in the grand hall of the palace. he put many intelligent questions respecting the makololo, and then gave them free permission to come to loanda as often as they pleased. this interview pleased the makololo extremely. every one remarked the serious deportment of the makololo. they viewed the large stone houses and churches in the vicinity of the great ocean with awe. a house with two stories was, until now, beyond their comprehension. in explanation of this strange thing, i had always been obliged to use the word for hut; and as huts are constructed by the poles being let into the earth, they never could comprehend how the poles of one hut could be founded upon the roof of another, or how men could live in the upper story, with the conical roof of the lower one in the middle. some makololo, who had visited my little house at kolobeng, in trying to describe it to their countrymen at linyanti, said, "it is not a hut; it is a mountain with several caves in it." commander bedingfeld and captain skene invited them to visit their vessels, the "pluto" and "philomel". knowing their fears, i told them that no one need go if he entertained the least suspicion of foul play. nearly the whole party went; and when on deck, i pointed to the sailors, and said, "now these are all my countrymen, sent by our queen for the purpose of putting down the trade of those that buy and sell black men." they replied, "truly! they are just like you!" and all their fears seemed to vanish at once, for they went forward among the men, and the jolly tars, acting much as the makololo would have done in similar circumstances, handed them a share of the bread and beef which they had for dinner. the commander allowed them to fire off a cannon; and, having the most exalted ideas of its power, they were greatly pleased when i told them, "that is what they put down the slave-trade with." the size of the brig-of-war amazed them. "it is not a canoe at all; it is a town!" the sailors' deck they named "the kotla"; and then, as a climax to their description of this great ark, added, "and what sort of a town is it that you must climb up into with a rope?" the effect of the politeness of the officers and men on their minds was most beneficial. they had behaved with the greatest kindness to me all the way from linyanti, and i now rose rapidly in their estimation; for, whatever they may have surmised before, they now saw that i was respected among my own countrymen, and always afterward treated me with the greatest deference. on the th there was a procession and service of the mass in the cathedral; and, wishing to show my men a place of worship, i took them to the church, which now serves as the chief one of the see of angola and congo. there is an impression on some minds that a gorgeous ritual is better calculated to inspire devotional feelings than the simple forms of the protestant worship. but here the frequent genuflexions, changing of positions, burning of incense, with the priests' back turned to the people, the laughing, talking, and manifest irreverence of the singers, with firing of guns, etc., did not convey to the minds of my men the idea of adoration. i overheard them, in talking to each other, remark that "they had seen the white men charming their demons;" a phrase identical with one they had used when seeing the balonda beating drums before their idols. in the beginning of august i suffered a severe relapse, which reduced me to a mere skeleton. i was then unable to attend to my men for a considerable time; but when in convalescence from this last attack, i was thankful to find that i was free from that lassitude which, in my first recovery, showed the continuance of the malaria in the system. i found that my men, without prompting, had established a brisk trade in fire-wood. they sallied forth at cock-crowing in the mornings, and by daylight reached the uncultivated parts of the adjacent country, collected a bundle of fire-wood, and returned to the city. it was then divided into smaller fagots, and sold to the inhabitants; and as they gave larger quantities than the regular wood-carriers, they found no difficulty in selling. a ship freighted with coal for the cruisers having arrived from england, mr. gabriel procured them employment in unloading her at sixpence a day. they continued at this work for upward of a month, and nothing could exceed their astonishment at the vast amount of cargo one ship contained. as they themselves always afterward expressed it, they had labored every day from sunrise to sunset for a moon and a half, unloading, as quickly as they could, "stones that burn", and were tired out, still leaving plenty in her. with the money so obtained they purchased clothing, beads, and other articles to take back to their own country. their ideas of the value of different kinds of goods rather astonished those who had dealt only with natives on the coast. hearing it stated with confidence that the africans preferred the thinnest fabrics, provided they had gaudy colors and a large extent of surface, the idea was so new to my experience in the interior that i dissented, and, in order to show the superior good sense of the makololo, took them to the shop of mr. schut. when he showed them the amount of general goods which they might procure at loanda for a single tusk, i requested them, without assigning any reason, to point out the fabrics they prized most. they all at once selected the strongest pieces of english calico and other cloths, showing that they had regard to strength without reference to color. i believe that most of the bechuana nation would have done the same. but i was assured that the people near the coast, with whom the portuguese have to deal, have not so much regard to durability. this probably arises from calico being the chief circulating medium; quantity being then of more importance than quality. during the period of my indisposition, the bishop sent frequently to make inquiries, and, as soon as i was able to walk, i went to thank him for his civilities. his whole conversation and conduct showed him to be a man of great benevolence and kindness of heart. alluding to my being a protestant, he stated that he was a catholic from conviction; and though sorry to see others, like myself, following another path, he entertained no uncharitable feelings, nor would he ever sanction persecuting measures. he compared the various sects of christians, in their way to heaven, to a number of individuals choosing to pass down the different streets of loanda to one of the churches--all would arrive at the same point at last. his good influence, both in the city and the country, is universally acknowledged: he was promoting the establishment of schools, which, though formed more on the monastic principle than protestants might approve, will no doubt be a blessing. he was likewise successfully attempting to abolish the non-marriage custom of the country; and several marriages had taken place in loanda among those who, but for his teaching, would have been content with concubinage. st. paul de loanda has been a very considerable city, but is now in a state of decay. it contains about twelve thousand inhabitants, most of whom are people of color.* there are various evidences of its former magnificence, especially two cathedrals, one of which, once a jesuit college, is now converted into a workshop; and in passing the other, we saw with sorrow a number of oxen feeding within its stately walls. three forts continue in a good state of repair. many large stone houses are to be found. the palace of the governor and government offices are commodious structures, but nearly all the houses of the native inhabitants are of wattle and daub. trees are planted all over the town for the sake of shade, and the city presents an imposing appearance from the sea. it is provided with an effective police, and the custom-house department is extremely well managed. all parties agree in representing the portuguese authorities as both polite and obliging; and if ever any inconvenience is felt by strangers visiting the port, it must be considered the fault of the system, and not of the men. * from the census of - we find the population of this city arranged thus: whites, only of whom are females. this is the largest collection of whites in the country, for angola itself contains only about whites. there are half-castes in loanda, and only of them slaves; and there are blacks, more than of whom are slaves. the harbor is formed by the low, sandy island of loanda, which is inhabited by about souls, upward of of whom are industrious native fishermen, who supply the city with abundance of good fish daily. the space between it and the main land, on which the city is built, is the station for ships. when a high southwest wind blows, the waves of the ocean dash over part of the island, and, driving large quantities of sand before them, gradually fill up the harbor. great quantities of soil are also washed in the rainy season from the heights above the city, so that the port, which once contained water sufficient to float the largest ships close to the custom-house, is now at low water dry. the ships are compelled to anchor about a mile north of their old station. nearly all the water consumed in loanda is brought from the river bengo by means of launches, the only supply that the city affords being from some deep wells of slightly brackish water. unsuccessful attempts have been made by different governors to finish a canal, which the dutch, while in possession of loanda during the seven years preceding , had begun, to bring water from the river coanza to the city. there is not a single english merchant at loanda, and only two american. this is the more remarkable, as nearly all the commerce is carried on by means of english calico brought hither via lisbon. several english houses attempted to establish a trade about , and accepted bills on rio de janeiro in payment for their goods, but the increased activity of our cruisers had such an effect upon the mercantile houses of that city that most of them failed. the english merchants lost all, and loanda got a bad name in the commercial world in consequence. one of the arrangements of the custom-house may have had some influence in preventing english trade. ships coming here must be consigned to some one on the spot; the consignee receives one hundred dollars per mast, and he generally makes a great deal more for himself by putting a percentage on boats and men hired for loading and unloading, and on every item that passes through his hands. the port charges are also rendered heavy by twenty dollars being charged as a perquisite of the secretary of government, with a fee for the chief physician, something for the hospital, custom-house officers, guards, etc., etc. but, with all these drawbacks, the americans carry on a brisk and profitable trade in calico, biscuit, flour, butter, etc., etc. the portuguese home government has not generally received the credit for sincerity in suppressing the slave-trade which i conceive to be its due. in , my friend mr. gabriel saw slave-ships lying in this harbor, waiting for their cargoes, under the protection of the guns of the forts. at that time slavers had to wait many months at a time for a human freight, and a certain sum per head was paid to the government for all that were exported. the duties derived from the exportation of slaves far exceeded those from other commerce, and, by agreeing to the suppression of this profitable traffic, the government actually sacrificed the chief part of the export revenue. since that period, however, the revenue from lawful commerce has very much exceeded that on slaves. the intentions of the home portuguese government, however good, can not be fully carried out under the present system. the pay of the officers is so very small that they are nearly all obliged to engage in trade; and, owing to the lucrative nature of the slave-trade, the temptation to engage in it is so powerful, that the philanthropic statesmen of lisbon need hardly expect to have their humane and enlightened views carried out. the law, for instance, lately promulgated for the abolition of the carrier system (carregadores) is but one of several equally humane enactments against this mode of compulsory labor, but there is very little probability of the benevolent intentions of the legislature being carried into effect. loanda is regarded somewhat as a penal settlement, and those who leave their native land for this country do so with the hope of getting rich in a few years, and then returning home. they have thus no motive for seeking the permanent welfare of the country. the portuguese law preventing the subjects of any other nation from holding landed property unless they become naturalized, the country has neither the advantage of native nor foreign enterprise, and remains very much in the same state as our allies found it in . nearly all the european soldiers sent out are convicts, and, contrary to what might be expected from men in their position, behave remarkably well. a few riots have occurred, but nothing at all so serious as have taken place in our own penal settlements. it is a remarkable fact that the whole of the arms of loanda are every night in the hands of those who have been convicts. various reasons for this mild behavior are assigned by the officers, but none of these, when viewed in connection with our own experience in australia, appear to be valid. religion seems to have no connection with the change. perhaps the climate may have some influence in subduing their turbulent disposition, for the inhabitants generally are a timid race; they are not half so brave as our caffres. the people of ambriz ran away like a flock of sheep, and allowed the portuguese to take possession of their copper mines and country without striking a blow. if we must have convict settlements, attention to the climate might be of advantage in the selection. here even bulls are much tamer than with us. i never met with a ferocious one in this country, and the portuguese use them generally for riding; an ox is seldom seen. the objects which i had in view in opening up the country, as stated in a few notes of my journey, published in the newspapers of angola, so commended themselves to the general government and merchants of loanda, that, at the instance of his excellency the bishop, a handsome present for sekeletu was granted by the board of public works (junta da fazenda publica). it consisted of a colonel's complete uniform and a horse for the chief, and suits of clothing for all the men who accompanied me. the merchants also made a present, by public subscription, of handsome specimens of all their articles of trade, and two donkeys, for the purpose of introducing the breed into his country, as tsetse can not kill this beast of burden. these presents were accompanied by letters from the bishop and merchants; and i was kindly favored with letters of recommendation to the portuguese authorities in eastern africa. i took with me a good stock of cotton cloth, fresh supplies of ammunition and beads, and gave each of my men a musket. as my companions had amassed considerable quantities of goods, they were unable to carry mine, but the bishop furnished me with twenty carriers, and sent forward orders to all the commandants of the districts through which we were to pass to render me every assistance in their power. being now supplied with a good new tent made by my friends on board the philomel, we left loanda on the th of september, , and passed round by sea to the mouth of the river bengo. ascending this river, we went through the district in which stand the ruins of the convent of st. antonio; thence into icollo i bengo, which contains a population of blacks, mulattoes, and whites, and is so named from having been the residence of a former native king. the proportion of slaves is only . per cent. of the inhabitants. the commandant of this place, laurence jose marquis, is a frank old soldier and a most hospitable man; he is one of the few who secure the universal approbation of their fellow-men for stern, unflinching honesty, and has risen from the ranks to be a major in the army. we were accompanied thus far by our generous host, edmund gabriel, esq., who, by his unwearied attentions to myself, and liberality in supporting my men, had become endeared to all our hearts. my men were strongly impressed with a sense of his goodness, and often spoke of him in terms of admiration all the way to linyanti. while here we visited a large sugar manufactory belonging to a lady, donna anna da sousa. the flat alluvial lands on the banks of the senza or bengo are well adapted for raising sugar-cane, and this lady had a surprising number of slaves, but somehow the establishment was far from being in a flourishing condition. it presented such a contrast to the free-labor establishments of the mauritius, which i have since seen, where, with not one tenth of the number of hands, or such good soil, a man of color had, in one year, cleared pounds by a single crop, that i quote the fact, in hopes it may meet the eye of donna anna. the water of the river is muddy, and it is observed that such rivers have many more mosquitoes than those which have clear water. it was remarked to us here that these insects are much more numerous at the period of new moon than at other times; at any rate, we were all thankful to get away from the senza and its insect plagues. the whole of this part of the country is composed of marly tufa, containing the same kind of shells as those at present alive in the seas. as we advanced eastward and ascended the higher lands, we found eruptive trap, which had tilted up immense masses of mica and sandstone schists. the mica schist almost always dipped toward the interior of the country, forming those mountain ranges of which we have already spoken as giving a highland character to the district of golungo alto. the trap has frequently run through the gorges made in the upheaved rocks, and at the points of junction between the igneous and older rocks there are large quantities of strongly magnetic iron ore. the clayey soil formed by the disintegration of the mica schist and trap is the favorite soil for the coffee; and it is on these mountain sides, and others possessing a similar red clay soil, that this plant has propagated itself so widely. the meadow-lands adjacent to the senza and coanza being underlaid by that marly tufa which abounds toward the coast, and containing the same shells, show that, previous to the elevation of that side of the country, this region possessed some deeply-indented bays. th september, kalungwembo.--we were still on the same path by which we had come, and, there being no mosquitoes, we could now better enjoy the scenery. ranges of hills occupy both sides of our path, and the fine level road is adorned with a beautiful red flower named bolcamaria. the markets or sleeping-places are well supplied with provisions by great numbers of women, every one of whom is seen spinning cotton with a spindle and distaff, exactly like those which were in use among the ancient egyptians. a woman is scarcely ever seen going to the fields, though with a pot on her head, a child on her back, and the hoe over her shoulder, but she is employed in this way. the cotton was brought to the market for sale, and i bought a pound for a penny. this was the price demanded, and probably double what they ask from each other. we saw the cotton growing luxuriantly all around the market-places from seeds dropped accidentally. it is seen also about the native huts, and, so far as i could learn, it was the american cotton, so influenced by climate as to be perennial. we met in the road natives passing with bundles of cops, or spindles full of cotton thread, and these they were carrying to other parts to be woven into cloth. the women are the spinners, and the men perform the weaving. each web is about feet long, and or inches wide. the loom is of the simplest construction, being nothing but two beams placed one over the other, the web standing perpendicularly. the threads of the web are separated by means of a thin wooden lath, and the woof passed through by means of the spindle on which it has been wound in spinning. the mode of spinning and weaving in angola, and, indeed, throughout south central africa, is so very like the same occupations in the hands of the ancient egyptians, that i introduce a woodcut from the interesting work of sir gardner wilkinson. the lower figures are engaged in spinning in the real african method, and the weavers in the left-hand corner have their web in the angolese fashion.* * unfortunately, this woodcut can not be represented in this ascii text. the caption reads, 'ancient spinning and weaving, perpetuated in africa at the present day. from wilkinson's "ancient egyptians", p. , .' the web, or cloth on the loom, mentioned, has the vertical threads, or the warp, hanging, perhaps five feet, from a horizontal beam. the woof is passed through from side to side.--a. l., . numbers of other articles are brought for sale to these sleeping-places. the native smiths there carry on their trade. i bought ten very good table-knives, made of country iron, for twopence each. labor is extremely cheap, for i was assured that even carpenters, masons, smiths, etc., might be hired for fourpence a day, and agriculturists would gladly work for half that sum.* * in order that the reader may understand the social position of the people of this country, i here give the census of the district of golungo alto for the year , though the numbers are evidently not all furnished: householders or yeomen. patrons, or head men of several hamlets. native chiefs or sovas. macotas or councilors. carriers. carpenters. masons. shoemakers. potters. tailors. barbers. iron-founders. bellows-blowers. coke-makers. iron-miners. soldiers of militia. privileged gentlemen, i.e., who may wear boots. vagabonds. old men. blind men and women. lame men and women. slave men. slave women. free women. possessors of land. female gardeners. hunters of wild animals. smiths. mat-makers. males under years of age. females under years of age. these people possess idol-houses, sheep, goats, oxen, gardens, , hearths. the authorities find great difficulty in getting the people to furnish a correct account of their numbers. this census is quoted merely for the purpose of giving a general idea of the employments of the inhabitants. the following is taken from the census of icollo i bengo, and is added for a similar reason: living without the marriage tie. (all those who have not been married by a priest are so distinguished.) orphans-- black and white. native chiefs. carpenters. potters. tailors. shoemakers. barbers. mat-makers. sack-makers. basket-makers. the cattle in the district are: asses, oxen, cows, sheep, goats, swine; and as an annual tax is levied of sixpence per head on all stock, it is probable that the returns are less than the reality. being anxious to obtain some more knowledge of this interesting country and its ancient missionary establishments than the line of route by which we had come afforded, i resolved to visit the town of massangano, which is situated to the south of golungo alto, and at the confluence of the rivers lucalla and coanza. this led me to pass through the district of cazengo, which is rather famous for the abundance and excellence of its coffee. extensive coffee plantations were found to exist on the sides of the several lofty mountains that compose this district. they were not planted by the portuguese. the jesuit and other missionaries are known to have brought some of the fine old mocha seed, and these have propagated themselves far and wide; hence the excellence of the angola coffee. some have asserted that, as new plantations were constantly discovered even during the period of our visit, the coffee-tree was indigenous; but the fact that pine-apples, bananas, yams, orange-trees, custard apple-trees, pitangas, guavas, and other south american trees, were found by me in the same localities with the recently-discovered coffee, would seem to indicate that all foreign trees must have been introduced by the same agency. it is known that the jesuits also introduced many other trees for the sake of their timber alone. numbers of these have spread over the country, some have probably died out, and others failed to spread, like a lonely specimen which stands in what was the botanic garden of loanda, and, though most useful in yielding a substitute for frankincense, is the only one of the kind in africa. a circumstance which would facilitate the extensive propagation of the coffee on the proper clay soil is this: the seed, when buried beneath the soil, generally dies, while that which is sown broadcast, with no covering except the shade of the trees, vegetates readily. the agent in sowing in this case is a bird, which eats the outer rind, and throws the kernel on the ground. this plant can not bear the direct rays of the sun; consequently, when a number of the trees are discovered in the forest, all that is necessary is to clear away the brushwood, and leave as many of the tall forest-trees as will afford good shade to the coffee-plants below. the fortunate discoverer has then a flourishing coffee plantation. this district, small though it be, having only a population of , , of whom ten only are white, nevertheless yields an annual tribute to the government of thirteen hundred cotton cloths, each feet by or inches, of their own growth and manufacture. accompanied by the commandant of cazengo, who was well acquainted with this part of the country, i proceeded in a canoe down the river lucalla to massangano. this river is about yards wide, and navigable for canoes from its confluence with the coanza to about six miles above the point where it receives the luinha. near this latter point stand the strong, massive ruins of an iron foundry, erected in the times ( ) and by the order of the famous marquis of pombal. the whole of the buildings were constructed of stone, cemented with oil and lime. the dam for water-power was made of the same materials, and feet high. this had been broken through by a flood, and solid blocks, many yards in length, were carried down the stream, affording an instructive example of the transporting power of water. there was nothing in the appearance of the place to indicate unhealthiness; but eight spanish and swedish workmen, being brought hither for the purpose of instructing the natives in the art of smelting iron, soon fell victims to disease and "irregularities". the effort of the marquis to improve the mode of manufacturing iron was thus rendered abortive. labor and subsistence are, however, so very cheap that almost any amount of work can be executed, at a cost that renders expensive establishments unnecessary. a party of native miners and smiths is still kept in the employment of the government, who, working the rich black magnetic iron ore, produce for the government from to bars of good malleable iron every month. they are supported by the appropriation of a few thousands of a small fresh-water fish, called "cacusu", a portion of the tax levied upon the fishermen of the coanza. this fish is so much relished in the country that those who do not wish to eat them can easily convert them into money. the commandant of the district of massangano, for instance, has a right to a dish of three hundred every morning, as part of his salary. shell-fish are also found in the coanza, and the "peixemulher", or woman-fish of the portuguese, which is probably a manatee. the banks of the lucalla are very pretty, well planted with orange-trees, bananas, and the palm ('elaeis guineensis') which yields the oil of commerce. large plantations of maize, manioc, and tobacco are seen along both banks, which are enlivened by the frequent appearance of native houses imbosomed in dense shady groves, with little boys and girls playing about them. the banks are steep, the water having cut out its bed in dark red alluvial soil. before every cottage a small stage is erected, to which the inhabitants may descend to draw water without danger from the alligators. some have a little palisade made in the water for safety from these reptiles, and others use the shell of the fruit of the baobab-tree attached to a pole about ten feet long, with which, while standing on the high bank, they may draw water without fear of accident. many climbing plants run up the lofty silk, cotton, and baobab trees, and hang their beautiful flowers in gay festoons on the branches. as we approach massangano, the land on both banks of the lucalla becomes very level, and large portions are left marshy after the annual floods; but all is very fertile. as an illustration of the strength of the soil, i may state that we saw tobacco-plants in gardens near the confluence eight feet high, and each plant had thirty-six leaves, which were eighteen inches long by six or eight inches broad. but it is not a pastoral district. in our descent we observed the tsetse, and consequently the people had no domestic animals save goats. we found the town of massangano on a tongue of rather high land, formed by the left bank of the lucalla and right bank of the coanza, and received true portuguese hospitality from senhor lubata. the town has more than a thousand inhabitants; the district has , , with only slaves. it stands on a mound of calcareous tufa, containing great numbers of fossil shells, the most recent of which resemble those found in the marly tufa close to the coast. the fort stands on the south side of the town, on a high perpendicular bank overhanging the coanza. this river is here a noble stream, about a hundred and fifty yards wide, admitting navigation in large canoes from the bar at its mouth to cambambe, some thirty miles above this town. there, a fine waterfall hinders farther ascent. ten or twelve large canoes laden with country produce pass massangano every day. four galleons were constructed here as long ago as , which must have been of good size, for they crossed the ocean to rio janeiro. massangano district is well adapted for sugar and rice, while cambambe is a very superior field for cotton; but the bar at the mouth of the coanza would prevent the approach of a steamer into this desirable region, though a small one could ply on it with ease when once in. it is probable that the objects of those who attempted to make a canal from calumbo to loanda were not merely to supply that city with fresh water, but to afford facilities for transportation. the remains of the canal show it to have been made on a scale suited for the coanza canoes. the portuguese began another on a smaller scale in , and, after three years' labor, had finished only yards. nothing great or useful will ever be effected here so long as men come merely to get rich, and then return to portugal. the latitude of the town and fort of massangano is d ' " s., being nearly the same as that of cassange. the country between loanda and this point being comparatively flat, a railroad might be constructed at small expense. the level country is prolonged along the north bank of the coanza to the edge of the cassange basin, and a railway carried thither would be convenient for the transport of the products of the rich districts of cassange, pungo andongo, ambaca, cambambe, golungo alto, cazengo, muchima, and calumbo; in a word, the whole of angola and independent tribes adjacent to this kingdom. the portuguese merchants generally look to foreign enterprise and to their own government for the means by which this amelioration might be effected; but, as i always stated to them when conversing on the subject, foreign capitalists would never run the risk, unless they saw the angolese doing something for themselves, and the laws so altered that the subjects of other nations should enjoy the same privileges in the country with themselves. the government of portugal has indeed shown a wise and liberal policy by its permission for the alienation of the crown lands in angola; but the law giving it effect is so fenced round with limitations, and so deluged with verbiage, that to plain people it seems any thing but a straightforward license to foreigners to become 'bona fide' landholders and cultivators of the soil. at present the tolls paid on the different lines of roads for ferries and bridges are equal to the interest of large sums of money, though but a small amount has been expended in making available roads. there are two churches and a hospital in ruins at massangano; and the remains of two convents are pointed out, one of which is said to have been an establishment of black benedictines, which, if successful, considering the materials the brethren had to work on, must have been a laborious undertaking. there is neither priest nor schoolmaster in the town, but i was pleased to observe a number of children taught by one of the inhabitants. the cultivated lands attached to all these conventual establishments in angola are now rented by the government of loanda, and thither the bishop lately removed all the gold and silver vessels belonging to them. the fort of massangano is small, but in good repair; it contains some very ancient guns, which were loaded from the breech, and must have been formidable weapons in their time. the natives of this country entertain a remarkable dread of great guns, and this tends much to the permanence of the portuguese authority. they dread a cannon greatly, though the carriage be so rotten that it would fall to pieces at the first shot; the fort of pungo andongo is kept securely by cannon perched on cross sticks alone! massangano was a very important town at the time the dutch held forcible possession of loanda and part of angola; but when, in the year , the dutch were expelled from this country by a small body of portuguese, under the governor salvador correa de sa benevides, massangano was left to sink into its present decay. since it was partially abandoned by the portuguese, several baobab-trees have sprung up and attained a diameter of eighteen or twenty inches, and are about twenty feet high. no certain conclusion can be drawn from these instances, as it is not known at what time after they began to grow; but their present size shows that their growth is not unusually slow. several fires occurred during our stay, by the thatch having, through long exposure to a torrid sun, become like tinder. the roofs became ignited without any visible cause except the intense solar rays, and excited terror in the minds of the inhabitants, as the slightest spark carried by the wind would have set the whole town in a blaze. there is not a single inscription on stone visible in massangano. if destroyed to-morrow, no one could tell where it and most portuguese interior villages stood, any more than we can do those of the balonda. during the occupation of this town the coanza was used for the purpose of navigation, but their vessels were so frequently plundered by their dutch neighbors that, when they regained the good port of loanda, they no longer made use of the river. we remained here four days, in hopes of obtaining an observation for the longitude, but at this season of the year the sky is almost constantly overcast by a thick canopy of clouds of a milk-and-water hue; this continues until the rainy season (which was now close at hand) commences. the lands on the north side of the coanza belong to the quisamas (kisamas), an independent tribe, which the portuguese have not been able to subdue. the few who came under my observation possessed much of the bushman or hottentot feature, and were dressed in strips of soft bark hanging from the waist to the knee. they deal largely in salt, which their country produces in great abundance. it is brought in crystals of about inches long and - / in diameter. this is hawked about every where in angola, and, next to calico, is the most common medium of barter. the kisama are brave; and when the portuguese army followed them into their forests, they reduced the invaders to extremity by tapping all the reservoirs of water, which were no other than the enormous baobabs of the country hollowed into cisterns. as the kisama country is ill supplied with water otherwise, the portuguese were soon obliged to retreat. their country, lying near to massangano, is low and marshy, but becomes more elevated in the distance, and beyond them lie the lofty dark mountain ranges of the libollo, another powerful and independent people. near massangano i observed what seemed to be an effort of nature to furnish a variety of domestic fowls, more capable than the common kind of bearing the heat of the sun. this was a hen and chickens with all their feathers curled upward, thus giving shade to the body without increasing the heat. they are here named "kisafu" by the native population, who pay a high price for them when they wish to offer them as a sacrifice, and by the portuguese they are termed "arripiada", or shivering. there seems to be a tendency in nature to afford varieties adapted to the convenience of man. a kind of very short-legged fowl among the boers was obtained, in consequence of observing that such were more easily caught for transportation in their frequent removals in search of pasture. a similar instance of securing a variety occurred with the short-limbed sheep in america. returning by ascending the lucalla into cazengo, we had an opportunity of visiting several flourishing coffee plantations, and observed that several men, who had begun with no capital but honest industry, had, in the course of a few years, acquired a comfortable subsistence. one of these, mr. pinto, generously furnished me with a good supply of his excellent coffee, and my men with a breed of rabbits to carry to their own country. their lands, granted by government, yielded, without much labor, coffee sufficient for all the necessaries of life. the fact of other avenues of wealth opening up so readily seems like a providential invitation to forsake the slave-trade and engage in lawful commerce. we saw the female population occupied, as usual, in the spinning of cotton and cultivation of their lands. their only instrument for culture is a double-handled hoe, which is worked with a sort of dragging motion. many of the men were employed in weaving. the latter appear to be less industrious than the former, for they require a month to finish a single web. there is, however, not much inducement to industry, for, notwithstanding the time consumed in its manufacture, each web is sold for only two shillings. on returning to golungo alto i found several of my men laid up with fever. one of the reasons for my leaving them there was that they might recover from the fatigue of the journey from loanda, which had much more effect upon their feet than hundreds of miles had on our way westward. they had always been accustomed to moisture in their own well-watered land, and we certainly had a superabundance of that in loanda. the roads, however, from loanda to golungo alto were both hard and dry, and they suffered severely in consequence; yet they were composing songs to be sung when they should reach home. the argonauts were nothing to them; and they remarked very impressively to me, "it was well you came with makololo, for no tribe could have done what we have accomplished in coming to the white man's country: we are the true ancients, who can tell wonderful things." two of them now had fever in the continued form, and became jaundiced, the whites or conjunctival membrane of their eyes becoming as yellow as saffron; and a third suffered from an attack of mania. he came to his companions one day, and said, "remain well. i am called away by the gods!" and set off at the top of his speed. the young men caught him before he had gone a mile, and bound him. by gentle treatment and watching for a few days he recovered. i have observed several instances of this kind in the country, but very few cases of idiocy, and i believe that continued insanity is rare. chapter . visit a deserted convent--favorable report of jesuits and their teaching --gradations of native society--punishment of thieves--palm-toddy; its baneful effects--freemasons--marriages and funerals--litigation--mr. canto's illness--bad behavior of his slaves--an entertainment--ideas on free labor--loss of american cotton-seed--abundance of cotton in the country--sickness of sekeletu's horse--eclipse of the sun--insects which distill water--experiments with them--proceed to ambaca--sickly season--office of commandant--punishment of official delinquents-- present from mr. schut of loanda--visit pungo andongo--its good pasturage, grain, fruit, etc.--the fort and columnar rocks--the queen of jinga--salubrity of pungo andongo--price of a slave--a merchant-prince--his hospitality--hear of the loss of my papers in "forerunner"--narrow escape from an alligator--ancient burial-places--neglect of agriculture in angola--manioc the staple product--its cheapness--sickness--friendly visit from a colored priest--the prince of congo--no priests in the interior of angola. while waiting for the recovery of my men, i visited, in company with my friend mr. canto, the deserted convent of st. hilarion, at bango, a few miles northwest of golungo alto. it is situated in a magnificent valley, containing a population numbering hearths. this is the abode of the sova, or chief bango, who still holds a place of authority under the portuguese. the garden of the convent, the church, and dormitories of the brethren are still kept in a good state of repair. i looked at the furniture, couches, and large chests for holding the provisions of the brotherhood with interest, and would fain have learned something of the former occupants; but all the books and sacred vessels had lately been removed to loanda, and even the graves of the good men stand without any record: their resting-places are, however, carefully tended. all speak well of the jesuits and other missionaries, as the capuchins, etc., for having attended diligently to the instruction of the children. they were supposed to have a tendency to take the part of the people against the government, and were supplanted by priests, concerning whom no regret is expressed that they were allowed to die out. in viewing the present fruits of former missions, it is impossible not to feel assured that, if the jesuit teaching has been so permanent, that of protestants, who leave the bible in the hands of their converts, will not be less abiding. the chief bango has built a large two-story house close by the convent, but superstitious fears prevent him from sleeping in it. the portuguese take advantage of all the gradations into which native society has divided itself. this man, for instance, is still a sova or chief, has his councilors, and maintains the same state as when the country was independent. when any of his people are guilty of theft, he pays down the amount of goods stolen at once, and reimburses himself out of the property of the thief so effectually as to be benefited by the transaction. the people under him are divided into a number of classes. there are his councilors, as the highest, who are generally head men of several villages, and the carriers, the lowest free men. one class above the last obtains the privilege of wearing shoes from the chief by paying for it; another, the soldiers or militia, pay for the privilege of serving, the advantage being that they are not afterward liable to be made carriers. they are also divided into gentlemen and little gentlemen, and, though quite black, speak of themselves as white men, and of the others, who may not wear shoes, as "blacks". the men of all these classes trust to their wives for food, and spend most of their time in drinking the palm-toddy. this toddy is the juice of the palm-oil-tree ('elaeis guineensis'), which, when tapped, yields a sweet, clear liquid, not at all intoxicating while fresh, but, when allowed to stand till the afternoon, causes inebriation and many crimes. this toddy, called malova, is the bane of the country. culprits are continually brought before the commandants for assaults committed through its influence. men come up with deep gashes on their heads; and one, who had burned his father's house, i saw making a profound bow to mr. canto, and volunteering to explain why he did the deed. there is also a sort of fraternity of freemasons, named empacasseiros, into which no one is admitted unless he is an expert hunter, and can shoot well with the gun. they are distinguished by a fillet of buffalo hide around their heads, and are employed as messengers in all cases requiring express. they are very trustworthy, and, when on active service, form the best native troops the portuguese possess. the militia are of no value as soldiers, but cost the country nothing, being supported by their wives. their duties are chiefly to guard the residences of commandants, and to act as police. the chief recreations of the natives of angola are marriages and funerals. when a young woman is about to be married, she is placed in a hut alone and anointed with various unguents, and many incantations are employed in order to secure good fortune and fruitfulness. here, as almost every where in the south, the height of good fortune is to bear sons. they often leave a husband altogether if they have daughters only. in their dances, when any one may wish to deride another, in the accompanying song a line is introduced, "so and so has no children, and never will get any." she feels the insult so keenly that it is not uncommon for her to rush away and commit suicide. after some days the bride elect is taken to another hut, and adorned with all the richest clothing and ornaments that the relatives can either lend or borrow. she is then placed in a public situation, saluted as a lady, and presents made by all her acquaintances are placed around her. after this she is taken to the residence of her husband, where she has a hut for herself, and becomes one of several wives, for polygamy is general. dancing, feasting, and drinking on such occasions are prolonged for several days. in case of separation, the woman returns to her father's family, and the husband receives back what he gave for her. in nearly all cases a man gives a price for the wife, and in cases of mulattoes, as much as pounds is often given to the parents of the bride. this is one of the evils the bishop was trying to remedy. in cases of death the body is kept several days, and there is a grand concourse of both sexes, with beating of drums, dances, and debauchery, kept up with feasting, etc., according to the means of the relatives. the great ambition of many of the blacks of angola is to give their friends an expensive funeral. often, when one is asked to sell a pig, he replies, "i am keeping it in case of the death of any of my friends." a pig is usually slaughtered and eaten on the last day of the ceremonies, and its head thrown into the nearest stream or river. a native will sometimes appear intoxicated on these occasions, and, if blamed for his intemperance, will reply, "why! my mother is dead!" as if he thought it a sufficient justification. the expenses of funerals are so heavy that often years elapse before they can defray them. these people are said to be very litigious and obstinate: constant disputes are taking place respecting their lands. a case came before the weekly court of the commandant involving property in a palm-tree worth twopence. the judge advised the pursuer to withdraw the case, as the mere expenses of entering it would be much more than the cost of the tree. "oh no," said he; "i have a piece of calico with me for the clerk, and money for yourself. it's my right; i will not forego it." the calico itself cost three or four shillings. they rejoice if they can say of an enemy, "i took him before the court." my friend mr. canto, the commandant, being seized with fever in a severe form, it afforded me much pleasure to attend him in his sickness, who had been so kind to me in mine. he was for some time in a state of insensibility, and i, having the charge of his establishment, had thus an opportunity of observing the workings of slavery. when a master is ill, the slaves run riot among the eatables. i did not know this until i observed that every time the sugar-basin came to the table it was empty. on visiting my patient by night, i passed along a corridor, and unexpectedly came upon the washerwoman eating pine-apples and sugar. all the sweetmeats were devoured, and it was difficult for me to get even bread and butter until i took the precaution of locking the pantry door. probably the slaves thought that, as both they and the luxuries were the master's property, there was no good reason why they should be kept apart. debarred by my precaution from these sources of enjoyment, they took to killing the fowls and goats, and, when the animal was dead, brought it to me, saying, "we found this thing lying out there." they then enjoyed a feast of flesh. a feeling of insecurity prevails throughout this country. it is quite common to furnish visitors with the keys of their rooms. when called on to come to breakfast or dinner, each locks his door and puts the key in his pocket. at kolobeng we never locked our doors by night or by day for months together; but there slavery is unknown. the portuguese do not seem at all bigoted in their attachment to slavery, nor yet in their prejudices against color. mr. canto gave an entertainment in order to draw all classes together and promote general good-will. two sovas or native chiefs were present, and took their places without the least appearance of embarrassment. the sova of kilombo appeared in the dress of a general, and the sova of bango was gayly attired in a red coat, profusely ornamented with tinsel. the latter had a band of musicians with him consisting of six trumpeters and four drummers, who performed very well. these men are fond of titles, and the portuguese government humors them by conferring honorary captaincies, etc.: the sova of bango was at present anxious to obtain the title of "major of all the sovas". at the tables of other gentlemen i observed the same thing constantly occurring. at this meeting mr. canto communicated some ideas which i had written out on the dignity of labor, and the superiority of free over slave labor. the portuguese gentlemen present were anxiously expecting an arrival of american cotton-seed from mr. gabriel. they are now in the transition state from unlawful to lawful trade, and turn eagerly to cotton, coffee, and sugar as new sources of wealth. mr. canto had been commissioned by them to purchase three sugar-mills. our cruisers have been the principal agents in compelling them to abandon the slave-trade; and our government, in furnishing them with a supply of cotton-seed, showed a generous intention to aid them in commencing a more honorable course. it can scarcely be believed, however, that after lord clarendon had been at the trouble of procuring fresh cotton-seed through our minister at washington, and had sent it out to the care of h. m. commissioner at loanda, probably from having fallen into the hands of a few incorrigible slave-traders, it never reached its destination. it was most likely cast into the sea of ambriz, and my friends at golungo alto were left without the means of commencing a new enterprise. mr. canto mentioned that there is now much more cotton in the country than can be consumed; and if he had possession of a few hundred pounds, he would buy up all the oil and cotton at a fair price, and thereby bring about a revolution in the agriculture of the country. these commodities are not produced in greater quantity, because the people have no market for those which now spring up almost spontaneously around them. the above was put down in my journal when i had no idea that enlarged supplies of cotton from new sources were so much needed at home. it is common to cut down cotton-trees as a nuisance, and cultivate beans, potatoes, and manioc sufficient only for their own consumption. i have the impression that cotton, which is deciduous in america, is perennial here; for the plants i saw in winter were not dead, though going by the name algodao americana, or american cotton. the rents paid for gardens belonging to the old convents are merely nominal, varying from one shilling to three pounds per annum. the higher rents being realized from those in the immediate vicinity of loanda, none but portuguese or half-castes can pay them. when about to start, the horse which the governor had kindly presented for sekeletu was seized with inflammation, which delayed us some time longer, and we ultimately lost it. we had been careful to watch it when coming through the district of matamba, where we had discovered the tsetse, that no insect might light upon it. the change of diet here may have had some influence in producing the disease; for i was informed by dr. welweitsch, an able german naturalist, whom we found pursuing his arduous labors here, and whose life we hope may be spared to give his researches to the world, that, of fifty-eight kinds of grasses found at loanda, only three or four species exist here, and these of the most diminutive kinds. the twenty-four different species of grass of golungo alto are nearly all gigantic. indeed, gigantic grasses, climbers, shrubs and trees, with but few plants, constitute the vegetation of this region. november th. an eclipse of the sun, which i had anxiously hoped to observe with a view of determining the longitude, happened this morning, and, as often took place in this cloudy climate, the sun was covered four minutes before it began. when it shone forth the eclipse was in progress, and a few minutes before it should (according to my calculations) have ended the sun was again completely obscured. the greatest patience and perseverance are required, if one wishes to ascertain his position when it is the rainy season. before leaving, i had an opportunity of observing a curious insect, which inhabits trees of the fig family ('ficus'), upward of twenty species of which are found here. seven or eight of them cluster round a spot on one of the smaller branches, and there keep up a constant distillation of a clear fluid, which, dropping to the ground, forms a little puddle below. if a vessel is placed under them in the evening, it contains three or four pints of fluid in the morning. the natives say that, if a drop falls into the eyes, it causes inflammation of these organs. to the question whence is this fluid derived, the people reply that the insects suck it out of the tree, and our own naturalists give the same answer. i have never seen an orifice, and it is scarcely possible that the tree can yield so much. a similar but much smaller homopterous insect, of the family 'cercopidae', is known in england as the frog-hopper ('aphrophora spumaria'), when full grown and furnished with wings, but while still in the pupa state it is called "cuckoo-spit", from the mass of froth in which it envelops itself. the circulation of sap in plants in our climate, especially of the graminaceae, is not quick enough to yield much moisture. the african species is five or six times the size of the english. in the case of branches of the fig-tree, the point the insects congregate on is soon marked by a number of incipient roots, such as are thrown out when a cutting is inserted in the ground for the purpose of starting another tree. i believe that both the english and african insects belong to the same family, and differ only in size, and that the chief part of the moisture is derived from the atmosphere. i leave it for naturalists to explain how these little creatures distill both by night and day as much water as they please, and are more independent than her majesty's steam-ships, with their apparatus for condensing steam; for, without coal, their abundant supplies of sea-water are of no avail. i tried the following experiment: finding a colony of these insects busily distilling on a branch of the 'ricinus communis', or castor-oil plant, i denuded about inches of the bark on the tree side of the insects, and scraped away the inner bark, so as to destroy all the ascending vessels. i also cut a hole in the side of the branch, reaching to the middle, and then cut out the pith and internal vessels. the distillation was then going on at the rate of one drop each seconds, or about ounces - / drams in hours. next morning the distillation, so far from being affected by the attempt to stop the supplies, supposing they had come up through the branch from the tree, was increased to a drop every seconds, or drops per minute, making pint ( ounces) in every hours. i then cut the branch so much that, during the day, it broke; but they still went on at the rate of a drop every seconds, while another colony on a branch of the same tree gave a drop every seconds only, or at the rate of about ounces - / drams in hours. i finally cut off the branch; but this was too much for their patience, for they immediately decamped, as insects will do from either a dead branch or a dead animal, which indian hunters soon know, when they sit down on a recently-killed bear. the presence of greater moisture in the air increased the power of these distillers: the period of greatest activity was in the morning, when the air and every thing else was charged with dew. having but one day left for experiment, i found again that another colony on a branch denuded in the same way yielded a drop every seconds, or pints ounces in hours, while a colony on a branch untouched yielded a drop every seconds, or ounces - / drams in hours. i regretted somewhat the want of time to institute another experiment, namely, to cut a branch and place it in water, so as to keep it in life, and then observe if there was any diminution of the quantity of water in the vessel. this alone was wanting to make it certain that they draw water from the atmosphere. i imagine that they have some power of which we are not aware, besides that nervous influence which causes constant motion to our own involuntary muscles, the power of life-long action without fatigue. the reader will remember, in connection with this insect, the case of the ants already mentioned. december th. both myself and men having recovered from severe attacks of fever, we left the hospitable residence of mr. canto with a deep sense of his kindness to us all, and proceeded on our way to ambaca. (lat. d ' " s., long. d ' e.) frequent rains had fallen in october and november, which were nearly always accompanied with thunder. occasionally the quantity of moisture in the atmosphere is greatly increased without any visible cause: this imparts a sensation of considerable cold, though the thermometer exhibits no fall of the mercury. the greater humidity in the air, affording a better conducting medium for the radiation of heat from the body, is as dangerous as a sudden fall of the thermometer: it causes considerable disease among the natives, and this season is denominated "carneirado", as if by the disease they were slaughtered like sheep. the season of these changes, which is the most favorable for europeans, is the most unhealthy for the native population; and this is by no means a climate in which either natives or europeans can indulge in irregularities with impunity. owing to the weakness of the men who had been sick, we were able to march but short distances. three hours and a half brought us to the banks of the caloi, a small stream which flows into the senza. this is one of the parts of the country reputed to yield petroleum, but the geological formation, being mica schist, dipping toward the eastward, did not promise much for our finding it. our hospitable friend, mr. mellot, accompanied us to another little river, called the quango, where i saw two fine boys, the sons of the sub-commandant, mr. feltao, who, though only from six to eight years old, were subject to fever. we then passed on in the bright sunlight, the whole country looking so fresh and green after the rains, and every thing so cheering, one could not but wonder to find it so feverish. we found, on reaching ambaca, that the gallant old soldier, laurence jose marquis, had, since our passing icollo i bengo, been promoted, on account of his stern integrity, to the government of this important district. the office of commandant is much coveted by the officers of the line who come to angola, not so much for the salary as for the perquisites, which, when managed skillfully, in the course of a few years make one rich. an idea may be formed of the conduct of some of these officials from the following extract from the boletin of loanda of the th of october, : "the acting governor-general of the province of angola and its dependencies determines as follows: "having instituted an investigation (syndecancia) against the commandant of the fort of----, a captain of the army of portugal in commission in this province,----, on account of numerous complaints, which have come before this government, of violences and extortions practiced by the said commandant, and those complaints appearing by the result of the investigation to be well founded, it will be convenient to exonerate the captain referred to from the command of the fort of----, to which he had been nominated by the portfolio of this general government, no. , of th december of the past year; and if not otherwise determined, the same official shall be judged by a council of war for the criminal acts which are to him attributed." even this public mention of his crimes attaches no stigma to the man's character. the council of war, by which these delinquents always prefer to be judged, is composed of men who eagerly expect to occupy the post of commandant themselves, and anticipate their own trial for similar acts at some future time. the severest sentence a council of war awards is a few weeks' suspension from office in his regiment. this want of official integrity, which is not at all attributable to the home government of portugal, would prove a serious impediment in the way of foreign enterprise developing the resources of this rich province. and to this cause, indeed, may be ascribed the failure of the portuguese laws for the entire suppression of the slave-trade. the officers ought to receive higher pay, if integrity is expected from them. at present, a captain's pay for a year will only keep him in good uniform. the high pay our own officers receive has manifest advantages. before leaving ambaca we received a present of ten head of cattle from mr. schut of loanda, and, as it shows the cheapness of provisions here, i may mention that the cost was only about a guinea per head. on crossing the lucalla we made a detour to the south, in order to visit the famous rocks of pungo andongo. as soon as we crossed the rivulet lotete, a change in the vegetation of the country was apparent. we found trees identical with those to be seen south of the chobe. the grass, too, stands in tufts, and is of that kind which the natives consider to be best adapted for cattle. two species of grape-bearing vines abound every where in this district, and the influence of the good pasturage is seen in the plump condition of the cattle. in all my previous inquiries respecting the vegetable products of angola, i was invariably directed to pungo andongo. do you grow wheat? "oh, yes, in pungo andongo."--grapes, figs, or peaches? "oh, yes, in pungo andongo."--do you make butter, cheese, etc.? the uniform answer was, "oh, yes, there is abundance of all these in pungo andongo." but when we arrived here, we found that the answers all referred to the activity of one man, colonel manuel antonio pires. the presence of the wild grape shows that vineyards might be cultivated with success; the wheat grows well without irrigation; and any one who tasted the butter and cheese at the table of colonel pires would prefer them to the stale produce of the irish dairy, in general use throughout that province. the cattle in this country are seldom milked, on account of the strong prejudice which the portuguese entertain against the use of milk. they believe that it may be used with safety in the morning, but, if taken after midday, that it will cause fever. it seemed to me that there was not much reason for carefully avoiding a few drops in their coffee, after having devoured ten times the amount in the shape of cheese at dinner. the fort of pungo andongo (lat. d ' " s., long. d ' e.) is situated in the midst of a group of curious columnar-shaped rocks, each of which is upward of three hundred feet in height. they are composed of conglomerate, made up of a great variety of rounded pieces in a matrix of dark red sandstone. they rest on a thick stratum of this last rock, with very few of the pebbles in its substance. on this a fossil palm has been found, and if of the same age as those on the eastern side of the continent, on which similar palms now lie, there may be coal underneath this, as well as under that at tete. the asserted existence of petroleum springs at dande, and near cambambe, would seem to indicate the presence of this useful mineral, though i am not aware of any one having actually seen a seam of coal tilted up to the surface in angola, as we have at tete. the gigantic pillars of pungo andongo have been formed by a current of the sea coming from the s.s.e.; for, seen from the top, they appear arranged in that direction, and must have withstood the surges of the ocean at a period of our world's history, when the relations of land and sea were totally different from what they are now, and long before "the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of god shouted for joy to see the abodes prepared which man was soon to fill." the imbedded pieces in the conglomerate are of gneiss, clay shale, mica and sandstone schists, trap, and porphyry, most of which are large enough to give the whole the appearance of being the only remaining vestiges of vast primaeval banks of shingle. several little streams run among these rocks, and in the central part of the pillars stands the village, completely environed by well-nigh inaccessible rocks. the pathways into the village might be defended by a small body of troops against an army; and this place was long the stronghold of the tribe called jinga, the original possessors of the country. we were shown a footprint carved on one of these rocks. it is spoken of as that of a famous queen, who reigned over all this region. in looking at these rude attempts at commemoration, one feels the value of letters. in the history of angola we find that the famous queen donna anna de souza came from the vicinity, as embassadress from her brother, gola bandy, king of the jinga, to loanda, in , to sue for peace, and astonished the governor by the readiness of her answers. the governor proposed, as a condition of peace, the payment by the jinga of an annual tribute. "people talk of tribute after they have conquered, and not before it; we come to talk of peace, not of subjection," was the ready answer. the governor was as much nonplussed as our cape governors often are when they tell the caffres "to put it all down in writing, and they will then be able to answer them." she remained some time in loanda, gained all she sought, and, after being taught by the missionaries, was baptized, and returned to her own country with honor. she succeeded to the kingdom on the death of her brother, whom it was supposed she poisoned, but in a subsequent war with the portuguese she lost nearly all her army in a great battle fought in . she returned to the church after a long period of apostasy, and died in extreme old age; and the jinga still live as an independent people to the north of this their ancient country. no african tribe has ever been destroyed. in former times the portuguese imagined that this place was particularly unhealthy, and banishment to the black rocks of pungo andongo was thought by their judges to be a much severer sentence than transportation to any part of the coast; but this district is now well known to be the most healthy part of angola. the water is remarkably pure, the soil is light, and the country open and undulating, with a general slope down toward the river coanza, a few miles distant. that river is the southern boundary of the portuguese, and beyond, to the s. and s.w., we see the high mountains of the libollo. on the s.e. we have also a mountainous country, inhabited by the kimbonda or ambonda, who are said by colonel pires to be a very brave and independent people, but hospitable and fair in their dealings. they are rich in cattle, and their country produces much beeswax, which is carefully collected, and brought to the portuguese, with whom they have always been on good terms. the ako (haco), a branch of this family, inhabit the left bank of the coanza above this village, who, instead of bringing slaves for sale, as formerly, now occasionally bring wax for the purchase of a slave from the portuguese. i saw a boy sold for twelve shillings: he said that he belonged to the country of matiamvo. here i bought a pair of well-made boots, of good tanned leather, which reached above the knee, for five shillings and eightpence, and that was just the price given for one pound of ivory by mr. pires; consequently, the boy was worth two pairs of boots, or two pounds of ivory. the libollo on the s. have not so good a character, but the coanza is always deep enough to form a line of defense. colonel pires is a good example of what an honest industrious man in this country may become. he came as a servant in a ship, and, by a long course of persevering labor, has raised himself to be the richest merchant in angola. he possesses some thousands of cattle; and, on any emergency, can appear in the field with several hundred armed slaves. while enjoying the hospitality of this merchant-prince in his commodious residence, which is outside the rocks, and commands a beautiful view of all the adjacent country, i learned that all my dispatches, maps, and journal had gone to the bottom of the sea in the mail-packet "forerunner". i felt so glad that my friend lieutenant bedingfeld, to whose care i had committed them, though in the most imminent danger, had not shared a similar fate, that i was at once reconciled to the labor of rewriting. i availed myself of the kindness of colonel pires, and remained till the end of the year reproducing my lost papers. colonel pires having another establishment on the banks of the coanza, about six miles distant, i visited it with him about once a week for the purpose of recreation. the difference of temperature caused by the lower altitude was seen in the cashew-trees; for while, near the rocks, these trees were but coming into flower, those at the lower station were ripening their fruit. cocoanut trees and bananas bear well at the lower station, but yield little or no fruit at the upper. the difference indicated by the thermometer was deg. the general range near the rocks was deg. at a.m., deg. at midday, and deg. in the evening. a slave-boy belonging to colonel pires, having stolen and eaten some lemons in the evening, went to the river to wash his mouth, so as not to be detected by the flavor. an alligator seized him and carried him to an island in the middle of the stream; there the boy grasped hold of the reeds, and baffled all the efforts of the reptile to dislodge him, till his companions, attracted by his cries, came in a canoe to his assistance. the alligator at once let go his hold; for, when out of his own element, he is cowardly. the boy had many marks of the teeth in his abdomen and thigh, and those of the claws on his legs and arms. the slaves in colonel pires' establishments appeared more like free servants than any i had elsewhere seen. every thing was neat and clean, while generally, where slaves are the only domestics, there is an aspect of slovenliness, as if they went on the principle of always doing as little for their masters as possible. in the country near to this station were a large number of the ancient burial-places of the jinga. these are simply large mounds of stones, with drinking and cooking vessels of rude pottery on them. some are arranged in a circular form, two or three yards in diameter, and shaped like a haycock. there is not a single vestige of any inscription. the natives of angola generally have a strange predilection for bringing their dead to the sides of the most frequented paths. they have a particular anxiety to secure the point where cross-roads meet. on and around the graves are planted tree euphorbias and other species of that family. on the grave itself they also place water-bottles, broken pipes, cooking vessels, and sometimes a little bow and arrow. the portuguese government, wishing to prevent this custom, affixed a penalty on any one burying in the roads, and appointed places of public sepulture in every district in the country. the people persist, however, in spite of the most stringent enforcement of the law, to follow their ancient custom. the country between the coanza and pungo andongo is covered with low trees, bushes, and fine pasturage. in the latter, we were pleased to see our old acquaintances, the gaudy gladiolus, amaryllis toxicaria, hymanthus, and other bulbs in as flourishing a condition as at the cape. it is surprising that so little has been done in the way of agriculture in angola. raising wheat by means of irrigation has never been tried; no plow is ever used; and the only instrument is the native hoe, in the hands of slaves. the chief object of agriculture is the manioc, which does not contain nutriment sufficient to give proper stamina to the people. the half-caste portuguese have not so much energy as their fathers. they subsist chiefly on the manioc, and, as that can be eaten either raw, roasted, or boiled, as it comes from the ground; or fermented in water, and then roasted or dried after fermentation, and baked or pounded into fine meal; or rasped into meal and cooked as farina; or made into confectionary with butter and sugar, it does not so soon pall upon the palate as one might imagine, when told that it constitutes their principal food. the leaves boiled make an excellent vegetable for the table; and, when eaten by goats, their milk is much increased. the wood is a good fuel, and yields a large quantity of potash. if planted in a dry soil, it takes two years to come to perfection, requiring, during that time, one weeding only. it bears drought well, and never shrivels up, like other plants, when deprived of rain. when planted in low alluvial soils, and either well supplied with rain or annually flooded, twelve, or even ten months, are sufficient to bring it to maturity. the root rasped while raw, placed upon a cloth, and rubbed with the hands while water is poured upon it, parts with its starchy glutinous matter, and this, when it settles at the bottom of the vessel, and the water poured off, is placed in the sun till nearly dry, to form tapioca. the process of drying is completed on an iron plate over a slow fire, the mass being stirred meanwhile with a stick, and when quite dry it appears agglutinated into little globules, and is in the form we see the tapioca of commerce. this is never eaten by weevils, and so little labor is required in its cultivation that on the spot it is extremely cheap. throughout the interior parts of angola, fine manioc meal, which could with ease have been converted either into superior starch or tapioca, is commonly sold at the rate of about ten pounds for a penny. all this region, however, has no means of transport to loanda other than the shoulders of the carriers and slaves over a footpath. cambambe, to which the navigation of the coanza reaches, is reported to be thirty leagues below pungo andongo. a large waterfall is the limit on that side; and another exists higher up, at the confluence of the lombe (lat. d ' " s., and about long. d e.), over which hippopotami and elephants are sometimes drawn and killed. the river between is rapid, and generally rushes over a rocky bottom. its source is pointed out as s.e. or s.s.e. of its confluence with the lombe, and near bihe. the situation of bihe is not well known. when at sanza we were assured that it lies nearly south of that point, and eight days distant. this statement seemed to be corroborated by our meeting many people going to matiamvo and to loanda from bihe. both parties had come to sanza, and then branched off, one to the east, the other to the west. the source of the coanza is thus probably not far from sanza. i had the happiness of doing a little good in the way of administering to the sick, for there are no doctors in the interior of angola. notwithstanding the general healthiness of this fine district and its pleasant temperature, i was attacked by fever myself. while confined to my room, a gentleman of color, a canon of the church, kindly paid me a visit. he was on a tour of visitation in the different interior districts for the purpose of baptizing and marrying. he had lately been on a visit to lisbon in company with the prince of congo, and had been invested with an order of honor by the king of portugal as an acknowledgment of his services. he had all the appearance of a true negro, but commanded the respect of the people; and colonel p., who had known him for thirty years, pronounced him to be a good man. there are only three or four priests in loanda, all men of color, but educated for the office. about the time of my journey in angola, an offer was made to any young men of ability who might wish to devote themselves to the service of the church, to afford them the requisite education at the university of coimbra in portugal. i was informed, on what seemed good authority, that the prince of congo is professedly a christian, and that there are no fewer than twelve churches in that kingdom, the fruits of the mission established in former times at san salvador, the capital. these churches are kept in partial repair by the people, who also keep up the ceremonies of the church, pronouncing some gibberish over the dead, in imitation of the latin prayers which they had formerly heard. many of them can read and write. when a king of congo dies, the body is wrapped up in a great many folds of cloth until a priest can come from loanda to consecrate his successor. the king of congo still retains the title of lord of angola, which he had when the jinga, the original possessors of the soil, owed him allegiance; and, when he writes to the governor of angola, he places his own name first, as if addressing his vassal. the jinga paid him tribute annually in cowries, which were found on the island that shelters loanda harbor, and, on refusing to continue payment, the king of congo gave over the island to the portuguese, and thus their dominion commenced in this quarter. there is not much knowledge of the christian religion in either congo or angola, yet it is looked upon with a certain degree of favor. the prevalence of fever is probably the reason why no priest occupies a post in any part of the interior. they come on tours of visitation like that mentioned, and it is said that no expense is incurred, for all the people are ready not only to pay for their services, but also to furnish every article in their power gratuitously. in view of the desolate condition of this fine missionary field, it is more than probable that the presence of a few protestants would soon provoke the priests, if not to love, to good works. chapter . leave pungo andongo--extent of portuguese power--meet traders and carriers--red ants; their fierce attack; usefulness; numbers--descend the heights of tala mungongo--fruit-trees in the valley of cassange--edible muscle--birds--cassange village--quinine and cathory-- sickness of captain neves' infant--a diviner thrashed--death of the child--mourning--loss of life from the ordeal--wide-spread superstitions--the chieftainship--charms--receive copies of the "times"--trading pombeiros--present for matiamvo--fever after westerly winds--capabilities of angola for producing the raw materials of english manufacture--trading parties with ivory--more fever--a hyaena's choice--makololo opinion of the portuguese--cypriano's debt--a funeral--dread of disembodied spirits--beautiful morning scenes-- crossing the quango--ambakistas called "the jews of angola"--fashions of the bashinje--approach the village of sansawe--his idea of dignity--the pombeiros' present--long detention--a blow on the beard--attacked in a forest--sudden conversion of a fighting chief to peace principles by means of a revolver--no blood shed in consequence--rate of traveling--slave women--way of addressing slaves--their thievish propensities--feeders of the congo or zaire--obliged to refuse presents--cross the loajima--appearance of people; hair fashions. january , . having, through the kindness of colonel pires, reproduced some of my lost papers, i left pungo andongo the first day of this year, and at candumba, slept in one of the dairy establishments of my friend, who had sent forward orders for an ample supply of butter, cheese, and milk. our path lay along the right bank of the coanza. this is composed of the same sandstone rock, with pebbles, which forms the flooring of the country. the land is level, has much open forest, and is well adapted for pasturage. on reaching the confluence of the lombe, we left the river, and proceeded in a northeasterly direction, through a fine open green country, to the village of malange, where we struck into our former path. a few miles to the west of this a path branches off to a new district named the duke braganza. this path crosses the lucalla and several of its feeders. the whole of the country drained by these is described as extremely fertile. the territory west of braganza is reported to be mountainous, well wooded and watered; wild coffee is abundant, and the people even make their huts of coffee-trees. the rivers dande, senza, and lucalla are said to rise in one mountain range. numerous tribes inhabit the country to the north, who are all independent. the portuguese power extends chiefly over the tribes through whose lands we have passed. it may be said to be firmly seated only between the rivers dande and coanza. it extends inland about three hundred miles to the river quango; and the population, according to the imperfect data afforded by the census, given annually by the commandants of the fifteen or sixteen districts into which it is divided, can not be under , souls. leaving malange, we passed quickly, without deviation, along the path by which we had come. at sanza (lat. d ' " s., long. d ' e.) we expected to get a little seed-wheat, but this was not now to be found in angola. the underlying rock of the whole of this section is that same sandstone which we have before noticed, but it gradually becomes finer in the grain, with the addition of a little mica, the farther we go eastward; we enter upon clay shale at tala mungongo (lat. d ' " s., long. d ' e.), and find it dipping a little to the west. the general geological structure is a broad fringe of mica and sandstone schist (about deg. e.), dipping in toward the centre of the country, beneath these horizontal and sedimentary rocks of more recent date, which form an inland basin. the fringe is not, however, the highest in altitude, though the oldest in age. while at this latter place we met a native of bihe who has visited the country of shinte three times for the purposes of trade. he gave us some of the news of that distant part, but not a word of the makololo, who have always been represented in the countries to the north as a desperately savage race, whom no trader could visit with safety. the half-caste traders whom we met at shinte's had returned to angola with sixty-six slaves and upward of fifty tusks of ivory. as we came along the path, we daily met long lines of carriers bearing large square masses of beeswax, each about a hundred pounds weight, and numbers of elephants' tusks, the property of angolese merchants. many natives were proceeding to the coast also on their own account, carrying beeswax, ivory, and sweet oil. they appeared to travel in perfect security; and at different parts of the road we purchased fowls from them at a penny each. my men took care to celebrate their own daring in having actually entered ships, while the natives of these parts, who had endeavored to frighten them on their way down, had only seen them at a distance. poor fellows! they were more than ever attentive to me; and, as they were not obliged to erect sheds for themselves, in consequence of finding them already built at the different sleeping-places, all their care was bestowed in making me comfortable. mashauana, as usual, made his bed with his head close to my feet, and never during the entire journey did i have to call him twice for any thing i needed. during our stay at tala mungongo, our attention was attracted to a species of red ant which infests different parts of this country. it is remarkably fond of animal food. the commandant of the village having slaughtered a cow, slaves were obliged to sit up the whole night, burning fires of straw around the meat, to prevent them from devouring most of it. these ants are frequently met with in numbers like a small army. at a little distance they appear as a brownish-red band, two or three inches wide, stretched across the path, all eagerly pressing on in one direction. if a person happens to tread upon them, they rush up his legs and bite with surprising vigor. the first time i encountered this by no means contemptible enemy was near cassange. my attention being taken up in viewing the distant landscape, i accidentally stepped upon one of their nests. not an instant seemed to elapse before a simultaneous attack was made on various unprotected parts, up the trowsers from below, and on my neck and breast above. the bites of these furies were like sparks of fire, and there was no retreat. i jumped about for a second or two, then in desperation tore off all my clothing, and rubbed and picked them off seriatim as quickly as possible. ugh! they would make the most lethargic mortal look alive. fortunately, no one observed this rencounter, or word might have been taken back to the village that i had become mad. i was once assaulted in a similar way when sound asleep at night in my tent, and it was only by holding my blanket over the fire that i could get rid of them. it is really astonishing how such small bodies can contain so large an amount of ill-nature. they not only bite, but twist themselves round after the mandibles are inserted, to produce laceration and pain, more than would be effected by the single wound. frequently, while sitting on the ox, as he happened to tread near a band, they would rush up his legs to the rider, and soon let him know that he had disturbed their march. they possess no fear, attacking with equal ferocity the largest as well as the smallest animals. when any person has leaped over the band, numbers of them leave the ranks and rush along the path, seemingly anxious for a fight. they are very useful in ridding the country of dead animal matter, and, when they visit a human habitation, clear it entirely of the destructive white ants and other vermin. they destroy many noxious insects and reptiles. the severity of their attack is greatly increased by their vast numbers, and rats, mice, lizards, and even the 'python natalensis', when in a state of surfeit from recent feeding, fall victims to their fierce onslaught. these ants never make hills like the white ant. their nests are but a short distance beneath the soil, which has the soft appearance of the abodes of ants in england. occasionally they construct galleries over their path to the cells of the white ant, in order to secure themselves from the heat of the sun during their marauding expeditions. january th, . we descended in one hour from the heights of tala mungongo. i counted the number of paces made on the slope downward, and found them to be sixteen hundred, which may give a perpendicular height of from twelve to fifteen hundred feet. water boiled at degrees at tala mungongo above, and at deg. at the bottom of the declivity, the air being at deg. in the shade in the former case, and deg. in the latter. the temperature generally throughout the day was from deg. to deg. in the coolest shade we could find. the rivulets which cut up the valley of cassange were now dry, but the lui and luare contained abundance of rather brackish water. the banks are lined with palm, wild date-trees, and many guavas, the fruit of which was now becoming ripe. a tree much like the mango abounds, but it does not yield fruit. in these rivers a kind of edible muscle is plentiful, the shells of which exist in all the alluvial beds of the ancient rivers as far as the kuruman. the brackish nature of the water probably enables it to exist here. on the open grassy lawns great numbers of a species of lark are seen. they are black, with yellow shoulders. another black bird, with a long tail ('centropus senegalensis'), floats awkwardly, with its tail in a perpendicular position, over the long grass. it always chooses the highest points, and is caught on them with bird-lime, the long black tail-feathers being highly esteemed by the natives for plumes. we saw here also the "lehututu" ('tragopan leadbeaterii'), a large bird strongly resembling a turkey; it is black on the ground, but when it flies the outer half of the wings are white. it kills serpents, striking them dexterously behind the head. it derives its native name from the noise it makes, and it is found as far as kolobeng. another species like it is called the abyssinian hornbill. before we reached cassange we were overtaken by the commandant, senhor carvalho, who was returning, with a detachment of fifty men and a field-piece, from an unsuccessful search after some rebels. the rebels had fled, and all he could do was to burn their huts. he kindly invited me to take up my residence with him; but, not wishing to pass by the gentleman (captain neves) who had so kindly received me on my first arrival in the portuguese possessions, i declined. senhor rego had been superseded in his command, because the governor amaral, who had come into office since my departure from loanda, had determined that the law which requires the office of commandant to be exclusively occupied by military officers of the line should once more come into operation. i was again most kindly welcomed by my friend, captain neves, whom i found laboring under a violent inflammation and abscess of the hand. there is nothing in the situation of this village to indicate unhealthiness, except, perhaps, the rank luxuriance of the vegetation. nearly all the portuguese inhabitants suffer from enlargement of the spleen, the effects of frequent intermittents, and have generally a sickly appearance. thinking that this affection of the hand was simply an effort of nature to get rid of malarious matter from the system, i recommended the use of quinine. he himself applied the leaf of a plant called cathory, famed among the natives as an excellent remedy for ulcers. the cathory leaves, when boiled, exude a gummy juice, which effectually shuts out the external air. each remedy, of course, claimed the merit of the cure. many of the children are cut off by fever. a fine boy of captain neves' had, since my passage westward, shared a similar fate. another child died during the period of my visit. during his sickness, his mother, a woman of color, sent for a diviner in order to ascertain what ought to be done. the diviner, after throwing his dice, worked himself into the state of ecstasy in which they pretend to be in communication with the barimo. he then gave the oracular response that the child was being killed by the spirit of a portuguese trader who once lived at cassange. the case was this: on the death of the trader, the other portuguese merchants in the village came together, and sold the goods of the departed to each other, each man accounting for the portion received to the creditors of the deceased at loanda. the natives, looking on, and not understanding the nature of written mercantile transactions, concluded that the merchants of cassange had simply stolen the dead man's goods, and that now the spirit was killing the child of captain neves for the part he had taken in the affair. the diviner, in his response, revealed the impression made on his own mind by the sale, and likewise the native ideas of departed souls. as they give the whites credit for greater stupidity than themselves in all these matters, the mother of the child came, and told the father that he ought to give a slave to the diviner as a fee to make a sacrifice to appease the spirit and save the life of the child. the father quietly sent for a neighbor, and, though the diviner pretended to remain in his state of ecstasy, the brisk application of two sticks to his back suddenly reduced him to his senses and a most undignified flight. the mother of this child seemed to have no confidence in european wisdom, and, though i desired her to keep the child out of currents of wind, she preferred to follow her own custom, and even got it cupped on the cheeks. the consequence was that the child was soon in a dying state, and the father wishing it to be baptized, i commended its soul to the care and compassion of him who said, "of such is the kingdom of heaven." the mother at once rushed away, and commenced that doleful wail which is so affecting, as it indicates sorrow without hope. she continued it without intermission until the child was buried. in the evening her female companions used a small musical instrument, which produced a kind of screeching sound, as an accompaniment of the death wail. in the construction of this instrument they make use of caoutchouc, which, with a variety of other gums, is found in different parts of this country. the intercourse which the natives have had with white men does not seem to have much ameliorated their condition. a great number of persons are reported to lose their lives annually in different districts of angola by the cruel superstitions to which they are addicted, and the portuguese authorities either know nothing of them, or are unable to prevent their occurrence. the natives are bound to secrecy by those who administer the ordeal, which generally causes the death of the victim. a person, when accused of witchcraft, will often travel from distant districts in order to assert her innocency and brave the test. they come to a river on the cassange called dua, drink the infusion of a poisonous tree, and perish unknown. a woman was accused by a brother-in-law of being the cause of his sickness while we were at cassange. she offered to take the ordeal, as she had the idea that it would but prove her conscious innocence. captain neves refused his consent to her going, and thus saved her life, which would have been sacrificed, for the poison is very virulent. when a strong stomach rejects it, the accuser reiterates his charge; the dose is repeated, and the person dies. hundreds perish thus every year in the valley of cassange. the same superstitious ideas being prevalent through the whole of the country north of the zambesi, seems to indicate that the people must originally have been one. all believe that the souls of the departed still mingle among the living, and partake in some way of the food they consume. in sickness, sacrifices of fowls and goats are made to appease the spirits. it is imagined that they wish to take the living away from earth and all its enjoyments. when one man has killed another, a sacrifice is made, as if to lay the spirit of the victim. a sect is reported to exist who kill men in order to take their hearts and offer them to the barimo. the chieftainship is elective from certain families. among the bangalas of the cassange valley the chief is chosen from three families in rotation. a chief's brother inherits in preference to his son. the sons of a sister belong to her brother; and he often sells his nephews to pay his debts. by this and other unnatural customs, more than by war, is the slave-market supplied. the prejudices in favor of these practices are very deeply rooted in the native mind. even at loanda they retire out of the city in order to perform their heathenish rites without the cognizance of the authorities. their religion, if such it may be called, is one of dread. numbers of charms are employed to avert the evils with which they feel themselves to be encompassed. occasionally you meet a man, more cautious or more timid than the rest, with twenty or thirty charms round his neck. he seems to act upon the principle of proclus, in his prayer to all the gods and goddesses: among so many he surely must have the right one. the disrespect which europeans pay to the objects of their fear is to their minds only an evidence of great folly. while here, i reproduced the last of my lost papers and maps; and as there is a post twice a month from loanda, i had the happiness to receive a packet of the "times", and, among other news, an account of the russian war up to the terrible charge of the light cavalry. the intense anxiety i felt to hear more may be imagined by every true patriot; but i was forced to brood on in silent thought, and utter my poor prayers for friends who perchance were now no more, until i reached the other side of the continent. a considerable trade is carried on by the cassange merchants with all the surrounding territory by means of native traders, whom they term "pombeiros". two of these, called in the history of angola "the trading blacks" (os feirantes pretos), pedro joao baptista and antonio jose, having been sent by the first portuguese trader that lived at cassange, actually returned from some of the portuguese possessions in the east with letters from the governor of mozambique in the year , proving, as is remarked, "the possibility of so important a communication between mozambique and loanda." this is the only instance of native portuguese subjects crossing the continent. no european ever accomplished it, though this fact has lately been quoted as if the men had been "portuguese". captain neves was now actively engaged in preparing a present, worth about fifty pounds, to be sent by pombeiros to matiamvo. it consisted of great quantities of cotton cloth, a large carpet, an arm-chair with a canopy and curtains of crimson calico, an iron bedstead, mosquito curtains, beads, etc., and a number of pictures rudely painted in oil by an embryo black painter at cassange. matiamvo, like most of the natives in the interior of the country, has a strong desire to possess a cannon, and had sent ten large tusks to purchase one; but, being government property, it could not be sold: he was now furnished with a blunderbuss, mounted as a cannon, which would probably please him as well. senhor graca and some other portuguese have visited this chief at different times; but no european resides beyond the quango; indeed, it is contrary to the policy of the government of angola to allow their subjects to penetrate further into the interior. the present would have been a good opportunity for me to have visited that chief, and i felt strongly inclined to do so, as he had expressed dissatisfaction respecting my treatment by the chiboque, and even threatened to punish them. as it would be improper to force my men to go thither, i resolved to wait and see whether the proposition might not emanate from themselves. when i can get the natives to agree in the propriety of any step, they go to the end of the affair without a murmur. i speak to them and treat them as rational beings, and generally get on well with them in consequence. i have already remarked on the unhealthiness of cassange; and captain neves, who possesses an observing turn of mind, had noticed that always when the west wind blows much fever immediately follows. as long as easterly winds prevail, all enjoy good health; but in january, february, march, and april, the winds are variable, and sickness is general. the unhealthiness of the westerly winds probably results from malaria, appearing to be heavier than common air, and sweeping down into the valley of cassange from the western plateau, somewhat in the same way as the carbonic acid gas from bean-fields is supposed by colliers to do into coal-pits. in the west of scotland strong objections are made by that body of men to farmers planting beans in their vicinity, from the belief that they render the mines unhealthy. the gravitation of the malaria from the more elevated land of tala mungongo toward cassange is the only way the unhealthiness of this spot on the prevalence of the westerly winds can be accounted for. the banks of the quango, though much more marshy, and covered with ranker vegetation, are comparatively healthy; but thither the westerly wind does not seem to convey the noxious agent. feb. th. on the day of starting from cassange, the westerly wind blew strongly, and on the day following we were brought to a stand by several of our party being laid up with fever. this complaint is the only serious drawback angola possesses. it is in every other respect an agreeable land, and admirably adapted for yielding a rich abundance of tropical produce for the rest of the world. indeed, i have no hesitation in asserting that, had it been in the possession of england, it would now have been yielding as much or more of the raw material for her manufactures as an equal extent of territory in the cotton-growing states of america. a railway from loanda to this valley would secure the trade of most of the interior of south central africa.* * the following statistics may be of interest to mercantile men. they show that since the repression of the slave-trade in angola the value of the exports in lawful commerce has steadily augmented. we have no returns since , but the prosperity of legitimate trade has suffered no check. the duties are noted in portuguese money, "milreis", each of which is about three shillings in value. return of the quantities and value of the staple articles, the produce of the province of angola, exported from st. paul de loanda between july , , and june , , specifying the quantities and value of those exported in portuguese ships and in ships of other nations. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | in portuguese ships. || in ships of other nations. | | articles. |------------------------||----------------------------| | | amount. | value. || amount. | value. | |-----------------|---------|--------------||-------------|--------------| | | | l. s. d. || | l. s. d. | | ivory. . . cwt. | | , || | , | | palm oil . " | | , || qr. | , | | coffee . . " | | || | , | | hides. . . no. | | || | | | gum. . . . cwt. | | || | , | | beeswax. . " | | , || | , | | orchella . tons | | , || .... | .... | | | |--------------|| |--------------| | | | , || | , | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- total quantity and value of exports from loanda. l. s. d. ivory . . . cwt. . . . . , palm oil. . " qr. . . . . , coffee. . . " . . . . , hides . . . no. . . . . gum . . . . cwt. . . . . , beeswax . . " . . . . , orchella. . tons . . . . , ------------- l. , abstract view of the net revenue of the customs at st. paul de loanda in quinquennial periods from - to - , both included; and thence in each year to - . ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | | | | |tonnage dues,| | | duties on | duties on |duties on | duties on |store rents, | | years. | importation.|exportation.|re-export-| slaves. | and other | | | | | ation. | | incidental | | | | | | | receipts. | |---------|-------------|------------|----------|------------|-------------| | | mil. reis.| mil. reis.|mil. reis.| mil. reis.| mil. reis.| | - | | ... | .... | , | , | | - | , | | .... | , | , | | - | , | | .... | , | , | | - | , | , | .... | , | , | | - | , | , | .... | , | , | | - | , | , | .... | , | , | | - | , | , | .... | , | , | | - | , | , | .... | , | , | | - | , | , | .... | | , | | - | , | , | | , | , | | - | , | , | | , | , | | |-------------|------------| |------------| | | | , *| , | | , | | | | = l. , | = l. | |= l. , | | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- * this figure was originally miscalculated as , , which probably affected its conversion into pounds.--a. l., . ------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | net revenue | revenue from | total net | total amount | | years. | of customs. | other sources. | revenue. | of charges. | |---------|--------------|----------------|--------------|--------------| | | l. s. d. | l. s. d. | l. s. d. | l. s. d. | | - | , | , | , | , | | - | , | , | , | , | | - | , | , | , | , | | - | , | , | , | , | | - | , | , | , | , | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- the above account exhibits the total revenue and charges of the government of st. paul de loanda in each year, from - to - , both included. the above three tables are copied from the appendix to a dispatch sent by mr. gabriel to viscount palmerston, dated the th of august, , and, among other facts of interest, show a very satisfactory diminution in the duties upon slaves. the returns from to have been obtained from different sources as the average revenue; those from to are from the custom-house records. as soon as we could move toward the quango we did so, meeting in our course several trading-parties, both native and portuguese. we met two of the latter carrying a tusk weighing lbs. the owner afterward informed us that its fellow on the left side of the same elephant was lbs. it was feet - / inches long, and inches in circumference at the part on which the lip of the animal rests. the elephant was rather a small one, as is common in this hot central region. some idea may be formed of the strength of his neck when it is recollected that he bore a weight of lbs. the ivory which comes from the east and northeast of cassange is very much larger than any to be found further south. captain neves had one weighing lbs., and this weight is by no means uncommon. they have been found weighing even lbs. before reaching the quango we were again brought to a stand by fever in two of my companions, close to the residence of a portuguese who rejoiced in the name of william tell, and who lived here in spite of the prohibition of the government. we were using the water of a pond, and this gentleman, having come to invite me to dinner, drank a little of it, and caught fever in consequence. if malarious matter existed in water, it would have been a wonder had we escaped; for, traveling in the sun, with the thermometer from degrees to degrees in the shade, the evaporation from our bodies causing much thirst, we generally partook of every water we came to. we had probably thus more disease than others might suffer who had better shelter. mr. tell remarked that his garden was rather barren, being still, as he said, wild; but when more worked it would become better, though no manure be applied. my men were busy collecting a better breed of fowls and pigeons than those in their own country. mr. tell presented them with some large specimens from rio janeiro. of these they were wonderfully proud, and bore the cock in triumph through the country of the balonda, as evidence of having been to the sea. but when at the village of shinte, a hyaena came into our midst when we were all sound asleep, and picked out the giant in his basket from eighty-four others, and he was lost, to the great grief of my men. the anxiety these people have always shown to improve the breed of their domestic animals is, i think, a favorable point in their character. on looking at the common breeds in the possession of the portuguese, which are merely native cattle, and seeing them slaughter both heifer-calves and cows, which they themselves never do, and likewise making no use of the milk, they concluded that the portuguese must be an inferior race of white men. they never ceased remarking on the fine ground for gardens over which we were passing; and when i happened to mention that most of the flour which the portuguese consumed came from another country, they exclaimed, "are they ignorant of tillage?" "they know nothing but buying and selling: they are not men." i hope it may reach the ears of my angolese friends, and that they may be stirred up to develop the resources of their fine country. on coming back to cypriano's village on the th, we found that his step-father had died after we had passed, and, according to the custom of the country, he had spent more than his patrimony in funeral orgies. he acted with his wonted kindness, though, unfortunately, drinking has got him so deeply in debt that he now keeps out of the way of his creditors. he informed us that the source of the quango is eight days, or one hundred miles, to the south of this, and in a range called mosamba, in the country of the basongo. we can see from this a sort of break in the high land which stretches away round to tala mongongo, through which the river comes. a death had occurred in a village about a mile off, and the people were busy beating drums and firing guns. the funeral rites are half festive, half mourning, partaking somewhat of the character of an irish wake. there is nothing more heart-rending than their death wails. when the natives turn their eyes to the future world, they have a view cheerless enough of their own utter helplessness and hopelessness. they fancy themselves completely in the power of the disembodied spirits, and look upon the prospect of following them as the greatest of misfortunes. hence they are constantly deprecating the wrath of departed souls, believing that, if they are appeased, there is no other cause of death but witchcraft, which may be averted by charms. the whole of the colored population of angola are sunk in these gross superstitions, but have the opinion, notwithstanding, that they are wiser in these matters than their white neighbors. each tribe has a consciousness of following its own best interests in the best way. they are by no means destitute of that self-esteem which is so common in other nations; yet they fear all manner of phantoms, and have half-developed ideas and traditions of something or other, they know not what. the pleasures of animal life are ever present to their minds as the supreme good; and, but for the innumerable invisibilities, they might enjoy their luxurious climate as much as it is possible for man to do. i have often thought, in traveling through their land, that it presents pictures of beauty which angels might enjoy. how often have i beheld, in still mornings, scenes the very essence of beauty, and all bathed in a quiet air of delicious warmth! yet the occasional soft motion imparted a pleasing sensation of coolness as of a fan. green grassy meadows, the cattle feeding, the goats browsing, the kids skipping, the groups of herd-boys with miniature bows, arrows, and spears; the women wending their way to the river with watering-pots poised jauntily on their heads; men sewing under the shady banians; and old gray-headed fathers sitting on the ground, with staff in hand, listening to the morning gossip, while others carry trees or branches to repair their hedges; and all this, flooded with the bright african sunshine, and the birds singing among the branches before the heat of the day has become intense, form pictures which can never be forgotten. we were informed that a chief named gando, living on the other side of the river, having been accused of witchcraft, was killed by the ordeal, and his body thrown into the quango. the ferrymen demanded thirty yards of calico, but received six thankfully. the canoes were wretched, carrying only two persons at a time; but my men being well acquainted with the water, we all got over in about two hours and a half. they excited the admiration of the inhabitants by the manner in which they managed the cattle and donkeys in crossing. the most stubborn of beasts found himself powerless in their hands. five or six, seizing hold on one, bundled him at once into the stream, and, in this predicament, he always thought it best policy to give in and swim. the men sometimes swam along with the cattle, and forced them to go on by dashing water at their heads. the difference between my men and those of the native traders who accompanied us was never more apparent than now; for, while my men felt an interest in every thing we possessed in common, theirs were rather glad when the oxen refused to cross, for, being obliged to slaughter them on such occasions, the loss to their masters was a welcome feast to themselves. on the eastern side of the quango we passed on, without visiting our friend of the conical head-dress, to the residence of some ambakistas who had crossed the river in order to secure the first chances of trade in wax. i have before remarked on the knowledge of reading and writing that these ambakistas possess; they are famed for their love of all sorts of learning within their reach, a knowledge of the history of portugal, portuguese law, etc., etc. they are remarkably keen in trade, and are sometimes called the jews of angola. they are employed as clerks and writers, their feminine delicacy of constitution enabling them to write a fine lady's hand, a kind of writing much esteemed among the portuguese. they are not physically equal to the european portuguese, but possess considerable ability; and it is said that half-castes, in the course of a few generations, return to the black color of the maternal ancestor. the black population of angola has become much deteriorated. they are not so strongly formed as the independent tribes. a large quantity of aguardiente, an inferior kind of spirit, is imported into the country, which is most injurious in its effects. we saw many parties carrying casks of this baneful liquor to the independent chiefs beyond; and were informed that it is difficult for any trader to convey it far, carriers being in the habit of helping themselves by means of a straw, and then injecting an equal amount of water when near the point of delivery. to prevent this, it is common to see large demijohns with padlocks on the corks. these are frequently stolen. in fact, the carriers are much addicted to both lying and thieving, as might be expected from the lowest class of a people on whom the debasing slave system has acted for two centuries. the bashinje, in whose country we now are, seem to possess more of the low negro character and physiognomy than either the balonda or basongo; their color is generally dirty black, foreheads low and compressed, noses flat and much expanded laterally, though this is partly owing to the alae spreading over the cheeks, by the custom of inserting bits of sticks or reeds in the septum; their teeth are deformed by being filed to points; their lips are large. they make a nearer approach to a general negro appearance than any tribes i met; but i did not notice this on my way down. they cultivate pretty largely, and rely upon their agricultural products for their supplies of salt, flesh, tobacco, etc., from bangalas. their clothing consists of pieces of skin, hung loosely from the girdle in front and behind. they plait their hair fantastically. we saw some women coming with their hair woven into the form of a european hat, and it was only by a closer inspection that its nature was detected. others had it arranged in tufts, with a threefold cord along the ridge of each tuft; while others, again, follow the ancient egyptian fashion, having the whole mass of wool plaited into cords, all hanging down as far as the shoulders. this mode, with the somewhat egyptian cast of countenance in other parts of londa, reminded me strongly of the paintings of that nation in the british museum. we had now rain every day, and the sky seldom presented that cloudless aspect and clear blue so common in the dry lands of the south. the heavens are often overcast by large white motionless masses, which stand for hours in the same position, and the intervening spaces are filled with a milk-and-water-looking haze. notwithstanding these unfavorable circumstances, i obtained good observations for the longitude of this important point on both sides of the quango, and found the river running in d ' s. lat., d ' e. long. on proceeding to our former station near sansawe's village, he ran to meet us with wonderful urbanity, asking if we had seen moene put, king of the white men (or portuguese); and added, on parting, that he would come to receive his dues in the evening. i replied that, as he had treated us so scurvily, even forbidding his people to sell us any food, if he did not bring us a fowl and some eggs as part of his duty as a chief, he should receive no present from me. when he came, it was in the usual londa way of showing the exalted position he occupies, mounted on the shoulders of his spokesman, as schoolboys sometimes do in england, and as was represented to have been the case in the southern islands when captain cook visited them. my companions, amused at his idea of dignity, greeted him with a hearty laugh. he visited the native traders first, and then came to me with two cocks as a present. i spoke to him about the impolicy of treatment we had received at his hands, and quoted the example of the bangalas, who had been conquered by the portuguese, for their extortionate demands of payment for firewood, grass, water, etc., and concluded by denying his right to any payment for simply passing through uncultivated land. to all this he agreed; and then i gave him, as a token of friendship, a pannikin of coarse powder, two iron spoons, and two yards of coarse printed calico. he looked rather saucily at these articles, for he had just received a barrel containing lbs. of powder, yards of calico, and two bottles of brandy, from senhor pascoal the pombeiro. other presents were added the next day, but we gave nothing more; and the pombeiros informed me that it was necessary to give largely, because they are accompanied by slaves and carriers who are no great friends to their masters; and if they did not secure the friendship of these petty chiefs, many slaves and their loads might be stolen while passing through the forests. it is thus a sort of black-mail that these insignificant chiefs levy; and the native traders, in paying, do so simply as a bribe to keep them honest. this chief was a man of no power, but in our former ignorance of this he plagued us a whole day in passing. finding the progress of senhor pascoal and the other pombeiros excessively slow, i resolved to forego his company to cabango after i had delivered to him some letters to be sent back to cassange. i went forward with the intention of finishing my writing, and leaving a packet for him at some village. we ascended the eastern acclivity that bounds the cassange valley, which has rather a gradual ascent up from the quango, and we found that the last ascent, though apparently not quite so high as that at tala mungongo, is actually much higher. the top is about feet above the level of the sea, and the bottom feet; water boiling on the heights at deg., the thermometer in the air showing deg.; and at the bottom at deg., the air being deg. we had now gained the summit of the western subtending ridge, and began to descend toward the centre of the country, hoping soon to get out of the chiboque territory, which, when we ascended from the cassange valley, we had entered; but, on the th of april, the intermittent, which had begun on the th of march, was changed into an extremely severe attack of rheumatic fever. this was brought on by being obliged to sleep on an extensive plain covered with water. the rain poured down incessantly, but we formed our beds by dragging up the earth into oblong mounds, somewhat like graves in a country church-yard, and then placing grass upon them. the rain continuing to deluge us, we were unable to leave for two days, but as soon as it became fair we continued our march. the heavy dew upon the high grass was so cold as to cause shivering, and i was forced to lie by for eight days, tossing and groaning with violent pain in the head. this was the most severe attack i had endured. it made me quite unfit to move, or even know what was passing outside my little tent. senhor pascoal, who had been detained by the severe rain at a better spot, at last came up, and, knowing that leeches abounded in the rivulets, procured a number, and applied some dozens to the nape of the neck and the loins. this partially relieved the pain. he was then obliged to move forward, in order to purchase food for his large party. after many days i began to recover, and wished to move on, but my men objected to the attempt on account of my weakness. when senhor pascoal had been some time at the village in front, as he had received instructions from his employer, captain neves, to aid me as much as possible, and being himself a kindly-disposed person, he sent back two messengers to invite me to come on, if practicable. it happened that the head man of the village where i had lain twenty-two days, while bargaining and quarreling in my camp for a piece of meat, had been struck on the mouth by one of my men. my principal men paid five pieces of cloth and a gun as an atonement; but the more they yielded, the more exorbitant he became, and he sent word to all the surrounding villages to aid him in avenging the affront of a blow on the beard. as their courage usually rises with success, i resolved to yield no more, and departed. in passing through a forest in the country beyond, we were startled by a body of men rushing after us. they began by knocking down the burdens of the hindermost of my men, and several shots were fired, each party spreading out on both sides of the path. i fortunately had a six-barreled revolver, which my friend captain henry need, of her majesty's brig "linnet", had considerately sent to golungo alto after my departure from loanda. taking this in my hand, and forgetting fever, i staggered quickly along the path with two or three of my men, and fortunately encountered the chief. the sight of the six barrels gaping into his stomach, with my own ghastly visage looking daggers at his face, seemed to produce an instant revolution in his martial feelings, for he cried out, "oh! i have only come to speak to you, and wish peace only." mashauana had hold of him by the hand, and found him shaking. we examined his gun, and found that it had been discharged. both parties crowded up to their chiefs. one of the opposite party coming too near, one of mine drove him back with a battle-axe. the enemy protested their amicable intentions, and my men asserted the fact of having the goods knocked down as evidence of the contrary. without waiting long, i requested all to sit down, and pitsane, placing his hand upon the revolver, somewhat allayed their fears. i then said to the chief, "if you have come with peaceable intentions, we have no other; go away home to your village." he replied, "i am afraid lest you shoot me in the back." i rejoined, "if i wanted to kill you, i could shoot you in the face as well." mosantu called out to me, "that's only a makalaka trick; don't give him your back." but i said, "tell him to observe that i am not afraid of him;" and, turning, mounted my ox. there was not much danger in the fire that was opened at first, there being so many trees. the enemy probably expected that the sudden attack would make us forsake our goods, and allow them to plunder with ease. the villagers were no doubt pleased with being allowed to retire unscathed, and we were also glad to get away without having shed a drop of blood, or having compromised ourselves for any future visit. my men were delighted with their own bravery, and made the woods ring with telling each other how "brilliant their conduct before the enemy" would have been, had hostilities not been brought to a sudden close. i do not mention this little skirmish as a very frightful affair. the negro character in these parts, and in angola, is essentially cowardly, except when influenced by success. a partial triumph over any body of men would induce the whole country to rise in arms, and this is the chief danger to be feared. these petty chiefs have individually but little power, and with my men, now armed with guns, i could have easily beaten them off singly; but, being of the same family, they would readily unite in vast numbers if incited by prospects of successful plunder. they are by no means equal to the cape caffres in any respect whatever. in the evening we came to moena kikanje, and found him a sensible man. he is the last of the chiboque chiefs in this direction, and is in alliance with matiamvo, whose territory commences a short distance beyond. his village is placed on the east bank of the quilo, which is here twenty yards wide, and breast deep. the country was generally covered with forest, and we slept every night at some village. i was so weak, and had become so deaf from the effects of the fever, that i was glad to avail myself of the company of senhor pascoal and the other native traders. our rate of traveling was only two geographical miles per hour, and the average number of hours three and a half per day, or seven miles. two thirds of the month was spent in stoppages, there being only ten traveling days in each month. the stoppages were caused by sickness, and the necessity of remaining in different parts to purchase food; and also because, when one carrier was sick, the rest refused to carry his load. one of the pombeiros had eight good-looking women in a chain whom he was taking to the country of matiamvo to sell for ivory. they always looked ashamed when i happened to come near them, and must have felt keenly their forlorn and degraded position. i believe they were captives taken from the rebel cassanges. the way in which slaves are spoken of in angola and eastern africa must sound strangely even to the owners when they first come from europe. in angola the common appellation is "o diabo", or "brutu"; and it is quite usual to hear gentlemen call out, "o diabo! bring fire." in eastern africa, on the contrary, they apply the term "bicho" (an animal), and you hear the phrase, "call the animal to do this or that." in fact, slave-owners come to regard their slaves as not human, and will curse them as the "race of a dog". most of the carriers of my traveling companions were hired basongo, and required constant vigilance to prevent them stealing the goods they carried. salt, which is one of the chief articles conveyed into the country, became considerably lighter as we went along, but the carriers shielded themselves by saying that it had been melted by the rain. their burdens were taken from them every evening, and placed in security under the guardianship of senhor pascoal's own slaves. it was pitiable to observe the worrying life he led. there was the greatest contrast possible between the conduct of his people and that of my faithful makololo. we crossed the loange, a deep but narrow stream, by a bridge. it becomes much larger, and contains hippopotami, lower down. it is the boundary of londa on the west. we slept also on the banks of the pezo, now flooded, and could not but admire their capabilities for easy irrigation. on reaching the river chikapa (lat. d ' s., long. d ' e.), the th of march, we found it fifty or sixty yards wide, and flowing e.n.e. into the kasai. the adjacent country is of the same level nature as that part of londa formerly described; but, having come farther to the eastward than our previous course, we found that all the rivers had worn for themselves much deeper valleys than at the points we had formerly crossed them. surrounded on all sides by large gloomy forests, the people of these parts have a much more indistinct idea of the geography of their country than those who live in hilly regions. it was only after long and patient inquiry that i became fully persuaded that the quilo runs into the chikapa. as we now crossed them both considerably farther down, and were greatly to the eastward of our first route, there can be no doubt that these rivers take the same course as the others, into the kasai, and that i had been led into a mistake in saying that any of them flowed to the westward. indeed, it was only at this time that i began to perceive that all the western feeders of the kasai, except the quango, flow first from the western side toward the centre of the country, then gradually turn, with the kasai itself, to the north; and, after the confluence of the kasai with the quango, an immense body of water, collected from all these branches, finds its way out of the country by means of the river congo or zaire on the west coast. the people living along the path we are now following were quite accustomed to the visits of native traders, and did not feel in any way bound to make presents of food except for the purpose of cheating: thus, a man gave me a fowl and some meal, and, after a short time, returned. i offered him a handsome present of beads; but these he declined, and demanded a cloth instead, which was far more than the value of his gift. they did the same with my men, until we had to refuse presents altogether. others made high demands because i slept in a "house of cloth", and must be rich. they seemed to think that they had a perfect right to payment for simply passing through the country. beyond the chikapa we crossed the kamaue, a small deep stream proceeding from the s.s.w., and flowing into the chikapa. on the th of april we reached the loajima, where we had to form a bridge to effect our passage. this was not so difficult an operation as some might imagine; for a tree was growing in a horizontal position across part of the stream, and, there being no want of the tough climbing plants which admit of being knitted like ropes, senhor p. soon constructed a bridge. the loajima was here about twenty-five yards wide, but very much deeper than where i had crossed before on the shoulders of mashauana. the last rain of this season had fallen on the th, and had suddenly been followed by a great decrease of the temperature. the people in these parts seemed more slender in form, and their color a lighter olive, than any we had hitherto met. the mode of dressing the great masses of woolly hair which lay upon their shoulders, together with their general features, again reminded me of the ancient egyptians. several were seen with the upward inclination of the outer angles of the eye, but this was not general. a few of the ladies adopt a curious custom of attaching the hair to a hoop which encircles the head, giving it somewhat the appearance of the glory round the head of the virgin (wood-cut no. *). some have a small hoop behind that represented in the wood-cut. others wear an ornament of woven hair and hide adorned with beads. the hair of the tails of buffaloes, which are to be found farther east, is sometimes added. this is represented in no. . while others, as in no. , weave their own hair on pieces of hide into the form of buffalo horns; or, as in no. , make a single horn in front. the features given are frequently met with, but they are by no means universal. many tattoo their bodies by inserting some black substance beneath the skin, which leaves an elevated cicatrix about half an inch long: these are made in the form of stars, and other figures of no particular beauty. * unfortunately these wood-cuts can not be represented in this ascii text. no. appears like a wheel with spokes of hair connecting it to the head. no. appears somewhat like a tiara sloped forward, as the bow of a ship. no. appears like gently curving horns. there is a part in the middle, and the hair, on leather frames, curls outward and upward at the temples. no. is likewise, but the single horn curves outward and upward from the forehead--it is labelled "a young man's fashion". except for no. , all are represented as having the rest of their hair hanging in braids around the sides and back. all of the faces, as livingstone asserts, appear much like paintings of ancient egyptians, and could easily be european except for the shading and the slanted eyes. they are all handsome.--a. l., . chapter . make a detour southward--peculiarities of the inhabitants--scarcity of animals--forests--geological structure of the country--abundance and cheapness of food near the chihombo--a slave lost--the makololo opinion of slaveholders--funeral obsequies in cabango--send a sketch of the country to mr. gabriel--native information respecting the kasai and quango--the trade with luba--drainage of londa--report of matiamvo's country and government--senhor faria's present to a chief--the balonda mode of spending time--faithless guide--makololo lament the ignorance of the balonda--eagerness of the villagers for trade--civility of a female chief--the chief bango and his people--refuse to eat beef--ambition of africans to have a village--winters in the interior--spring at kolobeng--white ants: "never could desire to eat any thing better"--young herbage and animals--valley of the loembwe-- the white man a hobgoblin--specimen of quarreling--eager desire for calico--want of clothing at kawawa's--funeral observances--agreeable intercourse with kawawa--his impudent demand--unpleasant parting--kawawa tries to prevent our crossing the river kasai--stratagem. we made a little detour to the southward in order to get provisions in a cheaper market. this led us along the rivulet called tamba, where we found the people, who had not been visited so frequently by the slave-traders as the rest, rather timid and very civil. it was agreeable to get again among the uncontaminated, and to see the natives look at us without that air of superciliousness which is so unpleasant and common in the beaten track. the same olive color prevailed. they file their teeth to a point, which makes the smile of the women frightful, as it reminds one of the grin of an alligator. the inhabitants throughout this country exhibit as great a variety of taste as appears on the surface of society among ourselves. many of the men are dandies; their shoulders are always wet with the oil dropping from their lubricated hair, and every thing about them is ornamented in one way or another. some thrum a musical instrument the livelong day, and, when they wake at night, proceed at once to their musical performance. many of these musicians are too poor to have iron keys to their instrument, but make them of bamboo, and persevere, though no one hears the music but themselves. others try to appear warlike by never going out of their huts except with a load of bows and arrows, or a gun ornamented with a strip of hide for every animal they have shot; and others never go any where without a canary in a cage. ladies may be seen carefully tending little lap-dogs, which are intended to be eaten. their villages are generally in forests, and composed of groups of irregularly-planted brown huts, with banana and cotton trees, and tobacco growing around. there is also at every hut a high stage erected for drying manioc roots and meal, and elevated cages to hold domestic fowls. round baskets are laid on the thatch of the huts for the hens to lay in, and on the arrival of strangers, men, women, and children ply their calling as hucksters with a great deal of noisy haggling; all their transactions are conducted with civil banter and good temper. my men, having the meat of the oxen which we slaughtered from time to time for sale, were entreated to exchange it for meal; no matter how small the pieces offered were, it gave them pleasure to deal. the landscape around is green, with a tint of yellow, the grass long, the paths about a foot wide, and generally worn deeply in the middle. the tall overhanging grass, when brushed against by the feet and legs, disturbed the lizards and mice, and occasionally a serpent, causing a rustling among the herbage. there are not many birds; every animal is entrapped and eaten. gins are seen on both sides of the path every ten or fifteen yards, for miles together. the time and labor required to dig up moles and mice from their burrows would, if applied to cultivation, afford food for any amount of fowls or swine, but the latter are seldom met with. we passed on through forests abounding in climbing-plants, many of which are so extremely tough that a man is required to go in front with a hatchet; and when the burdens of the carriers are caught, they are obliged to cut the climbers with their teeth, for no amount of tugging will make them break. the paths in all these forests are so zigzag that a person may imagine he has traveled a distance of thirty miles, which, when reckoned as the crow flies, may not be fifteen. we reached the river moamba (lat. d ' s., long. d ' " e.) on the th may. this is a stream of thirty yards wide, and, like the quilo, loange, chikapa, and loajima, contains both alligators and hippopotami. we crossed it by means of canoes. here, as on the slopes down to the quilo and chikapa, we had an opportunity of viewing the geological structure of the country--a capping of ferruginous conglomerate, which in many parts looks as if it had been melted, for the rounded nodules resemble masses of slag, and they have a smooth scale on the surface; but in all probability it is an aqueous deposit, for it contains water-worn pebbles of all sorts, and generally small. below this mass lies a pale red hardened sandstone, and beneath that a trap-like whinstone. lowest of all lies a coarse-grained sandstone containing a few pebbles, and, in connection with it, a white calcareous rock is occasionally met with, and so are banks of loose round quartz pebbles. the slopes are longer from the level country above the further we go eastward, and every where we meet with circumscribed bogs on them, surrounded by clumps of straight, lofty evergreen trees, which look extremely graceful on a ground of yellowish grass. several of these bogs pour forth a solution of iron, which exhibits on its surface the prismatic colors. the level plateaus between the rivers, both east and west of the moamba, across which we traveled, were less woody than the river glens. the trees on them are scraggy and wide apart. there are also large open grass-covered spaces, with scarcely even a bush. on these rather dreary intervals between the rivers it was impossible not to be painfully struck with the absence of all animal life. not a bird was to be seen, except occasionally a tomtit, some of the 'sylviadae' and 'drymoica', also a black bird ('dicrurus ludwigii', smith) common throughout the country. we were gladdened by the voice of birds only near the rivers, and there they are neither numerous nor varied. the senegal longclaw, however, maintains its place, and is the largest bird seen. we saw a butcher-bird in a trap as we passed. there are remarkably few small animals, they having been hunted almost to extermination, and few insects except ants, which abound in considerable number and variety. there are scarcely any common flies to be seen, nor are we ever troubled by mosquitoes. the air is still, hot, and oppressive; the intensely bright sunlight glances peacefully on the evergreen forest leaves, and all feel glad when the path comes into the shade. the want of life in the scenery made me long to tread again the banks of the zambesi, and see the graceful antelopes feeding beside the dark buffaloes and sleek elands. here hippopotami are known to exist only by their footprints on the banks. not one is ever seen to blow or put his head up at all; they have learned to breathe in silence and keep out of sight. we never heard one uttering the snorting sound so common on the zambesi. we crossed two small streams, the kanesi and fombeji, before reaching cabango, a village situated on the banks of the chihombo. the country was becoming more densely peopled as we proceeded, but it bears no population compared to what it might easily sustain. provisions were to be had in great abundance; a fowl and basket of meal weighing lbs. were sold for a yard and a half of very inferior cotton cloth, worth not more than threepence. an idea of the cheapness of food may be formed from the fact that captain neves purchased lbs. of tobacco from the bangalas for about two pounds sterling. this, when carried into central londa, might purchase seven thousand five hundred fowls, or feed with meal and fowls seven thousand persons for one day, giving each a fowl and lbs. of meal. when food is purchased here with either salt or coarse calico, four persons can be well fed with animal and vegetable food at the rate of one penny a day. the chief vegetable food is the manioc and lotsa meal. these contain a very large proportion of starch, and, when eaten alone for any length of time produce most distressing heartburn. as we ourselves experienced in coming north, they also cause a weakness of vision, which occurs in the case of animals fed on pure gluten or amylaceous matter only. i now discovered that when these starchy substances are eaten along with a proportion of ground-nuts, which contain a considerable quantity of oil, no injurious effects follow. while on the way to cabango we saw fresh tracks of elands, the first we had observed in this country. a poor little slave girl, being ill, turned aside in the path, and, though we waited all the next day making search for her, she was lost. she was tall and slender for her age, as if of too quick growth, and probably, unable to bear the fatigue of the march, lay down and slept in the forest, then, waking in the dark, went farther and farther astray. the treatment of the slaves witnessed by my men certainly did not raise slaveholders in their estimation. their usual exclamation was "ga ba na pelu" (they have no heart); and they added, with reference to the slaves, "why do they let them?" as if they thought that the slaves had the natural right to rid the world of such heartless creatures, and ought to do it. the uneasiness of the trader was continually showing itself, and, upon the whole, he had reason to be on the alert both day and night. the carriers perpetually stole the goods intrusted to their care, and he could not openly accuse them, lest they should plunder him of all, and leave him quite in the lurch. he could only hope to manage them after getting all the remaining goods safely into a house in cabango; he might then deduct something from their pay for what they had purloined on the way. cabango (lat. d ' s., long. d ' or ' e.) is the dwelling-place of muanzanza, one of matiamvo's subordinate chiefs. his village consists of about two hundred huts and ten or twelve square houses, constructed of poles with grass interwoven. the latter are occupied by half-caste portuguese from ambaca, agents for the cassange traders. the cold in the mornings was now severe to the feelings, the thermometer ranging from deg. to deg., though, when protected, sometimes standing as high as deg. at six a.m. when the sun is well up, the thermometer in the shade rises to deg., and in the evenings it is about deg. a person having died in this village, we could transact no business with the chief until the funeral obsequies were finished. these occupy about four days, during which there is a constant succession of dancing, wailing, and feasting. guns are fired by day, and drums beaten by night, and all the relatives, dressed in fantastic caps, keep up the ceremonies with spirit proportionate to the amount of beer and beef expended. when there is a large expenditure, the remark is often made afterward, "what a fine funeral that was!" a figure, consisting chiefly of feathers and beads, is paraded on these occasions, and seems to be regarded as an idol. having met with an accident to one of my eyes by a blow from a branch in passing through a forest, i remained some days here, endeavoring, though with much pain, to draw a sketch of the country thus far, to be sent back to mr. gabriel at loanda. i was always anxious to transmit an account of my discoveries on every possible occasion, lest, any thing happening in the country to which i was going, they should be entirely lost. i also fondly expected a packet of letters and papers which my good angel at loanda would be sure to send if they came to hand, but i afterward found that, though he had offered a large sum to any one who would return with an assurance of having delivered the last packet he sent, no one followed me with it to cabango. the unwearied attentions of this good englishman, from his first welcome to me when, a weary, dejected, and worn-down stranger, i arrived at his residence, and his whole subsequent conduct, will be held in lively remembrance by me to my dying day. several of the native traders here having visited the country of luba, lying far to the north of this, and there being some visitors also from the town of mai, which is situated far down the kasai, i picked up some information respecting those distant parts. in going to the town of mai the traders crossed only two large rivers, the loajima and chihombo. the kasai flows a little to the east of the town of mai, and near it there is a large waterfall. they describe the kasai as being there of very great size, and that it thence bends round to the west. on asking an old man, who was about to return to his chief mai, to imagine himself standing at his home, and point to the confluence of the quango and kasai, he immediately turned, and, pointing to the westward, said, "when we travel five days (thirty-five or forty miles) in that direction, we come to it." he stated also that the kasai received another river, named the lubilash. there is but one opinion among the balonda respecting the kasai and quango. they invariably describe the kasai as receiving the quango, and, beyond the confluence, assuming the name of zaire or zerezere. and the kasai, even previous to the junction, is much larger than the quango, from the numerous branches it receives. besides those we have already crossed, there is the chihombo at cabango; and forty-two miles beyond this, eastward, runs the kasai itself; fourteen miles beyond that, the kaunguesi; then, forty-two miles farther east, flows the lolua; besides numbers of little streams, all of which contribute to swell the kasai. about thirty-four miles east of the lolua, or a hundred and thirty-two miles e.n.e. of cabango, stands the town of matiamvo, the paramount chief of all the balonda. the town of mai is pointed out as to the n.n.w. of cabango, and thirty-two days or two hundred and twenty-four miles distant, or about lat. s. d '. the chief town of luba, another independent chief, is eight days farther in the same direction, or lat. s. d '. judging from the appearance of the people who had come for the purposes of trade from mai, those in the north are in quite as uncivilized a condition as the balonda. they are clad in a kind of cloth made of the inner bark of a tree. neither guns nor native traders are admitted into the country, the chief of luba entertaining a dread of innovation. if a native trader goes thither, he must dress like the common people in angola, in a loose robe resembling a kilt. the chief trades in shells and beads only. his people kill the elephants by means of spears, poisoned arrows, and traps. all assert that elephants' tusks from that country are heavier and of greater length than any others. it is evident, from all the information i could collect both here and elsewhere, that the drainage of londa falls to the north and then runs westward. the countries of luba and mai are evidently lower than this, and yet this is of no great altitude--probably not much more than feet above the level of the sea. having here received pretty certain information on a point in which i felt much interest, namely, that the kasai is not navigable from the coast, owing to the large waterfall near the town of mai, and that no great kingdom exists in the region beyond, between this and the equator, i would fain have visited matiamvo. this seemed a very desirable step, as it is good policy as well as right to acknowledge the sovereign of a country; and i was assured, both by balonda and native traders, that a considerable branch of the zambesi rises in the country east of his town, and flows away to the south. the whole of this branch, extending down even to where it turns westward to masiko, is probably placed too far eastward on the map. it was put down when i believed matiamvo and cazembe to be farther east than i have since seen reason to believe them. all, being derived from native testimony, is offered to the reader with diffidence, as needing verification by actual explorers. the people of that part, named kanyika and kanyoka, living on its banks, are represented as both numerous and friendly, but matiamvo will on no account permit any white person to visit them, as his principal supplies of ivory are drawn from them. thinking that we might descend this branch of the zambesi to masiko, and thence to the barotse, i felt a strong inclination to make the attempt. the goods, however, we had brought with us to pay our way, had, by the long detention from fever and weakness in both myself and men, dwindled to a mere fragment; and, being but slightly acquainted with the balonda dialect, i felt that i could neither use persuasion nor presents to effect my object. from all i could hear of matiamvo, there was no chance of my being allowed to proceed through his country to the southward. if i had gone merely to visit him, all the goods would have been expended by the time i returned to cabango; and we had not found mendicity so pleasant on our way to the north as to induce us to desire to return to it. the country of matiamvo is said to be well peopled, but they have little or no trade. they receive calico, salt, gunpowder, coarse earthenware, and beads, and give in return ivory and slaves. they possess no cattle, matiamvo alone having a single herd, which he keeps entirely for the sake of the flesh. the present chief is said to be mild in his government, and will depose an under-chief for unjust conduct. he occasionally sends the distance of a hundred miles or more to behead an offending officer. but, though i was informed by the portuguese that he possesses absolute power, his name had less influence over his subjects with whom i came in contact than that of sekeletu has over his people living at a much greater distance from the capital. as we thought it best to strike away to the s.e. from cabango to our old friend katema, i asked a guide from muanzanza as soon as the funeral proceedings were over. he agreed to furnish one, and also accepted a smaller present from me than usual, when it was represented to him by pascoal and faria that i was not a trader. he seemed to regard these presents as his proper dues; and as a cargo of goods had come by senhor pascoal, he entered the house for the purpose of receiving his share, when senhor faria gravely presented him with the commonest earthenware vessel, of which great numbers are brought for this trade. the chief received it with expressions of abundant gratitude, as these vessels are highly valued, because from their depth they can hold so much food or beer. the association of ideas is sometimes so very ludicrous that it is difficult to maintain one's gravity. several of the children of the late matiamvo came to beg from me, but never to offer any food. having spoken to one young man named liula (heavens) about their stinginess, he soon brought bananas and manioc. i liked his appearance and conversation, and believe that the balonda would not be difficult to teach, but their mode of life would be a drawback. the balonda in this quarter are much more agreeable-looking than any of the inhabitants nearer the coast. the women allow their teeth to remain in their beautifully white state, and would be comely but for the custom of inserting pieces of reed into the cartilage of the nose. they seem generally to be in good spirits, and spend their time in everlasting talk, funeral ceremonies, and marriages. this flow of animal spirits must be one reason why they are such an indestructible race. the habitual influence on their minds of the agency of unseen spirits may have a tendency in the same direction, by preserving the mental quietude of a kind of fatalism. we were forced to prepay our guide and his father too, and he went but one day, although he promised to go with us to katema. he was not in the least ashamed at breaking his engagements, and probably no disgrace will be attached to the deed by muanzanza. among the bakwains he would have been punished. my men would have stripped him of the wages which he wore on his person, but thought that, as we had always acted on the mildest principles, they would let him move off with his unearned gains. they frequently lamented the want of knowledge in these people, saying, in their own tongue, "ah! they don't know that we are men as well as they, and that we are only bearing with their insolence with patience because we are men." then would follow a hearty curse, showing that the patience was nearly expended; but they seldom quarreled in the language of the balonda. the only one who ever lost his temper was the man who struck a head man of one of the villages on the mouth, and he was the most abject individual in our company. the reason why we needed a guide at all was to secure the convenience of a path, which, though generally no better than a sheep-walk, is much easier than going straight in one direction, through tangled forests and tropical vegetation. we knew the general direction we ought to follow, and also if any deviation occurred from our proper route; but, to avoid impassable forests and untreadable bogs, and to get to the proper fords of the rivers, we always tried to procure a guide, and he always followed the common path from one village to another when that lay in the direction we were going. after leaving cabango on the st, we crossed several little streams running into the chihombo on our left, and in one of them i saw tree ferns ('cyathea dregei') for the first time in africa. the trunk was about four feet high and ten inches in diameter. we saw also grass trees of two varieties, which, in damp localities, had attained a height of forty feet. on crossing the chihombo, which we did about twelve miles above cabango, we found it waist-deep and rapid. we were delighted to see the evidences of buffalo and hippopotami on its banks. as soon as we got away from the track of the slave-traders, the more kindly spirit of the southern balonda appeared, for an old man brought a large present of food from one of the villages, and volunteered to go as guide himself. the people, however, of the numerous villages which we passed always made efforts to detain us, that they might have a little trade in the way of furnishing our suppers. at one village, indeed, they would not show us the path at all unless we remained at least a day with them. having refused, we took a path in the direction we ought to go, but it led us into an inextricable thicket. returning to the village again, we tried another footpath in a similar direction, but this led us into an equally impassable and trackless forest. we were thus forced to come back and remain. in the following morning they put us in the proper path, which in a few hours led us through a forest that would otherwise have taken us days to penetrate. beyond this forest we found the village of nyakalonga, a sister of the late matiamvo, who treated us handsomely. she wished her people to guide us to the next village, but this they declined unless we engaged in trade. she then requested us to wait an hour or two till she could get ready a present of meal, manioc roots, ground-nuts, and a fowl. it was truly pleasant to meet with people possessing some civility, after the hauteur we had experienced on the slave-path. she sent her son to the next village without requiring payment. the stream which ran past her village was quite impassable there, and for a distance of about a mile on either side, the bog being soft and shaky, and, when the crust was broken through, about six feet deep. on the th we reached the village of the chief bango (lat. d ' " s., long. d ' e.), who brought us a handsome present of meal, and the meat of an entire pallah. we here slaughtered the last of the cows presented to us by mr. schut, which i had kept milked until it gave only a teaspoonful at a time. my men enjoyed a hearty laugh when they found that i had given up all hope of more, for they had been talking among themselves about my perseverance. we offered a leg of the cow to bango, but he informed us that neither he nor his people ever partook of beef, as they looked upon cattle as human, and living at home like men. none of his people purchased any of the meat, which was always eagerly done every where else. there are several other tribes who refuse to keep cattle, though not to eat them when offered by others, because, say they, oxen bring enemies and war; but this is the first instance i have met with in which they have been refused as food. the fact of killing the pallahs for food shows that the objection does not extend to meat in general. the little streams in this part of the country did not flow in deep dells, nor were we troubled with the gigantic grasses which annoyed our eyes on the slopes of the streams before we came to cabango. the country was quite flat, and the people cultivated manioc very extensively. there is no large collection of the inhabitants in any one spot. the ambition of each seems to be to have his own little village; and we see many coming from distant parts with the flesh of buffaloes and antelopes as the tribute claimed by bango. we have now entered again the country of the game, but they are so exceedingly shy that we have not yet seen a single animal. the arrangement into many villages pleases the africans vastly, for every one who has a few huts under him feels himself in some measure to be a chief. the country at this time is covered with yellowish grass quite dry. some of the bushes and trees are green; others are shedding their leaves, the young buds pushing off the old foliage. trees, which in the south stand bare during the winter months, have here but a short period of leaflessness. occasionally, however, a cold north wind comes up even as far as cabango, and spreads a wintry aspect on all the exposed vegetation. the tender shoots of the evergreen trees on the south side become as if scorched; the leaves of manioc, pumpkins, and other tender plants are killed; while the same kinds, in spots sheltered by forests, continue green through the whole year. all the interior of south africa has a distinct winter of cold, varying in intensity with the latitudes. in the central parts of the cape colony the cold in the winter is often severe, and the ground is covered with snow. at kuruman snow seldom falls, but the frost is keen. there is frost even as far as the chobe, and a partial winter in the barotse valley, but beyond the orange river we never have cold and damp combined. indeed, a shower of rain seldom or never falls during winter, and hence the healthiness of the bechuana climate. from the barotse valley northward it is questionable if it ever freezes; but, during the prevalence of the south wind, the thermometer sinks as low as deg., and conveys the impression of bitter cold. nothing can exceed the beauty of the change from the wintry appearance to that of spring at kolobeng. previous to the commencement of the rains, an easterly wind blows strongly by day, but dies away at night. the clouds collect in increasing masses, and relieve in some measure the bright glare of the southern sun. the wind dries up every thing, and when at its greatest strength is hot, and raises clouds of dust. the general temperature during the day rises above deg.: then showers begin to fall; and if the ground is but once well soaked with a good day's rain, the change produced is marvelous. in a day or two a tinge of green is apparent all over the landscape, and in five or six days the fresh leaves sprouting forth, and the young grass shooting up, give an appearance of spring which it requires weeks of a colder climate to produce. the birds, which in the hot, dry, windy season had been silent, now burst forth into merry twittering songs, and are busy building their nests. some of them, indeed, hatch several times a year. the lowering of the temperature, by rains or other causes, has much the same effect as the increasing mildness of our own spring. the earth teems with myriads of young insects; in some parts of the country hundreds of centipedes, myriapedes, and beetles emerge from their hiding-places, somewhat as our snails at home do; and in the evenings the white ants swarm by thousands. a stream of them is seen to rush out of a hole, and, after flying one or two hundred yards, they descend; and if they light upon a piece of soil proper for the commencement of a new colony, they bend up their tails, unhook their wings, and, leaving them on the surface, quickly begin their mining operations. if an attempt is made to separate the wings from the body by drawing them away backward, they seem as if hooked into the body, and tear away large portions of the insect; but if turned forward, as the ant itself does, they snap off with the greatest ease. indeed, they seem formed only to serve the insect in its short flight to a new habitation, and then to be thrown aside. nothing can exceed the eagerness with which, at the proper time, they rush out from their birth-place. occasionally this occurs in a house, and then, in order to prevent every corner from being filled with them, i have seen a fire placed over the orifice; but they hesitate not even to pass through the fire. while swarming they appear like snow-flakes floating about in the air, and dogs, cats, hawks, and almost every bird, may be seen busily devouring them. the natives, too, profit by the occasion, and actively collect them for food, they being about half an inch long, as thick as a crow-quill, and very fat. when roasted they are said to be good, and somewhat resemble grains of boiled rice. an idea may be formed of this dish by what once occurred on the banks of the zouga. the bayeiye chief palani visiting us while eating, i gave him a piece of bread and preserved apricots; and as he seemed to relish it much, i asked him if he had any food equal to that in his country. "ah!" said he, "did you ever taste white ants?" as i never had, he replied, "well, if you had, you never could have desired to eat any thing better." the general way of catching them is to dig into the ant-hill, and wait till the builders come forth to repair the damage, then brush them off quickly into a vessel, as the ant-eater does into his mouth. the fall of the rain makes all the cattle look fresh and clean, and both men and women proceed cheerily to their already hoed gardens, and sow the seed. the large animals in the country leave the spots where they had been compelled to congregate for the sake of water, and become much wilder. occasionally a herd of buffaloes or antelopes smell rain from afar, and set off in a straight line toward the place. sometimes they make mistakes, and are obliged to return to the water they had left. very large tracts of country are denuded of old grass during the winter by means of fire, in order to attract the game to that which there springs up unmixed with the older crop. this new herbage has a renovating tendency, for as long as they feed on the dry grass of the former season they continue in good condition; but no sooner are they able to indulge their appetites on the fresh herbage, than even the marrow in their bones becomes dissolved, and a red, soft, uneatable mass is left behind. after this commences the work of regaining their former plumpness. may th. we left bango, and proceeded to the river loembwe, which flows to the n.n.e., and abounds in hippopotami. it is about sixty yards wide, and four feet deep, but usually contains much less water than this, for there are fishing-weirs placed right across it. like all the african rivers in this quarter, it has morasses on each bank, yet the valley in which it winds, when seen from the high lands above, is extremely beautiful. this valley is about the fourth of a mile wide, and it was easy to fancy the similarity of many spots on it to the goodly manors in our own country, and feel assured that there was still ample territory left for an indefinite increase of the world's population. the villages are widely apart and difficult of access, from the paths being so covered with tall grass that even an ox can scarcely follow the track. the grass cuts the feet of the men; yet we met a woman with a little child, and a girl, wending their way home with loads of manioc. the sight of a white man always infuses a tremor into their dark bosoms, and in every case of the kind they appeared immensely relieved when i had fairly passed without having sprung upon them. in the villages the dogs run away with their tails between their legs, as if they had seen a lion. the women peer from behind the walls till he comes near them, and then hastily dash into the house. when a little child, unconscious of danger, meets you in the street, he sets up a scream at the apparition, and conveys the impression that he is not far from going into fits. among the bechuanas i have been obliged to reprove the women for making a hobgoblin of the white man, and telling their children that they would send for him to bite them. having passed the loembwe, we were in a more open country, with every few hours a small valley, through which ran a little rill in the middle of a bog. these were always difficult to pass, and being numerous, kept the lower part of the person constantly wet. at different points in our course we came upon votive offerings to the barimo. these usually consisted of food; and every deserted village still contained the idols and little sheds with pots of medicine in them. one afternoon we passed a small frame house with the head of an ox in it as an object of worship. the dreary uniformity of gloomy forests and open flats must have a depressing influence on the minds of the people. some villages appear more superstitious than others, if we may judge from the greater number of idols they contain. only on one occasion did we witness a specimen of quarreling. an old woman, standing by our camp, continued to belabor a good-looking young man for hours with her tongue. irritated at last, he uttered some words of impatience, when another man sprang at him, exclaiming, "how dare you curse my 'mama'?" they caught each other, and a sort of pushing, dragging wrestling-match ensued. the old woman who had been the cause of the affray wished us to interfere, and the combatants themselves hoped as much; but we, preferring to remain neutral, allowed them to fight it out. it ended by one falling under the other, both, from their scuffling, being in a state of nudity. they picked up their clothing and ran off in different directions, each threatening to bring his gun and settle the dispute in mortal combat. only one, however, returned, and the old woman continued her scolding till my men, fairly tired of her tongue, ordered her to be gone. this trifling incident was one of interest to me, for, during the whole period of my residence in the bechuana country, i never saw unarmed men strike each other. their disputes are usually conducted with great volubility and noisy swearing, but they generally terminate by both parties bursting into a laugh. at every village attempts were made to induce us to remain a night. sometimes large pots of beer were offered to us as a temptation. occasionally the head man would peremptorily order us to halt under a tree which he pointed out. at other times young men volunteered to guide us to the impassable part of the next bog, in the hope of bringing us to a stand, for all are excessively eager to trade; but food was so very cheap that we sometimes preferred paying them to keep it, and let us part in good humor. a good-sized fowl could be had for a single charge of gunpowder. each native who owns a gun carries about with him a measure capable of holding but one charge, in which he receives his powder. throughout this region the women are almost entirely naked, their gowns being a patch of cloth frightfully narrow, with no flounces; and nothing could exceed the eagerness with which they offered to purchase strips of calico of an inferior description. they were delighted with the large pieces we gave, though only about two feet long, for a fowl and a basket of upward of lbs. of meal. as we had now only a small remnant of our stock, we were obliged to withstand their importunity, and then many of their women, with true maternal feelings, held up their little naked babies, entreating us to sell only a little rag for them. the fire, they say, is their only clothing by night, and the little ones derive heat by sticking closely to their parents. instead of a skin or cloth to carry their babies in, the women plait a belt about four inches broad, of the inner bark of a tree, and this, hung from the one shoulder to the opposite side, like a soldier's belt, enables them to support the child by placing it on their side in a sitting position. their land is very fertile, and they can raise ground-nuts and manioc in abundance. here i observed no cotton, nor any domestic animals except fowls and little dogs. the chief possessed a few goats, and i never could get any satisfactory reason why the people also did not rear them. on the evening of the d of june we reached the village of kawawa, rather an important personage in these parts. this village consists of forty or fifty huts, and is surrounded by forest. drums were beating over the body of a man who had died the preceding day, and some women were making a clamorous wail at the door of his hut, and addressing the deceased as if alive. the drums continued beating the whole night, with as much regularity as a steam-engine thumps on board ship. we observed that a person dressed fantastically with a great number of feathers left the people at the dance and wailing, and went away into the deep forest in the morning, to return again to the obsequies in the evening; he is intended to represent one of the barimo. in the morning we had agreeable intercourse with kawawa; he visited us, and we sat and talked nearly the whole day with him and his people. when we visited him in return, we found him in his large court-house, which, though of a beehive shape, was remarkably well built. as i had shown him a number of curiosities, he now produced a jug, of english ware, shaped like an old man holding a can of beer in his hand, as the greatest curiosity he had to exhibit. we had now an opportunity of hearing a case brought before him for judgment. a poor man and his wife were accused of having bewitched the man whose wake was now held in the village. before kawawa even heard the defense, he said, "you have killed one of my children; bring all yours before me, that i may choose which of them shall be mine instead." the wife eloquently defended herself, but this availed little, for these accusations are the means resorted to by some chiefs to secure subjects for the slave-market. he probably thought that i had come to purchase slaves, though i had already given a pretty full explanation of my pursuits both to himself and his people. we exhibited the pictures of the magic lantern in the evening, and all were delighted except kawawa himself. he showed symptoms of dread, and several times started up as if to run away, but was prevented by the crowd behind. some of the more intelligent understood the explanations well, and expatiated eloquently on them to the more obtuse. nothing could exceed the civilities which had passed between us during this day; but kawawa had heard that the chiboque had forced us to pay an ox, and now thought he might do the same. when, therefore, i sent next morning to let him know that we were ready to start, he replied in his figurative way, "if an ox came in the way of a man, ought he not to eat it? i had given one to the chiboque, and must give him the same, together with a gun, gunpowder, and a black robe, like that he had seen spread out to dry the day before; that, if i refused an ox, i must give one of my men, and a book by which he might see the state of matiamvo's heart toward him, and which would forewarn him, should matiamvo ever resolve to cut off his head." kawawa came in the coolest manner possible to our encampment after sending this message, and told me he had seen all our goods, and must have all he asked, as he had command of the kasai in our front, and would prevent us from passing it unless we paid this tribute. i replied that the goods were my property and not his; that i would never have it said that a white man had paid tribute to a black, and that i should cross the kasai in spite of him. he ordered his people to arm themselves, and when some of my men saw them rushing for their bows, arrows, and spears, they became somewhat panic-stricken. i ordered them to move away, and not to fire unless kawawa's people struck the first blow. i took the lead, and expected them all to follow, as they usually had done, but many of my men remained behind. when i knew this, i jumped off the ox, and made a rush to them with the revolver in my hand. kawawa ran away among his people, and they turned their backs too. i shouted to my men to take up their luggage and march; some did so with alacrity, feeling that they had disobeyed orders by remaining; but one of them refused, and was preparing to fire at kawawa, until i gave him a punch on the head with the pistol, and made him go too. i felt here, as elsewhere, that subordination must be maintained at all risks. we all moved into the forest, the people of kawawa standing about a hundred yards off, gazing, but not firing a shot or an arrow. it is extremely unpleasant to part with these chieftains thus, after spending a day or two in the most amicable intercourse, and in a part where the people are generally civil. this kawawa, however, is not a good specimen of the balonda chiefs, and is rather notorious in the neighborhood for his folly. we were told that he has good reason to believe that matiamvo will some day cut off his head for his disregard of the rights of strangers. kawawa was not to be balked of his supposed rights by the unceremonious way in which we had left him; for, when we had reached the ford of the kasai, about ten miles distant, we found that he had sent four of his men, with orders to the ferrymen to refuse us passage. we were here duly informed that we must deliver up all the articles mentioned, and one of our men besides. this demand for one of our number always nettled every heart. the canoes were taken away before our eyes, and we were supposed to be quite helpless without them, at a river a good hundred yards broad, and very deep. pitsane stood on the bank, gazing with apparent indifference on the stream, and made an accurate observation of where the canoes were hidden among the reeds. the ferrymen casually asked one of my batoka if they had rivers in his country, and he answered with truth, "no, we have none." kawawa's people then felt sure we could not cross. i thought of swimming when they were gone; but after it was dark, by the unasked loan of one of the hidden canoes, we soon were snug in our bivouac on the southern bank of the kasai. i left some beads as payment for some meal which had been presented by the ferrymen; and, the canoe having been left on their own side of the river, pitsane and his companions laughed uproariously at the disgust our enemies would feel, and their perplexity as to who had been our paddler across. they were quite sure that kawawa would imagine that we had been ferried over by his own people, and would be divining to find out who had done the deed. when ready to depart in the morning, kawawa's people appeared on the opposite heights, and could scarcely believe their eyes when they saw us prepared to start away to the south. at last one of them called out, "ah! ye are bad," to which pitsane and his companions retorted, "ah! ye are good, and we thank you for the loan of your canoe." we were careful to explain the whole of the circumstances to katema and the other chiefs, and they all agreed that we were perfectly justifiable under the circumstances, and that matiamvo would approve our conduct. when any thing that might bear an unfavorable construction happens among themselves, they send explanations to each other. the mere fact of doing so prevents them from losing their character, for there is public opinion even among them. chapter . level plains--vultures and other birds--diversity of color in flowers of the same species--the sundew--twenty-seventh attack of fever--a river which flows in opposite directions--lake dilolo the watershed between the atlantic and indian oceans--position of rocks--sir roderick murchison's explanation--characteristics of the rainy season in connection with the floods of the zambesi and the nile--probable reason of difference in amount of rain south and north of the equator--arab reports of region east of londa--probable watershed of the zambesi and the nile--lake dilolo--reach katema's town: his renewed hospitality; desire to appear like a white man; ludicrous departure--jackdaws-- ford southern branch of lake dilolo--small fish--project for a makololo village near the confluence of the leeba and the leeambye--hearty welcome from shinte--kolimbota's wound--plant-seeds and fruit-trees brought from angola--masiko and limboa's quarrel--nyamoana now a widow--purchase canoes and descend the leeba--herds of wild animals on its banks--unsuccessful buffalo-hunt--frogs--sinbad and the tsetse-- dispatch a message to manenko--arrival of her husband sambanza--the ceremony called kasendi--unexpected fee for performing a surgical operation--social condition of the tribes--desertion of mboenga--stratagem of mambowe hunters--water-turtles--charged by a buffalo--reception from the people of libonta--explain the causes of our long delay--pitsane's speech--thanksgiving services--appearance of my "braves"--wonderful kindness of the people. after leaving the kasai, we entered upon the extensive level plains which we had formerly found in a flooded condition. the water on them was not yet dried up, as it still remained in certain hollow spots. vultures were seen floating in the air, showing that carrion was to be found; and, indeed, we saw several of the large game, but so exceedingly wild as to be unapproachable. numbers of caterpillars mounted the stalks of grass, and many dragonflies and butterflies appeared, though this was winter. the caprimulgus or goat-sucker, swifts, and different kinds of swallows, with a fiery-red bee-eater in flocks, showed that the lowest temperature here does not destroy the insects on which they feed. jet-black larks, with yellow shoulders, enliven the mornings with their songs, but they do not continue so long on the wing as ours, nor soar so high. we saw many of the pretty white ardea, and other water-birds, flying over the spots not yet dried up; and occasionally wild ducks, but these only in numbers sufficient to remind us that we were approaching the zambesi, where every water-fowl has a home. while passing across these interminable-looking plains, the eye rests with pleasure on a small flower, which exists in such numbers as to give its own hue to the ground. one broad band of yellow stretches across our path. on looking at the flowers which formed this golden carpet, we saw every variety of that color, from the palest lemon to the richest orange. crossing a hundred yards of this, we came upon another broad band of the same flower, but blue, and this color is varied from the lightest tint to dark blue, and even purple. i had before observed the same flower possessing different colors in different parts of the country, and once a great number of liver-colored flowers, which elsewhere were yellow. even the color of the birds changed with the district we passed through; but never before did i see such a marked change as from yellow to blue, repeated again and again on the same plain. another beautiful plant attracted my attention so strongly on these plains that i dismounted to examine it. to my great delight i found it to be an old home acquaintance, a species of drosera, closely resembling our own sundew ('drosera anglia'). the flower-stalk never attains a height of more than two or three inches, and the leaves are covered with reddish hairs, each of which has a drop of clammy fluid at its tip, making the whole appear as if spangled over with small diamonds. i noticed it first in the morning, and imagined the appearance was caused by the sun shining on drops of dew; but, as it continued to maintain its brilliancy during the heat of the day, i proceeded to investigate the cause of its beauty, and found that the points of the hairs exuded pure liquid, in, apparently, capsules of clear, glutinous matter. they were thus like dewdrops preserved from evaporation. the clammy fluid is intended to entrap insects, which, dying on the leaf, probably yield nutriment to the plant. during our second day on this extensive plain i suffered from my twenty-seventh attack of fever, at a part where no surface-water was to be found. we never thought it necessary to carry water with us in this region; and now, when i was quite unable to move on, my men soon found water to allay my burning thirst by digging with sticks a few feet beneath the surface. we had thus an opportunity of observing the state of these remarkable plains at different seasons of the year. next day we pursued our way, and on the th of june we forded the lotembwa to the n.w. of dilolo, and regained our former path. the lotembwa here is about a mile wide, about three feet deep, and full of the lotus, papyrus, arum, mat-rushes, and other aquatic plants. i did not observe the course in which the water flowed while crossing; but, having noticed before that the lotembwa on the other side of the lake dilolo flowed in a southerly direction, i supposed that this was simply a prolongation of the same river beyond dilolo, and that it rose in this large marsh, which we had not seen in our progress to the n.w. but when we came to the southern lotembwa, we were informed by shakatwala that the river we had crossed flowed in an opposite direction--not into dilolo, but into the kasai. this phenomenon of a river running in opposite directions struck even his mind as strange; and, though i did not observe the current, simply from taking it for granted that it was toward the lake, i have no doubt that his assertion, corroborated as it was by others, is correct, and that the dilolo is actually the watershed between the river systems that flow to the east and west. i would have returned in order to examine more carefully this most interesting point, but, having had my lower extremities chilled in crossing the northern lotembwa, i was seized with vomiting of blood, and, besides, saw no reason to doubt the native testimony. the distance between dilolo and the valleys leading to that of the kasai is not more than fifteen miles, and the plains between are perfectly level; and, had i returned, i should only have found that this little lake dilolo, by giving a portion to the kasai and another to the zambesi, distributes its waters to the atlantic and indian oceans. i state the fact exactly as it opened to my own mind, for it was only now that i apprehended the true form of the river systems and continent. i had seen the various rivers of this country on the western side flowing from the subtending ridges into the centre, and had received information from natives and arabs that most of the rivers on the eastern side of the same great region took a somewhat similar course from an elevated ridge there, and that all united in two main drains, the one flowing to the north and the other to the south, and that the northern drain found its way out by the congo to the west, and the southern by the zambesi to the east. i was thus on the watershed, or highest point of these two great systems, but still not more than feet above the level of the sea, and feet lower than the top of the western ridge we had already crossed; yet, instead of lofty snow-clad mountains appearing to verify the conjectures of the speculative, we had extensive plains, over which one may travel a month without seeing any thing higher than an ant-hill or a tree. i was not then aware that any one else had discovered the elevated trough form of the centre of africa. i had observed that the old schistose rocks on the sides dipped in toward the centre of the country, and their strike nearly corresponded with the major axis of the continent; and also that where the later erupted trap rocks had been spread out in tabular masses over the central plateau, they had borne angular fragments of the older rocks in their substance; but the partial generalization which the observations led to was, that great volcanic action had taken place in ancient times, somewhat in the same way it does now, at distances of not more than three hundred miles from the sea, and that this igneous action, extending along both sides of the continent, had tilted up the lateral rocks in the manner they are now seen to lie. the greater energy and more extended range of igneous action in those very remote periods when africa was formed, embracing all the flanks, imparted to it its present very simple literal outline. this was the length to which i had come. the trap rocks, which now constitute the "filling up" of the great valley, were always a puzzle to me till favored with sir roderick murchison's explanation of the original form of the continent, for then i could see clearly why these trap rocks, which still lie in a perfectly horizontal position on extensive areas, held in their substance angular fragments, containing algae of the old schists, which form the bottom of the original lacustrine basin: the traps, in bursting through, had broken them off and preserved them. there are, besides, ranges of hills in the central parts, composed of clay and sandstone schists, with the ripple mark distinct, in which no fossils appear; but as they are usually tilted away from the masses of horizontal trap, it is probable that they too were a portion of the original bottom, and fossils may yet be found in them.* * after dwelling upon the geological structure of the cape colony as developed by mr. a. bain, and the existence in very remote periods of lacustrine conditions in the central part of south africa, as proved by fresh-water and terrestrial fossils, sir roderick murchison thus writes: "such as south africa is now, such have been her main features during countless past ages anterior to the creation of the human race; for the old rocks which form her outer fringe unquestionably circled round an interior marshy or lacustrine country, in which the dicynodon flourished, at a time when not a single animal was similar to any living thing which now inhabits the surface of our globe. the present central and meridian zone of waters, whether lakes or marshes, extending from lake tchad to lake 'ngami, with hippopotami on their banks, are therefore but the great modern residual geographical phenomena of those of a mesozoic age. the differences, however, between the geological past of africa and her present state are enormous. since that primeval time, the lands have been much elevated above the sea-level-- eruptive rocks piercing in parts through them; deep rents and defiles have been suddenly formed in the subtending ridges through which some rivers escape outward. "travelers will eventually ascertain whether the basin-shaped structure, which is here announced as having been the great feature of the most ancient, as it is of the actual geography of south africa (i.e., from primeval times to the present day), does, or does not, extend into northern africa. looking at that much broader portion of the continent, we have some reason to surmise that the higher mountains also form, in a general sense, its flanks only."--president's address, royal geographical society, , p. cxxiii. the characteristics of the rainy season in this wonderfully humid region may account in some measure for the periodical floods of the zambesi, and perhaps the nile. the rains seem to follow the course of the sun, for they fall in october and november, when the sun passes over this zone on his way south. on reaching the tropic of capricorn in december, it is dry; and december and january are the months in which injurious droughts are most dreaded near that tropic (from kolobeng to linyanti). as he returns again to the north in february, march, and april, we have the great rains of the year; and the plains, which in october and november were well moistened, and imbibed rain like sponges, now become supersaturated, and pour forth those floods of clear water which inundate the banks of the zambesi. somewhat the same phenomenon probably causes the periodical inundations of the nile. the two rivers rise in the same region; but there is a difference in the period of flood, possibly from their being on opposite sides of the equator. the waters of the nile are said to become turbid in june; and the flood attains its greatest height in august, or the period when we may suppose the supersaturation to occur. the subject is worthy the investigation of those who may examine the region between the equator and deg. s.; for the nile does not show much increase when the sun is at its farthest point north, or tropic of cancer, but at the time of its returning to the equator, exactly as in the other case when he is on capricorn, and the zambesi is affected.* * the above is from my own observation, together with information derived from the portuguese in the interior of angola; and i may add that the result of many years' observation by messrs. gabriel and brand at loanda, on the west coast, is in accordance therewith. it rains there between the st and th of november, but january and december are usually both warm and dry. the heavier rains commence about the st of february, and last until the th of may. then no rain falls between the th of may and the st of november. the rain averages from to inches per annum. in it was . inches; in , . inches. although i had no means of measuring the amount of rain which fell in londa, i feel certain that the annual quantity exceeds very much that which falls on the coast, because for a long time we noticed that every dawn was marked by a deluging shower, which began without warning-drops or thunder. i observed that the rain ceased suddenly on the th of april, and the lesser rains commenced about a fortnight before the beginning of november. from information derived from arabs of zanzibar, whom i met at naliele in the middle of the country, the region to the east of the parts of londa over which we have traveled resembles them in its conformation. they report swampy steppes, some of which have no trees, where the inhabitants use grass, and stalks of native corn, for fuel. a large shallow lake is also pointed out in that direction, named tanganyenka, which requires three days for crossing in canoes. it is connected with another named kalagwe (garague?), farther north, and may be the nyanja of the maravim. from this lake is derived, by numerous small streams, the river loapula, the eastern branch of the zambesi, which, coming from the n.e., flows past the town of cazembe. the southern end of this lake is ten days northeast of the town of cazembe; and as that is probably more than five days from shinte, we can not have been nearer to it than miles. probably this lake is the watershed between the zambesi and the nile, as lake dilolo is that between the leeba and kasai. but, however this may be, the phenomena of the rainy season show that it is not necessary to assume the existence of high snowy mountains until we get reliable information. this, it is to be hoped, will be one of the results of the researches of captain burton in his present journey. the original valley formation of the continent determined the northern and southern course of the zambesi in the centre, and also of the ancient river which once flowed from the linyanti basin to the orange river. it also gave direction to the southern and northern flow of the kasai and the nile. we find that between the latitudes, say deg. and deg. s., from which, in all probability, the head waters of those rivers diverge, there is a sort of elevated partition in the great longitudinal valley. presuming on the correctness of the native information, which places the humid region to which the nile and zambesi probably owe their origin within the latitudes indicated, why does so much more rain fall there than in the same latitudes north of the equator? why does darfur not give rise to great rivers, like londa and the country east of it? the prevailing winds in the ocean opposite the territory pointed out are said to be from the n.e. and s.e. during a great part of the year; they extend their currents on one side at least of the equator quite beyond the middle of the continent, and even until in angola they meet the sea-breeze from the atlantic. if the reader remembers the explanation given at page ,* that the comparative want of rain on the kalahari desert is caused by the mass of air losing its humidity as it passes up and glides over the subtending ridge, and will turn to the map, he may perceive that the same cause is in operation in an intense degree by the mountains of abyssinia to render the region about darfur still more arid, and that the flanking ranges mentioned lie much nearer the equator than those which rob the kalahari of humidity. the nile, even while running through a part of that region, receives remarkably few branches. observing also that there is no known abrupt lateral mountain-range between deg. and deg. s., but that there is an elevated partition there, and that the southing and northing of the southeasters and northeasters probably cause a confluence of the two great atmospheric currents, he will perceive an accumulation of humidity on the flanks and crown of the partition, instead of, as elsewhere, opposite the kalahari and darfur, a deposition of the atmospheric moisture on the eastern slopes of the subtending ridges. this explanation is offered with all deference to those who have made meteorology their special study, and as a hint to travelers who may have opportunity to examine the subject more fully. i often observed, while on a portion of the partition, that the air by night was generally quite still, but as soon as the sun's rays began to shoot across the upper strata of the atmosphere in the early morning, a copious discharge came suddenly down from the accumulated clouds. it always reminded me of the experiment of putting a rod into a saturated solution of a certain salt, causing instant crystallization. this, too, was the period when i often observed the greatest amount of cold. * since the explanation in page [chapter paragraph ] was printed, i have been pleased to see the same explanation given by the popular astronomer and natural philosopher, m. babinet, in reference to the climate of france. it is quoted from a letter of a correspondent of the 'times' in paris: "in the normal meteorological state of france and europe, the west wind, which is the counter-current of the trade-winds that constantly blow from the east under the tropics--the west wind, i say, after having touched france and europe by the western shores, re-descends by marseilles and the mediterranean, constantinople and the archipelago, astrakan and the caspian sea, in order to merge again into the great circuit of the general winds, and be thus carried again into the equatorial current. whenever these masses of air, impregnated with humidity during their passage over the ocean, meet with an obstacle, such as a chain of mountains, for example, they slide up the acclivity, and, when they reach the crest, find themselves relieved from a portion of the column of air which pressed upon them. thus, dilating by reason of their elasticity, they cause a considerable degree of cold, and a precipitation of humidity in the form of fogs, clouds, rain, or snow. a similar effect occurs whatever be the obstacle they find in their way. now this is what had gradually taken place before . by some cause or other connected with the currents of the atmosphere, the warm current from the west had annually ascended northward, so that, instead of passing through france, it came from the baltic and the north of germany, thus momentarily disturbing the ordinary law of the temperatures of europe. but in a sudden change occurred. the western current again passed, as before, through the centre of france. it met with an obstacle in the air which had not yet found its usual outlet toward the west and south. hence a stoppage, a rising, a consequent dilation and fall of temperature, extraordinary rains and inundations. but, now that the natural state of things is restored, nothing appears to prognosticate the return of similar disasters. were the western current found annually to move further north, we might again experience meteorological effects similar to those of . hence the regular seasons may be considered re-established in france for several years to come. the important meteorological communications which the imperial observatory is daily establishing with the other countries of europe, and the introduction of apparatus for measuring the velocity of the aerial currents and prevailing winds, will soon afford prognostics sufficiently certain to enable an enlightened government to provide in time against future evils." after crossing the northern lotembwa we met a party of the people of kangenke, who had treated us kindly on our way to the north, and sent him a robe of striped calico, with an explanation of the reason for not returning through his village. we then went on to the lake dilolo. it is a fine sheet of water, six or eight miles long, and one or two broad, and somewhat of a triangular shape. a branch proceeds from one of the angles, and flows into the southern lotembwa. though laboring under fever, the sight of the blue waters, and the waves lashing the shore, had a most soothing influence on the mind, after so much of lifeless, flat, and gloomy forest. the heart yearned for the vivid impressions which are always created by the sight of the broad expanse of the grand old ocean. that has life in it; but the flat uniformities over which we had roamed made me feel as if buried alive. we found moene dilolo (lord of the lake) a fat, jolly fellow, who lamented that when they had no strangers they had plenty of beer, and always none when they came. he gave us a handsome present of meal and putrid buffalo's flesh. meat can not be too far gone for them, as it is used only in small quantities, as a sauce to their tasteless manioc. they were at this time hunting antelopes, in order to send the skins as a tribute to matiamvo. great quantities of fish are caught in the lake; and numbers of young water-fowl are now found in the nests among the reeds. our progress had always been slow, and i found that our rate of traveling could only be five hours a day for five successive days. on the sixth, both men and oxen showed symptoms of knocking up. we never exceeded two and a half or three miles an hour in a straight line, though all were anxious to get home. the difference in the rate of traveling between ourselves and the slave-traders was our having a rather quicker step, a longer day's journey, and twenty traveling days a month instead of their ten. when one of my men became ill, but still could walk, others parted his luggage among them; yet we had often to stop one day a week, besides sundays, simply for the sake of rest. the latitude of lake dilolo is d ' " s., long. d ' e. june th. we reached the collection of straggling villages over which katema rules, and were thankful to see old familiar faces again. shakatwala performed the part of a chief by bringing forth abundant supplies of food in his master's name. he informed us that katema, too, was out hunting skins for matiamvo. in different parts of this country, we remarked that when old friends were inquired for, the reply was, "ba hola" (they are getting better); or if the people of a village were inquired for, the answer was, "they are recovering," as if sickness was quite a common thing. indeed, many with whom we had made acquaintance in going north we now found were in their graves. on the th katema came home from his hunting, having heard of our arrival. he desired me to rest myself and eat abundantly, for, being a great man, i must feel tired; and he took good care to give the means of doing so. all the people in these parts are exceedingly kind and liberal with their food, and katema was not behindhand. when he visited our encampment, i presented him with a cloak of red baize, ornamented with gold tinsel, which cost thirty shillings, according to the promise i had made in going to londa; also a cotton robe, both large and small beads, an iron spoon, and a tin pannikin containing a quarter of a pound of powder. he seemed greatly pleased with the liberality shown, and assured me that the way was mine, and that no one should molest me in it if he could help it. we were informed by shakatwala that the chief never used any part of a present before making an offer of it to his mother, or the departed spirit to whom he prayed. katema asked if i could not make a dress for him like the one i wore, so that he might appear as a white man when any stranger visited him. one of the councilors, imagining that he ought to second this by begging, katema checked him by saying, "whatever strangers give, be it little or much, i always receive it with thankfulness, and never trouble them for more." on departing, he mounted on the shoulders of his spokesman, as the most dignified mode of retiring. the spokesman being a slender man, and the chief six feet high, and stout in proportion, there would have been a break-down had he not been accustomed to it. we were very much pleased with katema; and next day he presented us with a cow, that we might enjoy the abundant supplies of meal he had given with good animal food. he then departed for the hunting-ground, after assuring me that the town and every thing in it were mine, and that his factotum, shakatwala, would remain and attend to every want, and also conduct us to the leeba. on attempting to slaughter the cow katema had given, we found the herd as wild as buffaloes; and one of my men having only wounded it, they fled many miles into the forest, and were with great difficulty brought back. even the herdsman was afraid to go near them. the majority of them were white, and they were all beautiful animals. after hunting it for two days it was dispatched at last by another ball. here we saw a flock of jackdaws, a rare sight in londa, busy with the grubs in the valley, which are eaten by the people too. leaving katema's town on the th, and proceeding four miles to the eastward, we forded the southern branch of lake dilolo. we found it a mile and a quarter broad; and, as it flows into the lotembwa, the lake would seem to be a drain of the surrounding flats, and to partake of the character of a fountain. the ford was waist-deep, and very difficult, from the masses of arum and rushes through which we waded. going to the eastward about three miles, we came to the southern lotembwa itself, running in a valley two miles broad. it is here eighty or ninety yards wide, and contains numerous islands covered with dense sylvan vegetation. in the rainy season the valley is flooded, and as the waters dry up great multitudes of fish are caught. this happens very extensively over the country, and fishing-weirs are met with every where. a species of small fish, about the size of the minnow, is caught in bagfuls and dried in the sun. the taste is a pungent aromatic bitter, and it was partaken of freely by my people, although they had never met with it before. on many of the paths which had been flooded a nasty sort of slime of decayed vegetable matter is left behind, and much sickness prevails during the drying up of the water. we did not find our friend mozinkwa at his pleasant home on the lokaloeje; his wife was dead, and he had removed elsewhere. he followed us some distance, but our reappearance seemed to stir up his sorrows. we found the pontoon at the village in which we left it. it had been carefully preserved, but a mouse had eaten a hole in it and rendered it useless. we traversed the extended plain on the north bank of the leeba, and crossed this river a little farther on at kanyonke's village, which is about twenty miles west of the peri hills, our former ford. the first stage beyond the leeba was at the rivulet loamba, by the village of chebende, nephew of shinte; and next day we met chebende himself returning from the funeral of samoana, his father. he was thin and haggard-looking compared to what he had been before, the probable effect of the orgies in which he had been engaged. pitsane and mohorisi, having concocted the project of a makololo village on the banks of the leeba, as an approach to the white man's market, spoke to chebende, as an influential man, on the subject, but he cautiously avoided expressing an opinion. the idea which had sprung up in their own minds of an establishment somewhere near the confluence of the leeba and leeambye, commended itself to my judgment at the time as a geographically suitable point for civilization and commerce. the right bank of the leeba there is never flooded; and from that point there is communication by means of canoes to the country of the kanyika, and also to cazembe and beyond, with but one or two large waterfalls between. there is no obstruction down to the barotse valley; and there is probably canoe navigation down the kafue or bashukulompo river, though it is reported to contain many cataracts. it flows through a fertile country, well peopled with bamasasa, who cultivate the native produce largely. as this was the middle of winter, it may be mentioned that the temperature of the water in the morning was deg., and that of the air deg., which, being loaded with moisture, was very cold to the feelings. yet the sun was very hot by day, and the temperature in the coolest shade from deg. to deg.; in the evenings from deg. to deg. before reaching the town of shinte we passed through many large villages of the balobale, who have fled from the chief kangenke. the mambari from bihe come constantly to him for trade; and, as he sells his people, great numbers of them escape to shinte and katema, who refuse to give them up. we reached our friend shinte, and received a hearty welcome from this friendly old man, and abundant provisions of the best he had. on hearing the report of the journey given by my companions, and receiving a piece of cotton cloth about two yards square, he said, "these mambari cheat us by bringing little pieces only; but the next time you pass i shall send men with you to trade for me in loanda." when i explained the use made of the slaves he sold, and that he was just destroying his own tribe by selling his people, and enlarging that of the mambari for the sake of these small pieces of cloth, it seemed to him quite a new idea. he entered into a long detail of his troubles with masiko, who had prevented him from cultivating that friendship with the makololo which i had inculcated, and had even plundered the messengers he had sent with kolimbota to the barotse valley. shinte was particularly anxious to explain that kolimbota had remained after my departure of his own accord, and that he had engaged in the quarrels of the country without being invited; that, in attempting to capture one of the children of a balobale man, who had offended the balonda by taking honey from a hive which did not belong to him, kolimbota had got wounded by a shot in the thigh, but that he had cured the wound, given him a wife, and sent a present of cloth to sekeletu, with a full account of the whole affair. from the statement of shinte we found that kolimbota had learned, before we left his town, that the way we intended to take was so dangerous that it would be better for him to leave us to our fate; and, as he had taken one of our canoes with him, it seemed evident that he did not expect us to return. shinte, however, sent a recommendation to his sister nyamoana to furnish as many canoes as we should need for our descent of the leeba and leeambye. as i had been desirous of introducing some of the fruit-trees of angola, both for my own sake and that of the inhabitants, we had carried a pot containing a little plantation of orange, cashew-trees, custard-apple-trees ('anona'), and a fig-tree, with coffee, aracas ('araca pomifera'), and papaws ('carica papaya'). fearing that, if we took them farther south at present, they might be killed by the cold, we planted them out in an inclosure of one of shinte's principal men, and, at his request, promised to give shinte a share when grown. they know the value of fruits, but at present have none except wild ones. a wild fruit we frequently met with in londa is eatable, and, when boiled, yields a large quantity of oil, which is much used in anointing both head and body. he eagerly accepted some of the seeds of the palm-oil-tree ('elaeis guineensis'), when told that this would produce oil in much greater quantity than their native tree, which is not a palm. there are very few palm-trees in this country, but near bango we saw a few of a peculiar palm, the ends of the leaf-stalks of which remain attached to the trunk, giving it a triangular shape. it is pleasant to observe that all the tribes in central africa are fond of agriculture. my men had collected quantities of seeds in angola, and now distributed them among their friends. some even carried onions, garlic, and bird's-eye pepper, growing in pannikins. the courts of the balonda, planted with tobacco, sugar-cane, and plants used as relishes, led me to the belief that care would be taken of my little nursery. the thermometer early in the mornings ranged from deg. to deg., at noon deg. to deg., and in the evening about deg. it was placed in the shade of my tent, which was pitched under the thickest tree we could find. the sensation of cold, after the heat of the day, was very keen. the balonda at this season never leave their fires till nine or ten in the morning. as the cold was so great here, it was probably frosty at linyanti; i therefore feared to expose my young trees there. the latitude of shinte's town is d ' " s., longitude d ' e. we remained with shinte till the th of july, he being unwilling to allow us to depart before hearing in a formal manner, in the presence of his greatest councilor chebende, a message from limboa, the brother of masiko. when masiko fled from the makololo country in consequence of a dislike of being in a state of subjection to sebituane, he came into the territory of shinte, who received him kindly, and sent orders to all the villages in his vicinity to supply him with food. limboa fled in a westerly direction with a number of people, and also became a chief. his country was sometimes called nyenko, but by the mambari and native portuguese traders "mboela"--the place where they "turned again", or back. as one of the fruits of polygamy, the children of different mothers are always in a state of variance. each son endeavors to gain the ascendency by enticing away the followers of the others. the mother of limboa being of a high family, he felt aggrieved because the situation chosen by masiko was better than his. masiko lived at a convenient distance from the saloisho hills, where there is abundance of iron ore, with which the inhabitants manufacture hoes, knives, etc. they are also skillful in making wooden vessels. limboa felt annoyed because he was obliged to apply for these articles through his brother, whom he regarded as his inferior, and accordingly resolved to come into the same district. as this was looked upon as an assertion of superiority which masiko would resist, it was virtually a declaration of war. both masiko and shinte pleaded my injunction to live in peace and friendship, but limboa, confident of success, now sent the message which i was about to hear--"that he, too, highly approved of the 'word' i had given, but would only for once transgress a little, and live at peace for ever afterward." he now desired the aid of shinte to subdue his brother. messengers came from masiko at the same time, desiring assistance to repel him. shinte felt inclined to aid limboa, but, as he had advised them both to wait till i came, i now urged him to let the quarrel alone, and he took my advice. we parted on the best possible terms with our friend shinte, and proceeded by our former path to the village of his sister nyamoana, who is now a widow. she received us with much apparent feeling, and said, "we had removed from our former abode to the place where you found us, and had no idea then that it was the spot where my husband was to die." she had come to the river lofuje, as they never remain in a place where death has once visited them. we received the loan of five small canoes from her, and also one of those we had left here before, to proceed down the leeba. after viewing the coanza at massangano, i thought the leeba at least a third larger, and upward of two hundred yards wide. we saw evidence of its rise during its last flood having been upward of forty feet in perpendicular height; but this is probably more than usual, as the amount of rain was above the average. my companions purchased also a number of canoes from the balonda. these are very small, and can carry only two persons. they are made quite thin and light, and as sharp as racing-skiffs, because they are used in hunting animals in the water. the price paid was a string of beads equal to the length of the canoe. we advised them to bring canoes for sale to the makololo, as they would gladly give them cows in exchange. in descending the leeba we saw many herds of wild animals, especially the tahetsi ('aigoceros equina'), one magnificent antelope, the putokuane ('antilope niger'), and two fine lions. the balobale, however, are getting well supplied with guns, and will soon thin out the large game. at one of the villages we were entreated to attack some buffaloes which grazed in the gardens every night and destroyed the manioc. as we had had no success in shooting at the game we had seen, and we all longed to have a meal of meat, we followed the footprints of a number of old bulls. they showed a great amount of cunning by selecting the densest parts of very closely-planted forests to stand or recline in during the day. we came within six yards of them several times before we knew that they were so near. we only heard them rush away among the crashing branches, catching only a glimpse of them. it was somewhat exciting to feel, as we trod on the dry leaves with stealthy steps, that, for any thing we knew, we might next moment be charged by one of the most dangerous beasts of the forest. we threaded out their doublings for hours, drawn on by a keen craving for animal food, as we had been entirely without salt for upward of two months, but never could get a shot. in passing along the side of the water every where except in londa, green frogs spring out at your feet, and light in the water as if taking a "header"; and on the leeambye and chobe we have great numbers of small green frogs ('rana fasciata', boie), which light on blades of grass with remarkable precision; but on coming along the leeba i was struck by the sight of a light green toad about an inch long. the leaf might be nearly perpendicular, but it stuck to it like a fly. it was of the same size as the 'brachymerus bi-fasciatus' (smith),* which i saw only once in the bakwain country. though small, it was hideous, being colored jet black, with vermilion spots. * the discovery of this last species is thus mentioned by that accomplished naturalist, dr. smith: "on the banks of the limpopo river, close to the tropic of capricorn, a massive tree was cut down to obtain wood to repair a wagon. the workman, while sawing the trunk longitudinally nearly along its centre, remarked, on reaching a certain point, 'it is hollow, and will not answer the purpose for which it is wanted.' he persevered, however, and when a division into equal halves was effected, it was discovered that the saw in its course had crossed a large hole, in which were five specimens of the species just described, each about an inch in length. every exertion was made to discover a means of communication between the external air and the cavity, but without success. every part of the latter was probed with the utmost care, and water was kept in each half for a considerable time, without any passing into the wood. the inner surface of the cavity was black, as if charred, and so was likewise the adjoining wood for half an inch from the cavity. the tree, at the part where the latter existed, was inches in diameter; the length of the trunk was feet. when the batrachia above mentioned were discovered, they appeared inanimate, but the influence of a warm sun to which they were subjected soon imparted to them a moderate degree of vigor. in a few hours from the time they were liberated they were tolerably active, and able to move from place to place apparently with great ease." before reaching the makondo rivulet, latitude d ' " s., we came upon the tsetse in such numbers that many bites were inflicted on my poor ox, in spite of a man with a branch warding them off. the bite of this insect does not affect the donkey as it does cattle. the next morning, the spots on which my ox had been bitten were marked by patches of hair about half an inch broad being wetted by exudation. poor sinbad had carried me all the way from the leeba to golungo alto, and all the way back again, without losing any of his peculiarities, or ever becoming reconciled to our perversity in forcing him away each morning from the pleasant pasturage on which he had fed. i wished to give the climax to his usefulness, and allay our craving for animal food at the same time; but my men having some compunction, we carried him to end his days in peace at naliele. having dispatched a message to our old friend manenko, we waited a day opposite her village, which was about fifteen miles from the river. her husband was instantly dispatched to meet us with liberal presents of food, she being unable to travel in consequence of a burn on the foot. sambanza gave us a detailed account of the political affairs of the country, and of kolimbota's evil doings, and next morning performed the ceremony called "kasendi", for cementing our friendship. it is accomplished thus: the hands of the parties are joined (in this case pitsane and sambanza were the parties engaged); small incisions are made on the clasped hands, on the pits of the stomach of each, and on the right cheeks and foreheads. a small quantity of blood is taken off from these points in both parties by means of a stalk of grass. the blood from one person is put into a pot of beer, and that of the second into another; each then drinks the other's blood, and they are supposed to become perpetual friends or relations. during the drinking of the beer, some of the party continue beating the ground with short clubs, and utter sentences by way of ratifying the treaty. the men belonging to each then finish the beer. the principals in the performance of "kasendi" are henceforth considered blood-relations, and are bound to disclose to each other any impending evil. if sekeletu should resolve to attack the balonda, pitsane would be under obligation to give sambanza warning to escape, and so on the other side. they now presented each other with the most valuable presents they had to bestow. sambanza walked off with pitsane's suit of green baize faced with red, which had been made in loanda, and pitsane, besides abundant supplies of food, obtained two shells similar to that i had received from shinte. on one occasion i became blood-relation to a young woman by accident. she had a large cartilaginous tumor between the bones of the fore-arm, which, as it gradually enlarged, so distended the muscles as to render her unable to work. she applied to me to excise it. i requested her to bring her husband, if he were willing to have the operation performed, and, while removing the tumor, one of the small arteries squirted some blood into my eye. she remarked, when i was wiping the blood out of it, "you were a friend before, now you are a blood-relation; and when you pass this way, always send me word, that i may cook food for you." in creating these friendships, my men had the full intention of returning; each one had his 'molekane' (friend) in every village of the friendly balonda. mohorisi even married a wife in the town of katema, and pitsane took another in the town of shinte. these alliances were looked upon with great favor by the balonda chiefs, as securing the good-will of the makololo. in order that the social condition of the tribes may be understood by the reader, i shall mention that, while waiting for sambanza, a party of barotse came from nyenko, the former residence of limboa, who had lately crossed the leeba on his way toward masiko. the head man of this party had brought limboa's son to his father, because the barotse at nyenko had, since the departure of limboa, elected nananko, another son of santuru, in his stead; and our visitor, to whom the boy had been intrusted as a guardian, thinking him to be in danger, fled with him to his father. the barotse, whom limboa had left behind at nyenko, on proceeding to elect nananko, said, "no, it is quite too much for limboa to rule over two places." i would have gone to visit limboa and masiko too, in order to prevent hostilities, but the state of my ox would not allow it. i therefore sent a message to limboa by some of his men, protesting against war with his brother, and giving him formal notice that the path up the leeba had been given to us by the balonda, the owners of the country, and that no attempt must ever be made to obstruct free intercourse. on leaving this place we were deserted by one of our party, mboenga, an ambonda man, who had accompanied us all the way to loanda and back. his father was living with masiko, and it was natural for him to wish to join his own family again. he went off honestly, with the exception of taking a fine "tari" skin given me by nyamoana, but he left a parcel of gun-flints which he had carried for me all the way from loanda. i regretted parting with him thus, and sent notice to him that he need not have run away, and if he wished to come to sekeletu again he would be welcome. we subsequently met a large party of barotse fleeing in the same direction; but when i represented to them that there was a probability of their being sold as slaves in londa, and none in the country of sekeletu, they concluded to return. the grievance which the barotse most feel is being obliged to live with sekeletu at linyanti, where there is neither fish nor fowl, nor any other kind of food, equal in quantity to what they enjoy in their own fat valley. a short distance below the confluence of the leeba and leeambye we met a number of hunters belonging to the tribe called mambowe, who live under masiko. they had dried flesh of hippopotami, buffaloes, and alligators. they stalk the animals by using the stratagem of a cap made of the skin of a leche's or poku's head, having the horns still attached, and another made so as to represent the upper white part of the crane called jabiru ('mycteru senegalensis'), with its long neck and beak above. with these on, they crawl through the grass; they can easily put up their heads so far as to see their prey without being recognized until they are within bow-shot. they presented me with three fine water-turtles,* one of which, when cooked, had upward of forty eggs in its body. the shell of the egg is flexible, and it is of the same size at both ends, like those of the alligator. the flesh, and especially the liver, is excellent. the hunters informed us that, when the message inculcating peace among the tribes came to masiko, the common people were so glad at the prospect of "binding up the spears", that they ran to the river, and bathed and plunged in it for joy. this party had been sent by masiko to the makololo for aid to repel their enemy, but, afraid to go thither, had spent the time in hunting. they have a dread of the makololo, and hence the joy they expressed when peace was proclaimed. the mambowe hunters were much alarmed until my name was mentioned. they then joined our party, and on the following day discovered a hippopotamus dead, which they had previously wounded. this was the first feast of flesh my men had enjoyed, for, though the game was wonderfully abundant, i had quite got out of the way of shooting, and missed perpetually. once i went with the determination of getting so close that i should not miss a zebra. we went along one of the branches that stretch out from the river in a small canoe, and two men, stooping down as low as they could, paddled it slowly along to an open space near to a herd of zebras and pokus. peering over the edge of the canoe, the open space seemed like a patch of wet ground, such as is often seen on the banks of a river, made smooth as the resting-place of alligators. when we came within a few yards of it, we found by the precipitate plunging of the reptile that this was a large alligator itself. although i had been most careful to approach near enough, i unfortunately only broke the hind leg of a zebra. my two men pursued it, but the loss of a hind leg does not prevent this animal from a gallop. as i walked slowly after the men on an extensive plain covered with a great crop of grass, which was 'laid' by its own weight, i observed that a solitary buffalo, disturbed by others of my own party, was coming to me at a gallop. i glanced around, but the only tree on the plain was a hundred yards off, and there was no escape elsewhere. i therefore cocked my rifle, with the intention of giving him a steady shot in the forehead when he should come within three or four yards of me. the thought flashed across my mind, "what if your gun misses fire?" i placed it to my shoulder as he came on at full speed, and that is tremendous, though generally he is a lumbering-looking animal in his paces. a small bush and bunch of grass fifteen yards off made him swerve a little, and exposed his shoulder. i just heard the ball crack there as i fell flat on my face. the pain must have made him renounce his purpose, for he bounded close past me on to the water, where he was found dead. in expressing my thankfulness to god among my men, they were much offended with themselves for not being present to shield me from this danger. the tree near me was a camel-thorn, and reminded me that we had come back to the land of thorns again, for the country we had left is one of evergreens. * it is probably a species allied to the 'sternotherus sinuatus' of dr. smith, as it has no disagreeable smell. this variety annually leaves the water with so much regularity for the deposit of its eggs, that the natives decide on the time of sowing their seed by its appearance. july th. we reached the town of libonta, and were received with demonstrations of joy such as i had never witnessed before. the women came forth to meet us, making their curious dancing gestures and loud lulliloos. some carried a mat and stick, in imitation of a spear and shield. others rushed forward and kissed the hands and cheeks of the different persons of their acquaintance among us, raising such a dust that it was quite a relief to get to the men assembled and sitting with proper african decorum in the kotla. we were looked upon as men risen from the dead, for the most skillful of their diviners had pronounced us to have perished long ago. after many expressions of joy at meeting, i arose, and, thanking them, explained the causes of our long delay, but left the report to be made by their own countrymen. formerly i had been the chief speaker, now i would leave the task of speaking to them. pitsane then delivered a speech of upward of an hour in length, giving a highly flattering picture of the whole journey, of the kindness of the white men in general, and of mr. gabriel in particular. he concluded by saying that i had done more for them than they expected; that i had not only opened up a path for them to the other white men, but conciliated all the chiefs along the route. the oldest man present rose and answered this speech, and, among other things, alluded to the disgust i felt at the makololo for engaging in marauding expeditions against lechulatebe and sebolamakwaia, of which we had heard from the first persons we met, and which my companions most energetically denounced as "mashue hela", entirely bad. he entreated me not to lose heart, but to reprove sekeletu as my child. another old man followed with the same entreaties. the following day we observed as our thanksgiving to god for his goodness in bringing us all back in safety to our friends. my men decked themselves out in their best, and i found that, although their goods were finished, they had managed to save suits of european clothing, which, being white, with their red caps, gave them rather a dashing appearance. they tried to walk like the soldiers they had seen in loanda, and called themselves my "braves" (batlabani). during the service they all sat with their guns over their shoulders, and excited the unbounded admiration of the women and children. i addressed them all on the goodness of god in preserving us from all the dangers of strange tribes and disease. we had a similar service in the afternoon. the men gave us two fine oxen for slaughter, and the women supplied us abundantly with milk, meal, and butter. it was all quite gratuitous, and i felt ashamed that i could make no return. my men explained the total expenditure of our means, and the libontese answered gracefully, "it does not matter; you have opened a path for us, and we shall have sleep." strangers came flocking from a distance, and seldom empty-handed. their presents i distributed among my men. our progress down the barotse valley was just like this. every village gave us an ox, and sometimes two. the people were wonderfully kind. i felt, and still feel, most deeply grateful, and tried to benefit them in the only way i could, by imparting the knowledge of that savior who can comfort and supply them in the time of need, and my prayer is that he may send his good spirit to instruct them and lead them into his kingdom. even now i earnestly long to return, and make some recompense to them for their kindness. in passing them on our way to the north, their liberality might have been supposed to be influenced by the hope of repayment on our return, for the white man's land is imagined to be the source of every ornament they prize most. but, though we set out from loanda with a considerable quantity of goods, hoping both to pay our way through the stingy chiboque, and to make presents to the kind balonda and still more generous makololo, the many delays caused by sickness made us expend all my stock, and all the goods my men procured by their own labor at loanda, and we returned to the makololo as poor as when we set out. yet no distrust was shown, and my poverty did not lessen my influence. they saw that i had been exerting myself for their benefit alone, and even my men remarked, "though we return as poor as we went, we have not gone in vain." they began immediately to collect tusks of hippopotami and other ivory for a second journey. chapter . colony of birds called linkololo--the village of chitlane--murder of mpololo's daughter--execution of the murderer and his wife--my companions find that their wives have married other husbands-- sunday--a party from masiko--freedom of speech--canoe struck by a hippopotamus--gonye--appearance of trees at the end of winter--murky atmosphere--surprising amount of organic life--hornets--the packages forwarded by mr. moffat--makololo suspicions and reply to the matebele who brought them--convey the goods to an island and build a hut over them--ascertain that sir r. murchison had recognized the true form of african continent--arrival at linyanti--a grand picho--shrewd inquiry-- sekeletu in his uniform--a trading-party sent to loanda with ivory-- mr. gabriel's kindness to them--difficulties in trading--two makololo forays during our absence--report of the country to the n.e.--death of influential men--the makololo desire to be nearer the market --opinions upon a change of residence--climate of barotse valley-- diseases--author's fevers not a fair criterion in the matter--the interior an inviting field for the philanthropist--consultations about a path to the east coast--decide on descending north bank of zambesi-- wait for the rainy season--native way of spending time during the period of greatest heat--favorable opening for missionary enterprise--ben habib wishes to marry--a maiden's choice--sekeletu's hospitality-- sulphureted hydrogen and malaria--conversations with makololo--their moral character and conduct--sekeletu wishes to purchase a sugar-mill, etc.--the donkeys--influence among the natives--"food fit for a chief"--parting words of mamire--motibe's excuses. on the st of july we parted with our kind libonta friends. we planted some of our palm-tree seeds in different villages of this valley. they began to sprout even while we were there, but, unfortunately, they were always destroyed by the mice which swarm in every hut. at chitlane's village we collected the young of a colony of the linkololo ('anastomus lamalligerus'), a black, long-legged bird, somewhat larger than a crow, which lives on shellfish ('ampullaria'), and breeds in society at certain localities among the reeds. these places are well known, as they continue there from year to year, and belong to the chiefs, who at particular times of the year gather most of the young. the produce of this "harvest", as they call it, which was presented to me, was a hundred and seventy-five unfledged birds. they had been rather late in collecting them, in consequence of waiting for the arrival of mpololo, who acts the part of chief, but gave them to me, knowing that this would be pleasing to him, otherwise this colony would have yielded double the amount. the old ones appear along the leeambye in vast flocks, and look lean and scraggy. the young are very fat, and, when roasted, are esteemed one of the dainties of the barotse valley. in presents of this kind, as well as of oxen, it is a sort of feast of joy, the person to whom they are presented having the honor of distributing the materials of the feast. we generally slaughtered every ox at the village where it was presented, and then our friends and we rejoiced together. the village of chitlane is situated, like all others in the barotse valley, on an eminence, over which floods do not rise; but this last year the water approached nearer to an entire submergence of the whole valley than has been known in the memory of man. great numbers of people were now suffering from sickness, which always prevails when the waters are drying up, and i found much demand for the medicines i had brought from loanda. the great variation of the temperature each day must have a trying effect upon the health. at this village there is a real indian banian-tree, which has spread itself over a considerable space by means of roots from its branches; it has been termed, in consequence, "the tree with legs" (more oa maotu). it is curious that trees of this family are looked upon with veneration, and all the way from the barotse to loanda are thought to be preservatives from evil. on reaching naliele on the st of august we found mpololo in great affliction on account of the death of his daughter and her child. she had been lately confined; and her father naturally remembered her when an ox was slaughtered, or when the tribute of other food, which he receives in lieu of sekeletu, came in his way, and sent frequent presents to her. this moved the envy of one of the makololo who hated mpololo, and, wishing to vex him, he entered the daughter's hut by night, and strangled both her and her child. he then tried to make fire in the hut and burn it, so that the murder might not be known; but the squeaking noise of rubbing the sticks awakened a servant, and the murderer was detected. both he and his wife were thrown into the river; the latter having "known of her husband's intentions, and not revealing them." she declared she had dissuaded him from the crime, and, had any one interposed a word, she might have been spared. mpololo exerted himself in every way to supply us with other canoes, and we left shinte's with him. the mambowe were well received, and departed with friendly messages to their chief masiko. my men were exceedingly delighted with the cordial reception we met with every where; but a source of annoyance was found where it was not expected. many of their wives had married other men during our two years' absence. mashauana's wife, who had borne him two children, was among the number. he wished to appear not to feel it much, saying, "why, wives are as plentiful as grass, and i can get another: she may go;" but he would add, "if i had that fellow, i would open his ears for him." as most of them had more wives than one, i tried to console them by saying that they had still more than i had, and that they had enough yet; but they felt the reflection to be galling, that while they were toiling, another had been devouring their corn. some of their wives came with very young infants in their arms. this excited no discontent; and for some i had to speak to the chief to order the men, who had married the only wives some of my companions ever had, to restore them. sunday, august th. a large audience listened most attentively to my morning address. surely some will remember the ideas conveyed, and pray to our merciful father, who would never have thought of him but for this visit. the invariably kind and respectful treatment i have received from these, and many other heathen tribes in this central country, together with the attentive observations of many years, have led me to the belief that, if one exerts himself for their good, he will never be ill treated. there may be opposition to his doctrine, but none to the man himself. while still at naliele, a party which had been sent after me by masiko arrived. he was much disappointed because i had not visited him. they brought an elephant's tusk, two calabashes of honey, two baskets of maize, and one of ground-nuts, as a present. masiko wished to say that he had followed the injunction which i had given as the will of god, and lived in peace until his brother limboa came, captured his women as they went to their gardens, and then appeared before his stockade. masiko offered to lead his men out; but they objected, saying, "let us servants be killed, you must not be slain." those who said this were young barotse who had been drilled to fighting by sebituane, and used shields of ox-hide. they beat off the party of limboa, ten being wounded, and ten slain in the engagement. limboa subsequently sent three slaves as a self-imposed fine to masiko for attacking him. i succeeded in getting the makololo to treat the messengers of masiko well, though, as they regarded them as rebels, it was somewhat against the grain at first to speak civilly to them. mpololo, attempting to justify an opposite line of conduct, told me how they had fled from sebituane, even though he had given them numbers of cattle after their subjection by his arms, and was rather surprised to find that i was disposed to think more highly of them for having asserted their independence, even at the loss of milk. for this food, all who have been accustomed to it from infancy in africa have an excessive longing. i pointed out how they might be mutually beneficial to each other by the exchange of canoes and cattle. there are some very old barotse living here who were the companions of the old chief santuru. these men, protected by their age, were very free in their comments on the "upstart" makololo. one of them, for instance, interrupted my conversation one day with some makololo gentlemen with the advice "not to believe them, for they were only a set of thieves;" and it was taken in quite a good-natured way. it is remarkable that none of the ancients here had any tradition of an earthquake having occurred in this region. their quick perception of events recognizable by the senses, and retentiveness of memory, render it probable that no perceptible movement of the earth has taken place between deg. and deg. s. in the centre of the continent during the last two centuries at least. there is no appearance of recent fracture or disturbance of rocks to be seen in the central country, except the falls of gonye; nor is there any evidence or tradition of hurricanes. i left naliele on the th of august, and, when proceeding along the shore at midday, a hippopotamus struck the canoe with her forehead, lifting one half of it quite out of the water, so as nearly to overturn it. the force of the butt she gave tilted mashauana out into the river; the rest of us sprang to the shore, which was only about ten yards off. glancing back, i saw her come to the surface a short way off, and look to the canoe, as if to see if she had done much mischief. it was a female, whose young one had been speared the day before. no damage was done except wetting person and goods. this is so unusual an occurrence, when the precaution is taken to coast along the shore, that my men exclaimed, "is the beast mad?" there were eight of us in the canoe at the time, and the shake it received shows the immense power of this animal in the water. on reaching gonye, mokwala, the head man, having presented me with a tusk, i gave it to pitsane, as he was eagerly collecting ivory for the loanda market. the rocks of gonye are reddish gray sandstone, nearly horizontal, and perforated by madrepores, the holes showing the course of the insect in different directions. the rock itself has been impregnated with iron, and that hardened, forms a glaze on the surface--an appearance common to many of the rocks of this country. august d. this is the end of winter. the trees which line the banks begin to bud and blossom, and there is some show of the influence of the new sap, which will soon end in buds that push off the old foliage by assuming a very bright orange color. this orange is so bright that i mistook it for masses of yellow blossom. there is every variety of shade in the leaves--yellow, purple, copper, liver-color, and even inky black. having got the loan of other canoes from mpololo, and three oxen as provision for the way, which made the number we had been presented with in the barotse valley amount to thirteen, we proceeded down the river toward sesheke, and were as much struck as formerly with the noble river. the whole scenery is lovely, though the atmosphere is murky in consequence of the continuance of the smoky tinge of winter. this peculiar tinge of the atmosphere was observed every winter at kolobeng, but it was not so observable in londa as in the south, though i had always considered that it was owing to the extensive burnings of the grass, in which hundreds of miles of pasturage are annually consumed. as the quantity burned in the north is very much greater than in the south, and the smoky tinge of winter was not observed, some other explanation than these burnings must be sought for. i have sometimes imagined that the lowering of the temperature in the winter rendered the vapor in the upper current of air visible, and imparted this hazy appearance. the amount of organic life is surprising. at the time the river begins to rise, the 'ibis religiosa' comes down in flocks of fifties, with prodigious numbers of other water-fowl. some of the sand-banks appear whitened during the day with flocks of pelicans--i once counted three hundred; others are brown with ducks ('anas histrionica')--i got fourteen of these by one shot ('querquedula hottentota', smith), and other kinds. great numbers of gulls ('procellaria turtur', smith), and several others, float over the surface. the vast quantity of small birds, which feed on insects, show that the river teems also with specimens of minute organic life. in walking among bushes on the banks we are occasionally stung by a hornet, which makes its nest in form like that of our own wasp, and hangs it on the branches of trees. the breeding storgh* is so strong in this insect that it pursues any one twenty or thirty yards who happens to brush too closely past its nest. the sting, which it tries to inflict near the eye, is more like a discharge of electricity from a powerful machine, or a violent blow, than aught else. it produces momentary insensibility, and is followed by the most pungent pain. yet this insect is quite timid when away from its nest. it is named murotuani by the bechuanas. * (greek) sigma-tau-omicron-rho-gamma-eta. we have tsetse between nameta and sekhosi. an insect of prey, about an inch in length, long-legged and gaunt-looking, may be observed flying about and lighting upon the bare ground. it is a tiger in its way, for it springs upon tsetse and other flies, and, sucking out their blood, throws the bodies aside. long before reaching sesheke we had been informed that a party of matebele, the people of mosilikatse, had brought some packages of goods for me to the south bank of the river, near the victoria falls, and, though they declared that they had been sent by mr. moffat, the makololo had refused to credit the statement of their sworn enemies. they imagined that the parcels were directed to me as a mere trick, whereby to place witchcraft-medicine into the hands of the makololo. when the matebele on the south bank called to the makololo on the north to come over in canoes and receive the goods sent by moffat to "nake", the makololo replied, "go along with you, we know better than that; how could he tell moffat to send his things here, he having gone away to the north?" the matebele answered, "here are the goods; we place them now before you, and if you leave them to perish the guilt will be yours." when they had departed the makololo thought better of it, and, after much divination, went over with fear and trembling, and carried the packages carefully to an island in the middle of the stream; then, building a hut over them to protect them from the weather, they left them; and there i found they had remained from september, , till september, , in perfect safety. here, as i had often experienced before, i found the news was very old, and had lost much of its interest by keeping, but there were some good eatables from mrs. moffat. among other things, i discovered that my friend, sir roderick murchison, while in his study in london, had arrived at the same conclusion respecting the form of the african continent as i had lately come to on the spot (see note p. [footnote to chapter paragraph ]); and that, from the attentive study of the geological map of mr. bain and other materials, some of which were furnished by the discoveries of mr. oswell and myself, he had not only clearly enunciated the peculiar configuration as an hypothesis in his discourse before the geographical society in , but had even the assurance to send me out a copy for my information! there was not much use in nursing my chagrin at being thus fairly "cut out" by the man who had foretold the existence of the australian gold before its discovery, for here it was in black and white. in his easy-chair he had forestalled me by three years, though i had been working hard through jungle, marsh, and fever, and, since the light dawned on my mind at dilolo, had been cherishing the pleasing delusion that i should be the first to suggest the idea that the interior of africa was a watery plateau of less elevation than flanking hilly ranges. having waited a few days at sesheke till the horses which we had left at linyanti should arrive, we proceeded to that town, and found the wagon, and every thing we had left in november, , perfectly safe. a grand meeting of all the people was called to receive our report, and the articles which had been sent by the governor and merchants of loanda. i explained that none of these were my property, but that they were sent to show the friendly feelings of the white men, and their eagerness to enter into commercial relations with the makololo. i then requested my companions to give a true account of what they had seen. the wonderful things lost nothing in the telling, the climax always being that they had finished the whole world, and had turned only when there was no more land. one glib old gentleman asked, "then you reached ma robert (mrs. l.)?" they were obliged to confess that she lived a little beyond the world. the presents were received with expressions of great satisfaction and delight; and on sunday, when sekeletu made his appearance at church in his uniform, it attracted more attention than the sermon; and the kind expressions they made use of respecting myself were so very flattering that i felt inclined to shut my eyes. their private opinion must have tallied with their public report, for i very soon received offers from volunteers to accompany me to the east coast. they said they wished to be able to return and relate strange things like my recent companions; and sekeletu immediately made arrangements with the arab ben habib to conduct a fresh party with a load of ivory to loanda. these, he said, must go with him and learn to trade: they were not to have any thing to do in the disposal of the ivory, but simply look and learn. my companions were to remain and rest themselves, and then return to loanda when the others had come home. sekeletu consulted me as to sending presents back to the governor and merchants of loanda, but, not possessing much confidence in this arab, i advised him to send a present by pitsane, as he knew who ought to receive it. since my arrival in england, information has been received from mr. gabriel that this party had arrived on the west coast, but that the ivory had been disposed of to some portuguese merchants in the interior, and the men had been obliged to carry it down to loanda. they had not been introduced to mr. gabriel, but that gentleman, having learned that they were in the city, went to them, and pronounced the names pitsane, mashauana, when all started up and crowded round him. when mr. g. obtained an interpreter, he learned that they had been ordered by sekeletu to be sure and go to my brother, as he termed him. mr. g. behaved in the same liberal manner as he had done to my companions, and they departed for their distant home after bidding him a formal and affectionate adieu. it was to be expected that they would be imposed upon in their first attempt at trading, but i believe that this could not be so easily repeated. it is, however, unfortunate that in dealing with the natives in the interior there is no attempt made at the establishment of fair prices. the trader shows a quantity of goods, the native asks for more, and more is given. the native, being ignorant of the value of the goods or of his ivory, tries what another demand will bring. after some haggling, an addition is made, and that bargain is concluded to the satisfaction of both parties. another trader comes, and perhaps offers more than the first; the customary demand for an addition is made, and he yields. the natives by this time are beginning to believe that the more they ask the more they will get: they continue to urge, the trader bursts into a rage, and the trade is stopped, to be renewed next day by a higher offer. the natives naturally conclude that they were right the day before, and a most disagreeable commercial intercourse is established. a great amount of time is spent in concluding these bargains. in other parts, it is quite common to see the natives going from one trader to another till they have finished the whole village; and some give presents of brandy to tempt their custom. much of this unpleasant state of feeling between natives and europeans results from the commencements made by those who were ignorant of the language, and from the want of education being given at the same time. during the time of our absence at loanda, the makololo had made two forays, and captured large herds of cattle. one, to the lake, was in order to punish lechulatebe for the insolence he had manifested after procuring some fire-arms; and the other to sebola makwaia, a chief living far to the n.e. this was most unjustifiable, and had been condemned by all the influential makololo. ben habib, however, had, in coming from zanzibar, visited sebola makwaia, and found that the chief town was governed by an old woman of that name. she received him kindly, and gave him a large quantity of magnificent ivory, sufficient to set him up as a trader, at a very small cost; but, his party having discharged their guns, ben habib observed that the female chief and her people were extremely alarmed, and would have fled and left their cattle in a panic, had he not calmed their fears. ben habib informed the uncle of sekeletu that he could easily guide him thither, and he might get a large number of cattle without any difficulty. this uncle advised sekeletu to go; and, as the only greatness he knew was imitation of his father's deeds, he went, but was not so successful as was anticipated. sebola makwaia had fled on hearing of the approach of the makololo; and, as the country is marshy and intersected in every direction by rivers, they could not easily pursue her. they captured canoes, and, pursuing up different streams, came to a small lake called "shuia". having entered the loangwa, flowing to the eastward, they found it advisable to return, as the natives in those parts became more warlike the further they went in that direction. before turning, the arab pointed out an elevated ridge in the distance, and said to the makololo, "when we see that, we always know that we are only ten or fifteen days from the sea." on seeing him afterward, he informed me that on the same ridge, but much further to the north, the banyassa lived, and that the rivers flowed from it toward the s.w. he also confirmed the other arab's account that the loapula, which he had crossed at the town of cazembe, flowed in the same direction, and into the leeambye. several of the influential makololo who had engaged in these marauding expeditions had died before our arrival, and nokwane had succumbed to his strange disease. ramosantane had perished through vomiting blood from over-fatigue in the march, and lerimo was affected by a leprosy peculiar to the barotse valley. in accordance with the advice of my libonta friends, i did not fail to reprove "my child sekeletu" for his marauding. this was not done in an angry manner, for no good is ever achieved by fierce denunciations. motibe, his father-in-law, said to me, "scold him much, but don't let others hear you." the makololo expressed great satisfaction with the route we had opened up to the west, and soon after our arrival a "picho" was called, in order to discuss the question of removal to the barotse valley, so that they might be nearer the market. some of the older men objected to abandoning the line of defense afforded by the rivers chobe and zambesi against their southern enemies the matebele. the makololo generally have an aversion to the barotse valley, on account of the fevers which are annually engendered in it as the waters dry up. they prefer it only as a cattle station; for, though the herds are frequently thinned by an epidemic disease (peripneumonia), they breed so fast that the losses are soon made good. wherever else the makololo go, they always leave a portion of their stock in the charge of herdsmen in that prolific valley. some of the younger men objected to removal, because the rankness of the grass at the barotse did not allow of their running fast, and because there "it never becomes cool." sekeletu at last stood up, and, addressing me, said, "i am perfectly satisfied as to the great advantages for trade of the path which you have opened, and think that we ought to go to the barotse, in order to make the way from us to loanda shorter; but with whom am i to live there? if you were coming with us, i would remove to-morrow; but now you are going to the white man's country to bring ma robert, and when you return you will find me near to the spot on which you wish to dwell." i had then no idea that any healthy spot existed in the country, and thought only of a convenient central situation, adapted for intercourse with the adjacent tribes and with the coast, such as that near to the confluence of the leeba and leeambye. the fever is certainly a drawback to this otherwise important missionary field. the great humidity produced by heavy rains and inundations, the exuberant vegetation caused by fervid heat in rich moist soil, and the prodigious amount of decaying vegetable matter annually exposed after the inundations to the rays of a torrid sun, with a flat surface often covered by forest through which the winds can not pass, all combine to render the climate far from salubrious for any portion of the human family. but the fever, thus caused and rendered virulent, is almost the only disease prevalent in it. there is no consumption or scrofula, and but little insanity. smallpox and measles visited the country some thirty years ago and cut off many, but they have since made no return, although the former has been almost constantly in one part or another of the coast. singularly enough, the people used inoculation for this disease; and in one village, where they seem to have chosen a malignant case from which to inoculate the rest, nearly the whole village was cut off. i have seen but one case of hydrocephalus, a few of epilepsy, none of cholera or cancer, and many diseases common in england are here quite unknown. it is true that i suffered severely from fever, but my experience can not be taken as a fair criterion in the matter. compelled to sleep on the damp ground month after month, exposed to drenching showers, and getting the lower extremities wetted two or three times every day, living on native food (with the exception of sugarless coffee, during the journey to the north and the latter half of the return journey), and that food the manioc roots and meal, which contain so much uncombined starch that the eyes become affected (as in the case of animals fed for experiment on pure gluten or starch), and being exposed during many hours each day in comparative inaction to the direct rays of the sun, the thermometer standing above deg. in the shade--these constitute a more pitiful hygiene than any missionaries who may follow will ever have to endure. i do not mention these privations as if i considered them to be "sacrifices", for i think that the word ought never to be applied to any thing we can do for him who came down from heaven and died for us; but i suppose it is necessary to notice them, in order that no unfavorable opinion may be formed from my experience as to what that of others might be, if less exposed to the vicissitudes of the weather and change of diet. i believe that the interior of this country presents a much more inviting field for the philanthropist than does the west coast, where missionaries of the church missionary, united presbyterian, and other societies have long labored with most astonishing devotedness and never-flagging zeal. there the fevers are much more virulent and more speedily fatal than here, for from deg. south they almost invariably take the intermittent or least fatal type; and their effect being to enlarge the spleen, a complaint which is best treated by change of climate, we have the remedy at hand by passing the th parallel on our way south. but i am not to be understood as intimating that any of the numerous tribes are anxious for instruction: they are not the inquiring spirits we read of in other countries; they do not desire the gospel, because they know nothing about either it or its benefits; but there is no impediment in the way of instruction. every head man would be proud of a european visitor or resident in his territory, and there is perfect security for life and property all over the interior country. the great barriers which have kept africa shut are the unhealthiness of the coast, and the exclusive, illiberal disposition of the border tribes. it has not within the historic period been cut into by deep arms of the sea, and only a small fringe of its population have come into contact with the rest of mankind. race has much to do in the present circumstances of nations; yet it is probable that the unhealthy coast-climate has reacted on the people, and aided both in perpetuating their own degradation and preventing those more inland from having intercourse with the rest of the world. it is to be hoped that these obstacles will be overcome by the more rapid means of locomotion possessed in the present age, if a good highway can become available from the coast into the interior. having found it impracticable to open up a carriage-path to the west, it became a question as to which part of the east coast we should direct our steps. the arabs had come from zanzibar through a peaceful country. they assured me that the powerful chiefs beyond the cazembe on the n.e., viz., moatutu, moaroro, and mogogo, chiefs of the tribes batutu, baroro, and bagogo, would have no objection to my passing through their country. they described the population there as located in small villages like the balonda, and that no difficulty is experienced in traveling among them. they mentioned also that, at a distance of ten days beyond cazembe, their path winds round the end of lake tanganyenka. but when they reach this lake, a little to the northwest of its southern extremity, they find no difficulty in obtaining canoes to carry them over. they sleep on islands, for it is said to require three days in crossing, and may thus be forty or fifty miles broad. here they punt the canoes the whole way, showing that it is shallow. there are many small streams in the path, and three large rivers. this, then, appeared to me to be the safest; but my present object being a path admitting of water rather than land carriage, this route did not promise so much as that by way of the zambesi or leeambye. the makololo knew all the country eastward as far as the kafue, from having lived in former times near the confluence of that river with the zambesi, and they all advised this path in preference to that by the way of zanzibar. the only difficulty that they assured me of was that in the falls of victoria. some recommended my going to sesheke, and crossing over in a n.e. direction to the kafue, which is only six days distant, and descending that river to the zambesi. others recommended me to go on the south bank of the zambesi until i had passed the falls, then get canoes and proceed farther down the river. all spoke strongly of the difficulties of traveling on the north bank, on account of the excessively broken and rocky nature of the country near the river on that side. and when ponuane, who had lately headed a foray there, proposed that i should carry canoes along that side till we reached the spot where the leeambye becomes broad and placid again, others declared that, from the difficulties he himself had experienced in forcing the men of his expedition to do this, they believed that mine would be sure to desert me if i attempted to impose such a task upon them. another objection to traveling on either bank of the river was the prevalence of the tsetse, which is so abundant that the inhabitants can keep no domestic animals except goats. while pondering over these different paths, i could not help regretting my being alone. if i had enjoyed the company of my former companion, mr. oswell, one of us might have taken the zambesi, and the other gone by way of zanzibar. the latter route was decidedly the easiest, because all the inland tribes were friendly, while the tribes in the direction of the zambesi were inimical, and i should now be obliged to lead a party, which the batoka of that country view as hostile invaders, through an enemy's land; but, as the prospect of permanent water-conveyance was good, i decided on going down the zambesi, and keeping on the north bank, because, in the map given by bowditch, tete, the farthest inland station of the portuguese, is erroneously placed on that side. being near the end of september, the rains were expected daily; the clouds were collecting, and the wind blew strongly from the east, but it was excessively hot. all the makololo urged me strongly to remain till the ground should be cooled by the rains; and as it was probable that i should get fever if i commenced my journey now, i resolved to wait. the parts of the country about deg. and deg. suffer from drought and become dusty. it is but the commencement of the humid region to the north, and partakes occasionally of the character of both the wet and dry regions. some idea may be formed of the heat in october by the fact that the thermometer (protected) stood, in the shade of my wagon, at deg. through the day. it rose to deg. if unprotected from the wind; at dark it showed deg.; at o'clock, deg.; and then gradually sunk till sunrise, when it was deg. that is usually the period of greatest cold in each twenty-four hours in this region. the natives, during the period of greatest heat, keep in their huts, which are always pleasantly cool by day, but close and suffocating by night. those who are able to afford it sit guzzling beer or boyaloa. the perspiration produced by copious draughts seems to give enjoyment, the evaporation causing a feeling of coolness. the attendants of the chief, on these occasions, keep up a continuous roar of bantering, raillery, laughing, and swearing. the dance is kept up in the moonlight till past midnight. the women stand clapping their hands continuously, and the old men sit admiringly, and say, "it is really very fine." as crowds came to see me, i employed much of my time in conversation, that being a good mode of conveying instruction. in the public meetings for worship the people listened very attentively, and behaved with more decorum than formerly. they really form a very inviting field for a missionary. surely the oft-told tale of the goodness and love of our heavenly father, in giving up his own son to death for us sinners, will, by the power of his holy spirit, beget love in some of these heathen hearts. st october. before ben habib started for loanda, he asked the daughter of sebituane in marriage. this is the plan the arabs adopt for gaining influence in a tribe, and they have been known to proceed thus cautiously to form connections, and gradually gain so much influence as to draw all the tribe over to their religion. i never heard of any persecution, although the arabs with whom i came in contact seemed much attached to their religion. this daughter of sebituane, named manchunyane, was about twelve years of age. as i was the bosom-friend of her father, i was supposed to have a voice in her disposal, and, on being asked, objected to her being taken away, we knew not whither, and where we might never see her again. as her name implies, she was only a little black, and, besides being as fair as any of the arabs, had quite the arab features; but i have no doubt that ben habib will renew his suit more successfully on some other occasion. in these cases of marriage, the consent of the young women is seldom asked. a maid-servant of sekeletu, however, pronounced by the makololo to be good-looking, was at this time sought in marriage by five young men. sekeletu, happening to be at my wagon when one of these preferred his suit, very coolly ordered all five to stand in a row before the young woman, that she might make her choice. two refused to stand, apparently, because they could not brook the idea of a repulse, although willing enough to take her if sekeletu had acceded to their petition without reference to her will. three dandified fellows stood forth, and she unhesitatingly decided on taking one who was really the best looking. it was amusing to see the mortification exhibited on the black faces of the unsuccessful candidates, while the spectators greeted them with a hearty laugh. during the whole of my stay with the makololo, sekeletu supplied my wants abundantly, appointing some cows to furnish me with milk, and, when he went out to hunt, sent home orders for slaughtered oxen to be given. that the food was not given in a niggardly spirit may be inferred from the fact that, when i proposed to depart on the th of october, he protested against my going off in such a hot sun. "only wait," said he, "for the first shower, and then i will let you go." this was reasonable, for the thermometer, placed upon a deal box in the sun, rose to deg. it stood at deg. in the shade by day, and deg. at sunset. if my experiments were correct, the blood of a european is of a higher temperature than that of an african. the bulb, held under my tongue, stood at deg.; under that of the natives, at deg. there was much sickness in the town, and no wonder, for part of the water left by the inundation still formed a large pond in the centre. even the plains between linyanti and sesheke had not yet been freed from the waters of the inundation. they had risen higher than usual, and for a long time canoes passed from the one place to the other, a distance of upward of miles, in nearly a straight line. we found many patches of stagnant water, which, when disturbed by our passing through them, evolved strong effluvia of sulphureted hydrogen. at other times these spots exhibit an efflorescence of the nitrate of soda; they also contain abundance of lime, probably from decaying vegetable matter, and from these may have emanated the malaria which caused the present sickness. i have often remarked this effluvium in sickly spots, and can not help believing but that it has some connection with fever, though i am quite aware of dr. macwilliams's unsuccessful efforts to discover sulphureted hydrogen, by the most delicate tests, in the niger expedition. i had plenty of employment, for, besides attending to the severer cases, i had perpetual calls on my attention. the town contained at least inhabitants, and every one thought that he might come, and at least look at me. in talking with some of the more intelligent in the evenings, the conversation having turned from inquiries respecting eclipses of the sun and moon to that other world where jesus reigns, they let me know that my attempts to enlighten them had not been without some small effect. "many of the children," said they, "talk about the strange things you bring to their ears, but the old men show a little opposition by saying, 'do we know what he is talking about?'" ntlaria and others complain of treacherous memories, and say, "when we hear words about other things, we hold them fast; but when we hear you tell much more wonderful things than any we have ever heard before, we don't know how it is, they run away from our hearts." these are the more intelligent of my makololo friends. on the majority the teaching produces no appreciable effect; they assent to the truth with the most perplexing indifference, adding, "but we don't know," or, "we do not understand." my medical intercourse with them enabled me to ascertain their moral status better than a mere religious teacher could do. they do not attempt to hide the evil, as men often do, from their spiritual instructors; but i have found it difficult to come to a conclusion on their character. they sometimes perform actions remarkably good, and sometimes as strangely the opposite. i have been unable to ascertain the motive for the good, or account for the callousness of conscience with which they perpetrate the bad. after long observation, i came to the conclusion that they are just such a strange mixture of good and evil as men are every where else. there is not among them an approach to that constant stream of benevolence flowing from the rich to the poor which we have in england, nor yet the unostentatious attentions which we have among our own poor to each other. yet there are frequent instances of genuine kindness and liberality, as well as actions of an opposite character. the rich show kindness to the poor in expectation of services, and a poor person who has no relatives will seldom be supplied even with water in illness, and, when dead, will be dragged out to be devoured by the hyaenas instead of being buried. relatives alone will condescend to touch a dead body. it would be easy to enumerate instances of inhumanity which i have witnessed. an interesting-looking girl came to my wagon one day in a state of nudity, and almost a skeleton. she was a captive from another tribe, and had been neglected by the man who claimed her. having supplied her wants, i made inquiry for him, and found that he had been unsuccessful in raising a crop of corn, and had no food to give her. i volunteered to take her; but he said he would allow me to feed her and make her fat, and then take her away. i protested against his heartlessness; and, as he said he could "not part with his child," i was precluded from attending to her wants. in a day or two she was lost sight of. she had gone out a little way from the town, and, being too weak to return, had been cruelly left to perish. another day i saw a poor boy going to the water to drink, apparently in a starving condition. this case i brought before the chief in council, and found that his emaciation was ascribed to disease and want combined. he was not one of the makololo, but a member of a subdued tribe. i showed them that any one professing to claim a child, and refusing proper nutriment, would be guilty of his death. sekeletu decided that the owner of this boy should give up his alleged right rather than destroy the child. when i took him he was so far gone as to be in the cold stage of starvation, but was soon brought round by a little milk given three or four times a day. on leaving linyanti i handed him over to the charge of his chief, sekeletu, who feeds his servants very well. on the other hand, i have seen instances in which both men and women have taken up little orphans and carefully reared them as their own children. by a selection of cases of either kind, it would not be difficult to make these people appear excessively good or uncommonly bad. i still possessed some of the coffee which i had brought from angola, and some of the sugar which i had left in my wagon. so long as the sugar lasted, sekeletu favored me with his company at meals; but the sugar soon came to a close. the makololo, as formerly mentioned, were well acquainted with the sugar-cane, as it is cultivated by the barotse, but never knew that sugar could be got from it. when i explained the process by which it was produced, sekeletu asked if i could not buy him an apparatus for the purpose of making sugar. he said that he would plant the cane largely if he only had the means of making the sugar from it. i replied that i was unable to purchase a mill, when he instantly rejoined, "why not take ivory to buy it?" as i had been living at his expense, i was glad of the opportunity to show my gratitude by serving him; and when he and his principal men understood that i was willing to execute a commission, sekeletu gave me an order for a sugar-mill, and for all the different varieties of clothing that he had ever seen, especially a mohair coat, a good rifle, beads, brass-wire, etc., etc., and wound up by saying, "and any other beautiful thing you may see in your own country." as to the quantity of ivory required to execute the commission, i said i feared that a large amount would be necessary. both he and his councilors replied, "the ivory is all your own; if you leave any in the country it will be your own fault." he was also anxious for horses. the two i had left with him when i went to loanda were still living, and had been of great use to him in hunting the giraffe and eland, and he was now anxious to have a breed. this, i thought, might be obtained at the portuguese settlements. all were very much delighted with the donkeys we had brought from loanda. as we found that they were not affected by the bite of the tsetse, and there was a prospect of the breed being continued, it was gratifying to see the experiment of their introduction so far successful. the donkeys came as frisky as kids all the way from loanda until we began to descend the leeambye. there we came upon so many interlacing branches of the river, and were obliged to drag them through such masses of tangled aquatic plants, that we half drowned them, and were at last obliged to leave them somewhat exhausted at naliele. they excited the unbounded admiration of my men by their knowledge of the different kinds of plants, which, as they remarked, "the animals had never before seen in their own country;" and when the donkeys indulged in their music, they startled the inhabitants more than if they had been lions. we never rode them, nor yet the horse which had been given by the bishop, for fear of hurting them by any work. although the makololo were so confiding, the reader must not imagine that they would be so to every individual who might visit them. much of my influence depended upon the good name given me by the bakwains, and that i secured only through a long course of tolerably good conduct. no one ever gains much influence in this country without purity and uprightness. the acts of a stranger are keenly scrutinized by both young and old, and seldom is the judgment pronounced, even by the heathen, unfair or uncharitable. i have heard women speaking in admiration of a white man because he was pure, and never was guilty of any secret immorality. had he been, they would have known it, and, untutored heathen though they be, would have despised him in consequence. secret vice becomes known throughout the tribe; and while one, unacquainted with the language, may imagine a peccadillo to be hidden, it is as patent to all as it would be in london had he a placard on his back. th october, . the first continuous rain of the season commenced during the night, the wind being from the n.e., as it always was on like occasions at kolobeng. the rainy season was thus begun, and i made ready to go. the mother of sekeletu prepared a bag of ground-nuts, by frying them in cream with a little salt, as a sort of sandwiches for my journey. this is considered food fit for a chief. others ground the maize from my own garden into meal, and sekeletu pointed out sekwebu and kanyata as the persons who should head the party intended to form my company. sekwebu had been captured by the matebele when a little boy, and the tribe in which he was a captive had migrated to the country near tete; he had traveled along both banks of the zambesi several times, and was intimately acquainted with the dialects spoken there. i found him to be a person of great prudence and sound judgment, and his subsequent loss at the mauritius has been, ever since, a source of sincere regret. he at once recommended our keeping well away from the river, on account of the tsetse and rocky country, assigning also as a reason for it that the leeambye beyond the falls turns round to the n.n.e. mamire, who had married the mother of sekeletu, on coming to bid me farewell before starting, said, "you are now going among people who can not be trusted because we have used them badly; but you go with a different message from any they ever heard before, and jesus will be with you and help you, though among enemies; and if he carries you safely, and brings you and ma robert back again, i shall say he has bestowed a great favor upon me. may we obtain a path whereby we may visit and be visited by other tribes, and by white men!" on telling him my fears that he was still inclined to follow the old marauding system, which prevented intercourse, and that he, from his influential position, was especially guilty in the late forays, he acknowledged all rather too freely for my taste, but seemed quite aware that the old system was far from right. mentioning my inability to pay the men who were to accompany me, he replied, "a man wishes, of course, to appear among his friends, after a long absence, with something of his own to show; the whole of the ivory in the country is yours, so you must take as much as you can, and sekeletu will furnish men to carry it." these remarks of mamire are quoted literally, in order to show the state of mind of the most influential in the tribe. and as i wish to give the reader a fair idea of the other side of the question as well, it may be mentioned that motibe parried the imputation of the guilt of marauding by every possible subterfuge. he would not admit that they had done wrong, and laid the guilt of the wars in which the makololo had engaged on the boers, the matebele, and every other tribe except his own. when quite a youth, motibe's family had been attacked by a party of boers; he hid himself in an ant-eater's hole, but was drawn out and thrashed with a whip of hippopotamus hide. when enjoined to live in peace, he would reply, "teach the boers to lay down their arms first." yet motibe, on other occasions, seemed to feel the difference between those who are christians indeed and those who are so only in name. in all our discussions we parted good friends. chapter . departure from linyanti--a thunder-storm--an act of genuine kindness-- fitted out a second time by the makololo--sail down the leeambye-- sekote's kotla and human skulls; his grave adorned with elephants' tusks--victoria falls--native names--columns of vapor--gigantic crack-- wear of the rocks--shrines of the barimo--"the pestle of the gods"-- second visit to the falls--island garden--store-house island-- native diviners--a european diviner--makololo foray--marauder to be fined--mambari--makololo wish to stop mambari slave-trading--part with sekeletu--night traveling--river lekone--ancient fresh-water lakes--formation of lake ngami--native traditions--drainage of the great valley--native reports of the country to the north--maps--moyara's village--savage customs of the batoka--a chain of trading stations--remedy against tsetse--"the well of joy"--first traces of trade with europeans--knocking out the front teeth--facetious explanation--degradation of the batoka--description of the traveling party--cross the unguesi--geological formation--ruins of a large town-- productions of the soil similar to those in angola--abundance of fruit. on the d of november we bade adieu to our friends at linyanti, accompanied by sekeletu and about followers. we were all fed at his expense, and he took cattle for this purpose from every station we came to. the principal men of the makololo, lebeole, ntlarie, nkwatlele, etc., were also of the party. we passed through the patch of the tsetse, which exists between linyanti and sesheke, by night. the majority of the company went on by daylight, in order to prepare our beds. sekeletu and i, with about forty young men, waited outside the tsetse till dark. we then went forward, and about ten o'clock it became so pitchy dark that both horses and men were completely blinded. the lightning spread over the sky, forming eight or ten branches at a time, in shape exactly like those of a tree. this, with great volumes of sheet-lightning, enabled us at times to see the whole country. the intervals between the flashes were so densely dark as to convey the idea of stone-blindness. the horses trembled, cried out, and turned round, as if searching for each other, and every new flash revealed the men taking different directions, laughing, and stumbling against each other. the thunder was of that tremendously loud kind only to be heard in tropical countries, and which friends from india have assured me is louder in africa than any they have ever heard elsewhere. then came a pelting rain, which completed our confusion. after the intense heat of the day, we soon felt miserably cold, and turned aside to a fire we saw in the distance. this had been made by some people on their march; for this path is seldom without numbers of strangers passing to and from the capital. my clothing having gone on, i lay down on the cold ground, expecting to spend a miserable night; but sekeletu kindly covered me with his own blanket, and lay uncovered himself. i was much affected by this act of genuine kindness. if such men must perish by the advance of civilization, as certain races of animals do before others, it is a pity. god grant that ere this time comes they may receive that gospel which is a solace for the soul in death! while at sesheke, sekeletu supplied me with twelve oxen--three of which were accustomed to being ridden upon--hoes, and beads to purchase a canoe when we should strike the leeambye beyond the falls. he likewise presented abundance of good fresh butter and honey, and did every thing in his power to make me comfortable for the journey. i was entirely dependent on his generosity, for the goods i originally brought from the cape were all expended by the time i set off from linyanti to the west coast. i there drew pounds of my salary, paid my men with it, and purchased goods for the return journey to linyanti. these being now all expended, the makololo again fitted me out, and sent me on to the east coast. i was thus dependent on their bounty, and that of other africans, for the means of going from linyanti to loanda, and again from linyanti to the east coast, and i feel deeply grateful to them. coin would have been of no benefit, for gold and silver are quite unknown. we were here joined by moriantsane, uncle of sekeletu and head man of sesheke, and, entering canoes on the th, some sailed down the river to the confluence of the chobe, while others drove the cattle along the banks, spending one night at mparia, the island at the confluence of the chobe, which is composed of trap, having crystals of quartz in it coated with a pellicle of green copper ore. attempting to proceed down the river next day, we were detained some hours by a strong east wind raising waves so large as to threaten to swamp the canoes. the river here is very large and deep, and contains two considerable islands, which from either bank seem to be joined to the opposite shore. while waiting for the wind to moderate, my friends related the traditions of these islands, and, as usual, praised the wisdom of sebituane in balking the batoka, who formerly enticed wandering tribes to them, and starved them, by compelling the chiefs to remain by his side till all his cattle and people were ferried over. the barotse believe that at certain parts of the river a tremendous monster lies hid, and that it will catch a canoe, and hold it fast and motionless, in spite of the utmost exertions of the paddlers. while near nameta they even objected to pass a spot supposed to be haunted, and proceeded along a branch instead of the main stream. they believe that some of them possess a knowledge of the proper prayer to lay the monster. it is strange to find fables similar to those of the more northern nations even in the heart of africa. can they be the vestiges of traditions of animals which no longer exist? the fossil bones which lie in the calcareous tufa of this region will yet, we hope, reveal the ancient fauna. having descended about ten miles, we came to the island of nampene, at the beginning of the rapids, where we were obliged to leave the canoes and proceed along the banks on foot. the next evening we slept opposite the island of chondo, and, then crossing the lekone or lekwine, early the following morning were at the island of sekote, called kalai. this sekote was the last of the batoka chiefs whom sebituane rooted out. the island is surrounded by a rocky shore and deep channels, through which the river rushes with great force. sekote, feeling secure in his island home, ventured to ferry over the matebele enemies of sebituane. when they had retired, sebituane made one of those rapid marches which he always adopted in every enterprise. he came down the leeambye from naliele, sailing by day along the banks, and during the night in the middle of the stream, to avoid the hippopotami. when he reached kalai, sekote took advantage of the larger canoes they employ in the rapids, and fled during the night to the opposite bank. most of his people were slain or taken captive, and the island has ever since been under the makololo. it is large enough to contain a considerable town. on the northern side i found the kotla of the elder sekote, garnished with numbers of human skulls mounted on poles: a large heap of the crania of hippopotami, the tusks untouched except by time, stood on one side. at a short distance, under some trees, we saw the grave of sekote, ornamented with seventy large elephants' tusks planted round it with the points turned inward, and there were thirty more placed over the resting-places of his relatives. these were all decaying from the effects of the sun and weather; but a few, which had enjoyed the shade, were in a pretty good condition. i felt inclined to take a specimen of the tusks of the hippopotami, as they were the largest i had ever seen, but feared that the people would look upon me as a "resurrectionist" if i did, and regard any unfavorable event which might afterward occur as a punishment for the sacrilege. the batoka believe that sekote had a pot of medicine buried here, which, when opened, would cause an epidemic in the country. these tyrants acted much on the fears of their people. as this was the point from which we intended to strike off to the northeast, i resolved on the following day to visit the falls of victoria, called by the natives mosioatunya, or more anciently shongwe. of these we had often heard since we came into the country; indeed, one of the questions asked by sebituane was, "have you smoke that sounds in your country?" they did not go near enough to examine them, but, viewing them with awe at a distance, said, in reference to the vapor and noise, "mosi oa tunya" (smoke does sound there). it was previously called shongwe, the meaning of which i could not ascertain. the word for a "pot" resembles this, and it may mean a seething caldron, but i am not certain of it. being persuaded that mr. oswell and myself were the very first europeans who ever visited the zambesi in the centre of the country, and that this is the connecting link between the known and unknown portions of that river, i decided to use the same liberty as the makololo did, and gave the only english name i have affixed to any part of the country. no better proof of previous ignorance of this river could be desired than that an untraveled gentleman, who had spent a great part of his life in the study of the geography of africa, and knew every thing written on the subject from the time of ptolemy downward, actually asserted in the "athenaeum", while i was coming up the red sea, that this magnificent river, the leeambye, had "no connection with the zambesi, but flowed under the kalahari desert, and became lost;" and "that, as all the old maps asserted, the zambesi took its rise in the very hills to which we have now come." this modest assertion smacks exactly as if a native of timbuctoo should declare that the "thames" and the "pool" were different rivers, he having seen neither the one nor the other. leeambye and zambesi mean the very same thing, viz., the river. sekeletu intended to accompany me, but, one canoe only having come instead of the two he had ordered, he resigned it to me. after twenty minutes' sail from kalai we came in sight, for the first time, of the columns of vapor appropriately called "smoke", rising at a distance of five or six miles, exactly as when large tracts of grass are burned in africa. five columns now arose, and, bending in the direction of the wind, they seemed placed against a low ridge covered with trees; the tops of the columns at this distance appeared to mingle with the clouds. they were white below, and higher up became dark, so as to simulate smoke very closely. the whole scene was extremely beautiful; the banks and islands dotted over the river are adorned with sylvan vegetation of great variety of color and form. at the period of our visit several trees were spangled over with blossoms. trees have each their own physiognomy. there, towering over all, stands the great burly baobab, each of whose enormous arms would form the trunk of a large tree, beside groups of graceful palms, which, with their feathery-shaped leaves depicted on the sky, lend their beauty to the scene. as a hieroglyphic they always mean "far from home", for one can never get over their foreign air in a picture or landscape. the silvery mohonono, which in the tropics is in form like the cedar of lebanon, stands in pleasing contrast with the dark color of the motsouri, whose cypress-form is dotted over at present with its pleasant scarlet fruit. some trees resemble the great spreading oak, others assume the character of our own elms and chestnuts; but no one can imagine the beauty of the view from any thing witnessed in england. it had never been seen before by european eyes; but scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight. the only want felt is that of mountains in the background. the falls are bounded on three sides by ridges or feet in height, which are covered with forest, with the red soil appearing among the trees. when about half a mile from the falls, i left the canoe by which we had come down thus far, and embarked in a lighter one, with men well acquainted with the rapids, who, by passing down the centre of the stream in the eddies and still places caused by many jutting rocks, brought me to an island situated in the middle of the river, and on the edge of the lip over which the water rolls. in coming hither there was danger of being swept down by the streams which rushed along on each side of the island; but the river was now low, and we sailed where it is totally impossible to go when the water is high. but, though we had reached the island, and were within a few yards of the spot, a view from which would solve the whole problem, i believe that no one could perceive where the vast body of water went; it seemed to lose itself in the earth, the opposite lip of the fissure into which it disappeared being only feet distant. at least i did not comprehend it until, creeping with awe to the verge, i peered down into a large rent which had been made from bank to bank of the broad zambesi, and saw that a stream of a thousand yards broad leaped down a hundred feet, and then became suddenly compressed into a space of fifteen or twenty yards. the entire falls are simply a crack made in a hard basaltic rock from the right to the left bank of the zambesi, and then prolonged from the left bank away through thirty or forty miles of hills. if one imagines the thames filled with low, tree-covered hills immediately beyond the tunnel, extending as far as gravesend, the bed of black basaltic rock instead of london mud, and a fissure made therein from one end of the tunnel to the other down through the keystones of the arch, and prolonged from the left end of the tunnel through thirty miles of hills, the pathway being feet down from the bed of the river instead of what it is, with the lips of the fissure from to feet apart, then fancy the thames leaping bodily into the gulf, and forced there to change its direction, and flow from the right to the left bank, and then rush boiling and roaring through the hills, he may have some idea of what takes place at this, the most wonderful sight i had witnessed in africa. in looking down into the fissure on the right of the island, one sees nothing but a dense white cloud, which, at the time we visited the spot, had two bright rainbows on it. (the sun was on the meridian, and the declination about equal to the latitude of the place.) from this cloud rushed up a great jet of vapor exactly like steam, and it mounted or feet high; there condensing, it changed its hue to that of dark smoke, and came back in a constant shower, which soon wetted us to the skin. this shower falls chiefly on the opposite side of the fissure, and a few yards back from the lip there stands a straight hedge of evergreen trees, whose leaves are always wet. from their roots a number of little rills run back into the gulf, but, as they flow down the steep wall there, the column of vapor, in its ascent, licks them up clean off the rock, and away they mount again. they are constantly running down, but never reach the bottom. on the left of the island we see the water at the bottom, a white rolling mass moving away to the prolongation of the fissure, which branches off near the left bank of the river. a piece of the rock has fallen off a spot on the left of the island, and juts out from the water below, and from it i judged the distance which the water falls to be about feet. the walls of this gigantic crack are perpendicular, and composed of one homogeneous mass of rock. the edge of that side over which the water falls is worn off two or three feet, and pieces have fallen away, so as to give it somewhat of a serrated appearance. that over which the water does not fall is quite straight, except at the left corner, where a rent appears, and a piece seems inclined to fall off. upon the whole, it is nearly in the state in which it was left at the period of its formation. the rock is dark brown in color, except about ten feet from the bottom, which is discolored by the annual rise of the water to that or a greater height. on the left side of the island we have a good view of the mass of water which causes one of the columns of vapor to ascend, as it leaps quite clear of the rock, and forms a thick unbroken fleece all the way to the bottom. its whiteness gave the idea of snow, a sight i had not seen for many a day. as it broke into (if i may use the term) pieces of water, all rushing on in the same direction, each gave off several rays of foam, exactly as bits of steel, when burned in oxygen gas, give off rays of sparks. the snow-white sheet seemed like myriads of small comets rushing on in one direction, each of which left behind its nucleus rays of foam. i never saw the appearance referred to noticed elsewhere. it seemed to be the effect of the mass of water leaping at once clear of the rock, and but slowly breaking up into spray. i have mentioned that we saw five columns of vapor ascending from this strange abyss. they are evidently formed by the compression suffered by the force of the water's own fall into an unyielding wedge-shaped space. of the five columns, two on the right and one on the left of the island were the largest, and the streams which formed them seemed each to exceed in size the falls of the clyde at stonebyres when that river is in flood. this was the period of low water in the leeambye; but, as far as i could guess, there was a flow of five or six hundred yards of water, which, at the edge of the fall, seemed at least three feet deep. i write in the hope that others, more capable of judging distances than myself, will visit the scene, and i state simply the impressions made on my mind at the time. i thought, and do still think, the river above the falls to be one thousand yards broad; but i am a poor judge of distances on water, for i showed a naval friend what i supposed to be four hundred yards in the bay of loanda, and, to my surprise, he pronounced it to be nine hundred. i tried to measure the leeambye with a strong thread, the only line i had in my possession, but, when the men had gone two or three hundred yards, they got into conversation, and did not hear us shouting that the line had become entangled. by still going on they broke it, and, being carried away down the stream, it was lost on a snag. in vain i tried to bring to my recollection the way i had been taught to measure a river by taking an angle with the sextant. that i once knew it, and that it was easy, were all the lost ideas i could recall, and they only increased my vexation. however, i measured the river farther down by another plan, and then i discovered that the portuguese had measured it at tete, and found it a little over one thousand yards. at the falls it is as broad as at tete, if not more so. whoever may come after me will not, i trust, find reason to say i have indulged in exaggeration.* with respect to the drawing, it must be borne in mind that it was composed from a rude sketch as viewed from the island, which exhibited the columns of vapor only, and a ground plan. the artist has given a good idea of the scene, but, by way of explanation, he has shown more of the depth of the fissure than is visible except by going close to the edge. the left-hand column, and that farthest off, are the smallest, and all ought to have been a little more tapering at the tops. * the river is about one mile ( . km) wide at the falls, and plunges over feet at the centre. livingstone greatly underestimated both distances.--a. l., . the fissure is said by the makololo to be very much deeper farther to the eastward; there is one part at which the walls are so sloping that people accustomed to it can go down by descending in a sitting position. the makololo on one occasion, pursuing some fugitive batoka, saw them, unable to stop the impetus of their flight at the edge, literally dashed to pieces at the bottom. they beheld the stream like a "white cord" at the bottom, and so far down (probably feet) that they became giddy, and were fain to go away holding on to the ground. now, though the edge of the rock over which the river falls does not show wearing more than three feet, and there is no appearance of the opposite wall being worn out at the bottom in the parts exposed to view, yet it is probable that, where it has flowed beyond the walls, the sides of the fissure may have given way, and the parts out of sight may be broader than the "white cord" on the surface. there may even be some ramifications of the fissure, which take a portion of the stream quite beneath the rocks; but this i did not learn. if we take the want of much wear on the lip of hard basaltic rock as of any value, the period when this rock was riven is not geologically very remote. i regretted the want of proper means of measuring and marking its width at the falls, in order that, at some future time, the question whether it is progressive or not might be tested. it seemed as if a palm-tree could be laid across it from the island. and if it is progressive, as it would mark a great natural drainage being effected, it might furnish a hope that africa will one day become a healthy continent. it is, at any rate, very much changed in respect to its lakes within a comparatively recent period. at three spots near these falls, one of them the island in the middle, on which we were, three batoka chiefs offered up prayers and sacrifices to the barimo. they chose their places of prayer within the sound of the roar of the cataract, and in sight of the bright bows in the cloud. they must have looked upon the scene with awe. fear may have induced the selection. the river itself is to them mysterious. the words of the canoe-song are, "the leeambye! nobody knows whence it comes and whither it goes." the play of colors of the double iris on the cloud, seen by them elsewhere only as the rainbow, may have led them to the idea that this was the abode of deity. some of the makololo, who went with me near to gonye, looked upon the same sign with awe. when seen in the heavens it is named "motse oa barimo"--the pestle of the gods. here they could approach the emblem, and see it stand steadily above the blustering uproar below--a type of him who sits supreme--alone unchangeable, though ruling over all changing things. but, not aware of his true character, they had no admiration of the beautiful and good in their bosoms. they did not imitate his benevolence, for they were a bloody, imperious crew, and sebituane performed a noble service in the expulsion from their fastnesses of these cruel "lords of the isles". having feasted my eyes long on the beautiful sight, i returned to my friends at kalai, and saying to sekeletu that he had nothing else worth showing in his country, his curiosity was excited to visit it the next day. i returned with the intention of taking a lunar observation from the island itself, but the clouds were unfavorable, consequently all my determinations of position refer to kalai. (lat. d ' " s., long. d ' e.) sekeletu acknowledged to feeling a little nervous at the probability* of being sucked into the gulf before reaching the island. his companions amused themselves by throwing stones down, and wondered to see them diminishing in size, and even disappearing, before they reached the water at the bottom. * in modern american english, the word "possibility" is more appropriate here, and elsewhere in the text where "probability" is used.--a. l., . i had another object in view in my return to the island. i observed that it was covered with trees, the seeds of which had probably come down with the stream from the distant north, and several of which i had seen nowhere else, and every now and then the wind wafted a little of the condensed vapor over it, and kept the soil in a state of moisture, which caused a sward of grass, growing as green as on an english lawn. i selected a spot--not too near the chasm, for there the constant deposition of the moisture nourished numbers of polypi of a mushroom shape and fleshy consistence, but somewhat back--and made a little garden. i there planted about a hundred peach and apricot stones, and a quantity of coffee-seeds. i had attempted fruit-trees before, but, when left in charge of my makololo friends, they were always allowed to wither, after having vegetated, by being forgotten. i bargained for a hedge with one of the makololo, and if he is faithful, i have great hopes of mosioatunya's abilities as a nursery-man. my only source of fear is the hippopotami, whose footprints i saw on the island. when the garden was prepared, i cut my initials on a tree, and the date . this was the only instance in which i indulged in this piece of vanity. the garden stands in front, and, were there no hippopotami, i have no doubt but this will be the parent of all the gardens which may yet be in this new country. we then went up to kalai again. on passing up we had a view of the hut on the island where my goods had lain so long in safety. it was under a group of palm-trees, and sekeletu informed me that, so fully persuaded were most of the makololo of the presence of dangerous charms in the packages, that, had i not returned to tell them the contrary, they never would have been touched. some of the diviners had been so positive in their decisions on the point, that the men who lifted a bag thought they felt a live kid in it. the diviners always quote their predictions when they happen to tally with the event. they declared that the whole party which went to loanda had perished; and as i always quoted the instances in which they failed, many of them refused to throw the "bola" (instruments of divination) when i was near. this was a noted instance of failure. it would have afforded me equal if not greater pleasure to have exposed the failure, if such it had been, of the european diviner whose paper lay a whole year on this island, but i was obliged to confess that he had been successful with his "bola", and could only comfort myself with the idea that, though sir roderick murchison's discourse had lain so long within sight and sound of the magnificent falls, i had been "cut out" by no one in their discovery. i saw the falls at low water, and the columns of vapor when five or six miles distant. when the river is full, or in flood, the columns, it is said, can be seen ten miles off, and the sound is quite distinct somewhat below kalai, or about an equal distance. no one can then go to the island in the middle. the next visitor must bear these points in mind in comparing his description with mine. we here got information of a foray which had been made by a makololo man in the direction we were going. this instance of marauding was so much in accordance with the system which has been pursued in this country that i did not wonder at it. but the man had used sekeletu's name as having sent him, and, the proof being convincing, he would undoubtedly be fined. as that would be the first instance of a fine being levied for marauding, i looked upon it as the beginning of a better state of things. in tribes which have been accustomed to cattle-stealing, the act is not considered immoral in the way that theft is. before i knew the language well, i said to a chief, "you stole the cattle of so and so." "no, i did not steal them," was the reply, "i only lifted them." the word "gapa" is identical with the highland term for the same deed. another point came to our notice here. some mambari had come down thus far, and induced the batoka to sell a very large tusk which belonged to sekeletu for a few bits of cloth. they had gone among the batoka who need hoes, and, having purchased some of these from the people near sesheke, induced the others living farther east to sell both ivory and children. they would not part with children for clothing or beads, but agriculture with wooden hoes is so laborious, that the sight of the hoes prevailed. the makololo proposed to knock the mambari on the head as the remedy the next time they came; but on my proposing that they should send hoes themselves, and thereby secure the ivory in a quiet way, all approved highly of the idea, and pitsane and mohorisi expatiated on the value of the ivory, their own willingness to go and sell it at loanda, and the disgust with which the mambari whom we met in angola had looked upon their attempt to reach the proper market. if nothing untoward happens, i think there is a fair prospect of the trade in slaves being abolished in a natural way in this quarter, pitsane and mohorisi having again expressed their willingness to go away back to loanda if sekeletu would give them orders. this was the more remarkable, as both have plenty of food and leisure at home. th november. sekeletu and his large party having conveyed me thus far, and furnished me with a company of men to carry the tusks to the coast, we bade adieu to the makololo, and proceeded northward to the lekone. the country around is very beautiful, and was once well peopled with batoka, who possessed enormous herds of cattle. when sebituane came in former times, with his small but warlike party of makololo, to this spot, a general rising took place of the batoka through the whole country, in order to "eat him up"; but his usual success followed him, and, dispersing them, the makololo obtained so many cattle that they could not take any note of the herds of sheep and goats. the tsetse has been brought by buffaloes into some districts where formerly cattle abounded. this obliged us to travel the first few stages by night. we could not well detect the nature of the country in the dim moonlight; the path, however, seemed to lead along the high bank of what may have been the ancient bed of the zambesi before the fissure was made. the lekone now winds in it in an opposite direction to that in which the ancient river must have flowed. both the lekone and unguesi flow back toward the centre of the country, and in an opposite direction to that of the main stream. it was plain, then, that we were ascending the farther we went eastward. the level of the lower portion of the lekone is about two hundred feet above that of the zambesi at the falls, and considerably more than the altitude of linyanti; consequently, when the river flowed along this ancient bed instead of through the rent, the whole country between this and the ridge beyond libebe westward, lake ngami and the zouga southward, and eastward beyond nchokotsa, was one large fresh-water lake. there is abundant evidence of the existence and extent of this vast lake in the longitudes indicated, and stretching from deg. to deg. south latitude. the whole of this space is paved with a bed of tufa, more or less soft, according as it is covered with soil, or left exposed to atmospheric influences. wherever ant-eaters make deep holes in this ancient bottom, fresh-water shells are thrown out, identical with those now existing in the lake ngami and the zambesi. the barotse valley was another lake of a similar nature; and one existed beyond masiko, and a fourth near the orange river. the whole of these lakes were let out by means of cracks or fissures made in the subtending sides by the upheaval of the country. the fissure made at the victoria falls let out the water of this great valley, and left a small patch in what was probably its deepest portion, and is now called lake ngami. the falls of gonye furnished an outlet to the lake of the barotse valley, and so of the other great lakes of remote times. the congo also finds its way to the sea through a narrow fissure, and so does the orange river in the west; while other rents made in the eastern ridge, as the victoria falls and those to the east of tanganyenka, allowed the central waters to drain eastward. all the african lakes hitherto discovered are shallow, in consequence of being the mere 'residua' of very much larger ancient bodies of water. there can be no doubt that this continent was, in former times, very much more copiously supplied with water than at present, but a natural process of drainage has been going on for ages. deep fissures are made, probably by the elevation of the land, proofs of which are seen in modern shells imbedded in marly tufa all round the coast-line. whether this process of desiccation is as rapid throughout the continent as, in a letter to the late dean buckland, in , i showed to have been the case in the bechuana country, it is not for me to say; but, though there is a slight tradition of the waters having burst through the low hills south of the barotse, there is none of a sudden upheaval accompanied by an earthquake. the formation of the crack of mosioatunya is perhaps too ancient for that; yet, although information of any remarkable event is often transmitted in the native names, and they even retain a tradition which looks like the story of solomon and the harlots, there is not a name like tom earthquake or sam shake-the-ground in the whole country. they have a tradition which may refer to the building of the tower of babel, but it ends in the bold builders getting their crowns cracked by the fall of the scaffolding; and that they came out of a cave called "loey" (noe?) in company with the beasts, and all point to it in one direction, viz., the n.n.e. loey, too, is an exception in the language, as they use masculine instead of neuter pronouns to it. if we take a glance back at the great valley, the form the rivers have taken imparts the idea of a lake slowly drained out, for they have cut out for themselves beds exactly like what we may see in the soft mud of a shallow pool of rain-water, when that is let off by a furrow. this idea would probably not strike a person on coming first into the country, but more extensive acquaintance with the river system certainly would convey the impression. none of the rivers in the valley of the leeambye have slopes down to their beds. indeed, many parts are much like the thames at the isle of dogs, only the leeambye has to rise twenty or thirty feet before it can overflow some of its meadows. the rivers have each a bed of low water--a simple furrow cut sharply out of the calcareous tufa which lined the channel of the ancient lake--and another of inundation. when the beds of inundation are filled, they assume the appearance of chains of lakes. when the clyde fills the holms ("haughs") above bothwell bridge and retires again into its channel, it resembles the river we are speaking of, only here there are no high lands sloping down toward the bed of inundation, for the greater part of the region is not elevated fifty feet above them. even the rocky banks of the leeambye below gonye, and the ridges bounding the barotse valley, are not more than two or three hundred feet in altitude over the general dead level. many of the rivers are very tortuous in their course, the chobe and simah particularly so; and, if we may receive the testimony of the natives, they form what anatomists call 'anastamosis', or a network of rivers. thus, for instance, they assured me that if they go up the simah in a canoe, they can enter the chobe, and descend that river to the leeambye; or they may go up the kama and come down the simah; and so in the case of the kafue. it is reputed to be connected in this way with the leeambye in the north, and to part with the loangwa; and the makololo went from the one into the other in canoes. and even though the interlacing may not be quite to the extent believed by the natives, the country is so level and the rivers so tortuous that i see no improbability in the conclusion that here is a network of waters of a very peculiar nature. the reason why i am disposed to place a certain amount of confidence in the native reports is this: when mr. oswell and i discovered the zambesi in the centre of the continent in , being unable to ascend it at the time ourselves, we employed the natives to draw a map embodying their ideas of that river. we then sent the native map home with the same view that i now mention their ideas of the river system, namely, in order to be an aid to others in farther investigations. when i was able to ascend the leeambye to deg. south, and subsequently descend it, i found, after all the care i could bestow, that the alterations i was able to make in the original native plan were very trifling. the general idea their map gave was wonderfully accurate; and now i give, in the larger map appended, their views of the other rivers, in the hope that they may prove helpful to any traveler who may pursue the investigation farther. th. we remained a day at the village of moyara. here the valley in which the lekone flows trends away to the eastward, while our course is more to the northeast. the country is rocky and rough, the soil being red sand, which is covered with beautiful green trees, yielding abundance of wild fruits. the father of moyara was a powerful chief, but the son now sits among the ruins of the town, with four or five wives and very few people. at his hamlet a number of stakes are planted in the ground, and i counted fifty-four human skulls hung on their points. these were matebele, who, unable to approach sebituane on the island of loyela, had returned sick and famishing. moyara's father took advantage of their reduced condition, and after putting them to death, mounted their heads in the batoka fashion. the old man who perpetrated this deed now lies in the middle of his son's huts, with a lot of rotten ivory over his grave. one can not help feeling thankful that the reign of such wretches is over. they inhabited the whole of this side of the country, and were probably the barrier to the extension of the portuguese commerce in this direction. when looking at these skulls, i remarked to moyara that many of them were those of mere boys. he assented readily, and pointed them out as such. i asked why his father had killed boys. "to show his fierceness," was the answer. "is it fierceness to kill boys?" "yes; they had no business here." when i told him that this probably would insure his own death if the matebele came again, he replied, "when i hear of their coming i shall hide the bones." he was evidently proud of these trophies of his father's ferocity, and i was assured by other batoka that few strangers ever returned from a visit to this quarter. if a man wished to curry favor with a batoka chief, he ascertained when a stranger was about to leave, and waylaid him at a distance from the town, and when he brought his head back to the chief, it was mounted as a trophy, the different chiefs vieing with each other as to which should mount the greatest number of skulls in his village. if, as has been asserted, the portuguese ever had a chain of trading stations across the country from caconda to tete, it must have passed through these people; but the total ignorance of the zambesi flowing from north to south in the centre of the country, and the want of knowledge of the astonishing falls of victoria, which excite the wonder of even the natives, together with the absence of any tradition of such a chain of stations, compel me to believe that they existed only on paper. this conviction is strengthened by the fact that when a late attempt was made to claim the honor of crossing the continent for the portuguese, the only proof advanced was the journey of two black traders formerly mentioned, adorned with the name of "portuguese". if a chain of stations had existed, a few hundred names of the same sort might easily have been brought forward; and such is the love of barter among all the central africans, that, had there existed a market for ivory, its value would have become known, and even that on the graves of the chiefs would not have been safe. when about to leave moyara on the th, he brought a root which, when pounded and sprinkled over the oxen, is believed to disgust the tsetse, so that it flies off without sucking the blood. he promised to show me the plant or tree if i would give him an ox; but, as we were traveling, and could not afford the time required for the experiment, so as not to be cheated (as i had too often been by my medical friends), i deferred the investigation till i returned. it is probably but an evanescent remedy, and capable of rendering the cattle safe during one night only. moyara is now quite a dependent of the makololo, and my new party, not being thoroughly drilled, forced him to carry a tusk for them. when i relieved him, he poured forth a shower of thanks at being allowed to go back to sleep beneath his skulls. next day we came to namilanga, or "the well of joy". it is a small well dug beneath a very large fig-tree, the shade of which renders the water delightfully cool. the temperature through the day was deg. in the shade and deg. after sunset, but the air was not at all oppressive. this well received its name from the fact that, in former times, marauding parties, in returning with cattle, sat down here and were regaled with boyaloa, music, and the lullilooing of the women from the adjacent towns. all the surrounding country was formerly densely peopled, though now desolate and still. the old head man of the place told us that his father once went to bambala, where white traders lived, when our informant was a child, and returned when he had become a boy of about ten years. he went again, and returned when it was time to knock out his son's teeth. as that takes place at the age of puberty, he must have spent at least five years in each journey. he added that many who went there never returned, because they liked that country better than this. they had even forsaken their wives and children; and children had been so enticed and flattered by the finery bestowed upon them there, that they had disowned their parents and adopted others. the place to which they had gone, which they named bambala, was probably dambarari, which was situated close to zumbo. this was the first intimation we had of intercourse with the whites. the barotse, and all the other tribes in the central valley, have no such tradition as this, nor have either the one or the other any account of a trader's visit to them in ancient times. all the batoka tribes follow the curious custom of knocking out the upper front teeth at the age of puberty. this is done by both sexes; and though the under teeth, being relieved from the attrition of the upper, grow long and somewhat bent out, and thereby cause the under lip to protrude in a most unsightly way, no young woman thinks herself accomplished until she has got rid of the upper incisors. this custom gives all the batoka an uncouth, old-man-like appearance. their laugh is hideous, yet they are so attached to it that even sebituane was unable to eradicate the practice. he issued orders that none of the children living under him should be subjected to the custom by their parents, and disobedience to his mandates was usually punished with severity; but, notwithstanding this, the children would appear in the streets without their incisors, and no one would confess to the deed. when questioned respecting the origin of this practice, the batoka reply that their object is to be like oxen, and those who retain their teeth they consider to resemble zebras. whether this is the true reason or not, it is difficult to say; but it is noticeable that the veneration for oxen which prevails in many tribes should here be associated with hatred to the zebra, as among the bakwains; that this operation is performed at the same age that circumcision is in other tribes; and that here that ceremony is unknown. the custom is so universal that a person who has his teeth is considered ugly, and occasionally, when the batoka borrowed my looking-glass, the disparaging remark would be made respecting boys or girls who still retained their teeth, "look at the great teeth!" some of the makololo give a more facetious explanation of the custom: they say that the wife of a chief having in a quarrel bitten her husband's hand, he, in revenge, ordered her front teeth to be knocked out, and all the men in the tribe followed his example; but this does not explain why they afterward knocked out their own. the batoka of the zambesi are generally very dark in color, and very degraded and negro-like in appearance, while those who live on the high lands we are now ascending are frequently of the color of coffee and milk. we had a large number of the batoka of mokwine in our party, sent by sekeletu to carry his tusks. their greater degradation was probably caused by the treatment of their chiefs--the barbarians of the islands. i found them more difficult to manage than any of the rest of my companions, being much less reasonable and impressible than the others. my party consisted of the head men aforementioned, sekwebu, and kanyata. we were joined at the falls by another head man of the makololo, named monahin, in command of the batoka. we had also some of the banajoa under mosisinyane, and, last of all, a small party of bashubia and barotse under tuba mokoro, which had been furnished by sekeletu because of their ability to swim. they carried their paddles with them, and, as the makololo suggested, were able to swim over the rivers by night and steal canoes, if the inhabitants should be so unreasonable as to refuse to lend them. these different parties assorted together into messes; any orders were given through their head man, and when food was obtained he distributed it to the mess. each party knew its own spot in the encampment; and as this was always placed so that our backs should be to the east, the direction from whence the prevailing winds came, no time was lost in fixing the sheds of our encampment. they each took it in turn to pull grass to make my bed, so i lay luxuriously. november th. as the oxen could only move at night, in consequence of a fear that the buffaloes in this quarter might have introduced the tsetse, i usually performed the march by day on foot, while some of the men brought on the oxen by night. on coming to the villages under marimba, an old man, we crossed the unguesi, a rivulet which, like the lekone, runs backward. it falls into the leeambye a little above the commencement of the rapids. the stratified gneiss, which is the underlying rock of much of this part of the country, dips toward the centre of the continent, but the strata are often so much elevated as to appear nearly on their edges. rocks of augitic trap are found in various positions on it; the general strike is north and south; but when the gneiss was first seen, near to the basalt of the falls, it was easterly and westerly, and the dip toward the north, as if the eruptive force of the basalt had placed it in that position. we passed the remains of a very large town, which, from the only evidence of antiquity afforded by ruins in this country, must have been inhabited for a long period; the millstones of gneiss, trap, and quartz were worn down two and a half inches perpendicularly. the ivory grave-stones soon rot away. those of moyara's father, who must have died not more than a dozen years ago, were crumbling into powder; and we found this to be generally the case all over the batoka country. the region around is pretty well covered with forest; but there is abundance of open pasturage, and, as we are ascending in altitude, we find the grass to be short, and altogether unlike the tangled herbage of the barotse valley. it is remarkable that we now meet with the same trees we saw in descending toward the west coast. a kind of sterculia, which is the most common tree at loanda, and the baobab, flourish here; and the tree called moshuka, which we found near tala mungongo, was now yielding its fruit, which resembles small apples. the people brought it to us in large quantities: it tastes like a pear, but has a harsh rind, and four large seeds within. we found prodigious quantities of this fruit as we went along. the tree attains the height of or feet, and has leaves, hard and glossy, as large as one's hand. the tree itself is never found on the lowlands, but is mentioned with approbation at the end of the work of bowditch. my men almost lived upon the fruit for many days. the rains had fallen only partially: in many parts the soil was quite dry and the leaves drooped mournfully, but the fruit-trees are unaffected by a drought, except when it happens at the time of their blossoming. the batoka of my party declared that no one ever dies of hunger here. we obtained baskets of maneko, a curious fruit, with a horny rind, split into five pieces: these sections, when chewed, are full of a fine glutinous matter, and sweet like sugar. the seeds are covered with a yellow silky down, and are not eaten: the entire fruit is about the size of a walnut. we got also abundance of the motsouri and mamosho. we saw the batoka eating the beans called nju, which are contained in a large square pod; also the pulp between the seeds of nux vomica, and the motsintsela. other fruits become ripe at other seasons, as the motsikiri, which yields an oil, and is a magnificent tree, bearing masses of dark evergreen leaves; so that, from the general plenty, one can readily believe the statement made by the batoka. we here saw trees allowed to stand in gardens, and some of the batoka even plant them, a practice seen nowhere else among natives. a species of leucodendron abounds. when we meet with it on a spot on which no rain has yet fallen, we see that the young ones twist their leaves round during the heat of the day, so that the edge only is exposed to the rays of the sun; they have then a half twist on the petiole. the acacias in the same circumstances, and also the mopane ('bauhania'), fold their leaves together, and, by presenting the smallest possible surface to the sun, simulate the eucalypti of australia. chapter . low hills--black soldier-ants; their cannibalism--the plasterer and its chloroform--white ants; their usefulness--mutokwane-smoking; its effects--border territory--healthy table-lands--geological formation--cicadae--trees--flowers--river kalomo--physical conformation of country--ridges, sanatoria--a wounded buffalo assisted--buffalo-bird--rhinoceros-bird--leaders of herds--the honey-guide--the white mountain--mozuma river--sebituane's old home--hostile village--prophetic phrensy--food of the elephant-- ant-hills--friendly batoka--clothing despised--method of salutation-- wild fruits--the captive released--longings for peace--pingola's conquests--the village of monze--aspect of the country--visit from the chief monze and his wife--central healthy locations--friendly feelings of the people in reference to a white resident--fertility of the soil--bashukulompo mode of dressing their hair--gratitude of the prisoner we released--kindness and remarks of monze's sister--dip of the rocks--vegetation--generosity of the inhabitants--their anxiety for medicine--hooping-cough--birds and rain. november th. still at marimba's. in the adjacent country palms abound, but none of that species which yields the oil; indeed, that is met with only near the coast. there are numbers of flowers and bulbs just shooting up from the soil. the surface is rough, and broken into gullies; and, though the country is parched, it has not that appearance, so many trees having put forth their fresh green leaves at the time the rains ought to have come. among the rest stands the mola, with its dark brownish-green color and spreading oak-like form. in the distance there are ranges of low hills. on the north we have one called kanjele, and to the east that of kaonka, to which we proceed to-morrow. we have made a considerable detour to the north, both on account of our wish to avoid the tsetse and to visit the people. those of kaonka are the last batoka we shall meet, in friendship with the makololo. walking down to the forest, after telling these poor people, for the first time in their lives, that the son of god had so loved them as to come down from heaven to save them, i observed many regiments of black soldier-ants returning from their marauding expeditions. these i have often noticed before in different parts of the country; and as we had, even at kolobeng, an opportunity of observing their habits, i may give a short account of them here. they are black, with a slight tinge of gray, about half an inch in length, and on the line of march appear three or four abreast; when disturbed, they utter a distinct hissing or chirping sound. they follow a few leaders who never carry any thing, and they seem to be guided by a scent left on the path by the leaders; for, happening once to throw the water from my basin behind a bush where i was dressing, it lighted on the path by which a regiment had passed before i began my toilette, and when they returned they were totally at a loss to find the way home, though they continued searching for it nearly half an hour. it was found only by one making a long circuit round the wetted spot. the scent may have indicated also the propriety of their going in one direction only. if a handful of earth is thrown on the path at the middle of the regiment, either on its way home or abroad, those behind it are completely at a loss as to their farther progress. whatever it may be that guides them, they seem only to know that they are not to return, for they come up to the handful of earth, but will not cross it, though not a quarter of an inch high. they wheel round and regain their path again, but never think of retreating to the nest, or to the place where they have been stealing. after a quarter of an hour's confusion and hissing, one may make a circuit of a foot round the earth, and soon all follow in that roundabout way. when on their way to attack the abode of the white ants, the latter may be observed rushing about in a state of great perturbation. the black leaders, distinguished from the rest by their greater size, especially in the region of the sting, then seize the white ants one by one, and inflict a sting, which seems to inject a portion of fluid similar in effect to chloroform, as it renders them insensible, but not dead, and only able to move one or two front legs. as the leaders toss them on one side, the rank and file seize them and carry them off. one morning i saw a party going forth on what has been supposed to be a slave-hunting expedition. they came to a stick, which, being inclosed in a white-ant gallery, i knew contained numbers of this insect; but i was surprised to see the black soldiers passing without touching it. i lifted up the stick and broke a portion of the gallery, and then laid it across the path in the middle of the black regiment. the white ants, when uncovered, scampered about with great celerity, hiding themselves under the leaves, but attracted little attention from the black marauders till one of the leaders caught them, and, applying his sting, laid them in an instant on one side in a state of coma; the others then promptly seized them and rushed off. on first observing these marauding insects at kolobeng, i had the idea, imbibed from a work of no less authority than brougham's paley, that they seized the white ants in order to make them slaves; but, having rescued a number of captives, i placed them aside, and found that they never recovered from the state of insensibility into which they had been thrown by the leaders. i supposed then that the insensibility had been caused by the soldiers holding the necks of the white ants too tightly with their mandibles, as that is the way they seize them; but even the pupae which i took from the soldier-ants, though placed in a favorable temperature, never became developed. in addition to this, if any one examines the orifice by which the black ant enters his barracks, he will always find a little heap of hard heads and legs of white ants, showing that these black ruffians are a grade lower than slave-stealers, being actually cannibals. elsewhere i have seen a body of them removing their eggs from a place in which they were likely to be flooded by the rains; i calculated their numbers to be ; they carried their eggs a certain distance, then laid them down, when others took them and carried them farther on. every ant in the colony seemed to be employed in this laborious occupation, yet there was not a white slave-ant among them. one cold morning i observed a band of another species of black ant returning each with a captive; there could be no doubt of their cannibal propensities, for the "brutal soldiery" had already deprived the white ants of their legs. the fluid in the stings of this species is of an intensely acid taste. i had often noticed the stupefaction produced by the injection of a fluid from the sting of certain insects before. it is particularly observable in a hymenopterous insect called the "plasterer" ('pelopaeus eckloni'), which in his habits resembles somewhat the mason-bee. it is about an inch and a quarter in length, jet black in color, and may be observed coming into houses, carrying in its fore legs a pellet of soft plaster about the size of a pea. when it has fixed upon a convenient spot for its dwelling, it forms a cell about the same length as its body, plastering the walls so as to be quite thin and smooth inside. when this is finished, all except a round hole, it brings seven or eight caterpillars or spiders, each of which is rendered insensible, but not killed, by the fluid from its sting. these it deposits in the cell, and then one of its own larvae, which, as it grows, finds food quite fresh. the insects are in a state of coma, but the presence of vitality prevents putridity, or that drying up which would otherwise take place in this climate. by the time the young insect is full grown and its wings completely developed, the food is done. it then pierces the wall of its cell at the former door, or place last filled up by its parent, flies off, and begins life for itself. the plasterer is a most useful insect, as it acts as a check on the inordinate increase of caterpillars and spiders. it may often be seen with a caterpillar or even a cricket much larger than itself, but they lie perfectly still after the injection of chloroform, and the plasterer, placing a row of legs on each side of the body, uses both legs and wings in trailing the victim along. the fluid in each case is, i suppose, designed to cause insensibility, and likewise act as an antiseptic, the death of the victims being without pain. without these black soldier-ants the country would be overrun by the white ants; they are so extremely prolific, and nothing can exceed the energy with which they work. they perform a most important part in the economy of nature by burying vegetable matter as quickly beneath the soil as the ferocious red ant does dead animal substances. the white ant keeps generally out of sight, and works under galleries constructed by night to screen them from the observation of birds. at some given signal, however, i never could ascertain what, they rush out by hundreds, and the sound of their mandibles cutting grass into lengths may be heard like a gentle wind murmuring through the leaves of the trees. they drag these pieces to the doors of their abodes, and after some hours' toil leave off work, and many of the bits of grass may be seen collected around the orifice. they continue out of sight for perhaps a month, but they are never idle. on one occasion, a good bundle of grass was laid down for my bed on a spot which was quite smooth and destitute of plants. the ants at once sounded the call to a good supply of grass. i heard them incessantly nibbling and carrying away all that night; and they continued all next day (sunday), and all that night too, with unabated energy. they had thus been thirty-six hours at it, and seemed as fresh as ever. in some situations, if we remained a day, they devoured the grass beneath my mat, and would have eaten that too had we not laid down more grass. at some of their operations they beat time in a curious manner. hundreds of them are engaged in building a large tube, and they wish to beat it smooth. at a signal, they all give three or four energetic beats on the plaster in unison. it produces a sound like the dropping of rain off a bush when touched. these insects are the chief agents employed in forming a fertile soil. but for their labors, the tropical forests, bad as they are now with fallen trees, would be a thousand times worse. they would be impassable on account of the heaps of dead vegetation lying on the surface, and emitting worse effluvia than the comparatively small unburied collections do now. when one looks at the wonderful adaptations throughout creation, and the varied operations carried on with such wisdom and skill, the idea of second causes looks clumsy. we are viewing the direct handiwork of him who is the one and only power in the universe; wonderful in counsel; in whom we all live, and move, and have our being. the batoka of these parts are very degraded in their appearance, and are not likely to improve, either physically or mentally, while so much addicted to smoking the mutokwane ('cannabis sativa'). they like its narcotic effects, though the violent fit of coughing which follows a couple of puffs of smoke appears distressing, and causes a feeling of disgust in the spectator. this is not diminished on seeing the usual practice of taking a mouthful of water, and squirting it out together with the smoke, then uttering a string of half-incoherent sentences, usually in self-praise. this pernicious weed is extensively used in all the tribes of the interior. it causes a species of phrensy, and sebituane's soldiers, on coming in sight of their enemies, sat down and smoked it, in order that they might make an effective onslaught. i was unable to prevail on sekeletu and the young makololo to forego its use, although they can not point to an old man in the tribe who has been addicted to this indulgence. i believe it was the proximate cause of sebituane's last illness, for it sometimes occasions pneumonia. never having tried it, i can not describe the pleasurable effects it is said to produce, but the hashish in use among the turks is simply an extract of the same plant, and that, like opium, produces different effects on different individuals. some view every thing as if looking in through the wide end of a telescope, and others, in passing over a straw, lift up their feet as if about to cross the trunk of a tree. the portuguese in angola have such a belief in its deleterious effects that the use of it by a slave is considered a crime. november th. the inhabitants of the last of kaonka's villages complained of being plundered by the independent batoka. the tribes in front of this are regarded by the makololo as in a state of rebellion. i promised to speak to the rebels on the subject, and enjoined on kaonka the duty of giving them no offense. according to sekeletu's order, kaonka gave us the tribute of maize-corn and ground-nuts, which would otherwise have gone to linyanti. this had been done at every village, and we thereby saved the people the trouble of a journey to the capital. my own batoka had brought away such loads of provisions from their homes that we were in no want of food. after leaving kaonka we traveled over an uninhabited, gently undulating, and most beautiful district, the border territory between those who accept and those who reject the sway of the makololo. the face of the country appears as if in long waves, running north and south. there are no rivers, though water stands in pools in the hollows. we were now come into the country which my people all magnify as a perfect paradise. sebituane was driven from it by the matebele. it suited him exactly for cattle, corn, and health. the soil is dry, and often a reddish sand; there are few trees, but fine large shady ones stand dotted here and there over the country where towns formerly stood. one of the fig family i measured, and found to be forty feet in circumference; the heart had been burned out, and some one had made a lodging in it, for we saw the remains of a bed and a fire. the sight of the open country, with the increased altitude we were attaining, was most refreshing to the spirits. large game abound. we see in the distance buffaloes, elands, hartebeest, gnus, and elephants, all very tame, as no one disturbs them. lions, which always accompany other large animals, roared about us, but, as it was moonlight, there was no danger. in the evening, while standing on a mass of granite, one began to roar at me, though it was still light. the temperature was pleasant, as the rains, though not universal, had fallen in many places. it was very cloudy, preventing observations. the temperature at a.m. was deg., at midday deg., in the evening deg. this is very pleasant on the high lands, with but little moisture in the air. the different rocks to the westward of kaonka's, talcose gneiss and white mica schist, generally dip toward the west, but at kaonka's, large rounded masses of granite, containing black mica, began to appear. the outer rind of it inclines to peel off, and large crystals project on the exposed surface. in passing through some parts where a good shower of rain has fallen, the stridulous piercing notes of the cicadae are perfectly deafening; a drab-colored cricket joins the chorus with a sharp sound, which has as little modulation as the drone of a scottish bagpipe. i could not conceive how so small a thing could raise such a sound; it seemed to make the ground over it thrill. when cicadae, crickets, and frogs unite, their music may be heard at the distance of a quarter of a mile. a tree attracted my attention as new, the leaves being like those of an acacia, but the ends of the branches from which they grew resembled closely oblong fir-cones. the corn-poppy was abundant, and many of the trees, flowering bulbs, and plants were identical with those in pungo andongo. a flower as white as the snowdrop now begins to appear, and farther on it spots the whole sward with its beautiful pure white. a fresh crop appears every morning, and if the day is cloudy they do not expand till the afternoon. in an hour or so they droop and die. they are named by the natives, from their shape, "tlaku ea pitse", hoof of zebra. i carried several of the somewhat bulbous roots of this pretty flower till i reached the mauritius. on the th we crossed the river kalomo, which is about yards broad, and is the only stream that never dries up on this ridge. the current is rapid, and its course is toward the south, as it joins the zambesi at some distance below the falls. the unguesi and lekone, with their feeders, flow westward, this river to the south, and all those to which we are about to come take an easterly direction. we were thus at the apex of the ridge, and found that, as water boiled at deg., our altitude above the level of the sea was over feet. here the granite crops out again in great rounded masses which change the dip of the gneiss and mica schist rocks from the westward to the eastward. in crossing the western ridge i mentioned the clay shale or keele formation, a section of which we have in the valley of the quango: the strata there lie nearly horizontal, but on this ridge the granite seems to have been the active agent of elevation, for the rocks, both on its east and west, abut against it. both eastern and western ridges are known to be comparatively salubrious, and in this respect, as well as in the general aspect of the country, they resemble that most healthy of all healthy climates, the interior of south africa, near and adjacent to the desert. this ridge has neither fountain nor marsh upon it, and east of the kalomo we look upon treeless undulating plains covered with short grass. from a point somewhat near to the great falls, this ridge or oblong mound trends away to the northeast, and there treeless elevated plains again appear. then again the ridge is said to bend away from the falls to the southeast, the mashona country, or rather their mountains, appearing, according to mr. moffat, about four days east of matlokotloko, the present residence of mosilikatse. in reference to this ridge he makes the interesting remark, "i observed a number of the angora goat, most of them being white; and their long soft hair, covering their entire bodies to the ground, made them look like animals moving along without feet."* * moffat's "visit to mosilikatse".--royal geographical society's journal, vol. xxvi., p. . it is impossible to say how much farther to the north these subtending ridges may stretch. there is reason to believe that, though the same general form of country obtains, they are not flanked by abrupt hills between the latitude deg. south and the equator. the inquiry is worthy the attention of travelers. as they are known to be favorable to health, the makololo, who have been nearly all cut off by fevers in the valley, declaring that here they never had a headache, they may even be recommended as a sanatorium for those whose enterprise leads them into africa, either for the advancement of scientific knowledge, or for the purposes of trade or benevolence. in the case of the eastern ridge, we have water carriage, with only one short rapid as an obstruction, right up to its base; and if a quick passage can be effected during the healthy part of the year, there would be no danger of loss of health during a long stay on these high lands afterward. how much farther do these high ridges extend? the eastern one seems to bend in considerably toward the great falls; and the strike of the rocks indicating that, farther to the n.n.e. than my investigations extend, it may not, at a few degrees of latitude beyond, be more than or miles from the coast. they at least merit inquiry, for they afford a prospect to europeans of situations superior in point of salubrity to any of those on the coast; and so on the western side of the continent; for it is a fact that many parts in the interior of angola, which were formerly thought to be unhealthy on account of their distance inland, have been found, as population advanced, to be the most healthy spots in the country. did the great niger expedition turn back when near such a desirable position for its stricken and prostrate members? the distances from top to top of the ridges may be about deg. of longitude, or geographical miles. i can not hear of a hill on either ridge, and there are scarcely any in the space inclosed by them. the monakadze is the highest, but that is not more than a thousand feet above the flat valley. on account of this want of hills in the part of the country which, by gentle undulations, leads one insensibly up to an altitude of feet above the level of the sea, i have adopted the agricultural term ridges, for they partake very much of the character of the oblong mounds with which we are all familiar. and we shall yet see that the mountains which are met with outside these ridges are only a low fringe, many of which are not of much greater altitude than even the bottom of the great central valley. if we leave out of view the greater breadth of the central basin at other parts, and speak only of the comparatively narrow part formed by the bend to the westward of the eastern ridge, we might say that the form of this region is a broad furrow in the middle, with an elevated ridge about miles broad on either side, the land sloping thence, on both sides, to the sea. if i am right in believing the granite to be the cause of the elevation of this ridge, the direction in which the strike of the rocks trends to the n.n.e. may indicate that the same geological structure prevails farther north, and two or three lakes which exist in that direction may be of exactly the same nature with lake ngami, having been diminished to their present size by the same kind of agency as that which formed the falls of victoria. we met an elephant on the kalomo which had no tusks. this is as rare a thing in africa as it is to find them with tusks in ceylon. as soon as she saw us she made off. it is remarkable to see the fear of man operating even on this huge beast. buffaloes abound, and we see large herds of them feeding in all directions by day. when much disturbed by man they retire into the densest parts of the forest, and feed by night only. we secured a fine large bull by crawling close to a herd. when shot, he fell down, and the rest, not seeing their enemy, gazed about, wondering where the danger lay. the others came back to it, and, when we showed ourselves, much to the amusement of my companions, they lifted him up with their horns, and, half supporting him in the crowd, bore him away. all these wild animals usually gore a wounded companion, and expel him from the herd; even zebras bite and kick an unfortunate or a diseased one. it is intended by this instinct that none but the perfect and healthy ones should propagate the species. in this case they manifested their usual propensity to gore the wounded, but our appearance at that moment caused them to take flight, and this, with the goring being continued a little, gave my men the impression that they were helping away their wounded companion. he was shot between the fourth and fifth ribs; the ball passed through both lungs and a rib on the opposite side, and then lodged beneath the skin. but, though it was eight ounces in weight, yet he ran off some distance, and was secured only by the people driving him into a pool of water and killing him there with their spears. the herd ran away in the direction of our camp, and then came bounding past us again. we took refuge on a large ant-hill, and as they rushed by us at full gallop i had a good opportunity of seeing that the leader of a herd of about sixty was an old cow; all the others allowed her a full half-length in their front. on her withers sat about twenty buffalo-birds ('textor erythrorhynchus', smith), which act the part of guardian spirits to the animals. when the buffalo is quietly feeding, this bird may be seen hopping on the ground picking up food, or sitting on its back ridding it of the insects with which their skins are sometimes infested. the sight of the bird being much more acute than that of the buffalo, it is soon alarmed by the approach of any danger, and, flying up, the buffaloes instantly raise their heads to discover the cause which has led to the sudden flight of their guardian. they sometimes accompany the buffaloes in their flight on the wing, at other times they sit as above described. another african bird, namely, the 'buphaga africana', attends the rhinoceros for a similar purpose. it is called "kala" in the language of the bechuanas. when these people wish to express their dependence upon another, they address him as "my rhinoceros", as if they were the birds. the satellites of a chief go by the same name. this bird can not be said to depend entirely on the insects on that animal, for its hard, hairless skin is a protection against all except a few spotted ticks; but it seems to be attached to the beast, somewhat as the domestic dog is to man; and while the buffalo is alarmed by the sudden flying up of its sentinel, the rhinoceros, not having keen sight, but an acute ear, is warned by the cry of its associate, the 'buphaga africana'. the rhinoceros feeds by night, and its sentinel is frequently heard in the morning uttering its well-known call, as it searches for its bulky companion. one species of this bird, observed in angola, possesses a bill of a peculiar scoop or stone forceps form, as if intended only to tear off insects from the skin; and its claws are as sharp as needles, enabling it to hang on to an animal's ear while performing a useful service within it. this sharpness of the claws allows the bird to cling to the nearly insensible cuticle without irritating the nerves of pain on the true skin, exactly as a burr does to the human hand; but in the case of the 'buphaga africana' and 'erythrorhyncha', other food is partaken of, for we observed flocks of them roosting on the reeds, in spots where neither tame nor wild animals were to be found. the most wary animal in a herd is generally the "leader". when it is shot the others often seem at a loss what to do, and stop in a state of bewilderment. i have seen them attempt to follow each other and appear quite confused, no one knowing for half a minute or more where to direct the flight. on one occasion i happened to shoot the leader, a young zebra mare, which at some former time had been bitten on the hind leg by a carnivorous animal, and, thereby made unusually wary, had, in consequence, become a leader. if they see either one of their own herd or any other animal taking to flight, wild animals invariably flee. the most timid thus naturally leads the rest. it is not any other peculiarity, but simply this provision, which is given them for the preservation of the race. the great increase of wariness which is seen to occur when the females bring forth their young, causes all the leaders to be at that time females; and there is a probability that the separation of sexes into distinct herds, which is annually observed in many antelopes, arises from the simple fact that the greater caution of the she antelopes is partaken of only by the young males, and their more frequent flights now have the effect of leaving the old males behind. i am inclined to believe this, because, though the antelopes, as the pallahs, etc., are frequently in separate herds, they are never seen in the act of expelling the males. there may be some other reason in the case of the elephants; but the male and female elephants are never seen in one herd. the young males remain with their dams only until they are full grown; and so constantly is the separation maintained, that any one familiar with them, on seeing a picture with the sexes mixed, would immediately conclude that the artist had made it from his imagination, and not from sight. december , . we remained near a small hill, called maundo, where we began to be frequently invited by the honey-guide ('cuculus indicator'). wishing to ascertain the truth of the native assertion that this bird is a deceiver, and by its call sometimes leads to a wild beast and not to honey, i inquired if any of my men had ever been led by this friendly little bird to any thing else than what its name implies. only one of the could say he had been led to an elephant instead of a hive, like myself with the black rhinoceros mentioned before. i am quite convinced that the majority of people who commit themselves to its guidance are led to honey, and to it alone. on the d we crossed the river mozuma, or river of dila, having traveled through a beautifully undulating pastoral country. to the south, and a little east of this, stands the hill taba cheu, or "white mountain", from a mass of white rock, probably dolomite, on its top. but none of the hills are of any great altitude. when i heard this mountain described at linyanti i thought the glistening substance might be snow, and my informants were so loud in their assertions of its exceeding great altitude that i was startled with the idea; but i had quite forgotten that i was speaking with men who had been accustomed to plains, and knew nothing of very high mountains. when i inquired what the white substance was, they at once replied it was a kind of rock. i expected to have come nearer to it, and would have ascended it; but we were led to go to the northeast. yet i doubt not that the native testimony of its being stone is true. the distant ranges of hills which line the banks of the zambesi on the southeast, and landscapes which permit the eye to range over twenty or thirty miles at a time, with short grass under our feet, were especially refreshing sights to those who had traveled for months together over the confined views of the flat forest, and among the tangled rank herbage of the great valley. the mozuma, or river of dila, was the first water-course which indicated that we were now on the slopes toward the eastern coast. it contained no flowing water, but revealed in its banks what gave me great pleasure at the time--pieces of lignite, possibly indicating the existence of a mineral, namely, coal, the want of which in the central country i had always deplored. again and again we came to the ruins of large towns, containing the only hieroglyphics of this country, worn mill-stones, with the round ball of quartz with which the grinding was effected. great numbers of these balls were lying about, showing that the depopulation had been the result of war; for, had the people removed in peace, they would have taken the balls with them. at the river of dila we saw the spot where sebituane lived, and sekwebu pointed out the heaps of bones of cattle which the makololo had been obliged to slaughter after performing a march with great herds captured from the batoka through a patch of the fatal tsetse. when sebituane saw the symptoms of the poison, he gave orders to his people to eat the cattle. he still had vast numbers; and when the matebele, crossing the zambesi opposite this part, came to attack him, he invited the batoka to take repossession of their herds, he having so many as to be unable to guide them in their flight. the country was at that time exceedingly rich in cattle, and, besides pasturage, it is all well adapted for the cultivation of native produce. being on the eastern slope of the ridge, it receives more rain than any part of the westward. sekwebu had been instructed to point out to me the advantages of this position for a settlement, as that which all the makololo had never ceased to regret. it needed no eulogy from sekwebu; i admired it myself, and the enjoyment of good health in fine open scenery had an exhilarating effect on my spirits. the great want was population, the batoka having all taken refuge in the hills. we were now in the vicinity of those whom the makololo deem rebels, and felt some anxiety as to how we should be received. on the th we reached their first village. remaining at a distance of a quarter of a mile, we sent two men to inform them who we were, and that our purposes were peaceful. the head man came and spoke civilly, but, when nearly dark, the people of another village arrived and behaved very differently. they began by trying to spear a young man who had gone for water. then they approached us, and one came forward howling at the top of his voice in the most hideous manner; his eyes were shot out, his lips covered with foam, and every muscle of his frame quivered. he came near to me, and, having a small battle-axe in his hand, alarmed my men lest he might do violence; but they were afraid to disobey my previous orders, and to follow their own inclination by knocking him on the head. i felt a little alarmed too, but would not show fear before my own people or strangers, and kept a sharp look-out on the little battle-axe. it seemed to me a case of ecstasy or prophetic phrensy, voluntarily produced. i felt it would be a sorry way to leave the world, to get my head chopped by a mad savage, though that, perhaps, would be preferable to hydrophobia or delirium tremens. sekwebu took a spear in his hand, as if to pierce a bit of leather, but in reality to plunge it into the man if he offered violence to me. after my courage had been sufficiently tested, i beckoned with the head to the civil head man to remove him, and he did so by drawing him aside. this man pretended not to know what he was doing. i would fain have felt his pulse, to ascertain whether the violent trembling were not feigned, but had not much inclination to go near the battle-axe again. there was, however, a flow of perspiration, and the excitement continued fully half an hour, then gradually ceased. this paroxysm is the direct opposite of hypnotism, and it is singular that it has not been tried in europe as well as clairvoyance. this second batch of visitors took no pains to conceal their contempt for our small party, saying to each other, in a tone of triumph, "they are quite a godsend!" literally, "god has apportioned them to us." "they are lost among the tribes!" "they have wandered in order to be destroyed, and what can they do without shields among so many?" some of them asked if there were no other parties. sekeletu had ordered my men not to take their shields, as in the case of my first company. we were looked upon as unarmed, and an easy prey. we prepared against a night attack by discharging and reloading our guns, which were exactly the same in number (five) as on the former occasion, as i allowed my late companions to retain those which i purchased at loanda. we were not molested, but some of the enemy tried to lead us toward the bashukulompo, who are considered to be the fiercest race in this quarter. as we knew our direction to the confluence of the kafue and zambesi, we declined their guidance, and the civil head man of the evening before then came along with us. crowds of natives hovered round us in the forest; but he ran forward and explained, and we were not molested. that night we slept by a little village under a low range of hills, which are called chizamena. the country here is more woody than on the high lands we had left, but the trees are not in general large. great numbers of them have been broken off by elephants a foot or two from the ground: they thus seem pollarded from that point. this animal never seriously lessens the number of trees; indeed, i have often been struck by the very little damage he does in a forest. his food consists more of bulbs, tubers, roots, and branches, than any thing else. where they have been feeding, great numbers of trees, as thick as a man's body, are seen twisted down or broken off, in order that they may feed on the tender shoots at the tops. they are said sometimes to unite in wrenching down large trees. the natives in the interior believe that the elephant never touches grass, and i never saw evidence of his having grazed until we came near to tete, and then he had fed on grass in seed only; this seed contains so much farinaceous matter that the natives collect it for their own food. this part of the country abounds in ant-hills. in the open parts they are studded over the surface exactly as haycocks are in harvest, or heaps of manure in spring, rather disfiguring the landscape. in the woods they are as large as round haystacks, or feet in diameter at the base, and at least feet high. these are more fertile than the rest of the land, and here they are the chief garden-ground for maize, pumpkins, and tobacco. when we had passed the outskirting villages, which alone consider themselves in a state of war with the makololo, we found the batoka, or batonga, as they here call themselves, quite friendly. great numbers of them came from all the surrounding villages with presents of maize and masuka, and expressed great joy at the first appearance of a white man, and harbinger of peace. the women clothe themselves better than the balonda, but the men go 'in puris naturalibus'. they walk about without the smallest sense of shame. they have even lost the tradition of the "fig-leaf". i asked a fine, large-bodied old man if he did not think it would be better to adopt a little covering. he looked with a pitying leer, and laughed with surprise at my thinking him at all indecent; he evidently considered himself above such weak superstition. i told them that, on my return, i should have my family with me, and no one must come near us in that state. "what shall we put on? we have no clothing." it was considered a good joke when i told them that, if they had nothing else, they must put on a bunch of grass. the farther we advanced, the more we found the country swarming with inhabitants. great numbers came to see the white man, a sight they had never beheld before. they always brought presents of maize and masuka. their mode of salutation is quite singular. they throw themselves on their backs on the ground, and, rolling from side to side, slap the outside of their thighs as expressions of thankfulness and welcome, uttering the words "kina bomba." this method of salutation was to me very disagreeable, and i never could get reconciled to it. i called out, "stop, stop; i don't want that;" but they, imagining i was dissatisfied, only tumbled about more furiously, and slapped their thighs with greater vigor. the men being totally unclothed, this performance imparted to my mind a painful sense of their extreme degradation. my own batoka were much more degraded than the barotse, and more reckless. we had to keep a strict watch, so as not to be involved by their thieving from the inhabitants, in whose country and power we were. we had also to watch the use they made of their tongues, for some within hearing of the villagers would say, "i broke all the pots of that village," or, "i killed a man there." they were eager to recount their soldier deeds, when they were in company with the makololo in former times as a conquering army. they were thus placing us in danger by their remarks. i called them together, and spoke to them about their folly, and gave them a pretty plain intimation that i meant to insist upon as complete subordination as i had secured in my former journey, as being necessary for the safety of the party. happily, it never was needful to resort to any other measure for their obedience, as they all believed that i would enforce it. in connection with the low state of the batoka, i was led to think on the people of kuruman, who were equally degraded and equally depraved. there a man scorned to shed a tear. it would have been "tlolo", or transgression. weeping, such as dr. kane describes among the esquimaux, is therefore quite unknown in that country. but i have witnessed instances like this: baba, a mighty hunter--the interpreter who accompanied captain harris, and who was ultimately killed by a rhinoceros--sat listening to the gospel in the church at kuruman, and the gracious words of christ, made to touch his heart, evidently by the holy spirit, melted him into tears; i have seen him and others sink down to the ground weeping. when baba was lying mangled by the furious beast which tore him off his horse, he shed no tear, but quietly prayed as long as he was conscious. i had no hand in his instruction: if these batoka ever become like him, and they may, the influence that effects it must be divine. a very large portion of this quarter is covered with masuka-trees, and the ground was so strewed with the pleasant fruit that my men kept eating it constantly as we marched along. we saw a smaller kind of the same tree, named molondo, the fruit of which is about the size of marbles, having a tender skin, and slight acidity of taste mingled with its sweetness. another tree which is said to yield good fruit is named sombo, but it was not ripe at this season. december th. we passed the night near a series of villages. before we came to a stand under our tree, a man came running to us with hands and arms firmly bound with cords behind his back, entreating me to release him. when i had dismounted, the head man of the village advanced, and i inquired the prisoner's offense. he stated that he had come from the bashukulompo as a fugitive, and he had given him a wife and garden and a supply of seed; but, on refusing a demand for more, the prisoner had threatened to kill him, and had been seen the night before skulking about the village, apparently with that intention. i declined interceding unless he would confess to his father-in-law, and promise amendment. he at first refused to promise to abstain from violence, but afterward agreed. the father-in-law then said that he would take him to the village and release him, but the prisoner cried out bitterly, "he will kill me there; don't leave me, white man." i ordered a knife, and one of the villagers released him on the spot. his arms were cut by the cords, and he was quite lame from the blows he had received. these villagers supplied us abundantly with ground-nuts, maize, and corn. all expressed great satisfaction on hearing my message, as i directed their attention to jesus as their savior, whose word is "peace on earth, and good-will to men." they called out, "we are tired of flight; give us rest and sleep." they of course did not understand the full import of the message, but it was no wonder that they eagerly seized the idea of peace. their country has been visited by successive scourges during the last half century, and they are now "a nation scattered and peeled." when sebituane came, the cattle were innumerable, and yet these were the remnants only, left by a chief called pingola, who came from the northeast. he swept across the whole territory inhabited by his cattle-loving countrymen, devouring oxen, cows, and calves, without retaining a single head. he seems to have been actuated by a simple love of conquest, and is an instance of what has occurred two or three times in every century in this country, from time immemorial. a man or more energy or ambition than his fellows rises up and conquers a large territory, but as soon as he dies the power he built up is gone, and his reign, having been one of terror, is not perpetuated. this, and the want of literature, have prevented the establishment of any great empire in the interior of africa. pingola effected his conquests by carrying numbers of smith's bellows with him. the arrow-heads were heated before shooting into a town, and when a wound was inflicted on either man or beast, great confusion ensued. after pingola came sebituane, and after him the matebele of mosilikatse; and these successive inroads have reduced the batoka to a state in which they naturally rejoice at the prospect of deliverance and peace. we spent sunday, the th, at monze's village, who is considered the chief of all the batoka we have seen. he lives near the hill kisekise, whence we have a view of at least thirty miles of open undulating country, covered with short grass, and having but few trees. these open lawns would in any other land, as well as this, be termed pastoral, but the people have now no cattle, and only a few goats and fowls. they are located all over the country in small villages, and cultivate large gardens. they are said to have adopted this wide-spread mode of habitation in order to give alarm should any enemy appear. in former times they lived in large towns. in the distance (southeast) we see ranges of dark mountains along the banks of the zambesi, and are told of the existence there of the rapid named kansala, which is said to impede the navigation. the river is reported to be placid above that as far as the territory of sinamane, a batoka chief, who is said to command it after it emerges smooth again below the falls. kansala is the only rapid reported in the river until we come to kebrabasa, twenty or thirty miles above tete. on the north we have mountains appearing above the horizon, which are said to be on the banks of the kafue. the chief monze came to us on sunday morning, wrapped in a large cloth, and rolled himself about in the dust, screaming "kina bomba," as they all do. the sight of great naked men wallowing on the ground, though intended to do me honor, was always very painful; it made me feel thankful that my lot had been cast in such different circumstances from that of so many of my fellow-men. one of his wives accompanied him; she would have been comely if her teeth had been spared; she had a little battle-axe in her hand, and helped her husband to scream. she was much excited, for she had never seen a white man before. we rather liked monze, for he soon felt at home among us, and kept up conversation during much of the day. one head man of a village after another arrived, and each of them supplied us liberally with maize, ground-nuts, and corn. monze gave us a goat and a fowl, and appeared highly satisfied with a present of some handkerchiefs i had got in my supplies left at the island. being of printed cotton, they excited great admiration; and when i put a gaudy-colored one as a shawl about his child, he said that he would send for all his people to make a dance about it. in telling them that my object was to open up a path whereby they might, by getting merchandise for ivory, avoid the guilt of selling their children, i asked monze, with about of his men, if they would like a white man to live among them and teach them. all expressed high satisfaction at the prospect of the white man and his path: they would protect both him and his property. i asked the question, because it would be of great importance to have stations in this healthy region, whither agents oppressed by sickness might retire, and which would serve, moreover, as part of a chain of communication between the interior and the coast. the answer does not mean much more than what i know, by other means, to be the case--that a white man of good sense would be welcome and safe in all these parts. by uprightness, and laying himself out for the good of the people, he would be known all over the country as a benefactor of the race. none desire christian instruction, for of it they have no idea. but the people are now humbled by the scourgings they have received, and seem to be in a favorable state for the reception of the gospel. the gradual restoration of their former prosperity in cattle, simultaneously with instruction, would operate beneficially upon their minds. the language is a dialect of the other negro languages in the great valley; and as many of the batoka living under the makololo understand both it and the sichuana, missionaries could soon acquire it through that medium. monze had never been visited by any white man, but had seen black native traders, who, he said, came for ivory, not for slaves. he had heard of white men passing far to the east of him to cazembe, referring, no doubt, to pereira, lacerda, and others, who have visited that chief. the streams in this part are not perennial; i did not observe one suitable for the purpose of irrigation. there is but little wood; here and there you see large single trees, or small clumps of evergreens, but the abundance of maize and ground-nuts we met with shows that more rain falls than in the bechuana country, for there they never attempt to raise maize except in damp hollows on the banks of rivers. the pasturage is very fine for both cattle and sheep. my own men, who know the land thoroughly, declare that it is all garden-ground together, and that the more tender grains, which require richer soil than the native corn, need no care here. it is seldom stony. the men of a village came to our encampment, and, as they followed the bashukulompo mode of dressing their hair, we had an opportunity of examining it for the first time. a circle of hair at the top of the head, eight inches or more in diameter, is woven into a cone eight or ten inches high, with an obtuse apex, bent, in some cases, a little forward, giving it somewhat the appearance of a helmet. some have only a cone, four or five inches in diameter at the base. it is said that the hair of animals is added; but the sides of the cone are woven something like basket-work. the head man of this village, instead of having his brought to a point, had it prolonged into a wand, which extended a full yard from the crown of his head. the hair on the forehead, above the ears, and behind, is all shaven off, so they appear somewhat as if a cap of liberty were cocked upon the top of the head. after the weaving is performed it is said to be painful, as the scalp is drawn tightly up; but they become used to it. monze informed me that all his people were formerly ornamented in this way, but he discouraged it. i wished him to discourage the practice of knocking out the teeth too, but he smiled, as if in that case the fashion would be too strong for him, as it was for sebituane. monze came on monday morning, and, on parting, presented us with a piece of a buffalo which had been killed the day before by lions. we crossed the rivulet makoe, which runs westward into the kafue, and went northward in order to visit semalembue, an influential chief there. we slept at the village of monze's sister, who also passes by the same name. both he and his sister are feminine in their appearance, but disfigured by the foolish custom of knocking out the upper front teeth. it is not often that jail-birds turn out well, but the first person who appeared to welcome us at the village of monze's sister was the prisoner we had released in the way. he came with a handsome present of corn and meal, and, after praising our kindness to the villagers who had assembled around us, asked them, "what do you stand gazing at? don't you know that they have mouths like other people?" he then set off and brought large bundles of grass and wood for our comfort, and a pot to cook our food in. december th. the morning presented the appearance of a continuous rain from the north, the first time we had seen it set in from that quarter in such a southern latitude. in the bechuana country, continuous rains are always from the northeast or east, while in londa and angola they are from the north. at pungo andongo, for instance, the whitewash is all removed from the north side of the houses. it cleared up, however, about midday, and monze's sister conducted us a mile or two upon the road. on parting, she said that she had forwarded orders to a distant village to send food to the point where we should sleep. in expressing her joy at the prospect of living in peace, she said it would be so pleasant "to sleep without dreaming of any one pursuing them with a spear." in our front we had ranges of hills called chamai, covered with trees. we crossed the rivulet nakachinta, flowing westward into the kafue, and then passed over ridges of rocks of the same mica schist which we found so abundant in golungo alto; here they were surmounted by reddish porphyry and finely laminated felspathic grit with trap. the dip, however, of these rocks is not toward the centre of the continent, as in angola, for ever since we passed the masses of granite on the kalomo, the rocks, chiefly of mica schist, dip away from them, taking an easterly direction. a decided change of dip occurs again when we come near the zambesi, as will be noticed farther on. the hills which flank that river now appeared on our right as a high dark range, while those near the kafue have the aspect of a low blue range, with openings between. we crossed two never-failing rivulets also flowing into the kafue. the country is very fertile, but vegetation is nowhere rank. the boiling-point of water being deg., showed that we were not yet as low down as linyanti; but we had left the masuka-trees behind us, and many others with which we had become familiar. a feature common to the forests of angola and benguela, namely, the presence of orchilla-weed and lichens on the trees, with mosses on the ground, began to appear; but we never, on any part of the eastern slope, saw the abundant crops of ferns which are met with every where in angola. the orchilla-weed and mosses, too, were in but small quantities. as we passed along, the people continued to supply us with food in great abundance. they had by some means or other got a knowledge that i carried medicine, and, somewhat to the disgust of my men, who wished to keep it all to themselves, brought their sick children for cure. some of them i found had hooping-cough, which is one of the few epidemics that range through this country. in passing through the woods i for the first time heard the bird called mokwa reza, or "son-in-law of god" (micropogon sulphuratus?), utter its cry, which is supposed by the natives to be "pula, pula" (rain, rain). it is said to do this only before heavy falls of rain. it may be a cuckoo, for it is said to throw out the eggs of the white-backed senegal crow, and lay its own instead. this, combined with the cry for rain, causes the bird to be regarded with favor. the crow, on the other hand, has a bad repute, and, when rain is withheld, its nest is sought for and destroyed, in order to dissolve the charm by which it is supposed to seal up the windows of heaven. all the other birds now join in full chorus in the mornings, and two of them, at least, have fine loud notes. chapter . beautiful valley--buffalo--my young men kill two elephants--the hunt--mode of measuring height of live elephants--wild animals smaller here than in the south, though their food is more abundant--the elephant a dainty feeder--semalembue--his presents--joy in prospect of living in peace--trade--his people's way of wearing their hair--their mode of salutation--old encampment--sebituane's former residence--ford of kafue--hippopotami--hills and villages--geological formation-- prodigious quantities of large game--their tameness--rains--less sickness than in the journey to loanda--reason--charge from an elephant--vast amount of animal life on the zambesi--water of river discolored--an island with buffaloes and men on it--native devices for killing game--tsetse now in country--agricultural industry--an albino murdered by his mother--"guilty of tlolo"--women who make their mouths "like those of ducks"--first symptom of the slave-trade on this side--selole's hostility--an armed party hoaxed--an italian marauder slain--elephant's tenacity of life--a word to young sportsmen-- mr. oswell's adventure with an elephant; narrow escape--mburuma's village--suspicious conduct of his people--guides attempt to detain us--the village and people of ma mburuma--character our guides give of us. th. the country is becoming very beautiful, and furrowed by deep valleys; the underlying rocks, being igneous, have yielded fertile soil. there is great abundance of large game. the buffaloes select open spots, and often eminences, as standing-places through the day. we crossed the mbai, and found in its bed rocks of pink marble. some little hills near it are capped by marble of beautiful whiteness, the underlying rock being igneous. violent showers occur frequently on the hills, and cause such sudden sweeping floods in these rivulets, that five of our men, who had gone to the other side for firewood, were obliged to swim back. the temperature of the air is lowered considerably by the daily rains. several times the thermometer at sunrise has been as low as deg., and deg. at sunset. generally, however, it stood at from deg. to deg. at sunrise, deg. to deg. at midday, and deg. to deg. at sunset. the sensation, however, as before remarked, was not disagreeable. th. we entered a most beautiful valley, abounding in large game. finding a buffalo lying down, i went to secure him for our food. three balls did not kill him, and, as he turned round as if for a charge, we ran for the shelter of some rocks. before we gained them, we found that three elephants, probably attracted by the strange noise, had cut off our retreat on that side; they, however, turned short off, and allowed us to gain the rocks. we then saw that the buffalo was moving off quite briskly, and, in order not to be entirely balked, i tried a long shot at the last of the elephants, and, to the great joy of my people, broke his fore leg. the young men soon brought him to a stand, and one shot in the brain dispatched him. i was right glad to see the joy manifested at such an abundant supply of meat. on the following day, while my men were cutting up the elephant, great numbers of the villagers came to enjoy the feast. we were on the side of a fine green valley, studded here and there with trees, and cut by numerous rivulets. i had retired from the noise, to take an observation among some rocks of laminated grit, when i beheld an elephant and her calf at the end of the valley, about two miles distant. the calf was rolling in the mud, and the dam was standing fanning herself with her great ears. as i looked at them through my glass, i saw a long string of my own men appearing on the other side of them, and sekwebu came and told me that these had gone off saying, "our father will see to-day what sort of men he has got." i then went higher up the side of the valley, in order to have a distinct view of their mode of hunting. the goodly beast, totally unconscious of the approach of an enemy, stood for some time suckling her young one, which seemed about two years old; they then went into a pit containing mud, and smeared themselves all over with it, the little one frisking about his dam, flapping his ears and tossing his trunk incessantly, in elephantine fashion. she kept flapping her ears and wagging her tail, as if in the height of enjoyment. then began the piping of her enemies, which was performed by blowing into a tube, or the hands closed together, as boys do into a key. they call out to attract the animal's attention, "o chief! chief! we have come to kill you. o chief! chief! many more will die besides you, etc. the gods have said it," etc., etc. both animals expanded their ears and listened, then left their bath as the crowd rushed toward them. the little one ran forward toward the end of the valley, but, seeing the men there, returned to his dam. she placed herself on the danger side of her calf, and passed her proboscis over it again and again, as if to assure it of safety. she frequently looked back to the men, who kept up an incessant shouting, singing, and piping; then looked at her young one and ran after it, sometimes sideways, as if her feelings were divided between anxiety to protect her offspring and desire to revenge the temerity of her persecutors. the men kept about a hundred yards in her rear, and some that distance from her flanks, and continued thus until she was obliged to cross a rivulet. the time spent in descending and getting up the opposite bank allowed of their coming up to the edge, and discharging their spears at about twenty yards distance. after the first discharge she appeared with her sides red with blood, and, beginning to flee for her own life, seemed to think no more of her young. i had previously sent off sekwebu with orders to spare the calf. it ran very fast, but neither young nor old ever enter into a gallop; their quickest pace is only a sharp walk. before sekwebu could reach them, the calf had taken refuge in the water, and was killed. the pace of the dam gradually became slower. she turned with a shriek of rage, and made a furious charge back among the men. they vanished at right angles to her course, or sideways, and, as she ran straight on, she went through the whole party, but came near no one except a man who wore a piece of cloth on his shoulders. bright clothing is always dangerous in these cases. she charged three or four times, and, except in the first instance, never went farther than yards. she often stood after she had crossed a rivulet, and faced the men, though she received fresh spears. it was by this process of spearing and loss of blood that she was killed; for at last, making a short charge, she staggered round and sank down dead in a kneeling posture. i did not see the whole hunt, having been tempted away by both sun and moon appearing unclouded. i turned from the spectacle of the destruction of noble animals, which might be made so useful in africa, with a feeling of sickness, and it was not relieved by the recollection that the ivory was mine, though that was the case. i regretted to see them killed, and more especially the young one, the meat not being at all necessary at that time; but it is right to add that i did not feel sick when my own blood was up the day before. we ought, perhaps, to judge those deeds more leniently in which we ourselves have no temptation to engage. had i not been previously guilty of doing the very same thing, i might have prided myself on superior humanity when i experienced the nausea in viewing my men kill these two. the elephant first killed was a male, not full grown; his height at the withers, feet inches; circumference of the fore foot, inches * = feet inches. the female was full grown, and measured in height feet inches; circumference of the fore foot, inches * = feet ( inches). we afterward found that full-grown male elephants of this region ranged in height at the withers from feet inches to feet inches, and the circumference of the fore foot to be feet - / inches * = feet inches. these details are given because the general rule has been observed that twice the circumference of the impression made by the fore foot on the ground is the height of the animal. the print on the ground, being a little larger than the foot itself, would thus seem to be an accurate mode of measuring the size of any elephant that has passed; but the above measurements show that it is applicable only to full-grown animals. the greater size of the african elephant in the south would at once distinguish it from the indian one; but here they approach more nearly to each other in bulk, a female being about as large as a common indian male. but the ear of the african is an external mark which no one will mistake even in a picture. that of the female now killed was feet inches in depth, and feet in horizontal breadth. i have seen a native creep under one so as to be quite covered from the rain. the ear of the indian variety is not more than a third of this size. the representation of elephants on ancient coins shows that this important characteristic was distinctly recognized of old. indeed, cuvier remarked that it was better known by aristotle than by buffon. having been anxious to learn whether the african elephant is capable of being tamed, through the kindness of my friend admiral smythe i am enabled to give the reader conclusive evidence on this point. in the two medals furnished from his work, "a descriptive catalogue of his cabinet of roman and imperial large brass medals", the size of the ears will be at once noted as those of the true african elephant.* they were even more docile than the asiatic, and were taught various feats, as walking on ropes, dancing, etc. one of the coins is of faustina senior, the other of severus the seventh, and struck a.d. . these elephants were brought from africa to rome. the attempt to tame this most useful animal has never been made at the cape, nor has one ever been exhibited in england. there is only one very young calf of the species in the british museum. * unfortunately these illustrations can not be presented in this ascii text. a. l., . the abundance of food in this country, as compared with the south, would lead one to suppose that animals here must attain a much greater size; but actual measurement now confirms the impression made on my mind by the mere sight of the animals, that those in the districts north of deg. were smaller than the same races existing southward of that latitude. the first time that mr. oswell and myself saw full-grown male elephants on the river zouga, they seemed no larger than the females (which are always smaller than males) we had met on the limpopo. there they attain a height of upward of feet. at the zouga the height of one i measured was feet inches, and in this district feet inches. there is, however, an increase in the size of the tusks as we approach the equator. unfortunately, i never made measurements of other animals in the south; but the appearance of the animals themselves in the north at once produced the impression on my mind referred to as to their decrease in size. when we first saw koodoos, they were so much smaller than those we had been accustomed to in the south that we doubted whether they were not a new kind of antelope; and the leche, seen nowhere south of deg., is succeeded by the poku as we go north. this is, in fact, only a smaller species of that antelope, with a more reddish color. a great difference in size prevails also among domestic animals; but the influence of locality on them is not so well marked. the cattle of the batoka, for instance, are exceedingly small and very beautiful, possessing generally great breadth between the eyes and a very playful disposition. they are much smaller than the aboriginal cattle in the south; but it must be added that those of the barotse valley, in the same latitudes as the batoka, are large. the breed may have come from the west, as the cattle within the influence of the sea air, as at little fish bay, benguela, ambriz, and along that coast, are very large. those found at lake ngami, with large horns and standing six feet high, probably come from the same quarter. the goats are also small, and domestic fowls throughout this country are of a very small size, and even dogs, except where the inhabitants have had an opportunity of improving the breed by importation from the portuguese. as the barotse cattle are an exception to this general rule, so are the barotse dogs, for they are large, savage-looking animals, though in reality very cowardly. it is a little remarkable that a decrease in size should occur where food is the most abundant; but tropical climates seem unfavorable for the full development of either animals or man. it is not from want of care in the breeding, for the natives always choose the larger and stronger males for stock, and the same arrangement prevails in nature, for it is only by overcoming their weaker rivals that the wild males obtain possession of the herd. invariably they show the scars received in battle. the elephant we killed yesterday had an umbilical hernia as large as a child's head, probably caused by the charge of a rival. the cow showed scars received from men; two of the wounds in her side were still unhealed, and there was an orifice six inches long, and open, in her proboscis, and, as it was about a foot from the point, it must have interfered with her power of lifting water. in estimating the amount of food necessary for these and other large animals, sufficient attention has not been paid to the kinds chosen. the elephant, for instance, is a most dainty feeder, and particularly fond of certain sweet-tasted trees and fruits. he chooses the mohonono, the mimosa, and other trees which contain much saccharine matter, mucilage, and gum. he may be seen putting his head to a lofty palmyra, and swaying it to and fro to shake off the seeds; he then picks them up singly and eats them. or he may be seen standing by the masuka and other fruit-trees patiently picking off the sweet fruits one by one. he also digs up bulbs and tubers, but none of these are thoroughly digested. bruce remarked upon the undigested bits of wood seen in their droppings, and he must have observed, too, that neither leaves nor seeds are changed by passing through the alimentary canal. the woody fibre of roots and branches is dropped in the state of tow, the nutritious matter alone having been extracted. this capability of removing all the nourishment, and the selection of those kinds of food which contain great quantities of mucilage and gum, accounts for the fact that herds of elephants produce but small effect upon the vegetation of a country--quality being more requisite than quantity. the amount of internal fat found in them makes them much prized by the inhabitants, who are all very fond of it, both for food and ointment. after leaving the elephant valley we passed through a very beautiful country, but thinly inhabited by man. the underlying rock is trap, and dikes of talcose gneiss. the trap is often seen tilted on its edge, or dipping a little either to the north or south. the strike is generally to the northeast, the direction we are going. about losito we found the trap had given place to hornblende schist, mica schist, and various schorly rocks. we had now come into the region in which the appearance of the rocks conveys the impression of a great force having acted along the bed of the zambesi. indeed, i was led to the belief from seeing the manner in which the rocks have been thrust away on both sides from its bed, that the power which formed the crack of the falls had given direction to the river below, and opened a bed for it all the way from the falls to beyond the gorge of lupata. passing the rivulet losito, and through the ranges of hills, we reached the residence of semalembue on the th. his village is situated at the bottom of ranges through which the kafue finds a passage, and close to the bank of that river. the kafue, sometimes called kahowhe or bashukulompo river, is upward of two hundred yards wide here, and full of hippopotami, the young of which may be seen perched on the necks of their dams. at this point we had reached about the same level as linyanti. semalembue paid us a visit soon after our arrival, and said that he had often heard of me, and now that he had the pleasure of seeing me, he feared that i should sleep the first night at his village hungry. this was considered the handsome way of introducing a present, for he then handed five or six baskets of meal and maize, and an enormous one of ground-nuts. next morning he gave me about twenty baskets more of meal. i could make but a poor return for his kindness, but he accepted my apologies politely, saying that he knew there were no goods in the country from which i had come, and, in professing great joy at the words of peace i spoke, he said, "now i shall cultivate largely, in the hope of eating and sleeping in peace." it is noticeable that all whom we have yet met eagerly caught up the idea of living in peace as the probable effect of the gospel. they require no explanation of the existence of the deity. sekwebu makes use of the term "reza", and they appear to understand at once. like negroes in general, they have a strong tendency to worship, and i heard that semalembue gets a good deal of ivory from the surrounding tribes on pretense of having some supernatural power. he transmits this to some other chiefs on the zambesi, and receives in return english cotton goods which come from mozambique by babisa traders. my men here began to sell their beads and other ornaments for cotton cloth. semalembue was accompanied by about forty people, all large men. they have much wool on their heads, which is sometimes drawn all together up to the crown, and tied there in a large tapering bunch. the forehead and round by the ears is shaven close to the base of this tuft. others draw out the hair on one side, and twist it into little strings. the rest is taken over, and hangs above the ear, which gives the appearance of having a cap cocked jauntily on the side of the head. the mode of salutation is by clapping the hands. various parties of women came from the surrounding villages to see the white man, but all seemed very much afraid. their fear, which i seldom could allay, made them, when addressed, clap their hands with increasing vigor. sekwebu was the only one of the makololo who knew this part of the country; and this was the region which to his mind was best adapted for the residence of a tribe. the natives generally have a good idea of the nature of the soil and pasturage, and sekwebu expatiated with great eloquence on the capabilities of this part for supplying the wants of the makololo. there is certainly abundance of room at present in the country for thousands and thousands more of population. we passed near the losito, a former encampment of the matebele, with whom sekwebu had lived. at the sight of the bones of the oxen they had devoured, and the spot where savage dances had taken place, though all deserted now, the poor fellow burst out into a wild matebele song. he pointed out also a district, about two days and a half west of semalembue, where sebituane had formerly dwelt. there is a hot fountain on the hills there named "nakalombo", which may be seen at a distance emitting steam. "there," said sekwebu, "had your molekane (sebituane) been alive, he would have brought you to live with him. you would be on the bank of the river, and, by taking canoes, you would at once sail down to the zambesi, and visit the white people at the sea." this part is a favorite one with the makololo, and probably it would be a good one in which to form a centre of civilization. there is a large, flat district of country to the north, said to be peopled by the bashukulompo and other tribes, who cultivate the ground to a great extent, and raise vast quantities of grain, ground-nuts, sweet potatoes, etc. they also grow sugar-cane. if they were certain of a market, i believe they would not be unwilling to cultivate cotton too, but they have not been accustomed to the peaceful pursuits of commerce. all are fond of trade, but they have been taught none save that in ivory and slaves. the kafue enters a narrow gorge close by the village of semalembue; as the hill on the north is called bolengwe, i apply that name to the gorge (lat. d ' " s., long. d ' e.). semalembue said that he ought to see us over the river, so he accompanied us to a pass about a mile south of his village, and when we entered among the hills we found the ford of the kafue. on parting with semalembue i put on him a shirt, and he went away with it apparently much delighted. the ford was at least yards broad, but rocky and shallow. after crossing it in a canoe, we went along the left bank, and were completely shut in by high hills. every available spot between the river and the hills is under cultivation; and the residence of the people here is intended to secure safety for themselves and their gardens from their enemies; there is plenty of garden-ground outside the hills; here they are obliged to make pitfalls to protect the grain against the hippopotami. as these animals had not been disturbed by guns, they were remarkably tame, and took no notice of our passing. we again saw numbers of young ones, not much larger than terrier dogs, sitting on the necks of their dams, the little saucy-looking heads cocking up between the old one's ears; as they become a little older they sit on the withers. needing meat, we shot a full-grown cow, and found, as we had often done before, the flesh to be very much like pork. the height of this animal was feet inches, and from the point of the nose to the root of the tail feet . they seem quarrelsome, for both males and females are found covered with scars, and young males are often killed by the elder ones: we met an instance of this near the falls. we came to a great many little villages among the hills, as if the inhabitants had reason to hide themselves from the observation of their enemies. while detained cutting up the hippopotamus, i ascended a hill called mabue asula (stones smell badly), and, though not the highest in sight, it was certainly not feet lower than the most elevated. the boiling-point of water showed it to be about feet above the river, which was of the level of linyanti. these hills seemed to my men of prodigious altitude, for they had been accustomed to ant-hills only. the mention of mountains that pierced the clouds made them draw in their breath and hold their hands to their mouths. and when i told them that their previous description of taba cheu had led me to expect something of the sort, i found that the idea of a cloud-capped mountain had never entered into their heads. the mountains certainly look high, from having abrupt sides; but i had recognized the fact by the point of ebullition of water, that they are of a considerably lower altitude than the top of the ridge we had left. they constitute, in fact, a sort of low fringe on the outside of the eastern ridge, exactly as the (apparently) high mountains of angola (golungo alto) form an outer low fringe to the western ridge. i was much struck by the similarity of conformation and nature of the rocks on both sides of the continent; but there is a difference in the structure of the subtending ridges, as may be understood by the annexed ideal geological section. *[the ascii edition cannot include the drawing of the cross-section, but the comments are included in full.--a. l., .] ideal section across south central africa, intended to show the elevated valley form of that portion of the continent. -------------------------------------- west. [terrain] [remarks] sea. calcareous tufa. trap. with modern shells, and similar to those now found in the sea adjacent, with strongly magnetic iron ore. mica schist. dipping east. sandstone (like that of east africa). the rocks pungo andongo. of pungo andongo are a conglomerate of rounded shingle in rocks feet. a matrix of sandstone, and stand on horizontal sandstone, on which fossil palms appear. fault. red shales capped by ferruginous conglomerate. soft red shale or "keele". g| feet. r| water boils e| at deg. a| on top, ferruginous conglomerate; below that, red shale, t| feet. with banks of gravel. | lake dilolo. c| tufa and trap. in londa, the bottom of the valley e| feet. is formed of ferruginous conglomerate on the surface; n| lake ngami. hardened sandstone, with madrepore holes, t| banks of gravel, and occasionally trap; r| south of degrees, large patches of soft a| tufa. calcareous tufa, with pebbles of jasper, l| agates, &c., lie on various horizontal traps, | amygdaloids with analami and mesotype, which is p| burst through by basaltic rocks forming hills, l| and showing that the bottom of the valley a| radiated zeolite. consists of old silurian schists; t| there are also various granitic rocks e| cropping through the trap. a| u| basaltic rocks. augitic porphyry and basalt, .| with tufa over it. place of great cataract. mica schist. white mica schist dipping west, and gneiss. feet. kalomo. water boils granite. with black mica. at deg. mica schist. white mica schist and white marble. hill tops trap. hot fountain; conical hills of igneous rocks, feet. containing much mica. bottoms feet. mica schist. pink marble dolomite, on hills of mica schist, of various colours, with trap, schorl in gneiss, kyanite or disthene gneissose mica in the schist. ft. coal in sandstone. specular and magnetic iron on various igneous rocks; finely laminated porphyry; granite; hot fountain. sandstone overlying coal; trap dykes; syenitic porphyry dykes; black vesicular trap, penetrating in thin veins the clay shale of the country, converting it into porcellanite, and partially crystallizing the coal. on this sandstone lie fossil palms, and coniferous trees converted into silica, as on a similar rock in angola. compact siliceous schist. igneous rocks. trappean rocks, with hot fountain. calcareous tufa. arkose, or granitic grit, with modern shells covered by calcareous tufa. sea. east. the heights are given as an approximation obtained from observing the boiling point of water, they are drawn on a scale of / of an inch per feet in altitude. the section is necessarily exaggerated in longitude, as it was traversed in different latitudes, the western side being in d- d, the eastern d- d s. we can see from this hill five distinct ranges, of which bolengo is the most westerly, and komanga is the most easterly. the second is named sekonkamena, and the third funze. very many conical hills appear among them, and they are generally covered with trees. on their tops we have beautiful white quartz rocks, and some have a capping of dolomite. on the west of the second range we have great masses of kyanite or disthene, and on the flanks of the third and fourth a great deal of specular iron ore which is magnetic, and containing a very large percentage of the metal. the sides of these ranges are generally very precipitous, and there are rivulets between which are not perennial. many of the hills have been raised by granite, exactly like that of the kalomo. dikes of this granite may be seen thrusting up immense masses of mica schist and quartz or sandstone schist, and making the strata fold over them on each side, as clothes hung upon a line. the uppermost stratum is always dolomite or bright white quartz. semalembue intended that we should go a little to the northeast, and pass through the people called babimpe, and we saw some of that people, who invited us to come that way on account of its being smoother; but, feeling anxious to get back to the zambesi again, we decided to cross the hills toward its confluence with the kafue. the distance, which in a straight line is but small, occupied three days. the precipitous nature of the sides of this mass of hills knocked up the oxen and forced us to slaughter two, one of which, a very large one, and ornamented with upward of thirty pieces of its own skin detached and hanging down, sekeletu had wished us to take to the white people as a specimen of his cattle. we saw many elephants among the hills, and my men ran off and killed three. when we came to the top of the outer range of the hills we had a glorious view. at a short distance below us we saw the kafue, wending away over a forest-clad plain to the confluence, and on the other side of the zambesi, beyond that, lay a long range of dark hills. a line of fleecy clouds appeared lying along the course of that river at their base. the plain below us, at the left of the kafue, had more large game on it than any where else i had seen in africa. hundreds of buffaloes and zebras grazed on the open spaces, and there stood lordly elephants feeding majestically, nothing moving apparently but the proboscis. i wished that i had been able to take a photograph of a scene so seldom beheld, and which is destined, as guns increase, to pass away from earth. when we descended we found all the animals remarkably tame. the elephants stood beneath the trees, fanning themselves with their large ears, as if they did not see us at or yards distance. the number of animals was quite astonishing, and made me think that here i could realize an image of that time when megatheria fed undisturbed in the primeval forests. we saw great numbers of red-colored pigs ('potamochoerus') standing gazing at us in wonder. the people live on the hills, and, having no guns, seldom disturb the game. they have never been visited, even by half-castes; but babisa traders have come occasionally. continuous rains kept us for some time on the banks of the chiponga, and here we were unfortunate enough to come among the tsetse. mr. j. n. gray, of the british museum, has kindly obliged me with a drawing of the insect, with the ravages of which i have unfortunately been too familiar. (for description, see p. - [chapter paragraphs - ].) no. is the insect somewhat smaller than life, from the specimen having contracted in drying; they are a little larger than the common house-fly. no. is the insect magnified; and no. shows the magnified proboscis and poison-bulb at the root.* * unfortunately, these illustrations can not be presented in this ascii text. fortunately, information on the tsetse is no longer difficult to find. the "somewhat smaller than life" drawing is about cm from head to tail, not including wings or proboscis.--a. l., . we tried to leave one morning, but the rain coming on afresh brought us to a stand, and after waiting an hour, wet to the skin, we were fain to retrace our steps to our sheds. these rains were from the east, and the clouds might be seen on the hills exactly as the "table-cloth" on table mountain. this was the first wetting we had got since we left sesheke, for i had gained some experience in traveling. in londa we braved the rain, and, as i despised being carried in our frequent passage through running water, i was pretty constantly drenched; but now, when we saw a storm coming, we invariably halted. the men soon pulled grass sufficient to make a little shelter for themselves by placing it on a bush, and, having got my camp-stool and umbrella, with a little grass under my feet, i kept myself perfectly dry. we also lighted large fires, and the men were not chilled by streams of water running down their persons, and abstracting the heat, as they would have been had they been exposed to the rain. when it was over they warmed themselves by the fires, and we traveled on comfortably. the effect of this care was, that we had much less sickness than with a smaller party in journeying to loanda. another improvement made from my experience was avoiding an entire change of diet. in going to loanda i took little or no european food, in order not to burden my men and make them lose spirit, but trusted entirely to what might be got by the gun and the liberality of the balonda; but on this journey i took some flour which had been left in the wagon, with some got on the island, and baked my own bread all the way in an extemporaneous oven made by an inverted pot. with these precautions, aided, no doubt, by the greater healthiness of the district over which we passed, i enjoyed perfect health. when we left the chipongo on the th we passed among the range of hills on our left, which are composed of mica and clay slate. at the bottom we found a forest of large silicified trees, all lying as if the elevation of the range had made them fall away from it, and toward the river. an ordinary-sized tree standing on end, measured inches in diameter: there were laminae to the inch. these are easily counted, because there is usually a scale of pure silica between each, which has not been so much affected by the weather as the rest of the ring itself: the edges of the rings thus stand out plainly. mr. quekett, having kindly examined some specimens, finds that it is "silicified coniferous wood of the araucarian type; and the nearest allied wood that he knows of is that found, also in a fossil state, in new south wales." the numbers of large game were quite astonishing. i never saw elephants so tame as those near the chiponga: they stood close to our path without being the least afraid. this is different from their conduct where they have been accustomed to guns, for there they take alarm at the distance of a mile, and begin to run if a shot is fired even at a longer distance. my men killed another here, and rewarded the villagers of the chiponga for their liberality in meal by loading them with flesh. we spent a night at a baobab, which was hollow, and would hold twenty men inside. it had been used as a lodging-house by the babisa. as we approached nearer the zambesi, the country became covered with broad-leaved bushes, pretty thickly planted, and we had several times to shout to elephants to get out of our way. at an open space, a herd of buffaloes came trotting up to look at our oxen, and it was only by shooting one that i made them retreat. the meat is very much like that of an ox, and this one was very fine. the only danger we actually encountered was from a female elephant, with three young ones of different sizes. charging through the centre of our extended line, and causing the men to throw down their burdens in a great hurry, she received a spear for her temerity. i never saw an elephant with more than one calf before. we knew that we were near our zambesi again, even before the great river burst upon our sight, by the numbers of water-fowl we met. i killed four geese with two shots, and, had i followed the wishes of my men, could have secured a meal of water-fowl for the whole party. i never saw a river with so much animal life around and in it, and, as the barotse say, "its fish and fowl are always fat." when our eyes were gladdened by a view of its goodly broad waters, we found it very much larger than it is even above the falls. one might try to make his voice heard across it in vain. its flow was more rapid than near sesheke, being often four and a half miles an hour, and, what i never saw before, the water was discolored and of a deep brownish-red. in the great valley the leeambye never becomes of this color. the adjacent country, so far north as is known, is all level, and the soil, being generally covered with dense herbage, is not abraded; but on the eastern ridge the case is different; the grass is short, and, the elevation being great, the soil is washed down by the streams, and hence the discoloration which we now view. the same thing was observed on the western ridge. we never saw discoloration till we reached the quango; that obtained its matter from the western slope of the western ridge, just as this part of the zambesi receives its soil from the eastern slope of the eastern ridge. it carried a considerable quantity of wreck of reeds, sticks, and trees. we struck upon the river about eight miles east of the confluence with the kafue, and thereby missed a sight of that interesting point. the cloudiness of the weather was such that but few observations could be made for determining our position; so, pursuing our course, we went down the left bank, and came opposite the island of menye makaba. the zambesi contains numerous islands; this was about a mile and a half or two miles long, and upward of a quarter of a mile broad. besides human population, it has a herd of buffaloes that never leave it. in the distance they seemed to be upward of sixty. the human and brute inhabitants understand each other; for when the former think they ought to avenge the liberties committed on their gardens, the leaders of the latter come out boldly to give battle. they told us that the only time in which they can thin them is when the river is full and part of the island flooded. they then attack them from their canoes. the comparatively small space to which they have confined themselves shows how luxuriant the vegetation of this region is; for were they in want of more pasture, as buffaloes can swim well, and the distance from this bank to the island is not much more than yards, they might easily remove hither. the opposite bank is much more distant. ranges of hills appear now to run parallel with the zambesi, and are about fifteen miles apart. those on the north approach nearest to the river. the inhabitants on that side are the batonga, those on the south bank are the banyai. the hills abound in buffaloes, and elephants are numerous, and many are killed by the people on both banks. they erect stages on high trees overhanging the paths by which the elephants come, and then use a large spear with a handle nearly as thick as a man's wrist, and four or five feet long. when the animal comes beneath they throw the spear, and if it enters between the ribs above, as the blade is at least twenty inches long by two broad, the motion of the handle, as it is aided by knocking against the trees, makes frightful gashes within, and soon causes death. they kill them also by means of a spear inserted in a beam of wood, which being suspended on the branch of a tree by a cord attached to a latch fastened in the path, and intended to be struck by the animal's foot, leads to the fall of the beam, and, the spear being poisoned, causes death in a few hours. we were detained by continuous rains several days at this island. the clouds rested upon the tops of the hills as they came from the eastward, and then poured down plenteous showers on the valleys below. as soon as we could move, tomba nyama, the head man of the island, volunteered the loan of a canoe to cross a small river, called the chongwe, which we found to be about fifty or sixty yards broad and flooded. all this part of the country was well known to sekwebu, and he informed us that, when he passed through it as a boy, the inhabitants possessed abundance of cattle, and there were no tsetse. the existence of the insect now shows that it may return in company with the larger game. the vegetation along the bank was exceedingly rank, and the bushes so tangled that it was difficult to get on. the paths had been made by the wild animals alone, for the general pathway of the people is the river, in their canoes. we usually followed the footpaths of the game, and of these there was no lack. buffaloes, zebras, pallahs, and waterbucks abound, and there is also a great abundance of wild pigs, koodoos, and the black antelope. we got one buffalo as he was rolling himself in a pool of mud. he had a large piece of skin torn off his flank, it was believed by an alligator. we were struck by the fact that, as soon as we came between the ranges of hills which flank the zambesi, the rains felt warm. at sunrise the thermometer stood at from deg. to deg.; at midday, in the coolest shade, namely, in my little tent, under a shady tree, at deg. to deg.; and at sunset it was deg. this is different from any thing we experienced in the interior, for these rains always bring down the mercury to deg. or even deg. there, too, we found a small black coleopterous insect, which stung like the mosquito, but injected less poison; it puts us in mind of that insect, which does not exist in the high lands we had left. january th, . each village we passed furnished us with a couple of men to take us on to the next. they were useful in showing us the parts least covered with jungle. when we came near a village, we saw men, women, and children employed in weeding their gardens, they being great agriculturists. most of the men are muscular, and have large plowman hands. their color is the same admixture, from very dark to light olive, that we saw in londa. though all have thick lips and flat noses, only the more degraded of the population possess the ugly negro physiognomy. they mark themselves by a line of little raised cicatrices, each of which is a quarter of an inch long; they extend from the tip of the nose to the root of the hair on the forehead. it is remarkable that i never met with an albino in crossing africa, though, from accounts published by the portuguese, i was led to expect that they were held in favor as doctors by certain chiefs. i saw several in the south: one at kuruman is a full-grown woman, and a man having this peculiarity of skin was met with in the colony. their bodies are always blistered on exposure to the sun, as the skin is more tender than that of the blacks. the kuruman woman lived some time at kolobeng, and generally had on her bosom and shoulders the remains of large blisters. she was most anxious to be made black, but nitrate of silver, taken internally, did not produce its usual effect. during the time i resided at mabotsa, a woman came to the station with a fine boy, an albino. the father had ordered her to throw him away, but she clung to her offspring for many years. he was remarkably intelligent for his age. the pupil of the eye was of a pink color, and the eye itself was unsteady in vision. the hair, or rather wool, was yellow, and the features were those common among the bechuanas. after i left the place the mother is said to have become tired of living apart from the father, who refused to have her while she retained the son. she took him out one day, and killed him close to the village of mabotsa, and nothing was done to her by the authorities. from having met with no albinos in londa, i suspect they are there also put to death. we saw one dwarf only in londa, and brands on him showed he had once been a slave; and there is one dwarf woman at linyanti. the general absence of deformed persons is partly owing to their destruction in infancy, and partly to the mode of life being a natural one, so far as ventilation and food are concerned. they use but few unwholesome mixtures as condiments, and, though their undress exposes them to the vicissitudes of the temperature, it does not harbor vomites. it was observed that, when smallpox and measles visited the country, they were most severe on the half-castes who were clothed. in several tribes, a child which is said to "tlola", transgress, is put to death. "tlolo", or transgression, is ascribed to several curious cases. a child who cut the upper front teeth before the under was always put to death among the bakaa, and, i believe, also among the bakwains. in some tribes, a case of twins renders one of them liable to death; and an ox, which, while lying in the pen, beats the ground with its tail, is treated in the same way. it is thought to be calling death to visit the tribe. when i was coming through londa, my men carried a great number of fowls, of a larger breed than any they had at home. if one crowed before midnight, it had been guilty of "tlolo", and was killed. the men often carried them sitting on their guns, and, if one began to crow in a forest, the owner would give it a beating, by way of teaching it not to be guilty of crowing at unseasonable hours. the women here are in the habit of piercing the upper lip, and gradually enlarging the orifice until they can insert a shell. the lip then appears drawn out beyond the perpendicular of the nose, and gives them a most ungainly aspect. sekwebu remarked, "these women want to make their mouths like those of ducks;" and, indeed, it does appear as if they had the idea that female beauty of lip had been attained by the 'ornithorhynchus paradoxus' alone. this custom prevails throughout the country of the maravi, and no one could see it without confessing that fashion had never led women to a freak more mad. we had rains now every day, and considerable cloudiness, but the sun often burst through with scorching intensity. all call out against it then, saying, "o the sun! that is rain again." it was worth noticing that my companions never complained of the heat while on the highlands, but when we descended into the lowlands of angola, and here also, they began to fret on account of it. i myself felt an oppressive steaminess in the atmosphere which i had not experienced on the higher lands. as the game was abundant and my party very large, i had still to supply their wants with the gun. we slaughtered the oxen only when unsuccessful in hunting. we always entered into friendly relations with the head men of the different villages, and they presented grain and other food freely. one man gave a basinful of rice, the first we met with in the country. it is never seen in the interior. he said he knew it was "white man's corn", and when i wished to buy some more, he asked me to give him a slave. this was the first symptom of the slave-trade on this side of the country. the last of these friendly head men was named mobala; and having passed him in peace, we had no anticipation of any thing else; but, after a few hours, we reached selole or chilole, and found that he not only considered us enemies, but had actually sent an express to raise the tribe of mburuma against us. all the women of selole had fled, and the few people we met exhibited symptoms of terror. an armed party had come from mburuma in obedience to the call; but the head man of the company, being mburuma's brother, suspecting that it was a hoax, came to our encampment and told us the whole. when we explained our objects, he told us that mburuma, he had no doubt, would receive us well. the reason why selole acted in this foolish manner we afterward found to be this: an italian named simoens, and nicknamed siriatomba (don't eat tobacco), had married the daughter of a chief called sekokole, living north of tete. he armed a party of fifty slaves with guns, and, ascending the river in canoes some distance beyond the island meya makaba, attacked several inhabited islands beyond, securing a large number of prisoners, and much ivory. on his return, the different chiefs, at the instigation of his father-in-law, who also did not wish him to set up as a chief, united, attacked and dispersed the party of simoens, and killed him while trying to escape on foot. selole imagined that i was another italian, or, as he expressed it, "siriatomba risen from the dead." in his message to mburuma he even said that mobala, and all the villages beyond, were utterly destroyed by our fire-arms, but the sight of mobala himself, who had come to the village of selole, led the brother of mburuma to see at once that it was all a hoax. but for this, the foolish fellow selole might have given us trouble. we saw many of the liberated captives of this italian among the villages here, and sekwebu found them to be matebele. the brother of mburuma had a gun, which was the first we had seen in coming eastward. before we reached mburuma my men went to attack a troop of elephants, as they were much in need of meat. when the troop began to run, one of them fell into a hole, and before he could extricate himself an opportunity was afforded for all the men to throw their spears. when he rose he was like a huge porcupine, for each of the seventy or eighty men had discharged more than one spear at him. as they had no more, they sent for me to finish him. in order to put him at once out of pain, i went to within twenty yards, there being a bank between us which he could not readily climb. i rested the gun upon an ant-hill so as to take a steady aim; but, though i fired twelve two-ounce bullets, all i had, into different parts, i could not kill him. as it was becoming dark, i advised my men to let him stand, being sure of finding him dead in the morning; but, though we searched all the next day, and went more than ten miles, we never saw him again. i mention this to young men who may think that they will be able to hunt elephants on foot by adopting the ceylon practice of killing them by one ball in the brain. i believe that in africa the practice of standing before an elephant, expecting to kill him with one shot, would be certain death to the hunter; and i would add, for the information of those who may think that, because i met with a great abundance of game here, they also might find rare sport, that the tsetse exists all along both banks of the zambesi, and there can be no hunting by means of horses. hunting on foot in this climate is such excessively hard work, that i feel certain the keenest sportsman would very soon turn away from it in disgust. i myself was rather glad, when furnished with the excuse that i had no longer any balls, to hand over all the hunting to my men, who had no more love for the sport than myself, as they never engaged in it except when forced by hunger. some of them gave me a hint to melt down my plate by asking if it were not lead. i had two pewter plates and a piece of zinc which i now melted into bullets. i also spent the remainder of my handkerchiefs in buying spears for them. my men frequently surrounded herds of buffaloes and killed numbers of the calves. i, too, exerted myself greatly; but, as i am now obliged to shoot with the left arm, i am a bad shot, and this, with the lightness of the bullets, made me very unsuccessful. the more the hunger, the less my success, invariably. i may here add an adventure with an elephant of one who has had more narrow escapes than any man living, but whose modesty has always prevented him from publishing any thing about himself. when we were on the banks of the zouga in , mr. oswell pursued one of these animals into the dense, thick, thorny bushes met with on the margin of that river, and to which the elephant usually flees for safety. he followed through a narrow pathway by lifting up some of the branches and forcing his way through the rest; but, when he had just got over this difficulty, he saw the elephant, whose tail he had but got glimpses of before, now rushing toward him. there was then no time to lift up branches, so he tried to force the horse through them. he could not effect a passage; and, as there was but an instant between the attempt and failure, the hunter tried to dismount, but in doing this one foot was caught by a branch, and the spur drawn along the animal's flank; this made him spring away and throw the rider on the ground with his face to the elephant, which, being in full chase, still went on. mr. oswell saw the huge fore foot about to descend on his legs, parted them, and drew in his breath as if to resist the pressure of the other foot, which he expected would next descend on his body. he saw the whole length of the under part of the enormous brute pass over him; the horse got away safely. i have heard of but one other authentic instance in which an elephant went over a man without injury, and, for any one who knows the nature of the bush in which this occurred, the very thought of an encounter in it with such a foe is appalling. as the thorns are placed in pairs on opposite sides of the branches, and these turn round on being pressed against, one pair brings the other exactly into the position in which it must pierce the intruder. they cut like knives. horses dread this bush extremely; indeed, most of them refuse to face its thorns. on reaching mburuma's village, his brother came to meet us. we explained the reason of our delay, and he told us that we were looked upon with alarm. he said that siriatomba had been killed near the village of selole, and hence that man's fears. he added that the italian had come talking of peace, as we did, but had kidnapped children and bought ivory with them, and that we were supposed to be following the same calling. i pointed to my men, and asked if any of these were slaves, and if we had any children among them, and i think we satisfied him that we were true men. referring to our ill success in hunting the day before, he said, "the man at whose village you remained was in fault in allowing you to want meat, for he had only to run across to mburuma; he would have given him a little meal, and, having sprinkled that on the ground as an offering to the gods, you would have found your elephant." the chiefs in these parts take upon themselves an office somewhat like the priesthood, and the people imagine that they can propitiate the deity through them. in illustration of their ideas, it may be mentioned that, when we were among the tribes west of semalembue, several of the people came forward and introduced themselves--one as a hunter of elephants, another as a hunter of hippopotami, a third as a digger of pitfalls--apparently wishing me to give them medicine for success in their avocations, as well as to cure the diseases of those to whom i was administering the drugs. i thought they attributed supernatural power to them, for, like all africans, they have unbounded faith in the efficacy of charms; but i took pains to let them know that they must pray and trust to another power than mine for aid. we never saw mburuma himself, and the conduct of his people indicated very strong suspicions, though he gave us presents of meal, maize, and native corn. his people never came near us except in large bodies and fully armed. we had to order them to place their bows, arrows, and spears at a distance before entering our encampment. we did not, however, care much for a little trouble now, as we hoped that, if we could pass this time without much molestation, we might yet be able to return with ease, and without meeting sour, suspicious looks. the soil, glancing every where with mica, is very fertile, and all the valleys are cultivated, the maize being now in ear and eatable. ranges of hills, which line both banks of the river above this, now come close up to each bank, and form a narrow gorge, which, like all others of the same nature, is called mpata. there is a narrow pathway by the side of the river, but we preferred a more open one in a pass among the hills to the east, which is called mohango. the hills rise to a height of or feet, and are all covered with trees. the rocks were of various colored mica schist; and parallel with the zambesi lay a broad band of gneiss with garnets in it. it stood on edge, and several dikes of basalt, with dolerite, had cut through it. mburuma sent two men as guides to the loangwa. these men tried to bring us to a stand, at a distance of about six miles from the village, by the notice, "mburuma says you are to sleep under that tree." on declining to do this, we were told that we must wait at a certain village for a supply of corn. as none appeared in an hour, i proceeded on the march. it is not quite certain that their intentions were hostile, but this seemed to disarrange their plans, and one of them was soon observed running back to mburuma. they had first of all tried to separate our party by volunteering the loan of a canoe to convey sekwebu and me, together with our luggage, by way of the river, and, as it was pressed upon us, i thought that this was their design. the next attempt was to detain us in the pass; but, betraying no suspicion, we civilly declined to place ourselves in their power in an unfavorable position. we afterward heard that a party of babisa traders, who came from the northeast, bringing english goods from mozambique, had been plundered by this same people. elephants were still abundant, but more wild, as they fled with great speed as soon as we made our appearance. the country between mburuma's and his mother's village was all hilly and very difficult, and prevented us from traveling more than ten miles a day. at the village of ma mburuma (mother of mburuma), the guides, who had again joined us, gave a favorable report, and the women and children did not flee. here we found that traders, called bazunga, have been in the habit of coming in canoes, and that i was named as one of them. these i supposed to be half-caste portuguese, for they said that the hair of their heads and the skin beneath their clothing were different from mine. ma mburuma promised us canoes to cross the loangwa in our front. it was pleasant to see great numbers of men, women, and boys come, without suspicion, to look at the books, watch, looking-glass, revolver, etc. they are a strong, muscular race, and both men and women are seen cultivating the ground. the soil contains so much comminuted talc and mica from the adjacent hills that it seems as if mixed with spermaceti. they generally eat their corn only after it has begun to sprout from steeping it in water. the deformed lips of the women make them look very ugly; i never saw one smile. the people in this part seem to understand readily what is spoken about god, for they listen with great attention, and tell in return their own ideas of departed spirits. the position of the village of mburuma's mother was one of great beauty, quite inclosed by high, steep hills; and the valleys are all occupied by gardens of native corn and maize, which grow luxuriantly. we were obliged to hurry along, for the oxen were bitten daily by the tsetse, which, as i have before remarked, now inhabits extensive tracts which once supported herds of cattle that were swept off by mpakane and other marauders, whose devastations were well known to sekwebu, for he himself had been an actor in the scenes. when he told me of them he always lowered his voice, in order that the guides might not hear that he had been one of their enemies. but that we were looked upon with suspicion, on account of having come in the footsteps of invaders, was evident from our guides remarking to men in the gardens through which we passed, "they have words of peace--all very fine; but lies only, as the bazunga are great liars." they thought we did not understand them; but sekwebu knew every word perfectly; and, without paying any ostensible attention to these complimentary remarks, we always took care to explain ever afterward that we were not bazunga, but makoa (english). chapter . confluence of loangwa and zambesi--hostile appearances--ruins of a church--turmoil of spirit--cross the river--friendly parting--ruins of stone houses--the situation of zumbo for commerce--pleasant gardens--dr. lacerda's visit to cazembe--pereira's statement--unsuccessful attempt to establish trade with the people of cazembe--one of my men tossed by a buffalo--meet a man with jacket and hat on--hear of the portuguese and native war--holms and terraces on the banks of a river--dancing for corn--beautiful country--mpende's hostility--incantations--a fight anticipated--courage and remarks of my men--visit from two old councilors of mpende--their opinion of the english--mpende concludes not to fight us--his subsequent friendship--aids us to cross the river--the country--sweet potatoes--bakwain theory of rain confirmed--thunder without clouds--desertion of one of my men--other natives' ideas of the english--dalama (gold)--inhabitants dislike slave-buyers--meet native traders with american calico--game-laws-- elephant medicine--salt from the sand--fertility of soil--spotted hyaena--liberality and politeness of the people--presents--a stingy white trader--natives' remarks about him--effect on their minds--rain and wind now from an opposite direction--scarcity of fuel--trees for boat-building--boroma--freshets--leave the river--chicova, its geological features--small rapid near tete--loquacious guide--nyampungo, the rain-charmer--an old man--no silver--gold-washing--no cattle. th. we reached the confluence of the loangwa and the zambesi, most thankful to god for his great mercies in helping us thus far. mburuma's people had behaved so suspiciously, that, though we had guides from him, we were by no means sure that we should not be attacked in crossing the loangwa. we saw them here collecting in large numbers, and, though professing friendship, they kept at a distance from our camp. they refused to lend us more canoes than two, though they have many. they have no intercourse with europeans except through the babisa. they tell us that this was formerly the residence of the bazunga, and maintain silence as to the cause of their leaving it. i walked about some ruins i discovered, built of stone, and found the remains of a church, and on one side lay a broken bell, with the letters i. h. s. and a cross, but no date. there were no inscriptions on stone, and the people could not tell what the bazunga called their place. we found afterward it was zumbo. i felt some turmoil of spirit in the evening at the prospect of having all my efforts for the welfare of this great region and its teeming population knocked on the head by savages to-morrow, who might be said to "know not what they do." it seemed such a pity that the important fact of the existence of the two healthy ridges which i had discovered should not become known in christendom, for a confirmation would thereby have been given to the idea that africa is not open to the gospel. but i read that jesus said, "all power is given unto me in heaven and on earth; go ye, therefore, and teach all nations . . . and lo, i am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." i took this as his word of honor, and then went out to take observations for latitude and longitude, which, i think, were very successful. (the church: lat. d ' " s., long. d ' e.) th. the natives of the surrounding country collected around us this morning, all armed. the women and children were sent away, and one of mburuma's wives, who lives in the vicinity, was not allowed to approach, though she had come from her village to pay me a visit. only one canoe was lent to us, though we saw two others tied to the bank. the part we crossed was about a mile from the confluence, and, as it was now flooded, it seemed upward of half a mile in breadth. we passed all our goods first on to an island in the middle, then the remaining cattle and men; occupying the post of honor, i, as usual, was the last to enter the canoe. a number of the inhabitants stood armed all the time we were embarking. i showed them my watch, lens, and other things to keep them amused, until there only remained those who were to enter the canoe with me. i thanked them for their kindness, and wished them peace. after all, they may have been influenced only by the intention to be ready in case i should play them some false trick, for they have reason to be distrustful of the whites. the guides came over to bid us adieu, and we sat under a mango-tree fifteen feet in circumference. we found them more communicative now. they said that the land on both sides belonged to the bazunga, and that they had left of old, on the approach of changamera, ngaba, and mpakane. sekwebu was with the last named, but he maintained that they never came to the confluence, though they carried off all the cattle of mburuma. the guides confirmed this by saying that the bazunga were not attacked, but fled in alarm on the approach of the enemy. this mango-tree he knew by its proper name, and we found seven others and several tamarinds, and were informed that the chief mburuma sends men annually to gather the fruit, but, like many africans whom i have known, has not had patience to propagate more trees. i gave them some little presents for themselves, a handkerchief and a few beads, and they were highly pleased with a cloth of red baize for mburuma, which sekeletu had given me to purchase a canoe. we were thankful to part good friends. next morning we passed along the bottom of the range, called mazanzwe, and found the ruins of eight or ten stone houses. they all faced the river, and were high enough up the flanks of the hill mazanzwe to command a pleasant view of the broad zambesi. these establishments had all been built on one plan--a house on one side of a large court, surrounded by a wall; both houses and walls had been built of soft gray sandstone cemented together with mud. the work had been performed by slaves ignorant of building, for the stones were not often placed so as to cover the seams below. hence you frequently find the joinings forming one seam from the top to the bottom. much mortar or clay had been used to cover defects, and now trees of the fig family grow upon the walls, and clasp them with their roots. when the clay is moistened, masses of the walls come down by wholesale. some of the rafters and beams had fallen in, but were entire, and there were some trees in the middle of the houses as large as a man's body. on the opposite or south bank of the zambesi we saw the remains of a wall on a height which was probably a fort, and the church stood at a central point, formed by the right bank of the loangwa and the left of the zambesi. the situation of zumbo was admirably well chosen as a site for commerce. looking backward we see a mass of high, dark mountains, covered with trees; behind us rises the fine high hill mazanzwe, which stretches away northward along the left bank of the loangwa; to the s.e. lies an open country, with a small round hill in the distance called tofulo. the merchants, as they sat beneath the verandahs in front of their houses, had a magnificent view of the two rivers at their confluence; of their church at the angle; and of all the gardens which they had on both sides of the rivers. in these they cultivated wheat without irrigation, and, as the portuguese assert, of a grain twice the size of that at tete. from the guides we learned that the inhabitants had not imbibed much idea of christianity, for they used the same term for the church bell which they did for a diviner's drum. from this point the merchants had water communication in three directions beyond, namely, from the loangwa to the n.n.w., by the kafue to the w., and by the zambesi to the s.w. their attention, however, was chiefly attracted to the n. or londa; and the principal articles of trade were ivory and slaves. private enterprise was always restrained, for the colonies of the portuguese being strictly military, and the pay of the commandants being very small, the officers have always been obliged to engage in trade; and had they not employed their power to draw the trade to themselves by preventing private traders from making bargains beyond the villages, and only at regulated prices, they would have had no trade, as they themselves were obliged to remain always at their posts. several expeditions went to the north as far as to cazembe, and dr. lacerda, himself commandant of tete, went to that chief's residence. unfortunately, he was cut off while there, and his papers, taken possession of by a jesuit who accompanied him, were lost to the world. this jesuit probably intended to act fairly and have them published; but soon after his return he was called away by death himself, and the papers were lost sight of. dr. lacerda had a strong desire to open up communication with angola, which would have been of importance then, as affording a speedier mode of communication with portugal than by the way of the cape; but since the opening of the overland passage to india, a quicker transit is effected from eastern africa to lisbon by way of the red sea. besides lacerda, cazembe was visited by pereira, who gave a glowing account of that chief's power, which none of my inquiries have confirmed. the people of matiamvo stated to me that cazembe was a vassal of their chief: and, from all the native visitors whom i have seen, he appears to be exactly like shinte and katema, only a little more powerful. the term "emperor", which has been applied to him, seems totally inappropriate. the statement of pereira that twenty negroes were slaughtered in a day, was not confirmed by any one else, though numbers may have been killed on some particular occasion during the time of his visit, for we find throughout all the country north of deg., which i consider to be real negro, the custom of slaughtering victims to accompany the departed soul of a chief, and human sacrifices are occasionally offered, and certain parts of the bodies are used as charms. it is on account of the existence of such rites, with the similarity of the language, and the fact that the names of rivers are repeated again and again from north to south through all that region, that i consider them to have been originally one family. the last expedition to cazembe was somewhat of the same nature as the others, and failed in establishing a commerce, because the people of cazembe, who had come to tete to invite the portuguese to visit them, had not been allowed to trade with whom they might. as it had not been free-trade there, cazembe did not see why it should be free-trade at his town; he accordingly would not allow his people to furnish the party with food except at his price; and the expedition, being half starved in consequence, came away voting unanimously that cazembe was a great bore. when we left the loangwa we thought we had got rid of the hills; but there are some behind mazanzwe, though five or six miles off from the river. tsetse and the hills had destroyed two riding oxen, and when the little one that i now rode knocked up, i was forced to march on foot. the bush being very dense and high, we were going along among the trees, when three buffaloes, which we had unconsciously passed above the wind, thought that they were surrounded by men, and dashed through our line. my ox set off at a gallop, and when i could manage to glance back, i saw one of the men up in the air about five feet above a buffalo, which was tearing along with a stream of blood running down his flank. when i got back to the poor fellow, i found that he had lighted on his face, and, though he had been carried on the horns of the buffalo about twenty yards before getting the final toss, the skin was not pierced nor was a bone broken. when the beasts appeared, he had thrown down his load and stabbed one in the side. it turned suddenly upon him, and, before he could use a tree for defense, carried him off. we shampooed him well, and then went on, and in about a week he was able to engage in the hunt again. at zumbo we had entered upon old gray sandstone, with shingle in it, dipping generally toward the south, and forming the bed of the river. the zambesi is very broad here, but contains many inhabited islands. we slept opposite one on the th called shibanga. the nights are warm, the temperature never falling below deg.; it was deg. even at sunset. one can not cool the water by a wet towel round the vessel, and we feel no pleasure in drinking warm water, though the heat makes us imbibe large quantities. we often noticed lumps of a froth-like substance on the bushes as large as cricket-balls, which we could not explain. on the morning of the th we were pleased to see a person coming from the island of shibanga with jacket and hat on. he was quite black, but had come from the portuguese settlement at tete or nyungwe; and now, for the first time, we understood that the portuguese settlement was on the other bank of the river, and that they had been fighting with the natives for the last two years. we had thus got into the midst of a caffre war, without any particular wish to be on either side. he advised us to cross the river at once, as mpende lived on this side. we had been warned by the guides of mburuma against him, for they said that if we could get past mpende we might reach the white men, but that he was determined that no white man should pass him. wishing to follow this man's advice, we proposed to borrow his canoes; but, being afraid to offend the lords of the river, he declined. the consequence was, we were obliged to remain on the enemy's side. the next island belonged to a man named zungo, a fine, frank fellow, who brought us at once a present of corn, bound in a peculiar way in grass. he freely accepted our apology for having no present to give in return, as he knew that there were no goods in the interior, and, besides, sent forward a recommendation to his brother-in-law pangola. the country adjacent to the river is covered with dense bush, thorny and tangled, making one stoop or wait till the men broke or held the branches on one side. there is much rank grass, but it is not so high or rank as that of angola. the maize, however, which is grown here is equal in size to that which the americans sell for seed at the cape. there is usually a holm adjacent to the river, studded with villages and gardens. the holms are but partially cultivated, and on the other parts grows rank and weedy grass. there is then a second terrace, on which trees and bushes abound; and i thought i could detect a third and higher steppe. but i never could discover terraces on the adjacent country, such as in other countries show ancient sea-beaches. the path runs sometimes on the one and sometimes on the other of these river terraces. canoes are essentially necessary; but i find that they here cost too much for my means, and higher up, where my hoes might have secured one, i was unwilling to enter into a canoe and part with my men while there was danger of their being attacked. th. yesterday we rested under a broad-spreading fig-tree. large numbers of buffaloes and water-antelopes were feeding quietly in the meadows; the people have either no guns or no ammunition, or they would not be so tame. pangola visited us, and presented us with food. in few other countries would one hundred and fourteen sturdy vagabonds be supported by the generosity of the head men and villagers, and whatever they gave be presented with politeness. my men got pretty well supplied individually, for they went into the villages and commenced dancing. the young women were especially pleased with the new steps they had to show, though i suspect many of them were invented for the occasion, and would say, "dance for me, and i will grind corn for you." at every fresh instance of liberality, sekwebu said, "did not i tell you that these people had hearts, while we were still at linyanti?" all agreed that the character he had given was true, and some remarked, "look! although we have been so long away from home, not one of us has become lean." it was a fact that we had been all well supplied either with meat by my gun or their own spears, or food from the great generosity of the inhabitants. pangola promised to ferry us across the zambesi, but failed to fulfill his promise. he seemed to wish to avoid offending his neighbor mpende by aiding us to escape from his hands, so we proceeded along the bank. although we were in doubt as to our reception by mpende, i could not help admiring the beautiful country as we passed along. there is, indeed, only a small part under cultivation in this fertile valley, but my mind naturally turned to the comparison of it with kolobeng, where we waited anxiously during months for rain, and only a mere thunder-shower followed. i shall never forget the dry, hot east winds of that region; the yellowish, sultry, cloudless sky; the grass and all the plants drooping from drought, the cattle lean, the people dispirited, and our own hearts sick from hope deferred. there we often heard in the dead of the night the shrill whistle of the rain-doctor calling for rain that would not come, while here we listened to the rolling thunder by night, and beheld the swelling valleys adorned with plenty by day. we have rain almost daily, and every thing is beautifully fresh and green. i felt somewhat as people do on coming ashore after a long voyage--inclined to look upon the landscape in the most favorable light. the hills are covered with forests, and there is often a long line of fleecy cloud lying on them about midway up; they are very beautiful. finding no one willing to aid us in crossing the river, we proceeded to the village of the chief mpende. a fine large conical hill now appeared to the n.n.e.; it is the highest i have seen in these parts, and at some points it appears to be two cones joined together, the northern one being a little lower than the southern. another high hill stands on the same side to the n.e., and, from its similarity in shape to an axe at the top, is called motemwa. beyond it, eastward, lies the country of kaimbwa, a chief who has been engaged in actual conflict with the bazunga, and beat them too, according to the version of things here. the hills on the north bank are named kamoenja. when we came to mpende's village, he immediately sent to inquire who we were, and then ordered the guides who had come with us from the last village to go back and call their masters. he sent no message to us whatever. we had traveled very slowly up to this point, the tsetse-stricken oxen being now unable to go two miles an hour. we were also delayed by being obliged to stop at every village, and send notice of our approach to the head man, who came and received a little information, and gave some food. if we had passed on without taking any notice of them, they would have considered it impolite, and we should have appeared more as enemies than friends. i consoled myself for the loss of time by the thought that these conversations tended to the opening of our future path. d. this morning, at sunrise, a party of mpende's people came close to our encampment, uttering strange cries and waving some bright red substance toward us. they then lighted a fire with charms in it, and departed, uttering the same hideous screams as before. this was intended to render us powerless, and probably also to frighten us. ever since dawn, parties of armed men have been seen collecting from all quarters, and numbers passed us while it was yet dark. had we moved down the river at once, it would have been considered an indication of fear or defiance, and so would a retreat. i therefore resolved to wait, trusting in him who has the hearts of all men in his hands. they evidently intended to attack us, for no friendly message was sent; and when three of the batoka the night before entered the village to beg food, a man went round about each of them, making a noise like a lion. the villagers then called upon them to do homage, and, when they complied, the chief ordered some chaff to be given them, as if it had been food. other things also showed unmistakable hostility. as we were now pretty certain of a skirmish, i ordered an ox to be slaughtered, as this is a means which sebituane employed for inspiring courage. i have no doubt that we should have been victorious; indeed, my men, who were far better acquainted with fighting than any of the people on the zambesi, were rejoicing in the prospect of securing captives to carry the tusks for them. "we shall now," said they, "get both corn and clothes in plenty." they were in a sad state, poor fellows; for the rains we had encountered had made their skin-clothing drop off piecemeal, and they were looked upon with disgust by the well-fed and well-clothed zambesians. they were, however, veterans in marauding, and the head men, instead of being depressed by fear, as the people of mpende intended should be the case in using their charms, hinted broadly to me that i ought to allow them to keep mpende's wives. the roasting of meat went on fast and furious, and some of the young men said to me, "you have seen us with elephants, but you don't know yet what we can do with men." i believe that, had mpende struck the first blow, he would soon have found out that he never made a greater mistake in his life. his whole tribe was assembled at about the distance of half a mile. as the country is covered with trees, we did not see them; but every now and then a few came about us as spies, and would answer no questions. i handed a leg of the ox to two of these, and desired them to take it to mpende. after waiting a considerable time in suspense, two old men made their appearance, and said they had come to inquire who i was. i replied, "i am a lekoa" (an englishman). they said, "we don't know that tribe. we suppose you are a mozunga, the tribe with which we have been fighting." as i was not yet aware that the term mozunga was applied to a portuguese, and thought they meant half-castes, i showed them my hair and the skin of my bosom, and asked if the bazunga had hair and skin like mine. as the portuguese have the custom of cutting the hair close, and are also somewhat darker than we are, they answered, "no; we never saw skin so white as that;" and added, "ah! you must be one of that tribe that loves (literally, 'has heart to') the black men." i, of course, gladly responded in the affirmative. they returned to the village, and we afterward heard that there had been a long discussion between mpende and his councilors, and that one of the men with whom we had remained to talk the day before had been our advocate. he was named sindese oalea. when we were passing his village, after some conversation, he said to his people, "is that the man whom they wish to stop after he has passed so many tribes? what can mpende say to refusing him a passage?" it was owing to this man, and the fact that i belonged to the "friendly white tribe", that mpende was persuaded to allow us to pass. when we knew the favorable decision of the council, i sent sekwebu to speak about the purchase of a canoe, as one of my men had become very ill, and i wished to relieve his companions by taking him in a canoe. before sekwebu could finish his story, mpende remarked, "that white man is truly one of our friends. see how he lets me know his afflictions!" sekwebu adroitly took advantage of this turn in the conversation, and said, "ah! if you only knew him as well as we do who have lived with him, you would understand that he highly values your friendship and that of mburuma, and, as he is a stranger, he trusts in you to direct him." he replied, "well, he ought to cross to the other side of the river, for this bank is hilly and rough, and the way to tete is longer on this than on the opposite bank." "but who will take us across, if you do not?" "truly!" replied mpende; "i only wish you had come sooner to tell me about him; but you shall cross." mpende said frequently he was sorry he had not known me sooner, but that he had been prevented by his enchanter from coming near me; and he lamented that the same person had kept him from eating the meat which i had presented. he did every thing he could afterward to aid us on our course, and our departure was as different as possible from our approach to his village. i was very much pleased to find the english name spoken of with such great respect so far from the coast, and most thankful that no collision occurred to damage its influence. th. mpende sent two of his principal men to order the people of a large island below to ferry us across. the river is very broad, and, though my men were well acquainted with the management of canoes, we could not all cross over before dark. it is yards from bank to bank, and between and of deep water, flowing at the rate of - / miles per hour. we landed first on an island; then, to prevent our friends playing false with us, hauled the canoes up to our bivouac, and slept in them. next morning we all reached the opposite bank in safety. we observed, as we came along the zambesi, that it had fallen two feet below the height at which we first found it, and the water, though still muddy enough to deposit a film at the bottom of vessels in a few hours, is not nearly so red as it was, nor is there so much wreck on its surface. it is therefore not yet the period of the central zambesi inundation, as we were aware also from our knowledge of the interior. the present height of the water has been caused by rains outside the eastern ridge. the people here seem abundantly supplied with english cotton goods. the babisa are the medium of trade, for we were informed that the bazunga, who formerly visited these parts, have been prevented by the war from coming for the last two years. the babisa are said to be so fond of a tusk that they will even sell a newly-married wife for one. as we were now not far from the latitude of mozambique, i was somewhat tempted to strike away from the river to that port, instead of going to the s.e., in the direction the river flows; but, the great object of my journey being to secure water-carriage, i resolved to continue along the zambesi, though it did lead me among the enemies of the portuguese. the region to the north of the ranges of hills on our left is called senga, from being the country of the basenga, who are said to be great workers in iron, and to possess abundance of fine iron ore, which, when broken, shows veins of the pure metal in its substance. it has been well roasted in the operations of nature. beyond senga lies a range of mountains called mashinga, to which the portuguese in former times went to wash for gold, and beyond that are great numbers of tribes which pass under the general term maravi. to the northeast there are extensive plains destitute of trees, but covered with grass, and in some places it is marshy. the whole of the country to the north of the zambesi is asserted to be very much more fertile than that to the south. the maravi, for instance, raise sweet potatoes of immense size, but when these are planted on the southern bank they soon degenerate. the root of this plant ('convolvulus batata') does not keep more than two or three days, unless it is cut into thin slices and dried in the sun, but the maravi manage to preserve them for months by digging a pit and burying them therein inclosed in wood-ashes. unfortunately, the maravi, and all the tribes on that side of the country, are at enmity with the portuguese, and, as they practice night attacks in their warfare, it is dangerous to travel among them. th. i was most sincerely thankful to find myself on the south bank of the zambesi, and, having nothing else, i sent back one of my two spoons and a shirt as a thank-offering to mpende. the different head men along this river act very much in concert, and if one refuses passage they all do, uttering the sage remark, "if so-and-so did not lend his canoes, he must have had some good reason." the next island we came to was that of a man named mozinkwa. here we were detained some days by continuous rains, and thought we observed the confirmation of the bakwain theory of rains. a double tier of clouds floated quickly away to the west, and as soon as they began to come in an opposite direction the rains poured down. the inhabitants who live in a dry region like that of kolobeng are nearly all as weather-wise as the rain-makers, and any one living among them for any length of time becomes as much interested in the motions of the clouds as they are themselves. mr. moffat, who was as sorely tried by droughts as we were, and had his attention directed in the same way, has noted the curious phenomenon of thunder without clouds. mrs. l. heard it once, but i never had that good fortune. it is worth the attention of the observant. humboldt has seen rain without clouds, a phenomenon quite as singular. i have been in the vicinity of the fall of three aerolites, none of which i could afterward discover. one fell into the lake kumadau with a report somewhat like a sharp peal of thunder. the women of the bakurutse villages there all uttered a scream on hearing it. this happened at midday, and so did another at what is called the great chuai, which was visible in its descent, and was also accompanied with a thundering noise. the third fell near kuruman, and at night, and was seen as a falling star by people at motito and at daniel's kuil, places distant forty miles on opposite sides of the spot. it sounded to me like the report of a great gun, and a few seconds after, a lesser sound, as if striking the earth after a rebound. does the passage of a few such aerolites through the atmosphere to the earth by day cause thunder without clouds? we were detained here so long that my tent became again quite rotten. one of my men, after long sickness, which i did not understand, died here. he was one of the batoka, and when unable to walk i had some difficulty in making his companions carry him. they wished to leave him to die when his case became hopeless. another of them deserted to mozinkwa. he said that his motive for doing so was that the makololo had killed both his father and mother, and, as he had neither wife nor child, there was no reason why he should continue longer with them. i did not object to his statements, but said if he should change his mind he would be welcome to rejoin us, and intimated to mozinkwa that he must not be sold as a slave. we are now among people inured to slave-dealing. we were visited by men who had been as far as tete or nyungwe, and were told that we were but ten days from that fort. one of them, a mashona man, who had come from a great distance to the southwest, was anxious to accompany us to the country of the white men; he had traveled far, and i found that he had also knowledge of the english tribe, and of their hatred to the trade in slaves. he told sekwebu that the "english were men", an emphasis being put upon the term men, which leaves the impression that others are, as they express it in speaking scornfully, "only things". several spoke in the same manner, and i found that from mpende's downward i rose higher every day in the estimation of my own people. even the slaves gave a very high character to the english, and i found out afterward that, when i was first reported at tete, the servants of my friend the commandant said to him in joke, "ah! this is our brother who is coming; we shall all leave you and go with him." we had still, however, some difficulties in store for us before reaching that point. the man who wished to accompany us came and told us before our departure that his wife would not allow him to go, and she herself came to confirm the decision. here the women have only a small puncture in the upper lip, in which they insert a little button of tin. the perforation is made by degrees, a ring with an opening in it being attached to the lip, and the ends squeezed gradually together. the pressure on the flesh between the ends of the ring causes its absorption, and a hole is the result. children may be seen with the ring on the lip, but not yet punctured. the tin they purchase from the portuguese, and, although silver is reported to have been found in former times in this district, no one could distinguish it from tin. but they had a knowledge of gold, and for the first time i heard the word "dalama" (gold) in the native language. the word is quite unknown in the interior, and so is the metal itself. in conversing with the different people, we found the idea prevalent that those who had purchased slaves from them had done them an injury. "all the slaves of nyungwe," said one, "are our children; the bazunga have made a town at our expense." when i asked if they had not taken the prices offered them, they at once admitted it, but still thought that they had been injured by being so far tempted. from the way in which the lands of zumbo were spoken of as still belonging to the portuguese (and they are said to have been obtained by purchase), i was inclined to conclude that the purchase of land is not looked upon by the inhabitants in the same light as the purchase of slaves. february st. we met some native traders, and, as many of my men were now in a state of nudity, i bought some american calico marked "lawrence mills, lowell", with two small tusks, and distributed it among the most needy. after leaving mozinkwa's we came to the zingesi, a sand-rivulet in flood (lat. d ' " s., long. d ' e.). it was sixty or seventy yards wide, and waist-deep. like all these sand-rivers, it is for the most part dry; but by digging down a few feet, water is to be found, which is percolating along the bed on a stratum of clay. this is the phenomenon which is dignified by the name of "a river flowing under ground." in trying to ford this i felt thousands of particles of coarse sand striking my legs, and the slight disturbance of our footsteps caused deep holes to be made in the bed. the water, which is almost always very rapid in them, dug out the sand beneath our feet in a second or two, and we were all sinking by that means so deep that we were glad to relinquish the attempt to ford it before we got half way over; the oxen were carried away down into the zambesi. these sand-rivers remove vast masses of disintegrated rock before it is fine enough to form soil. the man who preceded me was only thigh-deep, but the disturbance caused by his feet made it breast-deep for me. the shower of particles and gravel which struck against my legs gave me the idea that the amount of matter removed by every freshet must be very great. in most rivers where much wearing is going on, a person diving to the bottom may hear literally thousands of stones knocking against each other. this attrition, being carried on for hundreds of miles in different rivers, must have an effect greater than if all the pestles and mortars and mills of the world were grinding and wearing away the rocks. the pounding to which i refer may be heard most distinctly in the vaal river, when that is slightly in flood. it was there i first heard it. in the leeambye, in the middle of the country, where there is no discoloration, and little carried along but sand, it is not to be heard. while opposite the village of a head man called mosusa, a number of elephants took refuge on an island in the river. there were two males, and a third not full grown; indeed, scarcely the size of a female. this was the first instance i had ever seen of a comparatively young one with the males, for they usually remain with the female herd till as large as their dams. the inhabitants were very anxious that my men should attack them, as they go into the gardens on the islands, and do much damage. the men went, but the elephants ran about half a mile to the opposite end of the island, and swam to the main land with their probosces above the water, and, no canoe being near, they escaped. they swim strongly, with the proboscis erect in the air. i was not very desirous to have one of these animals killed, for we understood that when we passed mpende we came into a country where the game-laws are strictly enforced. the lands of each chief are very well defined, the boundaries being usually marked by rivulets, great numbers of which flow into the zambesi from both banks, and, if an elephant is wounded on one man's land and dies on that of another, the under half of the carcass is claimed by the lord of the soil; and so stringent is the law, that the hunter can not begin at once to cut up his own elephant, but must send notice to the lord of the soil on which it lies, and wait until that personage sends one authorized to see a fair partition made. if the hunter should begin to cut up before the agent of the landowner arrives, he is liable to lose both the tusks and all the flesh. the hind leg of a buffalo must also be given to the man on whose land the animal was grazing, and a still larger quantity of the eland, which here and every where else in the country is esteemed right royal food. in the country above zumbo we did not find a vestige of this law; and but for the fact that it existed in the country of the bamapela, far to the south of this, i should have been disposed to regard it in the same light as i do the payment for leave to pass--an imposition levied on him who is seen to be weak because in the hands of his slaves. the only game-laws in the interior are, that the man who first wounds an animal, though he has inflicted but a mere scratch, is considered the killer of it; the second is entitled to a hind quarter, and the third to a fore leg. the chiefs are generally entitled to a share as tribute; in some parts it is the breast, in others the whole of the ribs and one fore leg. i generally respected this law, although exceptions are sometimes made when animals are killed by guns. the knowledge that he who succeeds in reaching the wounded beast first is entitled to a share stimulates the whole party to greater exertions in dispatching it. one of my men, having a knowledge of elephant medicine, was considered the leader in the hunt; he went before the others, examined the animals, and on his decision all depended. if he decided to attack a herd, the rest went boldly on; but if he declined, none of them would engage. a certain part of the elephant belonged to him by right of the office he held, and such was the faith in medicine held by the slaves of the portuguese whom we met hunting, that they offered to pay this man handsomely if he would show them the elephant medicine. when near mosusa's village we passed a rivulet called chowe, now running with rain-water. the inhabitants there extract a little salt from the sand when it is dry, and all the people of the adjacent country come to purchase it from them. this was the first salt we had met with since leaving angola, for none is to be found in either the country of the balonda or barotse; but we heard of salt-pans about a fortnight west of naliele, and i got a small supply from mpololo while there. that had long since been finished, and i had again lived two months without salt, suffering no inconvenience except an occasional longing for animal food or milk. in marching along, the rich reddish-brown soil was so clammy that it was very difficult to walk. it is, however, extremely fertile, and the people cultivate amazing quantities of corn, maize, millet, ground-nuts, pumpkins, and cucumbers. we observed that, when plants failed in one spot, they were in the habit of transplanting them into another, and they had also grown large numbers of young plants on the islands, where they are favored by moisture from the river, and were now removing them to the main land. the fact of their being obliged to do this shows that there is less rain here than in londa, for there we observed the grain in all stages of its growth at the same time. the people here build their huts in gardens on high stages. this is necessary on account of danger from the spotted hyaena, which is said to be very fierce, and also as a protection against lions and elephants. the hyaena is a very cowardly animal, but frequently approaches persons lying asleep, and makes an ugly gash on the face. mozinkwa had lost his upper lip in this way, and i have heard of men being killed by them; children, too, are sometimes carried off; for, though he is so cowardly that the human voice will make him run away at once, yet, when his teeth are in the flesh, he holds on, and shows amazing power of jaw. leg-bones of oxen, from which the natives have extracted the marrow and every thing eatable, are by this animal crunched up with the greatest ease, which he apparently effects by turning them round in his teeth till they are in a suitable position for being split. we had now come among people who had plenty, and were really very liberal. my men never returned from a village without some corn or maize in their hands. the real politeness with which food is given by nearly all the interior tribes, who have not had much intercourse with europeans, makes it a pleasure to accept. again and again i have heard an apology made for the smallness of the present, or regret expressed that they had not received notice of my approach in time to grind more, and generally they readily accepted our excuse at having nothing to give in return by saying that they were quite aware that there are no white men's goods in the interior. when i had it in my power, i always gave something really useful. to katema, shinte, and others, i gave presents which cost me about pounds each, and i could return to them at any time without having a character for stinginess. how some men can offer three buttons, or some other equally contemptible gift, while they have abundance in their possession, is to me unaccountable. they surely do not know, when they write it in their books, that they are declaring they have compromised the honor of englishmen. the people receive the offering with a degree of shame, and ladies may be seen to hand it quickly to the attendants, and, when they retire, laugh until the tears stand in their eyes, saying to those about them, "is that a white man? then there are niggards among them too. some of them are born without hearts!" one white trader, having presented an old gun to a chief, became a standing joke in the tribe: "the white man who made a present of a gun that was new when his grandfather was sucking his great-grandmother." when these tricks are repeated, the natives come to the conclusion that people who show such a want of sense must be told their duty; they therefore let them know what they ought to give, and travelers then complain of being pestered with their "shameless begging". i was troubled by importunity on the confines of civilization only, and when i first came to africa. february th. we were much detained by rains, a heavy shower without wind falling every morning about daybreak; it often cleared up after that, admitting of our moving on a few miles. a continuous rain of several hours then set in. the wind up to this point was always from the east, but both rain and wind now came so generally from the west, or opposite direction to what we had been accustomed to in the interior, that we were obliged to make our encampment face the east, in order to have them in our backs. the country adjacent to the river abounds in large trees; but the population is so numerous that, those left being all green, it is difficult to get dry firewood. on coming to some places, too, we were warned by the villagers not to cut the trees growing in certain spots, as they contained the graves of their ancestors. there are many tamarind-trees, and another very similar, which yields a fruit as large as a small walnut, of which the elephants are very fond. it is called motondo, and the portuguese extol its timber as excellent for building boats, as it does not soon rot in water. on the th we came to the village of boroma, which is situated among a number of others, each surrounded by extensive patches of cultivation. on the opposite side of the river we have a great cluster of conical hills called chorichori. boroma did not make his appearance, but sent a substitute who acted civilly. i sent sekwebu in the morning to state that we intended to move on; his mother replied that, as she had expected that we should remain, no food was ready, but she sent a basket of corn and a fowl. as an excuse why boroma did not present himself, she said that he was seized that morning by the barimo, which probably meant that his lordship was drunk. we marched along the river to a point opposite the hill pinkwe (lat. d ' " s., long. d ' e.), but the late abundant rains now flooded the zambesi again, and great quantities of wreck appeared upon the stream. it is probable that frequent freshets, caused by the rains on this side of the ridge, have prevented the portuguese near the coast from recognizing the one peculiar flood of inundation observed in the interior, and caused the belief that it is flooded soon after the commencement of the rains. the course of the nile being in the opposite direction to this, it does not receive these subsidiary waters, and hence its inundation is recognized all the way along its course. if the leeambye were prolonged southward into the cape colony, its flood would be identical with that of the nile. it would not be influenced by any streams in the kalahari, for there, as in a corresponding part of the nile, there would be no feeders. it is to be remembered that the great ancient river which flowed to the lake at boochap took this course exactly, and probably flowed thither until the fissure of the falls was made. this flood having filled the river, we found the numerous rivulets which flow into it filled also, and when going along the zambesi, we lost so much time in passing up each little stream till we could find a ford about waist deep, and then returning to the bank, that i resolved to leave the river altogether, and strike away to the southeast. we accordingly struck off when opposite the hill pinkwe, and came into a hard mopane country. in a hole of one of the mopane-trees i noticed that a squirrel ('sciurus cepapi') had placed a great number of fresh leaves over a store of seed. it is not against the cold of winter that they thus lay up food, but it is a provision against the hot season, when the trees have generally no seed. a great many silicified trees are met with lying on the ground all over this part of the country; some are broken off horizontally, and stand upright; others are lying prone, and broken across into a number of pieces. one was feet inches in diameter, and the wood must have been soft like that of the baobab, for there were only six concentric rings to the inch. as the semidiameter was only inches, this large tree could have been but years old. i found also a piece of palm-tree transformed into oxide of iron, and the pores filled with pure silica. these fossil trees lie upon soft gray sandstone containing banks of shingle, which forms the underlying rock of the country all the way from zumbo to near lupata. it is met with at litubaruba and in angola, with similar banks of shingle imbedded exactly like those now seen on the sea-beach, but i never could find a shell. there are many nodules and mounds of hardened clay upon it, which seem to have been deposited in eddies made round the roots of these ancient trees, for they appear of different colors in wavy and twisted lines. above this we have small quantities of calcareous marl. as we were now in the district of chicova, i examined the geological structure of the country with interest, because here, it has been stated, there once existed silver mines. the general rock is the gray soft sandstone i have mentioned, but at the rivulet bangue we come upon a dike of basalt six yards wide, running north and south. when we cross this, we come upon several others, some of which run more to the eastward. the sandstone is then found to have been disturbed, and at the rivulet called nake we found it tilted up and exhibiting a section, which was coarse sandstone above, sandstone-flag, shale, and, lastly, a thin seam of coal. the section was only shown for a short distance, and then became lost by a fault made by a dike of basalt, which ran to the e.n.e. in the direction of chicova. this chicova is not a kingdom, as has been stated, but a level tract, a part of which is annually overflowed by the zambesi, and is well adapted for the cultivation of corn. it is said to be below the northern end of the hill bungwe. i was very much pleased in discovering this small specimen of such a precious mineral as coal. i saw no indication of silver, and, if it ever was worked by the natives, it is remarkable that they have entirely lost the knowledge of it, and can not distinguish between silver and tin. in connection with these basaltic dikes, it may be mentioned that when i reached tete i was informed of the existence of a small rapid in the river near chicova; had i known this previously, i certainly would not have left the river without examining it. it is called kebrabasa, and is described as a number of rocks which jut out across the stream. i have no doubt but that it is formed by some of the basaltic dikes which we now saw, for they generally ran toward that point. i was partly influenced in leaving the river by a wish to avoid several chiefs in that direction, who levy a heavy tribute on those who pass up or down. our path lay along the bed of the nake for some distance, the banks being covered with impenetrable thickets. the villages are not numerous, but we went from one to the other, and were treated kindly. here they call themselves bambiri, though the general name of the whole nation is banyai. one of our guides was an inveterate talker, always stopping and asking for pay, that he might go on with a merry heart. i thought that he led us in the most difficult paths in order to make us feel his value, for, after passing through one thicket after another, we always came into the bed of the nake again, and as that was full of coarse sand, and the water only ankle deep, and as hot as a foot-bath from the powerful rays of the sun, we were all completely tired out. he likewise gave us a bad character at every village we passed, calling to them that they were to allow him to lead us astray, as we were a bad set. sekwebu knew every word he said, and, as he became intolerable, i dismissed him, giving him six feet of calico i had bought from native traders, and telling him that his tongue was a nuisance. it is in general best, when a scolding is necessary, to give it in combination with a present, and then end it by good wishes. this fellow went off smiling, and my men remarked, "his tongue is cured now." the country around the nake is hilly, and the valleys covered with tangled jungle. the people who live in this district have reclaimed their gardens from the forest, and the soil is extremely fertile. the nake flows northerly, and then to the east. it is or yards wide, but during most of the year is dry, affording water only by digging in the sand. we found in its bed masses of volcanic rock, identical with those i subsequently recognized as such at aden. th. the head man of these parts is named nyampungo. i sent the last fragment of cloth we had, with a request that we should be furnished with a guide to the next chief. after a long conference with his council, the cloth was returned with a promise of compliance, and a request for some beads only. this man is supposed to possess the charm for rain, and other tribes send to him to beg it. this shows that what we inferred before was correct, that less rain falls in this country than in londa. nyampungo behaved in quite a gentlemanly manner, presented me with some rice, and told my people to go among all the villages and beg for themselves. an old man, father-in-law of the chief, told me that he had seen books before, but never knew what they meant. they pray to departed chiefs and relatives, but the idea of praying to god seemed new, and they heard it with reverence. as this was an intelligent old man, i asked him about the silver, but he was as ignorant of it as the rest, and said, "we never dug silver, but we have washed for gold in the sands of the rivers mazoe and luia, which unite in the luenya." i think that this is quite conclusive on the question of no silver having been dug by the natives of this district. nyampungo is afflicted with a kind of disease called sesenda, which i imagine to be a species of leprosy common in this quarter, though they are a cleanly people. they never had cattle. the chief's father had always lived in their present position, and, when i asked him why he did not possess these useful animals, he said, "who would give us the medicine to enable us to keep them?" i found out the reason afterward in the prevalence of tsetse, but of this he was ignorant, having supposed that he could not keep cattle because he had no medicine. chapter . an elephant-hunt--offering and prayers to the barimo for success-- native mode of expression--working of game-laws--a feast--laughing hyaenas--numerous insects--curious notes of birds of song-- caterpillars--butterflies--silica--the fruit makoronga and elephants --rhinoceros adventure--korwe bird--its nest--a real confinement-- honey and beeswax--superstitious reverence for the lion--slow traveling--grapes--the ue--monina's village--native names--government of the banyai--electing a chief--youths instructed in "bonyai"--suspected of falsehood--war-dance--insanity and disappearance of monahin--fruitless search--monina's sympathy--the sand-river tangwe--the ordeal muavi: its victims--an unreasonable man--"woman's rights"--presents--temperance--a winding course to shun villages-- banyai complexion and hair--mushrooms--the tubers, mokuri--the tree shekabakadzi--face of the country--pot-holes--pursued by a party of natives--unpleasant threat--aroused by a company of soldiers--a civilized breakfast--arrival at tete. th. we left nyampungo this morning. the path wound up the molinge, another sand-river which flows into the nake. when we got clear of the tangled jungle which covers the banks of these rivulets, we entered the mopane country, where we could walk with comfort. when we had gone on a few hours, my men espied an elephant, and were soon in full pursuit. they were in want of meat, having tasted nothing but grain for several days. the desire for animal food made them all eager to slay him, and, though an old bull, he was soon killed. the people of nyampungo had never seen such desperadoes before. one rushed up and hamstrung the beast, while still standing, by a blow with an axe. some banyai elephant-hunters happened to be present when my men were fighting with him. one of them took out his snuff-box, and poured out all its contents at the root of a tree as an offering to the barimo for success. as soon as the animal fell, the whole of my party engaged in a wild, savage dance round the body, which quite frightened the banyai, and he who made the offering said to me, "i see you are traveling with people who don't know how to pray: i therefore offered the only thing i had in their behalf, and the elephant soon fell." one of nyampungo's men, who remained with me, ran a little forward, when an opening in the trees gave us a view of the chase, and uttered loud prayers for success in the combat. i admired the devout belief they all possessed in the actual existence of unseen beings, and prayed that they might yet know that benignant one who views us all as his own. my own people, who are rather a degraded lot, remarked to me as i came up, "god gave it to us. he said to the old beast, 'go up there; men are come who will kill and eat you.'" these remarks are quoted to give the reader an idea of the native mode of expression. as we were now in the country of stringent game-laws, we were obliged to send all the way back to nyampungo, to give information to a certain person who had been left there by the real owner of this district to watch over his property, the owner himself living near the zambesi. the side upon which the elephant fell had a short, broken tusk; the upper one, which was ours, was large and thick. the banyai remarked on our good luck. the men sent to give notice came back late in the afternoon of the following day. they brought a basket of corn, a fowl, and a few strings of handsome beads, as a sort of thank-offering for our having killed it on their land, and said they had thanked the barimo besides for our success, adding, "there it is; eat it and be glad." had we begun to cut it up before we got this permission, we should have lost the whole. they had brought a large party to eat their half, and they divided it with us in a friendly way. my men were delighted with the feast, though, by lying unopened a whole day, the carcass was pretty far gone. an astonishing number of hyaenas collected round, and kept up a loud laughter for two whole nights. some of them do make a very good imitation of a laugh. i asked my men what the hyaenas were laughing at, as they usually give animals credit for a share of intelligence. they said that they were laughing because we could not take the whole, and that they would have plenty to eat as well as we. on coming to the part where the elephant was slain, we passed through grass so tall that it reminded me of that in the valley of cassange. insects are very numerous after the rains commence. while waiting by the elephant, i observed a great number of insects, like grains of fine sand, moving on my boxes. on examination with a glass, four species were apparent; one of green and gold preening its wings, which glanced in the sun with metallic lustre; another clear as crystal; a third of the color of vermilion; and a fourth black. these are probably some of those which consume the seeds of every plant that grows. almost every kind has its own peculiar insect, and when the rains are over very few seeds remain untouched. the rankest poisons, as the kongwhane and euphorbia, are soon devoured; the former has a scarlet insect; and even the fiery bird's-eye pepper, which will keep off many others from their own seeds, is itself devoured by a maggot. i observed here, what i had often seen before, that certain districts abound in centipedes. here they have light reddish bodies and blue legs; great myriapedes are seen crawling every where. although they do no harm, they excite in man a feeling of loathing. perhaps our appearance produces a similar feeling in the elephant and other large animals. where they have been much disturbed, they certainly look upon us with great distrust, as the horrid biped that ruins their peace. in the quietest parts of the forest there is heard a faint but distinct hum, which tells of insect joy. one may see many whisking about in the clear sunshine in patches among the green glancing leaves; but there are invisible myriads working with never-tiring mandibles on leaves, and stalks, and beneath the soil. they are all brimful of enjoyment. indeed, the universality of organic life may be called a mantle of happy existence encircling the world, and imparts the idea of its being caused by the consciousness of our benignant father's smile on all the works of his hands. the birds of the tropics have been described as generally wanting in power of song. i was decidedly of opinion that this was not applicable to many parts in londa, though birds there are remarkably scarce. here the chorus, or body of song, was not much smaller in volume than it is in england. it was not so harmonious, and sounded always as if the birds were singing in a foreign tongue. some resemble the lark, and, indeed, there are several of that family; two have notes not unlike those of the thrush. one brought the chaffinch to my mind, and another the robin; but their songs are intermixed with several curious abrupt notes unlike any thing english. one utters deliberately "peek, pak, pok"; another has a single note like a stroke on a violin-string. the mokwa reza gives forth a screaming set of notes like our blackbird when disturbed, then concludes with what the natives say is "pula, pula" (rain, rain), but more like "weep, weep, weep". then we have the loud cry of francolins, the "pumpuru, pumpuru" of turtle-doves, and the "chiken, chiken, chik, churr, churr" of the honey-guide. occasionally, near villages, we have a kind of mocking-bird, imitating the calls of domestic fowls. these african birds have not been wanting in song; they have only lacked poets to sing their praises, which ours have had from the time of aristophanes downward. ours have both a classic and a modern interest to enhance their fame. in hot, dry weather, or at midday when the sun is fierce, all are still: let, however, a good shower fall, and all burst forth at once into merry lays and loving courtship. the early mornings and the cool evenings are their favorite times for singing. there are comparatively few with gaudy plumage, being totally unlike, in this respect, the birds of the brazils. the majority have decidedly a sober dress, though collectors, having generally selected the gaudiest as the most valuable, have conveyed the idea that the birds of the tropics for the most part possess gorgeous plumage. th. several of my men have been bitten by spiders and other insects, but no effect except pain has followed. a large caterpillar is frequently seen, called lezuntabuea. it is covered with long gray hairs, and, the body being dark, it resembles a porcupine in miniature. if one touches it, the hairs run into the pores of the skin, and remain there, giving sharp pricks. there are others which have a similar means of defense; and when the hand is drawn across them, as in passing a bush on which they happen to be, the contact resembles the stinging of nettles. from the great number of caterpillars seen, we have a considerable variety of butterflies. one particular kind flies more like a swallow than a butterfly. they are not remarkable for the gaudiness of their colors. in passing along we crossed the hills vungue or mvungwe, which we found to be composed of various eruptive rocks. at one part we have breccia of altered marl or slate in quartz, and various amygdaloids. it is curious to observe the different forms which silica assumes. we have it in claystone porphyry here, in minute round globules, no larger than turnip-seed, dotted thickly over the matrix; or crystallized round the walls of cavities, once filled with air or other elastic fluid; or it may appear in similar cavities as tufts of yellow asbestos, or as red, yellow, or green crystals, or in laminae so arranged as to appear like fossil wood. vungue forms the watershed between those sand rivulets which run to the n.e., and others which flow southward, as the kapopo, ue, and due, which run into the luia. we found that many elephants had been feeding on the fruit called mokoronga. this is a black-colored plum, having purple juice. we all ate it in large quantities, as we found it delicious. the only defect it has is the great size of the seed in comparison with the pulp. this is the chief fault of all uncultivated wild fruits. the mokoronga exists throughout this part of the country most abundantly, and the natives eagerly devour it, as it is said to be perfectly wholesome, or, as they express it, "it is pure fat," and fat is by them considered the best of food. though only a little larger than a cherry, we found that the elephants had stood picking them off patiently by the hour. we observed the footprints of a black rhinoceros ('rhinoceros bicornis', linn.) and her calf. we saw other footprints among the hills of semalembue, but the black rhinoceros is remarkably scarce in all the country north of the zambesi. the white rhinoceros ('rhinoceros simus' of burchell), or mohohu of the bechuanas, is quite extinct here, and will soon become unknown in the country to the south. it feeds almost entirely on grasses, and is of a timid, unsuspecting disposition: this renders it an easy prey, and they are slaughtered without mercy on the introduction of fire-arms. the black possesses a more savage nature, and, like the ill-natured in general, is never found with an ounce of fat in its body. from its greater fierceness and wariness, it holds its place in a district much longer than its more timid and better-conditioned neighbor. mr. oswell was once stalking two of these beasts, and, as they came slowly to him, he, knowing that there is but little chance of hitting the small brain of this animal by a shot in the head, lay expecting one of them to give his shoulder till he was within a few yards. the hunter then thought that by making a rush to his side he might succeed in escaping, but the rhinoceros, too quick for that, turned upon him, and, though he discharged his gun close to the animal's head, he was tossed in the air. my friend was insensible for some time, and, on recovering, found large wounds on the thigh and body: i saw that on the former part still open, and five inches long. the white, however, is not always quite safe, for one, even after it was mortally wounded, attacked mr. oswell's horse, and thrust the horn through to the saddle, tossing at the time both horse and rider. i once saw a white rhinoceros give a buffalo, which was gazing intently at myself, a poke in the chest, but it did not wound it, and seemed only a hint to get out of the way. four varieties of the rhinoceros are enumerated by naturalists, but my observation led me to conclude that there are but two, and that the extra species have been formed from differences in their sizes, ages, and the direction of the horns, as if we should reckon the short-horned cattle a different species from the alderneys or the highland breed. i was led to this from having once seen a black rhinoceros with a horn bent downward like that of the kuabaoba, and also because the animals of the two great varieties differ very much in appearance at different stages of their growth. i find, however, that dr. smith, the best judge in these matters, is quite decided as to the propriety of the subdivision into three or four species. for common readers, it is sufficient to remember that there are two well-defined species, that differ entirely in appearance and food. the absence of both these rhinoceroses among the reticulated rivers in the central valley may easily be accounted for, they would be such an easy prey to the natives in their canoes at the periods of inundation; but one can not so readily account for the total absence of the giraffe and ostrich on the high open lands of the batoka, north of the zambesi, unless we give credence to the native report which bounds the country still farther north by another network of waters near lake shuia, and suppose that it also prevented their progress southward. the batoka have no name for the giraffe or the ostrich in their language; yet, as the former exists in considerable numbers in the angle formed by the leeambye and chobe, they may have come from the north along the western ridge. the chobe would seem to have been too narrow to act as an obstacle to the giraffe, supposing it to have come into that district from the south; but the broad river into which that stream flows seems always to have presented an impassable barrier to both the giraffe and the ostrich, though they abound on its southern border, both in the kalahari desert and the country of mashona. we passed through large tracts of mopane country, and my men caught a great many of the birds called korwe ('tockus erythrorhynchus') in their breeding-places, which were in holes in the mopane-trees. on the th we passed the nest of a korwe just ready for the female to enter; the orifice was plastered on both sides, but a space was left of a heart shape, and exactly the size of the bird's body. the hole in the tree was in every case found to be prolonged some distance upward above the opening, and thither the korwe always fled to escape being caught. in another nest we found that one white egg, much like that of a pigeon, was laid, and the bird dropped another when captured. she had four besides in the ovarium. the first time that i saw this bird was at kolobeng, where i had gone to the forest for some timber. standing by a tree, a native looked behind me and exclaimed, "there is the nest of a korwe." i saw a slit only, about half an inch wide and three or four inches long, in a slight hollow of the tree. thinking the word korwe denoted some small animal, i waited with interest to see what he would extract; he broke the clay which surrounded the slit, put his arm into the hole, and brought out a 'tockus', or 'red-beaked hornbill', which he killed. he informed me that, when the female enters her nest, she submits to a real confinement. the male plasters up the entrance, leaving only a narrow slit by which to feed his mate, and which exactly suits the form of his beak. the female makes a nest of her own feathers, lays her eggs, hatches them, and remains with the young till they are fully fledged. during all this time, which is stated to be two or three months, the male continues to feed her and the young family. the prisoner generally becomes quite fat, and is esteemed a very dainty morsel by the natives, while the poor slave of a husband gets so lean that, on the sudden lowering of the temperature which sometimes happens after a fall of rain, he is benumbed, falls down, and dies. i never had an opportunity of ascertaining the actual length of the confinement, but on passing the same tree at kolobeng about eight days afterward the hole was plastered up again, as if, in the short time that had elapsed, the disconsolate husband had secured another wife. we did not disturb her, and my duties prevented me from returning to the spot. this is the month in which the female enters the nest. we had seen one of these, as before mentioned, with the plastering not quite finished; we saw many completed; and we received the very same account here that we did at kolobeng, that the bird comes forth when the young are fully fledged, at the period when the corn is ripe; indeed, her appearance abroad with her young is one of the signs they have for knowing when it ought to be so. as that is about the end of april, the time is between two and three months. she is said sometimes to hatch two eggs, and, when the young of these are full-fledged, other two are just out of the egg-shells: she then leaves the nest with the two elder, the orifice is again plastered up, and both male and female attend to the wants of the young which are left. on several occasions i observed a branch bearing the marks of the male having often sat upon it when feeding his mate, and the excreta had been expelled a full yard from the orifice, and often proved a means of discovering the retreat. the honey-guides were very assiduous in their friendly offices, and enabled my men to get a large quantity of honey. but, though bees abound, the wax of these parts forms no article of trade. in londa it may be said to be fully cared for, as you find hives placed upon trees in the most lonesome forests. we often met strings of carriers laden with large blocks of this substance, each or lbs. in weight, and pieces were offered to us for sale at every village; but here we never saw a single artificial hive. the bees were always found in the natural cavities of mopane-trees. it is probable that the good market for wax afforded to angola by the churches of brazil led to the gradual development of that branch of commerce there. i saw even on the banks of the quango as much as sixpence paid for a pound. in many parts of the batoka country bees exist in vast numbers, and the tribute due to sekeletu is often paid in large jars of honey; but, having no market nor use for the wax, it is thrown away. this was the case also with ivory at the lake ngami, at the period of its discovery. the reports brought by my other party from loanda of the value of wax had induced some of my present companions to bring small quantities of it to tete, but, not knowing the proper mode of preparing it, it was so dark colored that no one would purchase it; i afterward saw a little at kilimane which had been procured from the natives somewhere in this region. though we are now approaching the portuguese settlement, the country is still full of large game. my men killed six buffalo calves out of a herd we met. the abundance of these animals, and also of antelopes, shows the insufficiency of the bow and arrow to lessen their numbers. there are also a great many lions and hyaenas, and there is no check upon the increase of the former, for the people, believing that the souls of their chiefs enter into them, never attempt to kill them; they even believe that a chief may metamorphose himself into a lion, kill any one he chooses, and then return to the human form; therefore, when they see one, they commence clapping their hands, which is the usual mode of salutation here. the consequence is, that lions and hyaenas are so abundant that we see little huts made in the trees, indicating the places where some of the inhabitants have slept when benighted in the fields. as numbers of my men frequently left the line of march in order to take out the korwes from their nests, or follow the honey-guides, they excited the astonishment of our guides, who were constantly warning them of the danger they thereby incurred from lions. i was often considerably ahead of the main body of my men on this account, and was obliged to stop every hour or two; but, the sun being excessively hot by day, i was glad of the excuse for resting. we could make no such prodigious strides as officers in the arctic regions are able to do. ten or twelve miles a day were a good march for both the men and myself; and it was not the length of the marches, but continuing day after day to perform the same distance, that was so fatiguing. it was in this case much longer than appears on the map, because we kept out of the way of villages. i drank less than the natives when riding, but all my clothing was now constantly damp from the moisture which was imbibed in large quantities at every pond. one does not stay on these occasions to prepare water with alum or any thing else, but drinks any amount without fear. i never felt the atmosphere so steamy as on the low-lying lands of the zambesi, and yet it was becoming cooler than it was on the highlands. we crossed the rivulets kapopo and ue, now running, but usually dry. there are great numbers of wild grape-vines growing in this quarter; indeed, they abound every where along the banks of the zambesi. in the batoka country there is a variety which yields a black grape of considerable sweetness. the leaves are very large and harsh, as if capable of withstanding the rays of this hot sun; but the most common kinds--one with a round leaf and a greenish grape, and another with a leaf closely resembling that of the cultivated varieties, and with dark or purple fruit--have large seeds, which are strongly astringent, and render it a disagreeable fruit. the natives eat all the varieties; and i tasted vinegar made by a portuguese from these grapes. probably a country which yields the wild vines so very abundantly might be a fit one for the cultivated species. at this part of the journey so many of the vines had run across the little footpath we followed that one had to be constantly on the watch to avoid being tripped. the ground was covered with rounded shingle, which was not easily seen among the grass. pedestrianism may be all very well for those whose obesity requires much exercise, but for one who was becoming as thin as a lath, through the constant perspiration caused by marching day after day in the hot sun, the only good i saw in it was that it gave an honest sort of man a vivid idea of the tread-mill. although the rains were not quite over, great numbers of pools were drying up, and the ground was in many parts covered with small green cryptogamous plants, which gave it a mouldy appearance and a strong smell. as we sometimes pushed aside the masses of rank vegetation which hung over our path, we felt a sort of hot blast on our faces. every thing looked unwholesome, but we had no fever. the ue flows between high banks of a soft red sandstone streaked with white, and pieces of tufa. the crumbling sandstone is evidently alluvial, and is cut into feet deep. in this region, too, we met with pot-holes six feet deep and three or four in diameter. in some cases they form convenient wells; in others they are full of earth; and in others still the people have made them into graves for their chiefs. on the th we came to monina's village (close to the sand-river tangwe, latitude d ' " south, longitude d ' east). this man is very popular among the tribes on account of his liberality. boroma, nyampungo, monina, jira, katolosa (monomotapa), and susa, all acknowledge the supremacy of one called nyatewe, who is reported to decide all disputes respecting land. this confederation is exactly similar to what we observed in londa and other parts of africa. katolosa is "the emperor monomotapa" of history, but he is a chief of no great power, and acknowledges the supremacy of nyatewe. the portuguese formerly honored monomotapa with a guard, to fire off numbers of guns on the occasion of any funeral, and he was also partially subsidized. the only evidence of greatness possessed by his successor is his having about a hundred wives. when he dies a disputed succession and much fighting are expected. in reference to the term monomotapa, it is to be remembered that mono, moene, mona, mana, or morena, mean simply 'chief', and considerable confusion has arisen from naming different people by making a plural of the chief's name. the names monomoizes, spelled also monemuiges and monomuizes, and monomotapistas, when applied to these tribes, are exactly the same as if we should call the scotch the lord douglases. motape was the chief of the bambiri, a tribe of the banyai, and is now represented in the person of katolosa. he was probably a man of greater energy than his successor, yet only an insignificant chief. monomoizes was formed from moiza or muiza, the singular of the word babisa or aiza, the proper name of a large tribe to the north. in the transformation of this name the same error has been committed as in the others; and mistakes have occurred in many other names by inattention to the meaning, and predilection for the letter r. the river loangwa, for instance, has been termed arroangoa, and the luenya the ruanha. the bazizulu, or mashona, are spoken of as the morururus. the government of the banyai is rather peculiar, being a sort of feudal republicanism. the chief is elected, and they choose the son of the deceased chief's sister in preference to his own offspring. when dissatisfied with one candidate, they even go to a distant tribe for a successor, who is usually of the family of the late chief, a brother, or a sister's son, but never his own son or daughter. when first spoken to on the subject, he answers as if he thought himself unequal to the task and unworthy of the honor; but, having accepted it, all the wives, goods, and children of his predecessor belong to him, and he takes care to keep them in a dependent position. when any one of them becomes tired of this state of vassalage and sets up his own village, it is not unusual for the elected chief to send a number of the young men, who congregate about himself, to visit him. if he does not receive them with the usual amount of clapping of hands and humility, they, in obedience to orders, at once burn his village. the children of the chief have fewer privileges than common free men. they may not be sold, but, rather than choose any one of them for a chief at any future time, the free men would prefer to elect one of themselves, who bore only a very distant relationship to the family. these free men are a distinct class who can never be sold; and under them there is a class of slaves whose appearance as well as position is very degraded. monina had a great number of young men about him from twelve to fifteen years of age. these were all sons of free men, and bands of young men like them in the different districts leave their parents about the age of puberty, and live with such men as monina for the sake of instruction. when i asked the nature of the instruction, i was told "bonyai", which i suppose may be understood as indicating manhood, for it sounds as if we should say, "to teach an american americanism," or "an englishman to be english." while here they are kept in subjection to rather stringent regulations. they must salute carefully by clapping their hands on approaching a superior, and when any cooked food is brought, the young men may not approach the dish, but an elder divides a portion to each. they remain unmarried until a fresh set of youths is ready to occupy their place under the same instruction. the parents send servants with their sons to cultivate gardens to supply them with food, and also tusks to monina to purchase clothing for them. when the lads return to the village of their parents, a case is submitted to them for adjudication, and if they speak well on the point, the parents are highly gratified. when we told monina that we had nothing to present but some hoes, he replied that he was not in need of those articles, and that he had absolute power over the country in front, and if he prevented us from proceeding, no one would say any thing to him. his little boy boromo having come to the encampment to look at us, i gave him a knife, and he went off and brought a pint of honey for me. the father came soon afterward, and i offered him a shirt. he remarked to his councilors, "it is evident that this man has nothing, for, if he had, his people would be buying provisions, but we don't see them going about for that purpose." his council did not agree in this. they evidently believed that we had goods, but kept them hid, and we felt it rather hard to be suspected of falsehood. it was probably at their suggestion that in the evening a wardance was got up about a hundred yards from our encampment, as if to put us in fear and force us to bring forth presents. some of monina's young men had guns, but most were armed with large bows, arrows, and spears. they beat their drums furiously, and occasionally fired off a gun. as this sort of dance is never got up unless there is an intention to attack, my men expected an assault. we sat and looked at them for some time, and then, as it became dark, lay down, all ready to give them a warm reception. but an hour or two after dark the dance ceased, and, as we then saw no one approaching us, we went to sleep. during the night, one of my head men, monahin, was seen to get up, look toward the village, and say to one who was half awake, "don't you hear what these people are saying? go and listen." he then walked off in the opposite direction, and never returned. we had no guard set, but every one lay with his spear in his hand. the man to whom he spoke appears to have been in a dreamy condition, for it did not strike him that he ought to give the alarm. next morning i found to my sorrow that monahin was gone, and not a trace of him could be discovered. he had an attack of pleuritis some weeks before, and had recovered, but latterly complained a little of his head. i observed him in good spirits on the way hither, and in crossing some of the streams, as i was careful not to wet my feet, he aided me, and several times joked at my becoming so light. in the evening he sat beside my tent until it was dark, and did not manifest any great alarm. it was probably either a sudden fit of insanity, or, having gone a little way out from the camp, he may have been carried off by a lion, as this part of the country is full of them. i incline to the former opinion, because sudden insanity occurs when there is any unusual strain upon their minds. monahin was in command of the batoka of mokwine in my party, and he was looked upon with great dislike by all that chief's subjects. the only difficulties i had with them arose in consequence of being obliged to give orders through him. they said mokwine is reported to have been killed by the makololo, but monahin is the individual who put forth his hand and slew him. when one of these people kills in battle, he seems to have no compunction afterward; but when he makes a foray on his own responsibility, and kills a man of note, the common people make remarks to each other, which are reported to him, and bring the affair perpetually to his remembrance. this iteration on the conscience causes insanity, and when one runs away in a wide country like this, the fugitive is never heard of. monahin had lately become afraid of his own party from overhearing their remarks, and said more than once to me, "they want to kill me." i believe if he ran to any village they would take care of him. i felt his loss greatly, and spent three days in searching for him. he was a sensible and most obliging man. i sent in the morning to inform monina of this sad event, and he at once sent to all the gardens around, desiring the people to look for him, and, should he come near, to bring him home. he evidently sympathized with us in our sorrow, and, afraid lest we might suspect him, added, "we never catch nor kidnap people here. it is not our custom. it is considered as guilt among all the tribes." i gave him credit for truthfulness, and he allowed us to move on without farther molestation. after leaving his village we marched in the bed of a sand-river a quarter of a mile broad, called tangwe. walking on this sand is as fatiguing as walking on snow. the country is flat, and covered with low trees, but we see high hills in the distance. a little to the south we have those of the lobole. this region is very much infested by lions, and men never go any distance into the woods alone. having turned aside on one occasion at midday, and gone a short distance among grass a little taller than myself, an animal sprung away from me which was certainly not an antelope, but i could not distinguish whether it was a lion or a hyaena. this abundance of carnivora made us lose all hope of monahin. we saw footprints of many black rhinoceroses, buffaloes, and zebras. after a few hours we reached the village of nyakoba. two men, who accompanied us from monina to nyakoba's, would not believe us when we said that we had no beads. it is very trying to have one's veracity doubted, but, on opening the boxes, and showing them that all i had was perfectly useless to them, they consented to receive some beads off sekwebu's waist, and i promised to send four yards of calico from tete. as we came away from monina's village, a witch-doctor, who had been sent for, arrived, and all monina's wives went forth into the fields that morning fasting. there they would be compelled to drink an infusion of a plant named "goho", which is used as an ordeal. this ceremony is called "muavi", and is performed in this way. when a man suspects that any of his wives has bewitched him, he sends for the witch-doctor, and all the wives go forth into the field, and remain fasting till that person has made an infusion of the plant. they all drink it, each one holding up her hand to heaven in attestation of her innocency. those who vomit it are considered innocent, while those whom it purges are pronounced guilty, and put to death by burning. the innocent return to their homes, and slaughter a cock as a thank-offering to their guardian spirits. the practice of ordeal is common among all the negro nations north of the zambesi. this summary procedure excited my surprise, for my intercourse with the natives here had led me to believe that the women were held in so much estimation that the men would not dare to get rid of them thus. but the explanation i received was this. the slightest imputation makes them eagerly desire the test; they are conscious of being innocent, and have the fullest faith in the muavi detecting the guilty alone; hence they go willingly, and even eagerly, to drink it. when in angola, a half-caste was pointed out to me who is one of the most successful merchants in that country; and the mother of this gentleman, who was perfectly free, went, of her own accord, all the way from ambaca to cassange, to be killed by the ordeal, her rich son making no objection. the same custom prevails among the barotse, bashubia, and batoka, but with slight variations. the barotse, for instance, pour the medicine down the throat of a cock or of a dog, and judge of the innocence or guilt of the person accused according to the vomiting or purging of the animal. i happened to mention to my own men the water-test for witches formerly in use in scotland: the supposed witch, being bound hand and foot, was thrown into a pond; if she floated, she was considered guilty, taken out, and burned; but if she sank and was drowned, she was pronounced innocent. the wisdom of my ancestors excited as much wonder in their minds as their custom did in mine. the person whom nyakoba appointed to be our guide, having informed us of the decision, came and bargained that his services should be rewarded with a hoe. i had no objection to give it, and showed him the article; he was delighted with it, and went off to show it to his wife. he soon afterward returned, and said that, though he was perfectly willing to go, his wife would not let him. i said, "then bring back the hoe;" but he replied, "i want it." "well, go with us, and you shall have it." "but my wife won't let me." i remarked to my men, "did you ever hear such a fool?" they answered, "oh, that is the custom of these parts; the wives are the masters." and sekwebu informed me that he had gone to this man's house, and heard him saying to his wife, "do you think that i would ever leave you?" then, turning to sekwebu, he asked, "do you think i would leave this pretty woman? is she not pretty?" sekwebu had been making inquiries among the people, and had found that the women indeed possessed a great deal of influence. we questioned the guide whom we finally got from nyakoba, an intelligent young man, who had much of the arab features, and found the statements confirmed. when a young man takes a liking for a girl of another village, and the parents have no objection to the match, he is obliged to come and live at their village. he has to perform certain services for the mother-in-law, such as keeping her well supplied with firewood; and when he comes into her presence he is obliged to sit with his knees in a bent position, as putting out his feet toward the old lady would give her great offense. if he becomes tired of living in this state of vassalage, and wishes to return to his own family, he is obliged to leave all his children behind--they belong to the wife. this is only a more stringent enforcement of the law from which emanates the practice which prevails so very extensively in africa, known to europeans as "buying wives". such virtually it is, but it does not appear quite in that light to the actors. so many head of cattle or goats are given to the parents of the girl "to give her up", as it is termed, i.e., to forego all claim on her offspring, and allow an entire transference of her and her seed into another family. if nothing is given, the family from which she has come can claim the children as part of itself: the payment is made to sever this bond. in the case supposed, the young man has not been able to advance any thing for that purpose; and, from the temptations placed here before my men, i have no doubt that some prefer to have their daughters married in that way, as it leads to the increase of their own village. my men excited the admiration of the bambiri, who took them for a superior breed on account of their bravery in elephant-hunting, and wished to get them as sons-in-law on the conditions named, but none yielded to the temptation. we were informed that there is a child belonging to a half-caste portuguese in one of these tribes, and the father had tried in vain to get him from the mother's parents. we saw several things to confirm the impression of the higher position which women hold here; and, being anxious to discover if i were not mistaken, when we came among the portuguese i inquired of them, and was told that they had ascertained the same thing; and that, if they wished a man to perform any service for them, he would reply, "well, i shall go and ask my wife." if she consented, he would go, and perform his duty faithfully; but no amount of coaxing or bribery would induce him to do it if she refused. the portuguese praised the appearance of the banyai, and they certainly are a fine race. we got on better with nyakoba than we expected. he has been so much affected by the sesenda that he is quite decrepit, and requires to be fed. i at once showed his messenger that we had nothing whatever to give. nyakoba was offended with him for not believing me, and he immediately sent a basket of maize and another of corn, saying that he believed my statement, and would send men with me to tete who would not lead me to any other village. the birds here sing very sweetly, and i thought i heard the canary, as in londa. we had a heavy shower of rain, and i observed that the thermometer sank deg. in one hour afterward. from the beginning of february we experienced a sensible diminution of temperature. in january the lowest was deg., and that at sunrise; the average at the same hour (sunrise) being deg.; at p.m., deg.; and at sunset, deg. in february it fell as low as deg. in the course of the night, and the average height was deg. only once did it rise to deg., and a thunder-storm followed this; yet the sensation of heat was greater now than it had been at much higher temperatures on more elevated lands. we passed several villages by going roundabout ways through the forest. we saw the remains of a lion that had been killed by a buffalo, and the horns of a putokwane (black antelope), the finest i had ever seen, which had met its death by a lion. the drums, beating all night in one village near which we slept, showed that some person in it had finished his course. on the occasion of the death of a chief, a trader is liable to be robbed, for the people consider themselves not amenable to law until a new one is elected. we continued a very winding course, in order to avoid the chief katolosa, who is said to levy large sums upon those who fall into his hands. one of our guides was a fine, tall young man, the very image of ben habib the arab. they were carrying dried buffalo's meat to the market at tete as a private speculation. a great many of the banyai are of a light coffee-and-milk color, and, indeed, this color is considered handsome throughout the whole country, a fair complexion being as much a test of beauty with them as with us. as they draw out their hair into small cords a foot in length, and entwine the inner bark of a certain tree round each separate cord, and dye this substance of a reddish color, many of them put me in mind of the ancient egyptians. the great mass of dressed hair which they possess reaches to the shoulders, but when they intend to travel they draw it up to a bunch, and tie it on the top of the head. they are cleanly in their habits. as we did not come near human habitations, and could only take short stages on account of the illness of one of my men, i had an opportunity of observing the expedients my party resorted to in order to supply their wants. large white edible mushrooms are found on the ant-hills, and are very good. the mokuri, a tuber which abounds in the mopane country, they discovered by percussing the ground with stones; and another tuber, about the size of a turnip, called "bonga", is found in the same situations. it does not determine to the joints like the mokuri, and in winter has a sensible amount of salt in it. a fruit called "ndongo" by the makololo, "dongolo" by the bambiri, resembles in appearance a small plum, which becomes black when ripe, and is good food, as the seeds are small. many trees are known by tradition, and one receives curious bits of information in asking about different fruits that are met with. a tree named "shekabakadzi" is superior to all others for making fire by friction. as its name implies, women may even readily make fire by it when benighted. the country here is covered over with well-rounded shingle and gravel of granite, gneiss with much talc in it, mica schist, and other rocks which we saw 'in situ' between the kafue and loangwa. there are great mounds of soft red sand slightly coherent, which crumble in the hand with ease. the gravel and the sand drain away the water so effectually that the trees are exposed to the heat during a portion of the year without any moisture; hence they are not large, like those on the zambesi, and are often scrubby. the rivers are all of the sandy kind, and we pass over large patches between this and tete in which, in the dry season, no water is to be found. close on our south, the hills of lokole rise to a considerable height, and beyond them flows the mazoe with its golden sands. the great numbers of pot-holes on the sides of sandstone ridges, when viewed in connection with the large banks of rolled shingle and washed sand which are met with on this side of the eastern ridge, may indicate that the sea in former times rolled its waves along its flanks. many of the hills between the kafue and loangwa have their sides of the form seen in mud banks left by the tide. the pot-holes appear most abundant on low gray sandstone ridges here; and as the shingle is composed of the same rocks as the hills west of zumbo, it looks as if a current had dashed along from the southeast in the line in which the pot-holes now appear; and if the current was deflected by those hills toward the maravi country, north of tete, it may have hollowed the rounded, water-worn caverns in which these people store their corn, and also hide themselves from their enemies. i could detect no terraces on the land, but, if i am right in my supposition, the form of this part of the continent must once have resembled the curves or indentations seen on the southern extremity of the american continent. in the indentation to the s.e., s., s.w., and w. of this, lie the principal gold-washings; and the line of the current, supposing it to have struck against the hills of mburuma, shows the washings in the n. and n.e. of tete. we were tolerably successful in avoiding the villages, and slept one night on the flanks of the hill zimika, where a great number of deep pot-holes afforded an abundant supply of good rain-water. here, for the first time, we saw hills with bare, smooth, rocky tops, and we crossed over broad dikes of gneiss and syenitic porphyry: the directions in which they lay were n. and s. as we were now near to tete, we were congratulating ourselves on having avoided those who would only have plagued us; but next morning some men saw us, and ran off to inform the neighboring villages of our passing. a party immediately pursued us, and, as they knew we were within call of katolosa (monomotapa), they threatened to send information to that chief of our offense, in passing through the country without leave. we were obliged to give them two small tusks; for, had they told katolosa of our supposed offense, we should, in all probability, have lost the whole. we then went through a very rough, stony country without any path. being pretty well tired out in the evening of the d of march, i remained at about eight miles distance from tete, tette, or nyungwe. my men asked me to go on; i felt too fatigued to proceed, but sent forward to the commandant the letters of recommendation with which i had been favored in angola by the bishop and others, and lay down to rest. our food having been exhausted, my men had been subsisting for some time on roots and honey. about two o'clock in the morning of the d we were aroused by two officers and a company of soldiers, who had been sent with the materials for a civilized breakfast and a "masheela" to bring me to tete. (commandant's house: lat. d ' " s., long. d ' e.) my companions thought that we were captured by the armed men, and called me in alarm. when i understood the errand on which they had come, and had partaken of a good breakfast, though i had just before been too tired to sleep, all my fatigue vanished. it was the most refreshing breakfast i ever partook of, and i walked the last eight miles without the least feeling of weariness, although the path was so rough that one of the officers remarked to me, "this is enough to tear a man's life out of him." the pleasure experienced in partaking of that breakfast was only equaled by the enjoyment of mr. gabriel's bed on my arrival at loanda. it was also enhanced by the news that sebastopol had fallen and the war was finished. note.--having neglected, in referring to the footprints of the rhinoceros, to mention what may be interesting to naturalists, i add it here in a note; that wherever the footprints are seen, there are also marks of the animal having plowed up the ground and bushes with his horn. this has been supposed to indicate that he is subject to "fits of ungovernable rage"; but, when seen, he appears rather to be rejoicing in his strength. he acts as a bull sometimes does when he gores the earth with his horns. the rhinoceros, in addition to this, stands on a clump of bushes, bends his back down, and scrapes the ground with his feet, throwing it out backward, as if to stretch and clean his toes, in the same way that a dog may be seen to do on a little grass: this is certainly not rage. chapter . kind reception from the commandant--his generosity to my men--the village of tete--the population--distilled spirits--the fort--cause of the decadence of portuguese power--former trade--slaves employed in gold-washing--slave-trade drained the country of laborers--the rebel nyaude's stockade--he burns tete--kisaka's revolt and ravages--extensive field of sugar-cane--the commandant's good reputation among the natives--providential guidance--seams of coal--a hot spring--picturesque country--water-carriage to the coal-fields-- workmen's wages--exports--price of provisions--visit gold-washings-- the process of obtaining the precious metal--coal within a gold-field-- present from major sicard--natives raise wheat, etc.--liberality of the commandant--geographical information from senhor candido--earthquakes--native ideas of a supreme being--also of the immortality and transmigration of souls--fondness for display at funerals--trade restrictions--former jesuit establishment--state of religion and education at tete--inundation of the zambesi--cotton cultivated--the fibrous plants conge and buaze--detained by fever--the kumbanzo bark--native medicines--iron, its quality--hear of famine at kilimane--death of a portuguese lady--the funeral--disinterested kindness of the portuguese. i was most kindly received by the commandant tito augusto d'araujo sicard, who did every thing in his power to restore me from my emaciated condition; and, as this was still the unhealthy period at kilimane, he advised me to remain with him until the following month. he also generously presented my men with abundant provisions of millet; and, by giving them lodgings in a house of his own until they could erect their own huts, he preserved them from the bite of the tampans, here named carapatos.* we had heard frightful accounts of this insect while among the banyai, and major sicard assured me that to strangers its bite is more especially dangerous, as it sometimes causes fatal fever. it may please our homoeopathic friends to hear that, in curing the bite of the tampan, the natives administer one of the insects bruised in the medicine employed. * another insect, resembling a maggot, burrows into the feet of the natives and sucks their blood. mr. westwood says, "the tampan is a large species of mite, closely allied to the poisonous bug (as it is called) of persia, 'argos reflexus', respecting which such marvelous accounts have been recorded, and which the statement respecting the carapato or tampan would partially confirm." mr. w. also thinks that the poison- yielding larva called n'gwa is a "species of chrysomelidae. the larvae of the british species of that family exude a fetid yellow thickish fluid when alarmed, but he has not heard that any of them are at all poisonous." the village of tete is built on a long slope down to the river, the fort being close to the water. the rock beneath is gray sandstone, and has the appearance of being crushed away from the river: the strata have thus a crumpled form. the hollow between each crease is a street, the houses being built upon the projecting fold. the rocks at the top of the slope are much higher than the fort, and of course completely command it. there is then a large valley, and beyond that an oblong hill called karueira. the whole of the adjacent country is rocky and broken, but every available spot is under cultivation. the stone houses in tete are cemented with mud instead of lime, and thatched with reeds and grass. the rains, having washed out the mud between the stones, give all the houses a rough, untidy appearance. no lime was known to be found nearer than mozambique; some used in making seats in the verandas had actually been brought all that distance. the portuguese evidently knew nothing of the pink and white marbles which i found at the mbai, and another rivulet, named the unguesi, near it, and of which i brought home specimens, nor yet of the dolomite which lies so near to zumbo: they might have burned the marble into lime without going so far as mozambique. there are about thirty european houses; the rest are native, and of wattle and daub. a wall about ten feet high is intended to inclose the village, but most of the native inhabitants prefer to live on different spots outside. there are about twelve hundred huts in all, which with european households would give a population of about four thousand five hundred souls. only a small proportion of these, however, live on the spot; the majority are engaged in agricultural operations in the adjacent country. generally there are not more than two thousand people resident, for, compared with what it was, tete is now a ruin. the number of portuguese is very small; if we exclude the military, it is under twenty. lately, however, one hundred and five soldiers were sent from portugal to senna, where in one year twenty-five were cut off by fever. they were then removed to tete, and here they enjoy much better health, though, from the abundance of spirits distilled from various plants, wild fruits, and grain, in which pernicious beverage they largely indulge, besides partaking chiefly of unwholesome native food, better health could scarcely have been expected. the natives here understand the method of distillation by means of gun-barrels, and a succession of earthen pots filled with water to keep them cool. the general report of the fever here is that, while at kilimane the fever is continuous, at tete a man recovers in about three days. the mildest remedies only are used at first, and, if that period be passed, then the more severe. the fort of tete has been the salvation of the portuguese power in this quarter. it is a small square building, with a thatched apartment for the residence of the troops; and, though there are but few guns, they are in a much better state than those of any fort in the interior of angola. the cause of the decadence of the portuguese power in this region is simply this: in former times, considerable quantities of grain, as wheat, millet, and maize, were exported; also coffee, sugar, oil, and indigo, besides gold-dust and ivory. the cultivation of grain was carried on by means of slaves, of whom the portuguese possessed a large number. the gold-dust was procured by washing at various points on the north, south, and west of tete. a merchant took all his slaves with him to the washings, carrying as much calico and other goods as he could muster. on arriving at the washing-place, he made a present to the chief of the value of about a pound sterling. the slaves were then divided into parties, each headed by a confidential servant, who not only had the supervision of his squad while the washing went on, but bought dust from the inhabitants, and made a weekly return to his master. when several masters united at one spot, it was called a "bara", and they then erected a temporary church, in which a priest from one of the missions performed mass. both chiefs and people were favorable to these visits, because the traders purchased grain for the sustenance of the slaves with the goods they had brought. they continued at this labor until the whole of the goods were expended, and by this means about lbs. of gold were annually produced. probably more than this was actually obtained, but, as it was an article easily secreted, this alone was submitted to the authorities for taxation. at present the whole amount of gold obtained annually by the portuguese is from to lbs. only. when the slave-trade began, it seemed to many of the merchants a more speedy mode of becoming rich to sell off the slaves than to pursue the slow mode of gold-washing and agriculture, and they continued to export them until they had neither hands to labor nor to fight for them. it was just the story of the goose and the golden egg. the coffee and sugar plantations and gold-washings were abandoned, because the labor had been exported to the brazils. many of the portuguese then followed their slaves, and the government was obliged to pass a law to prevent further emigration, which, had it gone on, would have depopulated the portuguese possessions altogether. a clever man of asiatic (goa) and portuguese extraction, called nyaude, now built a stockade at the confluence of the luenya and zambesi; and when the commandant of tete sent an officer with his company to summon him to his presence, nyaude asked permission of the officer to dress himself, which being granted, he went into an inner apartment, and the officer ordered his men to pile their arms. a drum of war began to beat a note which is well known to the inhabitants. some of the soldiers took the alarm on hearing this note, but the officer, disregarding their warning, was, with his whole party, in a few minutes disarmed and bound hand and foot. the commandant of tete then armed the whole body of slaves and marched against the stockade of nyaude, but when they came near to it there was the luenya still to cross. as they did not effect this speedily, nyaude dispatched a strong party under his son bonga across the river below the stockade, and up the left bank of the zambesi until they came near to tete. they then attacked tete, which was wholly undefended save by a few soldiers in the fort, plundered and burned the whole town except the house of the commandant and a few others, with the church and fort. the women and children fled into the church; and it is a remarkable fact that none of the natives of this region will ever attack a church. having rendered tete a ruin, bonga carried off all the cattle and plunder to his father. news of this having been brought to the army before the stockade, a sudden panic dispersed the whole; and as the fugitives took roundabout ways in their flight, katolosa, who had hitherto pretended to be friendly with the portuguese, sent out his men to capture as many of them as they could. they killed many for the sake of their arms. this is the account which both natives and portuguese give of the affair. another half-caste from macao, called kisaka or choutama, on the opposite bank of the river, likewise rebelled. his father having died, he imagined that he had been bewitched by the portuguese, and he therefore plundered and burned all the plantations of the rich merchants of tete on the north bank. as i have before remarked, that bank is the most fertile, and there the portuguese had their villas and plantations to which they daily retired from tete. when these were destroyed the tete people were completely impoverished. an attempt was made to punish this rebel, but it was also unsuccessful, and he has lately been pardoned by the home government. one point in the narrative of this expedition is interesting. they came to a field of sugar-cane so large that men eating it during two days did not finish the whole. the portuguese were thus placed between two enemies, nyaude on the right bank and kisaka on the left, and not only so, but nyaude, having placed his stockade on the point of land on the right banks of both the luenya and zambesi, and washed by both these rivers, could prevent intercourse with the sea. the luenya rushes into the zambesi with great force when the latter is low, and, in coming up the zambesi, boats must cross it and the luenya separately, even going a little way up that river, so as not to be driven away by its current in the bed of the zambesi, and dashed on the rock which stands on the opposite shore. in coming up to the luenya for this purpose, all boats and canoes came close to the stockade to be robbed. nyaude kept the portuguese shut up in their fort at tete during two years, and they could only get goods sufficient to buy food by sending to kilimane by an overland route along the north bank of the zambesi. the mother country did not in these "caffre wars" pay the bills, so no one either became rich or blamed the missionaries. the merchants were unable to engage in trade, and commerce, which the slave-trade had rendered stagnant, was now completely obstructed. the present commandant of tete, major sicard, having great influence among the natives, from his good character, put a stop to the war more than once by his mere presence on the spot. we heard of him among the banyai as a man with whom they would never fight, because "he had a good heart." had i come down to this coast instead of going to loanda in , i should have come among the belligerents while the war was still raging, and should probably have been cut off. my present approach was just at the conclusion of the peace; and when the portuguese authorities here were informed, through the kind offices of lord clarendon and count de lavradio, that i was expected to come this way, they all declared that such was the existing state of affairs that no european could possibly pass through the tribes. some natives at last came down the river to tete and said, alluding to the sextant and artificial horizon, that "the son of god had come," and that he was "able to take the sun down from the heavens and place it under his arm!" major sicard then felt sure that this was the man mentioned in lord clarendon's dispatch. on mentioning to the commandant that i had discovered a small seam of coal, he stated that the portuguese were already aware of nine such seams, and that five of them were on the opposite bank of the river. as soon as i had recovered from my fatigue i went to examine them. we proceeded in a boat to the mouth of the lofubu or revubu, which is about two miles below tete, and on the opposite or northern bank. ascending this about four miles against a strong current of beautifully clear water, we landed near a small cataract, and walked about two miles through very fertile gardens to the seam, which we found to be in one of the feeders of the lofubu, called muatize or motize. the seam is in the perpendicular bank, and dips into the rivulet, or in a northerly direction. there is, first of all, a seam inches in diameter, then some shale, below which there is another seam, inches of which are seen, and, as the bottom touches the water of the muatize, it may be more. this part of the seam is about yards long. there is then a fault. about yards higher up the stream black vesicular trap is seen, penetrating in thin veins the clay shale of the country, converting it into porcellanite, and partially crystallizing the coal with which it came into contact. on the right bank of the lofubu there is another feeder entering that river near its confluence with the muatize, which is called the morongozi, in which there is another and still larger bed of coal exposed. farther up the lofubu there are other seams in the rivulets inyavu and makare; also several spots in the maravi country have the coal cropping out. this has evidently been brought to the surface by volcanic action at a later period than the coal formation. i also went up the zambesi, and visited a hot spring called nyamboronda, situated in the bed of a small rivulet named nyaondo, which shows that igneous action is not yet extinct. we landed at a small rivulet called mokorozi, then went a mile or two to the eastward, where we found a hot fountain at the bottom of a high hill. a little spring bubbles up on one side of the rivulet nyaondo, and a great quantity of acrid steam rises up from the ground adjacent, about feet square of which is so hot that my companions could not stand on it with their bare feet. there are several little holes from which the water trickles, but the principal spring is in a hole a foot in diameter, and about the same in depth. numbers of bubbles are constantly rising. the steam feels acrid in the throat, but is not inflammable, as it did not burn when i held a bunch of lighted grass over the bubbles. the mercury rises to deg. when the thermometer is put into the water in the hole, but after a few seconds it stands steadily at deg. even when flowing over the stones the water is too hot for the hand. little fish frequently leap out of the stream in the bed of which the fountain rises, into the hot water, and get scalded to death. we saw a frog which had performed the experiment, and was now cooked. the stones over which the water flows are incrusted with a white salt, and the water has a saline taste. the ground has been dug out near the fountain by the natives, in order to extract the salt it contains. it is situated among rocks of syenitic porphyry in broad dikes, and gneiss tilted on edge, and having a strike to the n.e. there are many specimens of half-formed pumice, with greenstone and lava. some of the sandstone strata are dislocated by a hornblende rock and by basalt, the sandstone nearest to the basalt being converted into quartz. the country around, as indeed all the district lying n. and n.w. of tete, is hilly, and, the hills being covered with trees, the scenery is very picturesque. the soil of the valleys is very fruitful and well cultivated. there would not be much difficulty in working the coal. the lofubu is about yards broad; it flows perennially, and at its very lowest period, which is after september, there is water about inches deep, which could be navigated in flat-bottomed boats. at the time of my visit it was full, and the current was very strong. if the small cataract referred to were to be avoided, the land-carriage beyond would only be about two miles. the other seams farther up the river may, after passing the cataract, be approached more easily than that in the muatize; as the seam, however, dips down into the stream, no drainage of the mine would be required, for if water were come to it would run into the stream. i did not visit the others, but i was informed that there are seams in the independent native territory as well as in that of the portuguese. that in the nake is in the banyai country, and, indeed, i have no doubt but that the whole country between zumbo and lupata is a coal-field of at least - / deg. of latitude in breadth, having many faults, made during the time of the igneous action. the gray sandstone rock having silicified trees lying on it is of these dimensions. the plantation in which the seam of coal exists would be valued among the portuguese at about dollars or pounds, but much more would probably be asked if a wealthy purchaser appeared. they could not, however, raise the price very much higher, because estates containing coal might be had from the native owners at a much cheaper rate. the wages of free laborers, when employed in such work as gold-washing, agriculture, or digging coal, is yards of unbleached calico per day. they might be got to work cheaper if engaged by the moon, or for about yards per month. for masons and carpenters even, the ordinary rate is yards per day. this is called braca. tradesmen from kilimane demand bracas, or yards, per day. english or american unbleached calico is the only currency used. the carriage of goods up the river to tete adds about per cent. to their cost. the usual conveyance is by means of very large canoes and launches built at senna. the amount of merchandise brought up during the five months of peace previous to my visit was of the value of , dollars, or about pounds. the annual supply of goods for trade is about , pounds, being calico, thick brass wire, beads, gunpowder, and guns. the quantity of the latter is, however, small, as the government of mozambique made that article contraband after the commencement of the war. goods, when traded with in the tribes around the portuguese, produce a profit of only about per cent., the articles traded in being ivory and gold-dust. a little oil and wheat are exported, but nothing else. trade with the tribes beyond the exclusive ones is much better. thirty brass rings cost s. at senna, pound at tete, and pounds beyond the tribes in the vicinity of tete; these are a good price for a penful of gold-dust of the value of pounds. the plantations of coffee, which, previous to the commencement of the slave-trade, yielded one material for exportation, are now deserted, and it is difficult to find a single tree. the indigo ('indigofera argentea', the common wild indigo of africa) is found growing every where, and large quantities of the senna-plant* grow in the village of tete and other parts, but neither indigo nor senna is collected. calumba-root, which is found in abundance in some parts farther down the river, is bought by the americans, it is said, to use as a dye-stuff. a kind of sarsaparilla, or a plant which is believed by the portuguese to be such, is found from londa to senna, but has never been exported. * these appear to belong to 'cassia acutifolia', or true senna of commerce, found in various parts of africa and india.--dr. hooker. the price of provisions is low, but very much higher than previous to the commencement of the war. two yards of calico are demanded for six fowls; this is considered very dear, because, before the war, the same quantity of calico was worth fowls. grain is sold in little bags made from the leaves of the palmyra, like those in which we receive sugar. they are called panjas, and each panja weighs between and lbs. the panja of wheat at tete is worth a dollar, or s.; but the native grain may be obtained among the islands below lupata at the rate of three panjas for two yards of calico. the highest articles of consumption are tea and coffee, the tea being often as high as s. a pound. food is cheaper down the river below lupata, and, previous to the war, the islands which stud the zambesi were all inhabited, and, the soil being exceedingly fertile, grain and fowls could be got to any amount. the inhabitants disappeared before their enemies the landeens, but are beginning to return since the peace. they have no cattle, the only place where we found no tsetse being the district of tete itself; and the cattle in the possession of the portuguese are a mere remnant of what they formerly owned. when visiting the hot fountain, i examined what were formerly the gold-washings in the rivulet mokoroze, which is nearly on the th parallel of latitude. the banks are covered with large groves of fine mango-trees, among which the portuguese lived while superintending the washing for the precious metal. the process of washing is very laborious and tedious. a quantity of sand is put into a wooden bowl with water; a half rotatory motion is given to the dish, which causes the coarser particles of sand to collect on one side of the bottom. these are carefully removed with the hand, and the process of rotation renewed until the whole of the sand is taken away, and the gold alone remains. it is found in very minute scales, and, unless i had been assured to the contrary, i should have taken it to be mica, for, knowing the gold to be of greater specific gravity than the sand, i imagined that a stream of water would remove the latter and leave the former; but here the practice is to remove the whole of the sand by the hand. this process was, no doubt, a profitable one to the portuguese, and it is probable that, with the improved plan by means of mercury, the sands would be lucrative. i had an opportunity of examining the gold-dust from different parts to the east and northeast of tete. there are six well-known washing-places. these are called mashinga, shindundo, missala, kapata, mano, and jawa. from the description of the rock i received, i suppose gold is found both in clay shale and quartz. at the range mushinga to the n.n.w. the rock is said to be so soft that the women pound it into powder in wooden mortars previous to washing. round toward the westward, the old portuguese indicate a station which was near to zumbo on the river panyame, and called dambarari, near which much gold was found. farther west lay the now unknown kingdom of abutua, which was formerly famous for the metal; and then, coming round toward the east, we have the gold-washings of the mashona, or bazizulu, and, farther east, that of manica, where gold is found much more abundantly than in any other part, and which has been supposed by some to be the ophir of king solomon. i saw the gold from this quarter as large as grains of wheat, that found in the rivers which run into the coal-field being in very minute scales. if we place one leg of the compasses at tete, and extend the other three and a half degrees, bringing it round from the northeast of tete by west, and then to the southeast, we nearly touch or include all the known gold-producing country. as the gold on this circumference is found in coarser grains than in the streams running toward the centre, or tete, i imagine that the real gold-field lies round about the coal-field; and, if i am right in the conjecture, then we have coal encircled by a gold-field, and abundance of wood, water, and provisions--a combination not often met with in the world. the inhabitants are not unfavorable to washings, conducted on the principle formerly mentioned. at present they wash only when in want of a little calico. they know the value of gold perfectly well, for they bring it for sale in goose-quills, and demand yards of calico for one penful. when the rivers in the district of manica and other gold-washing places have been flooded, they leave a coating of mud on the banks. the natives observe the spots which dry soonest, and commence digging there, in firm belief that gold lies beneath. they are said not to dig deeper than their chins, believing that if they did so the ground would fall in and kill them. when they find a 'piece' or flake of gold, they bury it again, from the superstitious idea that this is the seed of the gold, and, though they know the value of it well, they prefer losing it rather than the whole future crop. this conduct seemed to me so very unlikely in men who bring the dust in quills, and even put in a few seeds of a certain plant as a charm to prevent their losing any of it on the way, that i doubted the authority of my informant; but i found the report verified by all the portuguese who knew the native language and mode of thinking, and give the statement for what it is worth. if it is really practiced, the custom may have been introduced by some knowing one who wished to defraud the chiefs of their due; for we are informed in portuguese history that in former times these pieces or flakes of gold were considered the perquisites of the chiefs. major sicard, the commandant, whose kindness to me and my people was unbounded, presented a rosary made of the gold of the country, the workmanship of a native of tete, to my little daughter; also specimens of the gold-dust of three different places, which, with the coal of muatize and morongoze, are deposited in the museum of practical geology, jermyn street, london. all the cultivation is carried on with hoes in the native manner, and considerable quantities of 'holcus sorghum', maize, 'pennisetum typhoideum', or lotsa of the balonda, millet, rice, and wheat are raised, as also several kinds of beans--one of which, called "litloo" by the bechuanas, yields under ground, as well as the 'arachis hypogaea', or ground-nut; with cucumbers, pumpkins, and melons. the wheat is sown in low-lying places which are annually flooded by the zambesi. when the waters retire, the women drop a few grains in a hole made with a hoe, then push back the soil with the foot. one weeding alone is required before the grain comes to maturity. this simple process represents all our subsoil plowing, liming, manuring, and harrowing, for in four months after planting a good crop is ready for the sickle, and has been known to yield a hundred-fold. it flourished still more at zumbo. no irrigation is required, because here there are gentle rains, almost like mist, in winter, which go by the name of "wheat-showers", and are unknown in the interior, where no winter rain ever falls. the rains at tete come from the east, though the prevailing winds come from the s.s.e. the finest portion of the flour does not make bread nearly so white as the seconds, and here the boyaloa (pombe), or native beer, is employed to mix with the flour instead of yeast. it makes excellent bread. at kilimane, where the cocoanut palm abounds, the toddy from it, called "sura", is used for the same purpose, and makes the bread still lighter. as it was necessary to leave most of my men at this place, major sicard gave them a portion of land on which to cultivate their own food, generously supplying them with corn in the mean time. he also said that my young men might go and hunt elephants in company with his servants, and purchase goods with both the ivory and dried meat, in order that they might have something to take with them on their return to sekeletu. the men were delighted with his liberality, and soon sixty or seventy of them set off to engage in this enterprise. there was no calico to be had at this time in tete, but the commandant handsomely furnished my men with clothing. i was in a state of want myself, and, though i pressed him to take payment in ivory for both myself and men, he refused all recompense. i shall ever remember his kindness with deep gratitude. he has written me, since my arrival in england, that my men had killed four elephants in the course of two months after my departure. on the day of my arrival i was visited by all the gentlemen of the village, both white and colored, including the padre. not one of them had any idea as to where the source of the zambesi lay. they sent for the best traveled natives, but none of them knew the river even as far as kansala. the father of one of the rebels who had been fighting against them had been a great traveler to the southwest, and had even heard of our visit to lake ngami; but he was equally ignorant with all the others that the zambesi flowed in the centre of the country. they had, however, more knowledge of the country to the north of tete than i had. one man, who had gone to cazembe with major monteiro, stated that he had seen the luapura or loapula flowing past the town of that chieftain into the luameji or leeambye, but imagined that it found its way, somehow or other, into angola. the fact that sometimes rivers were seen to flow like this toward the centre of the country, led geographers to the supposition that inner africa was composed of elevated sandy plains, into which rivers ran and were lost. one of the gentlemen present, senhor candido, had visited a lake days to the n.n.w. of tete, which is probably the lake maravi of geographers, as in going thither they pass through the people of that name. the inhabitants of its southern coast are named shiva; those on the north, mujao; and they call the lake nyanja or nyanje, which simply means a large water, or bed of a large river. a high mountain stands in the middle of it, called murombo or murombola, which is inhabited by people who have much cattle. he stated that he crossed the nyanja at a narrow part, and was hours in the passage. the canoes were punted the whole way, and, if we take the rate about two miles per hour, it may be sixty or seventy miles in breadth. the country all round was composed of level plains covered with grass, and, indeed, in going thither they traveled seven or eight days without wood, and cooked their food with grass and stalks of native corn alone. the people sold their cattle at a very cheap rate. from the southern extremity of the lake two rivers issue forth: one, named after itself, the nyanja, which passes into the sea on the east coast under another name; and the shire, which flows into the zambesi a little below senna. the shire is named shirwa at its point of departure from the lake, and senhor candido was informed, when there, that the lake was simply an expansion of the river nyanja, which comes from the north and encircles the mountain murombo, the meaning of which is junction or union, in reference to the water having parted at its northern extremity, and united again at its southern. the shire flows through a low, flat, marshy country, but abounding in population, and they are said to be brave. the portuguese are unable to navigate the shire up to the lake nyanja, because of the great abundance of a water-plant which requires no soil, and which they name "alfacinya" ('pistia stratiotes'), from its resemblance to a lettuce. this completely obstructs the progress of canoes. in confirmation of this i may state that, when i passed the mouth of the shire, great quantities of this same plant were floating from it into the zambesi, and many parts of the banks below were covered with the dead plants. senhor candido stated that slight earthquakes have happened several times in the country of the maravi, and at no great distance from tete. the motion seems to come from the eastward, and never to have lasted more than a few seconds. they are named in the maravi tongue "shiwo", and in that of the people of tete "shitakoteko", or "shivering". this agrees exactly with what has taken place in the coast of mozambique--a few slight shocks of short duration, and all appearing to come from the east. at senna, too, a single shock has been felt several times, which shook the doors and windows, and made the glasses jingle. both tete and senna have hot springs in their vicinity, but the shocks seemed to come, not from them, but from the east, and proceed to the west. they are probably connected with the active volcanoes in the island of bourbon. as senhor candido holds the office of judge in all the disputes of the natives, and knows their language perfectly, his statement may be relied on that all the natives of this region have a clear idea of a supreme being, the maker and governor of all things. he is named "morimo", "molungo", "reza", "mpambe", in the different dialects spoken. the barotse name him "nyampi", and the balonda "zambi". all promptly acknowledge him as the ruler over all. they also fully believe in the soul's continued existence apart from the body, and visit the graves of relatives, making offerings of food, beer, etc. when undergoing the ordeal, they hold up their hands to the ruler of heaven, as if appealing to him to assert their innocence. when they escape, or recover from sickness, or are delivered from any danger, they offer a sacrifice of a fowl or a sheep, pouring out the blood as a libation to the soul of some departed relative. they believe in the transmigration of souls, and also that while persons are still living they may enter into lions and alligators, and then return again to their own bodies. while still at tete the son of monomotapa paid the commandant a visit. he is named mozungo, or "white man", has a narrow tapering head, and probably none of the ability or energy his father possessed. he was the favorite of his father, who hoped that he would occupy his place. a strong party, however, in the tribe placed katalosa in the chieftainship, and the son became, as they say, a child of this man. the portuguese have repeatedly received offers of territory if they would only attend the interment of the departed chief with troops, fire off many rounds of cartridges over the grave, and then give eclat to the installment of the new chief. their presence would probably influence the election, for many would vote on the side of power, and a candidate might feel it worth while to grant a good piece of land, if thereby he could secure the chieftainship to himself. when the portuguese traders wish to pass into the country beyond katalosa, they present him with about thirty-two yards of calico and some other goods, and he then gives them leave to pass in whatever direction they choose to go. they must, however, give certain quantities of cloth to a number of inferior chiefs beside, and they are subject to the game-laws. they have thus a body of exclusive tribes around them, preventing direct intercourse between them and the population beyond. it is strange that, when they had the power, they did not insist on the free navigation of the zambesi. i can only account for this in the same way in which i accounted for a similar state of things in the west. all the traders have been in the hands of slaves, and have wanted that moral courage which a free man, with free servants on whom he can depend, usually possesses. if the english had been here, they would have insisted on the free navigation of this pathway as an indispensable condition of friendship. the present system is a serious difficulty in the way of developing the resources of the country, and might prove fatal to an unarmed expedition. if this desirable and most fertile field of enterprise is ever to be opened up, men must proceed on a different plan from that which has been followed, and i do not apprehend there would be much difficulty in commencing a new system, if those who undertook it insisted that it is not our custom to pay for a highway which has not been made by man. the natives themselves would not deny that the river is free to those who do not trade in slaves. if, in addition to an open, frank explanation, a small subsidy were given to the paramount chief, the willing consent of all the subordinates would soon be secured. on the st of april i went to see the site of a former establishment of the jesuits, called micombo, about ten miles s.e. of tete. like all their settlements i have seen, both judgment and taste had been employed in the selection of the site. a little stream of mineral water had been collected in a tank and conducted to their house, before which was a little garden for raising vegetables at times of the year when no rain falls. it is now buried in a deep shady grove of mango-trees. i was accompanied by captain nunes, whose great-grandfather, also a captain in the time of the marquis of pombal, received sealed orders, to be opened only on a certain day. when that day arrived, he found the command to go with his company, seize all the jesuits of this establishment, and march them as prisoners to the coast. the riches of the fraternity, which were immense, were taken possession of by the state. large quantities of gold had often been sent to their superiors at goa, inclosed in images. the jesuits here do not seem to have possessed the sympathies of the people as their brethren in angola did. they were keen traders in ivory and gold-dust. all praise their industry. whatever they did, they did it with all their might, and probably their successful labors in securing the chief part of the trade to themselves had excited the envy of the laity. none of the natives here can read; and though the jesuits are said to have translated some of the prayers into the language of the country, i was unable to obtain a copy. the only religious teachers now in this part of the country are two gentlemen of color, natives of goa. the one who officiates at tete, named pedro antonio d'araujo, is a graduate in dogmatic theology and moral philosophy. there is but a single school in tete, and it is attended only by the native portuguese children, who are taught to read and write. the black population is totally uncared for. the soldiers are marched every sunday to hear mass, and but few others attend church. during the period of my stay, a kind of theatrical representation of our savior's passion and resurrection was performed. the images and other paraphernalia used were of great value, but the present riches of the church are nothing to what it once possessed. the commandant is obliged to lock up all the gold and silver in the fort for safety, though not from any apprehension of its being stolen by the people, for they have a dread of sacrilege. the state of religion and education is, i am sorry to say, as low as that of commerce; but the european portuguese value education highly, and send their children to goa and elsewhere for instruction in the higher branches. there is not a single bookseller's shop, however, in either eastern or western africa. even loanda, with its , or , souls, can not boast of one store for the sale of food for the mind. on the d the zambesi suddenly rose several feet in height. three such floods are expected annually, but this year there were four. this last was accompanied by discoloration, and must have been caused by another great fall of rain east of the ridge. we had observed a flood of discolored water when we reached the river at the kafue; it then fell two feet, and from subsequent rains again rose so high that we were obliged to leave it when opposite the hill pinkwe. about the th of march the river rose several feet with comparatively clear water, and it continued to rise until the st, with but very slight discoloration. this gradual rise was the greatest, and was probably caused by the water of inundation in the interior. the sudden rise which happened on the d, being deeply discolored, showed again the effect of rains at a comparatively short distance. the fact of the river rising three or four times annually, and the one flood of inundation being mixed with the others, may account for the portuguese not recognizing the phenomenon of the periodical inundation, so well known in the central country. the independent natives cultivate a little cotton, but it is not at all equal, either in quantity or quality, to what we found in angola. the pile is short, and it clings to the seed so much that they use an iron roller to detach it. the soil, however, is equal to the production of any tropical plant or fruit. the natives have never been encouraged to cultivate cotton for sale, nor has any new variety been introduced. we saw no palm-oil-trees, the oil which is occasionally exported being from the ground-nut. one of the merchants of tete had a mill of the rudest construction for grinding this nut, which was driven by donkeys. it was the only specimen of a machine i could exhibit to my men. a very superior kind of salad oil is obtained from the seeds of cucumbers, and is much used in native cookery. an offer, said to have been made by the "times", having excited attention even in this distant part, i asked the commandant if he knew of any plant fit for the production of paper. he procured specimens of the fibrous tissue of a species of aloe, named conge, and some also from the root of a wild date, and, lastly, of a plant named buaze, the fibres of which, though useless for the manufacture of paper, are probably a suitable substitute for flax. i submitted a small quantity of these fibres to messrs. pye, brothers, of london, who have invented a superior mode for the preparation of such tissues for the manufacturer. they most politely undertook the examination, and have given a favorable opinion of the buaze, as may be seen in the note below.* * lombard street, th march, . dear sir,--we have the pleasure to return you the specimens of fibrous plants from the zambesi river, on which you were desirous to see the effects of our treatment; we therefore inclose to you, no. . buaze, in the state received from you. a. do. as prepared by us. b. the tow which has come from it in hackling. no. . conge, as received from you. a. do. as prepared by us. with regard to both these fibres, we must state that the very minute quantity of each specimen has prevented our subjecting them to any thing like the full treatment of our process, and we can therefore only give you an approximate idea of their value. the buaze evidently possesses a very strong and fine fibre, assimilating to flax in its character, but we believe, when treated in quantity by our process, it would show both a stronger and finer fibre than flax; but being unable to apply the rolling or pressing processes with any efficiency to so very small a quantity, the gums are not yet so perfectly extracted as they would be, nor the fibre opened out to so fine a quality as it would then exhibit. this is even yet more the case with the conge, which, being naturally a harsh fibre, full of gums, wants exactly that powerful treatment which our process is calculated to give it, but which can not be applied to such miniature specimens. we do not therefore consider this as more than half treated, its fibre consequently remaining yet harsh, and coarse, and stiff, as compared with what it would be if treated in quantity. judging that it would be satisfactory to you to be in possession of the best practical opinion to be obtained on such a subject, we took the liberty of forwarding your little specimens to messrs. marshall, of leeds, who have kindly favored us with the following observations on them: "we have examined the samples you sent us yesterday, and think the conge or aloe fibre would be of no use to us, but the buaze fibre appears to resemble flax, and as prepared by you will be equal to flax worth pounds or pounds per ton, but we could hardly speak positively to the value unless we had cwt. or cwt. to try on our machinery. however, we think the result is promising, and we hope further inquiry will be made as to the probable supply of the material." we are, dear sir, your very obedient servants, pye, brothers. the rev. dr. livingstone. a representation of the plant is given in the annexed woodcut,* as a help to its identification. i was unable to procure either the flowers or fruit; but, as it is not recognized at sight by that accomplished botanist and eminent traveler, dr. j. d. hooker, it may safely be concluded that it is quite unknown to botanists. it is stated by the portuguese to grow in large quantities in the maravi country north of the zambesi, but it is not cultivated, and the only known use it has been put to is in making threads on which the natives string their beads. elsewhere the split tendons of animals are employed for this purpose. this seems to be of equal strength, for a firm thread of it feels like catgut in the hand, and would rather cut the fingers than break. * unfortunately, this woodcut can not be represented in this ascii text, but buaze, or bwazi, is 'securidaca longipedunculata'.--a. l., . having waited a month for the commencement of the healthy season at kilimane, i would have started at the beginning of april, but tarried a few days in order that the moon might make her appearance, and enable me to take lunar observations on my way down the river. a sudden change of temperature happening on the th, simultaneously with the appearance of the new moon, the commandant and myself, with nearly every person in the house, were laid up with a severe attack of fever. i soon recovered by the use of my wonted remedies, but major sicard and his little boy were confined much longer. there was a general fall of deg. of temperature from the middle of march, deg. at a.m., and deg. at p.m.; the greatest heat being deg. at midday, and the lowest deg. at sunrise. it afforded me pleasure to attend the invalids in their sickness, though i was unable to show a tithe of the gratitude i felt for the commandant's increasing kindness. my quinine and other remedies were nearly all expended, and no fresh supply was to be found here, there being no doctors at tete, and only one apothecary with the troops, whose stock of medicine was also small. the portuguese, however, informed me that they had the cinchona bark growing in their country--that there was a little of it to be found at tete--whole forests of it at senna and near the delta of kilimane. it seems quite a providential arrangement that the remedy for fever should be found in the greatest abundance where it is most needed. on seeing the leaves, i stated that it was not the 'cinchona longifolia' from which it is supposed the quinine of commerce is extracted, but the name and properties of this bark made me imagine that it was a cinchonaceous tree. i could not get the flower, but when i went to senna i tried to bring away a few small living trees with earth in a box. they, however, all died when we came to kilimane. failing in this mode of testing the point, i submitted a few leaves and seed-vessels to my friend, dr. hooker, who kindly informs me that they belong "apparently to an apocyneous plant, very nearly allied to the malouetia heudlotii (of decaisne), a native of senegambia." dr. h. adds, "various plants of this natural order are reputed powerful febrifuges, and some of them are said to equal the cinchona in their effects." it is called in the native tongue kumbanzo. the flowers are reported to be white. the pods are in pairs, a foot or fifteen inches in length, and contain a groove on their inner sides. the thick soft bark of the root is the part used by the natives; the portuguese use that of the tree itself. i immediately began to use a decoction of the bark of the root, and my men found it so efficacious that they collected small quantities of it for themselves, and kept it in little bags for future use. some of them said that they knew it in their own country, but i never happened to observe it. the decoction is given after the first paroxysm of the complaint is over. the portuguese believe it to have the same effects as the quinine, and it may prove a substitute for that invaluable medicine. there are numbers of other medicines in use among the natives, but i have always been obliged to regret want of time to ascertain which were useful and which of no value. we find a medicine in use by a tribe in one part of the country, and the same plant employed by a tribe a thousand miles distant. this surely must arise from some inherent virtue in the plant. the boers under potgeiter visited delgoa bay for the first time about ten years ago, in order to secure a port on the east coast for their republic. they had come from a part of the interior where the disease called croup occasionally prevails. there was no appearance of the disease among them at the period of their visit, but the portuguese inhabitants of that bay found that they had left it among them, and several adults were cut off by a form of the complaint called 'laryngismus stridulus', the disease of which the great washington died. similar cases have occurred in the south sea islands. ships have left diseases from which no one on board was suffering at the time of their visit. many of the inhabitants here were cut down, usually in three days from their first attack, until a native doctor adopted the plan of scratching the root of the tongue freely with a certain root, and giving a piece of it to be chewed. the cure may have been effected by the scarification only, but the portuguese have the strongest faith in the virtues of the root, and always keep some of it within reach. there are also other plants which the natives use in the treatment of fever, and some of them produce 'diaphoresis' in a short space of time. it is certain that we have got the knowledge of the most potent febrifuge in our pharmacopoeia from the natives of another country. we have no cure for cholera and some other diseases. it might be worth the investigation of those who visit africa to try and find other remedies in a somewhat similar way to that in which we found the quinine.* * i add the native names of a few of their remedies in order to assist the inquirer: mupanda panda: this is used in fever for producing perspiration; the leaves are named chirussa; the roots dye red, and are very astringent. goho or go-o: this is the ordeal medicine; it is both purgative and emetic. mutuva or mutumbue: this plant contains so much oil that it serves as lights in londa; it is an emollient drink for the cure of coughs, and the pounded leaves answer as soap to wash the head. nyamucu ucu has a curious softening effect on old dry grain. mussakasi is believed to remove the effects of the go- o. mudama is a stringent vermifuge. mapubuza dyes a red color. musikizi yields an oil. shinkondo: a virulent poison; the maravi use it in their ordeal, and it is very fatal. kanunka utare is said to expel serpents and rats by its pungent smell, which is not at all disagreeable to man; this is probably a kind of 'zanthoxylon', perhaps the z. melancantha of western africa, as it is used to expel rats and serpents there. mussonzoa dyes cloth black. mussio: the beans of this also dye black. kangome, with flowers and fruit like mocha coffee; the leaves are much like those of the sloe, and the seeds are used as coffee or eaten as beans. kanembe- embe: the pounded leaves used as an extemporaneous glue for mending broken vessels. katunguru is used for killing fish. mutavea nyerere: an active caustic. mudiacoro: also an external caustic, and used internally. kapande: another ordeal plant, but used to produce 'diaphoresis'. karumgasura: also diaphoretic. munyazi yields an oil, and is one of the ingredients for curing the wounds of poisoned arrows. uombue: a large root employed in killing fish. kakumate: used in intermittents. musheteko: applied to ulcers, and the infusion also internally in amenorrhoea. inyakanyanya: this is seen in small, dark-colored, crooked roots of pleasant aromatic smell and slightly bitter taste, and is highly extolled in the treatment of fever; it is found in manica. eskinencia: used in croup and sore-throat. itaca or itaka: for diaphoresis in fever; this root is brought as an article of barter by the arabs to kilimane; the natives purchase it eagerly. mukundukundu: a decoction used as a febrifuge in the same way as quinine; it grows plentifully at shupanga, and the wood is used as masts for launches. i may here add the recipe of brother pedro of zumbo for the cure of poisoned wounds, in order to show the similarity of practice among the natives of the zambesi, from whom, in all probability, he acquired his knowledge, and the bushmen of the kalahari. it consists of equal parts of the roots of the calumba, musheteko, abutua, batatinya, paregekanto, itaka, or kapande, put into a bottle and covered with common castor-oil. as i have before observed, i believe the oily ingredient is the effectual one, and ought to be tried by any one who has the misfortune to get wounded by a bushman's or banyai arrow. the only other metal, besides gold, we have in abundance in this region, is iron, and that is of excellent quality. in some places it is obtained from what is called the specular iron ore, and also from black oxide. the latter has been well roasted in the operations of nature, and contains a large proportion of the metal. it occurs generally in tears or rounded lumps, and is but slightly magnetic. when found in the beds of rivers, the natives know of its existence by the quantity of oxide on the surface, and they find no difficulty in digging it with pointed sticks. they consider english iron as "rotten"; and i have seen, when a javelin of their own iron lighted on the cranium of a hippopotamus, it curled up like the proboscis of a butterfly, and the owner would prepare it for future use by straightening it cold with two stones. i brought home some of the hoes which sekeletu gave me to purchase a canoe, also some others obtained in kilimane, and they have been found of such good quality that a friend of mine in birmingham has made an enfield rifle of them.* * the following remarks are by a practical blacksmith, one of the most experienced men in the gun-trade. in this trade various qualities of iron are used, and close attention is required to secure for each purpose the quality of iron peculiarly adapted to it: the iron in the two spades strongly resembles swedish or russian; it is highly carbonized. the same qualities are found in both spades. when chilled in water it has all the properties of steel: see the piece marked i, chilled at one end, and left soft at the other. when worked hot, it is very malleable: but cold, it breaks quite short and brittle. the great irregularity found in the working of the iron affords evidence that it has been prepared by inexperienced hands. this is shown in the bending of the small spade; the thick portion retains its crystallized nature, while the thin part has been changed by the hammering it has undergone. the large spade shows a very brittle fracture. the iron is too brittle for gun-work; it would be liable to break. this iron, if repeatedly heated and hammered, would become decarbonized, and would then possess the qualities found in the spear-head, which, after being curled up by being struck against a hard substance, was restored, by hammering, to its original form without injury. the piece of iron marked ii is a piece of gun-iron of fibrous quality, such as will bend without breaking. the piece marked iii is of crystalline quality; it has been submitted to a process which has changed it to iiii; iii and iiii are cut from the same bar. the spade-iron has been submitted to the same process, but no corresponding effect can be produced. the iron ore exists in great abundance, but i did not find any limestone in its immediate vicinity. so far as i could learn, there is neither copper nor silver. malachite is worked by the people of cazembe, but, as i did not see it, nor any other metal, i can say nothing about it. a few precious stones are met with, and some parts are quite covered with agates. the mineralogy of the district, however, has not been explored by any one competent to the task. when my friend the commandant was fairly recovered, and i myself felt strong again, i prepared to descend the zambesi. a number of my men were out elephant-hunting, and others had established a brisk trade in firewood, as their countrymen did at loanda. i chose sixteen of those who could manage canoes to convey me down the river. many more would have come, but we were informed that there had been a failure of the crops at kilimane from the rains not coming at the proper time, and thousands had died of hunger. i did not hear of a single effort having been made to relieve the famishing by sending them food down the river. those who perished were mostly slaves, and others seemed to think that their masters ought to pay for their relief. the sufferers were chiefly among those natives who inhabit the delta, and who are subject to the portuguese. they are in a state of slavery, but are kept on farms and mildly treated. many yield a certain rental of grain only to their owners, and are otherwise free. eight thousand are said to have perished. major sicard lent me a boat which had been built on the river, and sent also lieutenant miranda to conduct me to the coast. a portuguese lady who had come with her brother from lisbon, having been suffering for some days from a severe attack of fever, died about three o'clock in the morning of the th of april. the heat of the body having continued unabated till six o'clock, i was called in, and found her bosom quite as warm as i ever did in a living case of fever. this continued for three hours more. as i had never seen a case in which fever-heat continued so long after death, i delayed the funeral until unmistakable symptoms of dissolution occurred. she was a widow, only twenty-two years of age, and had been ten years in africa. i attended the funeral in the evening, and was struck by the custom of the country. a number of slaves preceded us, and fired off many rounds of gunpowder in front of the body. when a person of much popularity is buried, all the surrounding chiefs send deputations to fire over the grave. on one occasion at tete, more than thirty barrels of gunpowder were expended. early in the morning of the st the slaves of the deceased lady's brother went round the village making a lamentation, and drums were beaten all day, as they are at such times among the heathen. the commandant provided for the journey most abundantly, and gave orders to lieutenant miranda that i should not be allowed to pay for any thing all the way to the coast, and sent messages to his friends senhors ferrao, isidore, asevedo, and nunes, to treat me as they would himself. from every one of these gentlemen i am happy to acknowledge that i received most disinterested kindness, and i ought to speak well forever of portuguese hospitality. i have noted each little act of civility received, because somehow or other we have come to hold the portuguese character in rather a low estimation. this may have arisen partly from the pertinacity with which some of them have pursued the slave-trade, and partly from the contrast which they now offer to their illustrious ancestors--the foremost navigators of the world. if my specification of their kindnesses will tend to engender a more respectful feeling to the nation, i shall consider myself well rewarded. we had three large canoes in the company which had lately come up with goods from senna. they are made very large and strong, much larger than any we ever saw in the interior, and might strike with great force against a rock and not be broken. the men sit at the stern when paddling, and there is usually a little shed made over a part of the canoe to shade the passengers from the sun. the boat in which i went was furnished with such a covering, so i sat quite comfortably. chapter . leave tete and proceed down the river--pass the stockade of bonga-- gorge of lupata--"spine of the world"--width of river--islands--war drum at shiramba--canoe navigation--reach senna--its ruinous state--landeens levy fines upon the inhabitants--cowardice of native militia--state of the revenue--no direct trade with portugal--attempts to revive the trade of eastern africa--country round senna--gorongozo, a jesuit station--manica, the best gold region in eastern africa--boat-building at senna--our departure--capture of a rebel stockade--plants alfacinya and njefu at the confluence of the shire--landeen opinion of the whites--mazaro, the point reached by captain parker--his opinion respecting the navigation of the river from this to the ocean--lieutenant hoskins' remarks on the same subject--fever, its effects--kindly received into the house of colonel nunes at kilimane--forethought of captain nolloth and dr. walsh--joy imbittered--deep obligations to the earl of clarendon, etc.--on developing resources of the interior--desirableness of missionary societies selecting healthy stations--arrangements on leaving my men-- retrospect--probable influence of the discoveries on slavery--supply of cotton, sugar, etc., by free labor--commercial stations--development of the resources of africa a work of time--site of kilimane-- unhealthiness--death of a shipwrecked crew from fever--the captain saved by quinine--arrival of h. m. brig "frolic"--anxiety of one of my men to go to england--rough passage in the boats to the ship--sekwebu's alarm--sail for mauritius--sekwebu on board; he becomes insane; drowns himself--kindness of major-general c. m. hay--escape shipwreck--reach home. we left tete at noon on the d, and in the afternoon arrived at the garden of senhor a. manoel de gomez, son-in-law and nephew of bonga. the commandant of tete had sent a letter to the rebel bonga, stating that he ought to treat me kindly, and he had deputed his son-in-law to be my host. bonga is not at all equal to his father nyaude, who was a man of great ability. he is also in bad odor with the portuguese, because he receives all runaway slaves and criminals. he does not trust the portuguese, and is reported to be excessively superstitious. i found his son-in-law, manoel, extremely friendly, and able to converse in a very intelligent manner. he was in his garden when we arrived, but soon dressed himself respectably, and gave us a good tea and dinner. after a breakfast of tea, roasted eggs, and biscuits next morning, he presented six fowls and three goats as provisions for the journey. when we parted from him we passed the stockade of bonga at the confluence of the luenya, but did not go near it, as he is said to be very suspicious. the portuguese advised me not to take any observation, as the instruments might awaken fears in bonga's mind, but manoel said i might do so if i wished; his garden, however, being above the confluence, could not avail as a geographical point. there are some good houses in the stockade. the trees of which it is composed seemed to me to be living, and could not be burned. it was strange to see a stockade menacing the whole commerce of the river in a situation where the guns of a vessel would have full play on it, but it is a formidable affair for those who have only muskets. on one occasion, when nyaude was attacked by kisaka, they fought for weeks; and though nyaude was reduced to cutting up his copper anklets for balls, his enemies were not able to enter the stockade. on the th we sailed only about three hours, as we had done the day before; but having come to a small island at the western entrance of the gorge of lupata, where dr. lacerda is said to have taken an astronomical observation, and called it the island of mozambique, because it was believed to be in the same latitude, or d ', i wished to verify his position, and remained over night: my informants must have been mistaken, for i found the island of mozambique here to be lat. d ' " s. respecting this range, to which the gorge has given a name, some portuguese writers have stated it to be so high that snow lies on it during the whole year, and that it is composed of marble. it is not so high in appearance as the campsie hills when seen from the vale of clyde. the western side is the most abrupt, and gives the idea of the greatest height, as it rises up perpendicularly from the water six or seven hundred feet. as seen from this island, it is certainly no higher than arthur's seat appears from prince's street, edinburgh. the rock is compact silicious schist of a slightly reddish color, and in thin strata; the island on which we slept looks as if torn off from the opposite side of the gorge, for the strata are twisted and torn in every direction. the eastern side of the range is much more sloping than the western, covered with trees, and does not give the idea of altitude so much as the western. it extends a considerable way into the maganja country in the north, and then bends round toward the river again, and ends in the lofty mountain morumbala, opposite senna. on the other or southern side it is straighter, but is said to end in gorongozo, a mountain west of the same point. the person who called this lupata "the spine of the world" evidently did not mean to say that it was a translation of the word, for it means a defile or gorge having perpendicular walls. this range does not deserve the name of either cordillera or spine, unless we are willing to believe that the world has a very small and very crooked "back-bone". we passed through the gorge in two hours, and found it rather tortuous, and between and yards wide. the river is said to be here always excessively deep; it seemed to me that a steamer could pass through it at full speed. at the eastern entrance of lupata stand two conical hills; they are composed of porphyry, having large square crystals therein. these hills are called moenda en goma, which means a footprint of a wild beast. another conical hill on the opposite bank is named kasisi (priest), from having a bald top. we sailed on quickly with the current of the river, and found that it spread out to more than two miles in breadth; it is, however, full of islands, which are generally covered with reeds, and which, previous to the war, were inhabited, and yielded vast quantities of grain. we usually landed to cook breakfast, and then went on quickly. the breadth of water between the islands was now quite sufficient for a sailing vessel to tack, and work her sails in; the prevailing winds would blow her up the stream; but i regretted that i had not come when the river was at its lowest rather than at its highest. the testimony, however, of captain parker and lieutenant hoskins, hereafter to be noticed, may be considered conclusive as to the capabilities of this river for commercial purposes. the portuguese state that there is high water during five months of the year, and when it is low there is always a channel of deep water. but this is very winding; and as the river wears away some of the islands and forms others, the course of the channel is often altered. i suppose that an accurate chart of it made in one year would not be very reliable the next; but i believe, from all that i can learn, that the river could be navigated in a small flat-bottomed steamer during the whole year as far as tete. at this time a steamer of large size could have floated easily. the river was measured at the latter place by the portuguese, and found by them to be yards broad. the body of water flowing past when i was there was very great, and the breadth it occupied when among the islands had a most imposing effect. i could not get a glimpse of either shore. all the right bank beyond lupata is low and flat: on the north, the ranges of hills and dark lines below them are seen, but from the boat it is impossible to see the shore. i only guess the breadth of the river to be two miles; it is probably more. next day we landed at shiramba for breakfast, having sailed - / hours from lupata. this was once the residence of a portuguese brigadier, who spent large sums of money in embellishing his house and gardens: these we found in entire ruin, as his half-caste son had destroyed all, and then rebelled against the portuguese, but with less success than either nyaude or kisaka, for he had been seized and sent a prisoner to mozambique a short time before our visit. all the southern shore has been ravaged by the caffres, who are here named landeens, and most of the inhabitants who remain acknowledge the authority of bonga, and not of the portuguese. when at breakfast, the people of shiramba commenced beating the drum of war. lieutenant miranda, who was well acquainted with the customs of the country, immediately started to his feet, and got all the soldiers of our party under arms; he then demanded of the natives why the drum was beaten while we were there. they gave an evasive reply; and, as they employ this means of collecting their neighbors when they intend to rob canoes, our watchfulness may have prevented their proceeding farther. we spent the night of the th on the island called nkuesi, opposite a remarkable saddle-shaped mountain, and found that we were just on the th parallel of latitude. the sail down the river was very fine; the temperature becoming low, it was pleasant to the feelings; but the shores being flat and far from us, the scenery was uninteresting. we breakfasted on the th at pita, and found some half-caste portuguese had established themselves there, after fleeing from the opposite bank to escape kisaka's people, who were now ravaging all the maganja country. on the afternoon of the th we arrived at senna. (commandant isidore's house, yards s.w. of the mud fort on the banks of the river: lat. d ' " s., long. d ' e.) we found senna to be twenty-three and a half hours' sail from tete. we had the current entirely in our favor, but met various parties in large canoes toiling laboriously against it. they use long ropes, and pull the boats from the shore. they usually take about twenty days to ascend the distance we had descended in about four. the wages paid to boatmen are considered high. part of the men who had accompanied me gladly accepted employment from lieutenant miranda to take a load of goods in a canoe from senna to tete. i thought the state of tete quite lamentable, but that of senna was ten times worse. at tete there is some life; here every thing is in a state of stagnation and ruin. the fort, built of sun-dried bricks, has the grass growing over the walls, which have been patched in some places by paling. the landeens visit the village periodically, and levy fines upon the inhabitants, as they consider the portuguese a conquered tribe, and very rarely does a native come to trade. senhor isidore, the commandant, a man of considerable energy, had proposed to surround the whole village with palisades as a protection against the landeens, and the villagers were to begin this work the day after i left. it was sad to look at the ruin manifest in every building, but the half-castes appear to be in league with the rebels and landeens; for when any attempt is made by the portuguese to coerce the enemy or defend themselves, information is conveyed at once to the landeen camp, and, though the commandant prohibits the payment of tribute to the landeens, on their approach the half-castes eagerly ransom themselves. when i was there, a party of kisaka's people were ravaging the fine country on the opposite shore. they came down with the prisoners they had captured, and forthwith the half-castes of senna went over to buy slaves. encouraged by this, kisaka's people came over into senna fully armed and beating their drums, and were received into the house of a native portuguese. they had the village at their mercy, yet could have been driven off by half a dozen policemen. the commandant could only look on with bitter sorrow. he had soldiers, it is true, but it is notorious that the native militia of both senna and kilimane never think of standing to fight, but invariably run away, and leave their officers to be killed. they are brave only among the peaceable inhabitants. one of them, sent from kilimane with a packet of letters or expresses, arrived while i was at senna. he had been charged to deliver them with all speed, but senhor isidore had in the mean time gone to kilimane, remained there a fortnight, and reached senna again before the courier came. he could not punish him. we gave him a passage in our boat, but he left us in the way to visit his wife, and, "on urgent private business," probably gave up the service altogether, as he did not come to kilimane all the time i was there. it is impossible to describe the miserable state of decay into which the portuguese possessions here have sunk. the revenues are not equal to the expenses, and every officer i met told the same tale, that he had not received one farthing of pay for the last four years. they are all forced to engage in trade for the support of their families. senhor miranda had been actually engaged against the enemy during these four years, and had been highly lauded in the commandant's dispatches to the home government, but when he applied to the governor of kilimane for part of his four years' pay, he offered him twenty dollars only. miranda resigned his commission in consequence. the common soldiers sent out from portugal received some pay in calico. they all marry native women, and, the soil being very fertile, the wives find but little difficulty in supporting their husbands. there is no direct trade with portugal. a considerable number of banians, or natives of india, come annually in small vessels with cargoes of english and indian goods from bombay. it is not to be wondered at, then, that there have been attempts made of late years by speculative portuguese in lisbon to revive the trade of eastern africa by means of mercantile companies. one was formally proposed, which was modeled on the plan of our east india company; and it was actually imagined that all the forts, harbors, lands, etc., might be delivered over to a company, which would bind itself to develop the resources of the country, build schools, make roads, improve harbors, etc., and, after all, leave the portuguese the option of resuming possession. another effort has been made to attract commercial enterprise to this region by offering any mining company permission to search for the ores and work them. such a company, however, would gain but little in the way of protection or aid from the government of mozambique, as that can but barely maintain a hold on its own small possessions; the condition affixed of importing at the company's own cost a certain number of portuguese from the island of madeira or the azores, in order to increase the portuguese population in africa, is impolitic. taxes would also be levied on the minerals exported. it is noticeable that all the companies which have been proposed in portugal have this put prominently in the preamble, "and for the abolition of the inhuman slave-trade." this shows either that the statesmen in portugal are enlightened and philanthropic, or it may be meant as a trap for english capitalists; i incline to believe the former. if the portuguese really wish to develop the resources of the rich country beyond their possessions, they ought to invite the co-operation of other nations on equal terms with themselves. let the pathway into the interior be free to all; and, instead of wretched forts, with scarcely an acre of land around them which can be called their own, let real colonies be made. if, instead of military establishments, we had civil ones, and saw emigrants going out with their wives, plows, and seeds, rather than military convicts with bugles and kettle-drums, we might hope for a return of prosperity to eastern africa. the village of senna stands on the right bank of the zambesi. there are many reedy islands in front of it, and there is much bush in the country adjacent. the soil is fertile, but the village, being in a state of ruin, and having several pools of stagnant water, is very unhealthy. the bottom rock is the akose of brongniart, or granitic grit, and several conical hills of trap have burst through it. one standing about half a mile west of the village is called baramuana, which has another behind it; hence the name, which means "carry a child on the back". it is or feet high, and on the top lie two dismounted cannon, which were used to frighten away the landeens, who, in one attack upon senna, killed of the inhabitants. the prospect from baramuana is very fine; below, on the eastward, lies the zambesi, with the village of senna; and some twenty or thirty miles beyond stands the lofty mountain morumbala, probably or feet high. it is of an oblong shape, and from its physiognomy, which can be distinctly seen when the sun is in the west, is evidently igneous. on the northern end there is a hot sulphurous fountain, which my portuguese friends refused to allow me to visit, because the mountain is well peopled, and the mountaineers are at present not friendly with the portuguese. they have plenty of garden-ground and running water on its summit. my friends at senna declined the responsibility of taking me into danger. to the north of morumbala we have a fine view of the mountains of the maganja; they here come close to the river, and terminate in morumbala. many of them are conical, and the shire is reported to flow among them, and to run on the senna side of morumbala before joining the zambesi. on seeing the confluence afterward, close to a low range of hills beyond morumbala, i felt inclined to doubt the report, as the shire must then flow parallel with the zambesi, from which morumbala seems distant only twenty or thirty miles. all around to the southeast the country is flat, and covered with forest, but near senna a number of little abrupt conical hills diversify the scenery. to the west and north the country is also flat forest, which gives it a sombre appearance; but just in the haze of the horizon southwest by south, there rises a mountain range equal in height to morumbala, and called nyamonga. in a clear day another range beyond this may be seen, which is gorongozo, once a station of the jesuits. gorongozo is famed for its clear cold waters and healthiness, and there are some inscriptions engraved on large square slabs on the top of the mountain, which have probably been the work of the fathers. as this lies in the direction of a district between manica and sofala, which has been conjectured to be the ophir of king solomon, the idea that first sprang up in my mind was, that these monuments might be more ancient than the portuguese; but, on questioning some persons who had seen them, i found that they were in roman characters, and did not deserve a journey of six days to see them. manica lies three days northwest of gorongozo, and is the best gold country known in eastern africa. the only evidence the portuguese have of its being the ancient ophir is, that at sofala, its nearest port, pieces of wrought gold have been dug up near the fort and in the gardens. they also report the existence of hewn stones in the neighborhood, but these can not have been abundant, for all the stones of the fort of sofala are said to have been brought from portugal. natives whom i met in the country of sekeletu, from manica, or manoa, as they call it, state that there are several caves in the country, and walls of hewn stones, which they believe to have been made by their ancestors; and there is, according to the portuguese, a small tribe of arabs there, who have become completely like the other natives. two rivers, the motirikwe and sabia, or sabe, run through their country into the sea. the portuguese were driven out of the country by the landeens, but now talk of reoccupying manica. the most pleasant sight i witnessed at senna was the negroes of senhor isidore building boats after the european model, without any one to superintend their operations. they had been instructed by a european master, but now go into the forest and cut down the motondo-trees, lay down the keel, fit in the ribs, and make very neat boats and launches, valued at from pounds to pounds. senhor isidore had some of them instructed also in carpentry at rio janeiro, and they constructed for him the handsomest house in kilimane, the woodwork being all of country trees, some of which are capable of a fine polish, and very durable. a medical opinion having been asked by the commandant respecting a better site for the village, which, lying on the low bank of the zambesi, is very unhealthy, i recommended imitation of the jesuits, who had chosen the high, healthy mountain of gorongozo, and to select a new site on morumbala, which is perfectly healthy, well watered, and where the shire is deep enough for the purpose of navigation at its base. as the next resource, i proposed removal to the harbor of mitilone, which is at one of the mouths of the zambesi, a much better port than kilimane, and where, if they must have the fever, they would be in the way of doing more good to themselves and the country than they can do in their present situation. had the portuguese possessed this territory as a real colony, this important point would not have been left unoccupied; as it is, there is not even a native village placed at the entrance of this splendid river to show the way in. on the th of may sixteen of my men were employed to carry government goods in canoes up to tete. they were much pleased at getting this work. on the th the whole of the inhabitants of senna, with the commandant, accompanied us to the boats. a venerable old man, son of a judge, said they were in much sorrow on account of the miserable state of decay into which they had sunk, and of the insolent conduct of the people of kisaka now in the village. we were abundantly supplied with provisions by the commandant and senhor ferrao, and sailed pleasantly down the broad river. about thirty miles below senna we passed the mouth of the river zangwe on our right, which farther up goes by the name of pungwe; and about five miles farther on our left, close to the end of a low range into which morumbala merges, we crossed the mouth of the shire, which seemed to be about yards broad. a little inland from the confluence there is another rebel stockade, which was attacked by ensign rebeiro with three european soldiers, and captured; they disarmed the rebels and threw the guns into the water. this ensign and miranda volunteered to disperse the people of kisaka who were riding roughshod over the inhabitants of senna; but the offer was declined, the few real portuguese fearing the disloyal half-castes among whom they dwelt. slavery and immorality have here done their work; nowhere else does the european name stand at so low an ebb; but what can be expected? few portuguese women are ever taken to the colonies, and here i did not observe that honorable regard for the offspring which i noticed in angola. the son of a late governor of tete was pointed out to me in the condition and habit of a slave. there is neither priest nor school at senna, though there are ruins of churches and convents. on passing the shire we observed great quantities of the plant alfacinya, already mentioned, floating down into the zambesi. it is probably the 'pistia stratiotes', a gigantic "duck-weed". it was mixed with quantities of another aquatic plant, which the barotse named "njefu", containing in the petiole of the leaf a pleasant-tasted nut. this was so esteemed by sebituane that he made it part of his tribute from the subjected tribes. dr. hooker kindly informs me that the njefu "is probably a species of 'trapa', the nuts of which are eaten in the south of europe and in india. government derives a large revenue from them in kashmir, amounting to , pounds per annum for , ass-loads! the ancient thracians are said to have eaten them largely. in the south of france they are called water-chestnuts." the existence of these plants in such abundance in the shire may show that it flows from large collections of still water. we found them growing in all the still branches and lagoons of the leeambye in the far north, and there also we met a beautiful little floating plant, the 'azolla nilotica', which is found in the upper nile. they are seldom seen in flowing streams. a few miles beyond the shire we left the hills entirely, and sailed between extensive flats. the banks seen in the distance are covered with trees. we slept on a large inhabited island, and then came to the entrance of the river mutu (latitude d ' " s., longitude d ' e.): the point of departure is called mazaro, or "mouth of the mutu". the people who live on the north are called baroro, and their country bororo. the whole of the right bank is in subjection to the landeens, who, it was imagined, would levy a tribute upon us, for this they are accustomed to do to passengers. i regret that we did not meet them, for, though they are named caffres, i am not sure whether they are of the zulu family or of the mashona. i should have liked to form their acquaintance, and to learn what they really think of white men. i understood from sekwebu, and from one of changamera's people who lives at linyanti, and was present at the attack on senna, that they consider the whites as a conquered tribe. the zambesi at mazaro is a magnificent river, more than half a mile wide, and without islands. the opposite bank is covered with forests of fine timber; but the delta which begins here is only an immense flat, covered with high, coarse grass and reeds, with here and there a few mango and cocoanut trees. this was the point which was reached by the late lamented captain parker, who fell at the sulina mouth of the danube. i had a strong desire to follow the zambesi farther, and ascertain where this enormous body of water found its way into the sea; but on hearing from the portuguese that he had ascended to this point, and had been highly pleased with the capabilities of the river, i felt sure that his valuable opinion must be in possession of the admiralty. on my arrival in england i applied to captain washington, hydrographer to the admiralty, and he promptly furnished the document for publication by the royal geographical society. the river between mazaro and the sea must therefore be judged of from the testimony of one more competent to decide on its merits than a mere landsman like myself. 'on the quilimane and zambesi rivers'. from the journal of the late capt. hyde parker, r.n., h. m. brig "pantaloon". "the luabo is the main outlet of the great zambesi. in the rainy season--january and february principally--the whole country is overflowed, and the water escapes by the different rivers as far up as quilimane; but in the dry season neither quilimane nor olinda communicates with it. the position of the river is rather incorrect in the admiralty chart, being six miles too much to the southward, and also considerably to the westward. indeed, the coast from here up to tongamiara seems too far to the westward. the entrance to the luabo river is about two miles broad, and is easily distinguishable, when abreast of it, by a bluff (if i may so term it) of high, straight trees, very close together, on the western side of the entrance. the bar may be said to be formed by two series of sand-banks; that running from the eastern point runs diagonally across (opposite?) the entrance and nearly across it. its western extremity is about two miles outside the west point. "the bank running out from the west point projects to the southward three miles and a half, passing not one quarter of a mile from the eastern or cross bank. this narrow passage is the bar passage. it breaks completely across at low water, except under very extraordinary circumstances. at this time--low water--a great portion of the banks are uncovered; in some places they are seven or eight feet above water. "on these banks there is a break at all times, but in fine weather, at high water, a boat may cross near the east point. there is very little water, and, in places, a nasty race and bubble, so that caution is requisite. the best directions for going in over the regular bar passage, according to my experience, are as follows: steer down well to the eastward of the bar passage, so as to avoid the outer part of the western shoals, on which there is usually a bad sea. when you get near the cross-bar, keep along it till the bluff of trees on the west side of the entrance bears n.e.; you may then steer straight for it. this will clear the end of the cross-bar, and, directly you are within that, the water is smooth. the worst sea is generally just without the bar passage. "within the points the river widens at first and then contracts again. about three miles from the tree bluff is an island; the passage up the river is the right-hand side of it, and deep. the plan will best explain it. the rise and fall of the tide at the entrance of the river being at springs twenty feet, any vessel can get in at that time, but, with all these conveniences for traffic, there is none here at present. the water in the river is fresh down to the bar with the ebb tide, and in the rainy season it is fresh at the surface quite outside. in the rainy season, at the full and change of the moon, the zambesi frequently overflows its banks, making the country for an immense distance one great lake, with only a few small eminences above the water. on the banks of the river the huts are built on piles, and at these times the communication is only in canoes; but the waters do not remain up more than three or four days at a time. the first village is about eight miles up the river, on the western bank, and is opposite to another branch of the river called 'muselo', which discharges itself into the sea about five miles to the eastward. "the village is extensive, and about it there is a very large quantity of land in cultivation; calavances, or beans, of different sorts, rice, and pumpkins, are the principal things. i saw also about here some wild cotton, apparently of very good quality, but none is cultivated. the land is so fertile as to produce almost any (thing?) without much trouble. "at this village is a very large house, mud-built, with a court-yard. i believe it to have been used as a barracoon for slaves, several large cargoes having been exported from this river. i proceeded up the river as far as its junction with the quilimane river, called 'boca do rio', by my computation between and miles from the entrance. the influence of the tides is felt about or miles up the river. above that, the stream, in the dry season, runs from - / to - / miles an hour, but in the rains much stronger. the banks of the river, for the first miles, are generally thickly clothed with trees, with occasional open glades. there are many huts and villages on both sides, and a great deal of cultivation. at one village, about miles up on the eastern bank, and distinguished by being surrounded by an immense number of bananas and plantain-trees, a great quantity of excellent peas are cultivated; also cabbages, tomatoes, onions, etc. above this there are not many inhabitants on the left or west bank, although it is much the finest country, being higher, and abounding in cocoanut palms, the eastern bank being sandy and barren. the reason is, that some years back the landeens, or caffres, ravaged all this country, killing the men and taking the women as slaves, but they have never crossed the river; hence the natives are afraid to settle on the west bank, and the portuguese owners of the different 'prasos' have virtually lost them. the banks of the river continue mostly sandy, with few trees, except some cocoanut palms, until the southern end of the large plantation of nyangue, formed by the river about miles from maruru. here the country is more populous and better cultivated, the natives a finer race, and the huts larger and better constructed. maruru belongs to senor asevedo, of quilimane, well known to all english officers on the east coast for his hospitality. "the climate here is much cooler than nearer the sea, and asevedo has successfully cultivated most european as well as tropical vegetables. the sugar-cane thrives, as also coffee and cotton, and indigo is a weed. cattle here are beautiful, and some of them might show with credit in england. the natives are intelligent, and under a good government this fine country might become very valuable. three miles from maruru is mesan, a very pretty village among palm and mango trees. there is here a good house belonging to a senor ferrao; close by is the canal (mutu) of communication between the quilimane and zambesi rivers, which in the rainy season is navigable (?). i visited it in the month of october, which is about the dryest time of the year; it was then a dry canal, about or yards wide, overgrown with trees and grass, and, at the bottom, at least or feet above the level of the zambesi, which was running beneath. in the rains, by the marks i saw, the entrance rise of the river must be very nearly feet, and the volume of water discharged by it (the zambesi) enormous. "above maruru the country begins to become more hilly, and the high mountains of boruru are in sight; the first view of these is obtained below nyangue, and they must be of considerable height, as from this they are distant above miles. they are reported to contain great mineral wealth; gold and copper being found in the range, as also coal (?). the natives (landeens) are a bold, independent race, who do not acknowledge the portuguese authority, and even make them pay for leave to pass unmolested. throughout the whole course of the river hippopotami were very abundant, and at one village a chase by the natives was witnessed. they harpoon the animal with a barbed lance, to which is attached, by a cord or fathoms long, an inflated bladder. the natives follow in their canoes, and look out to fix more harpoons as the animal rises to blow, and, when exhausted, dispatch him with their lances. it is, in fact, nearly similar to a whale-hunt. elephants and lions are also abundant on the western side; the latter destroy many of the blacks annually, and are much feared by them. alligators are said to be numerous, but i did not see any. "the voyage up to maruru occupied seven days, as i did not work the men at the oar, but it might be done in four; we returned to the bar in two and a half days. "there is another mouth of the zambesi seven miles to the westward of luabo, which was visited by the 'castor's pinnace'; and i was assured by lieutenant hoskins that the bar was better than the one i visited." the conclusions of captain parker are strengthened by those of lieut. a. h. h. hoskins, who was on the coast at the same time, and also visited this spot. having applied to my friend for his deliberate opinion on the subject, he promptly furnished the following note in january last: "the zambesi appears to have five principal mouths, of which the luabo is the most southern and most navigable; cumana, and two whose names i do not know, not having myself visited it, lying between it and the quilimane, and the rise and fall at spring tides on the bar of the luabo is feet; and as, in the passage, there is never less than four feet (i having crossed it at dead low-water--springs), this would give an average depth sufficient for any commercial purposes. the rise and fall is six feet greater, the passages narrow and more defined, consequently deeper and more easily found than that of the quilimane river. the river above the bar is very tortuous, but deep; and it is observable that the influence of the tide is felt much higher in this branch than in the others; for whereas in the catrina and cumana i have obtained drinkable water a very short distance from the mouth, in the luabo i have ascended seventy miles without finding the saltness perceptibly diminished. this would facilitate navigation, and i have no hesitation in saying that little difficulty would be experienced in conveying a steam-vessel of the size and capabilities of the gunboat i lately commanded as high as the branching off of the quilimane river (mazaro), which, in the dry season, is observed many yards above the luabo (main stream); though i have been told by the portuguese that the freshes which come down in december and march fill it temporarily. these freshes deepen the river considerably at that time of the year, and freshen the water many miles from the coast. the population of the delta, except in the immediate neighborhood of the portuguese, appeared to be very sparse. antelopes and hippopotami were plentiful; the former tame and easily shot. i inquired frequently of both natives and portuguese if slavers were in the habit of entering there to ship their cargoes, but could not ascertain that they have ever done so in any except the quilimane. with common precaution the rivers are not unhealthy; for, during the whole time i was employed in them (off and on during eighteen months), in open boats and at all times of the year, frequently absent from the ship for a month or six weeks at a time, i had not, in my boat's crew of fourteen men, more than two, and those mild, cases of fever. too much importance can not be ascribed to the use of quinine, to which i attribute our comparative immunity, and with which our judicious commander, commodore wyvill, kept us amply supplied. i hope these few remarks may be of some little use in confirming your views of the utility of that magnificent river. a. h. h. hoskins." it ought to be remembered that the testimony of these gentlemen is all the more valuable, because they visited the river when the water was at its lowest, and the surface of the zambesi was not, as it was now, on a level with and flowing into the mutu, but sixteen feet beneath its bed. the mutu, at the point of departure, was only ten or twelve yards broad, shallow, and filled with aquatic plants. trees and reeds along the banks overhang it so much, that, though we had brought canoes and a boat from tete, we were unable to enter the mutu with them, and left them at mazaro. during most of the year this part of the mutu is dry, and we were even now obliged to carry all our luggage by land for about fifteen miles. as kilimane is called, in all the portuguese documents, the capital of the rivers of senna, it seemed strange to me that the capital should be built at a point where there was no direct water conveyance to the magnificent river whose name it bore; and, on inquiry, i was informed that the whole of the mutu was large in days of yore, and admitted of the free passage of great launches from kilimane all the year round, but that now this part of the mutu had been filled up. i was seized by a severe tertian fever at mazaro, but went along the right bank of the mutu to the n.n.e. and e. for about fifteen miles. we then found that it was made navigable by a river called the pangazi, which comes into it from the north. another river, flowing from the same direction, called the luare, swells it still more; and, last of all, the likuare, with the tide, make up the river of kilimane. the mutu at mazaro is simply a connecting link, such as is so often seen in africa, and neither its flow nor stoppage affects the river of kilimane. the waters of the pangazi were quite clear compared with those of the zambesi.* * i owe the following information, of a much later date, also to the politeness of captain washington. h. m. sloop "grecian" visited the coast in - , and the master remarks that "the entrance to the luabo is in lat. d ' s., long. d ' e., and may be known by a range of hummocks on its eastern side, and very low land to the s.w. the entrance is narrow, and, as with all the rivers on this coast, is fronted by a bar, which renders the navigation, particularly for boats, very dangerous with the wind to the south of east or west. our boats proceeded twenty miles up this river, fathoms on the bar, then - / -- -- -- fathoms. it was navigable farther up, but they did not proceed. it is quite possible for a moderate-sized vessel to cross the bar at spring tides, and be perfectly landlocked and hidden among the trees. "the maiudo, in d ' s., d ' e., is not mentioned in horsburgh, nor laid down in the admiralty chart, but is, nevertheless, one of some importance, and appears to be one of the principal stations for shipping slaves, as the boats found two barracoons, about miles up, bearing every indication of having been very recently occupied, and which had good presumptive evidence that the 'cauraigo', a brig under american colors, had embarked a cargo from thence but a short time before. the river is fronted by a portion of the elephant shoals, at the distance of three or four miles outside. the eastern bank is formed by level sea-cliffs (as seen from the ship it has that appearance), high for this part of the coast, and conspicuous. the western side is composed of thick trees, and terminates in dead wood, from which we called it 'dead-wood point'. after crossing the bar it branches off in a w. and n.w. direction, the latter being the principal arm, up which the boats went some miles, or about beyond the barracoon. fresh water can be obtained almost immediately inside the entrance, as the stream runs down very rapidly with the ebb tide. the least water crossing the bar (low-water-- springs) was - / fathom, one cast only therefrom from to fathoms, another fathoms nearly the whole way up. "the catrina, latitude d ' south, longitude d ' east. the external appearance of this river is precisely similar to that of the maiudo, so much so that it is difficult to distinguish them by any feature of the land. the longitude is the best guide, or, in the absence of observation, perhaps the angles contained by the extremes of land will be serviceable. thus, at nine miles off the maiudo the angle contained by the above was seven points, the bearing being n.e. w. of n.w. (?); while off the catrina, at the same distance from shore (about nine miles), the angle was only - / to points, being n. to n.w. as we did not send the boats up this river, no information was obtained." my fever became excessively severe in consequence of traveling in the hot sun, and the long grass blocking up the narrow path so as to exclude the air. the pulse beat with amazing force, and felt as if thumping against the crown of the head. the stomach and spleen swelled enormously, giving me, for the first time, an appearance which i had been disposed to laugh at among the portuguese. at interra we met senhor asevedo, a man who is well known by all who ever visited kilimane, and who was presented with a gold chronometer watch by the admiralty for his attentions to english officers. he immediately tendered his large sailing launch, which had a house in the stern. this was greatly in my favor, for it anchored in the middle of the stream, and gave me some rest from the mosquitoes, which in the whole of the delta are something frightful. sailing comfortably in this commodious launch along the river of kilimane, we reached that village (latitude d ' " s., longitude d ' e.) on the th of may, , which wanted only a few days of being four years since i started from cape town. here i was received into the house of colonel galdino jose nunes, one of the best men in the country. i had been three years without hearing from my family; letters having frequently been sent, but somehow or other, with but a single exception, they never reached me. i received, however, a letter from admiral trotter, conveying information of their welfare, and some newspapers, which were a treat indeed. her majesty's brig the "frolic" had called to inquire for me in the november previous, and captain nolluth, of that ship, had most considerately left a case of wine; and his surgeon, dr. james walsh, divining what i should need most, left an ounce of quinine. these gifts made my heart overflow. i had not tasted any liquor whatever during the time i had been in africa; but when reduced in angola to extreme weakness, i found much benefit from a little wine, and took from loanda one bottle of brandy in my medicine chest, intending to use it if it were again required; but the boy who carried it whirled the box upside down, and smashed the bottle, so i can not give my testimony either in favor of or against the brandy. but my joy on reaching the east coast was sadly imbittered by the news that commander maclune, of h. m. brigantine "dart", on coming in to kilimane to pick me up, had, with lieutenant woodruffe and five men, been lost on the bar. i never felt more poignant sorrow. it seemed as if it would have been easier for me to have died for them, than that they should all be cut off from the joys of life in generously attempting to render me a service. i would here acknowledge my deep obligations to the earl of clarendon, to the admiral at the cape, and others, for the kind interest they manifested in my safety; even the inquiries made were very much to my advantage. i also refer with feelings of gratitude to the governor of mozambique for offering me a passage in the schooner "zambesi", belonging to that province; and i shall never forget the generous hospitality of colonel nunes and his nephew, with whom i remained. one of the discoveries i have made is that there are vast numbers of good people in the world, and i do most devoutly tender my unfeigned thanks to that gracious one who mercifully watched over me in every position, and influenced the hearts of both black and white to regard me with favor. with the united testimony of captain parker and lieutenant hoskins, added to my own observation, there can be no reasonable doubt but that the real mouth of the zambesi is available for the purposes of commerce. the delta is claimed by the portuguese, and the southern bank of the luabo, or cuama, as this part of the zambesi is sometimes called, is owned by independent natives of the caffre family. the portuguese are thus near the main entrance to the new central region; and as they have of late years shown, in an enlightened and liberal spirit, their desire to develop the resources of eastern africa by proclaiming mozambique a free port, it is to be hoped that the same spirit will lead them to invite mercantile enterprise up the zambesi, by offering facilities to those who may be led to push commerce into the regions lying far beyond their territory. their wish to co-operate in the noble work of developing the resources of the rich country beyond could not be shown better than by placing a village with zambesian pilots at the harbor of mitilone, and erecting a light-house for the guidance of seafaring men. if this were done, no nation would be a greater gainer by it than the portuguese themselves, and assuredly no other needs a resuscitation of its commerce more. their kindness to me personally makes me wish for a return of their ancient prosperity; and the most liberal and generous act of the enlightened young king h. m. don pedro, in sending out orders to support my late companions at the public expense of the province of mozambique until my return to claim them, leads me to hope for encouragement in every measure for either the development of commerce, the elevation of the natives, or abolition of the trade in slaves. as far as i am myself concerned, the opening of the new central country is a matter for congratulation only in so far as it opens up a prospect for the elevation of the inhabitants. as i have elsewhere remarked, i view the end of the geographical feat as the beginning of the missionary enterprise. i take the latter term in its most extended signification, and include every effort made for the amelioration of our race, the promotion of all those means by which god in his providence is working, and bringing all his dealings with man to a glorious consummation. each man in his sphere, either knowingly or unwittingly, is performing the will of our father in heaven. men of science, searching after hidden truths, which, when discovered, will, like the electric telegraph, bind men more closely together--soldiers battling for the right against tyranny--sailors rescuing the victims of oppression from the grasp of heartless men-stealers--merchants teaching the nations lessons of mutual dependence--and many others, as well as missionaries, all work in the same direction, and all efforts are overruled for one glorious end. if the reader has accompanied me thus far, he may, perhaps, be disposed to take an interest in the objects i propose to myself, should god mercifully grant me the honor of doing something more for africa. as the highlands on the borders of the central basin are comparatively healthy, the first object seems to be to secure a permanent path thither, in order that europeans may pass as quickly as possible through the unhealthy region near the coast. the river has not been surveyed, but at the time i came down there was abundance of water for a large vessel, and this continues to be the case during four or five months of each year. the months of low water still admit of navigation by launches, and would permit small vessels equal to the thames steamers to ply with ease in the deep channel. if a steamer were sent to examine the zambesi, i would recommend one of the lightest draught, and the months of may, june, and july for passing through the delta; and this not so much for fear of want of water as the danger of being grounded on a sand or mud bank, and the health of the crew being endangered by the delay. in the months referred to no obstruction would be incurred in the channel below tete. twenty or thirty miles above that point we have a small rapid, of which i regret my inability to speak, as (mentioned already) i did not visit it. but, taking the distance below this point, we have, in round numbers, miles of navigable river. above this rapid we have another reach of miles, with sand, but no mud banks in it, which brings us to the foot of the eastern ridge. let it not, however, be thought that a vessel by going thither would return laden with ivory and gold-dust. the portuguese of tete pick up all the merchandise of the tribes in their vicinity, and, though i came out by traversing the people with whom the portuguese have been at war, it does not follow that it will be perfectly safe for others to go in whose goods may be a stronger temptation to cupidity than any thing i possessed. when we get beyond the hostile population mentioned, we reach a very different race. on the latter my chief hopes at present rest. all of them, however, are willing and anxious to engage in trade, and, while eager for this, none have ever been encouraged to cultivate the raw materials of commerce. their country is well adapted for cotton; and i venture to entertain the hope that by distributing seeds of better kinds than that which is found indigenous, and stimulating the natives to cultivate it by affording them the certainty of a market for all they may produce, we may engender a feeling of mutual dependence between them and ourselves. i have a twofold object in view, and believe that, by guiding our missionary labors so as to benefit our own country, we shall thereby more effectually and permanently benefit the heathen. seven years were spent at kolobeng in instructing my friends there; but the country being incapable of raising materials for exportation, when the boers made their murderous attack and scattered the tribe for a season, none sympathized except a few christian friends. had the people of kolobeng been in the habit of raising the raw materials of english commerce, the outrage would have been felt in england; or, what is more likely to have been the case, the people would have raised themselves in the scale by barter, and have become, like the basutos of moshesh and people of kuruman, possessed of fire-arms, and the boers would never have made the attack at all. we ought to encourage the africans to cultivate for our markets, as the most effectual means, next to the gospel, of their elevation. it is in the hope of working out this idea that i propose the formation of stations on the zambesi beyond the portuguese territory, but having communication through them with the coast. a chain of stations admitting of easy and speedy intercourse, such as might be formed along the flank of the eastern ridge, would be in a favorable position for carrying out the objects in view. the london missionary society has resolved to have a station among the makololo on the north bank, and another on the south among the matebele. the church--wesleyan, baptist, and that most energetic body, the free church--could each find desirable locations among the batoka and adjacent tribes. the country is so extensive there is no fear of clashing. all classes of christians find that sectarian rancor soon dies out when they are working together among and for the real heathen. only let the healthy locality be searched for and fixed upon, and then there will be free scope to work in the same cause in various directions, without that loss of men which the system of missions on the unhealthy coasts entails. while respectfully submitting the plan to these influential societies, i can positively state that, when fairly in the interior, there is perfect security for life and property among a people who will at least listen and reason. eight of my men begged to be allowed to come as far as kilimane, and, thinking that they would there see the ocean, i consented to their coming, though the food was so scarce in consequence of a dearth that they were compelled to suffer some hunger. they would fain have come farther; for when sekeletu parted with them, his orders were that none of them should turn until they had reached ma robert and brought her back with them. on my explaining the difficulty of crossing the sea, he said, "wherever you lead, they must follow." as i did not know well how i should get home myself, i advised them to go back to tete, where food was abundant, and there await my return. i bought a quantity of calico and brass wire with ten of the smaller tusks which we had in our charge, and sent the former back as clothing to those who remained at tete. as there were still twenty tusks left, i deposited them with colonel nunes, that, in the event of any thing happening to prevent my return, the impression might not be produced in the country that i had made away with sekeletu's ivory. i instructed colonel nunes, in case of my death, to sell the tusks and deliver the proceeds to my men; but i intended, if my life should be prolonged, to purchase the goods ordered by sekeletu in england with my own money, and pay myself on my return out of the price of the ivory. this i explained to the men fully, and they, understanding the matter, replied, "nay, father, you will not die; you will return to take us back to sekeletu." they promised to wait till i came back, and, on my part, i assured them that nothing but death would prevent my return. this i said, though while waiting at kilimane a letter came from the directors of the london missionary society stating that "they were restricted in their power of aiding plans connected only remotely with the spread of the gospel, and that the financial circumstances of the society were not such as to afford any ground of hope that it would be in a position, within any definite period, to enter upon untried, remote, and difficult fields of labor." this has been explained since as an effusion caused by temporary financial depression; but, feeling perfect confidence in my makololo friends, i was determined to return and trust to their generosity. the old love of independence, which i had so strongly before joining the society, again returned. it was roused by a mistaken view of what this letter meant; for the directors, immediately on my reaching home, saw the great importance of the opening, and entered with enlightened zeal on the work of sending the gospel into the new field. it is to be hoped that their constituents will not only enable them to begin, but to carry out their plans, and that no material depression will ever again be permitted, nor appearance of spasmodic benevolence recur. while i hope to continue the same cordial co-operation and friendship which have always characterized our intercourse, various reasons induce me to withdraw from pecuniary dependence on any society. i have done something for the heathen, but for an aged mother, who has still more sacred claims than they, i have been able to do nothing, and a continuance of the connection would be a perpetuation of my inability to make any provision for her declining years. in addition to "clergyman's sore throat", which partially disabled me from the work, my father's death imposed new obligations; and a fresh source of income having been opened to me without my asking, i had no hesitation in accepting what would enable me to fulfill my duty to my aged parent as well as to the heathen. if the reader remembers the way in which i was led, while teaching the bakwains, to commence exploration, he will, i think, recognize the hand of providence. anterior to that, when mr. moffat began to give the bible--the magna charta of all the rights and privileges of modern civilization--to the bechuanas, sebituane went north, and spread the language into which he was translating the sacred oracles in a new region larger than france. sebituane, at the same time, rooted out hordes of bloody savages, among whom no white man could have gone without leaving his skull to ornament some village. he opened up the way for me--let us hope also for the bible. then, again, while i was laboring at kolobeng, seeing only a small arc of the cycle of providence, i could not understand it, and felt inclined to ascribe our successive and prolonged droughts to the wicked one. but when forced by these and the boers to become explorer, and open a new country in the north rather than set my face southward, where missionaries are not needed, the gracious spirit of god influenced the minds of the heathen to regard me with favor; the divine hand is again perceived. then i turned away westward rather than in the opposite direction, chiefly from observing that some native portuguese, though influenced by the hope of a reward from their government to cross the continent, had been obliged to return from the east without accomplishing their object. had i gone at first in the eastern direction, which the course of the great leeambye seemed to invite, i should have come among the belligerents near tete when the war was raging at its height, instead of, as it happened, when all was over. and again, when enabled to reach loanda, the resolution to do my duty by going back to linyanti probably saved me from the fate of my papers in the "forerunner". and then, last of all, this new country is partially opened to the sympathies of christendom, and i find that sechele himself has, though unbidden by man, been teaching his own people. in fact, he has been doing all that i was prevented from doing, and i have been employed in exploring--a work i had no previous intention of performing. i think that i see the operation of the unseen hand in all this, and i humbly hope that it will still guide me to do good in my day and generation in africa. viewing the success awarded to opening up the new country as a development of divine providence in relation to the african family, the mind naturally turns to the probable influence it may have on negro slavery, and more especially on the practice of it by a large portion of our own race. we now demand increased supplies of cotton and sugar, and then reprobate the means our american brethren adopt to supply our wants. we claim a right to speak about this evil, and also to act in reference to its removal, the more especially because we are of one blood. it is on the anglo-american race that the hopes of the world for liberty and progress rest. now it is very grievous to find one portion of this race practicing the gigantic evil, and the other aiding, by increased demands for the produce of slave labor, in perpetuating the enormous wrong. the mauritius, a mere speck on the ocean, yields sugar, by means of guano, improved machinery, and free labor, equal in amount to one fourth part of the entire consumption of great britain. on that island land is excessively dear and far from rich: no crop can be raised except by means of guano, and labor has to be brought all the way from india. but in africa the land is cheap, the soil good, and free labor is to be found on the spot. our chief hopes rest with the natives themselves; and if the point to which i have given prominence, of healthy inland commercial stations, be realized, where all the produce raised may be collected, there is little doubt but that slavery among our kinsmen across the atlantic will, in the course of some years, cease to assume the form of a necessity to even the slaveholders themselves. natives alone can collect produce from the more distant hamlets, and bring it to the stations contemplated. this is the system pursued so successfully in angola. if england had possessed that strip of land, by civilly declining to enrich her "frontier colonists" by "caffre wars", the inborn energy of english colonists would have developed its resources, and the exports would not have been , pounds as now, but one million at least. the establishment of the necessary agency must be a work of time, and greater difficulty will be experienced on the eastern than on the western side of the continent, because in the one region we have a people who know none but slave-traders, while in the other we have tribes who have felt the influence of the coast missionaries and of the great niger expedition; one invaluable benefit it conferred was the dissemination of the knowledge of english love of commerce and english hatred of slavery, and it therefore was no failure. but on the east there is a river which may become a good pathway to a central population who are friendly to the english; and if we can conciliate the less amicable people on the river, and introduce commerce, an effectual blow will be struck at the slave-trade in that quarter. by linking the africans there to ourselves in the manner proposed, it is hoped that their elevation will eventually be the result. in this hope and proposed effort i am joined by my brother charles, who has come from america, after seventeen years' separation, for the purpose. we expect success through the influence of that spirit who already aided the efforts to open the country, and who has since turned the public mind toward it. a failure may be experienced by sudden rash speculation overstocking the markets there, and raising the prices against ourselves. but i propose to spend some more years of labor, and shall be thankful if i see the system fairly begun in an open pathway which will eventually benefit both africa and england. the village of kilimane stands on a great mud bank, and is surrounded by extensive swamps and rice-grounds. the banks of the river are lined with mangrove bushes, the roots of which, and the slimy banks on which they grow, are alternately exposed to the tide and sun. the houses are well built of brick and lime, the latter from mozambique. if one digs down two or three feet in any part of the site of the village, he comes to water; hence the walls built on this mud bank gradually subside; pieces are sometimes sawn off the doors below, because the walls in which they are fixed have descended into the ground, so as to leave the floors higher than the bottom of the doors. it is almost needless to say that kilimane is very unhealthy. a man of plethoric temperament is sure to get fever, and concerning a stout person one may hear the remark, "ah! he will not live long; he is sure to die." a hamburgh vessel was lost near the bar before we came down. the men were much more regular in their habits than english sailors, so i had an opportunity of observing the fever acting as a slow poison. they felt "out of sorts" only, but gradually became pale, bloodless, and emaciated, then weaker and weaker, till at last they sank more like oxen bitten by tsetse than any disease i ever saw. the captain, a strong, robust young man, remained in perfect health for about three months, but was at last knocked down suddenly and made as helpless as a child by this terrible disease. he had imbibed a foolish prejudice against quinine, our sheet-anchor in the complaint. this is rather a professional subject, but i introduce it here in order to protest against the prejudice as almost entirely unfounded. quinine is invaluable in fever, and never produces any unpleasant effects in any stage of the disease, if exhibited in combination with an aperient. the captain was saved by it, without his knowledge, and i was thankful that the mode of treatment, so efficacious among natives, promised so fair among europeans. after waiting about six weeks at this unhealthy spot, in which, however, by the kind attentions of colonel nunes and his nephew, i partially recovered from my tertian, h. m. brig "frolic" arrived off kilimane. as the village is twelve miles from the bar, and the weather was rough, she was at anchor ten days before we knew of her presence about seven miles from the entrance to the port. she brought abundant supplies for all my need, and pounds to pay my passage home, from my kind friend mr. thompson, the society's agent at the cape. the admiral at the cape kindly sent an offer of a passage to the mauritius, which i thankfully accepted. sekwebu and one attendant alone remained with me now. he was very intelligent, and had been of the greatest service to me; indeed, but for his good sense, tact, and command of the language of the tribes through which we passed, i believe we should scarcely have succeeded in reaching the coast. i naturally felt grateful to him; and as his chief wished all my companions to go to england with me, and would probably be disappointed if none went, i thought it would be beneficial for him to see the effects of civilization, and report them to his countrymen; i wished also to make some return for his very important services. others had petitioned to come, but i explained the danger of a change of climate and food, and with difficulty restrained them. the only one who now remained begged so hard to come on board ship that i greatly regretted that the expense prevented my acceding to his wish to visit england. i said to him, "you will die if you go to such a cold country as mine." "that is nothing," he reiterated; "let me die at your feet." when we parted from our friends at kilimane, the sea on the bar was frightful even to the seamen. this was the first time sekwebu had seen the sea. captain peyton had sent two boats in case of accident. the waves were so high that, when the cutter was in one trough, and we in the pinnace in another, her mast was hid. we then mounted to the crest of the wave, rushed down the slope, and struck the water again with a blow which felt as if she had struck the bottom. boats must be singularly well constructed to be able to stand these shocks. three breakers swept over us. the men lift up their oars, and a wave comes sweeping over all, giving the impression that the boat is going down, but she only goes beneath the top of the wave, comes out on the other side, and swings down the slope, and a man bales out the water with a bucket. poor sekwebu looked at me when these terrible seas broke over, and said, "is this the way you go? is this the way you go?" i smiled and said, "yes; don't you see it is?" and tried to encourage him. he was well acquainted with canoes, but never had seen aught like this. when we reached the ship--a fine, large brig of sixteen guns and a crew of one hundred and thirty--she was rolling so that we could see a part of her bottom. it was quite impossible for landsmen to catch the ropes and climb up, so a chair was sent down, and we were hoisted in as ladies usually are, and received so hearty an english welcome from captain peyton and all on board that i felt myself at once at home in every thing except my own mother tongue. i seemed to know the language perfectly, but the words i wanted would not come at my call. when i left england i had no intention of returning, and directed my attention earnestly to the languages of africa, paying none to english composition. with the exception of a short interval in angola, i had been three and a half years without speaking english, and this, with thirteen years of previous partial disuse of my native tongue, made me feel sadly at a loss on board the "frolic". we left kilimane on the th of july, and reached the mauritius on the th of august, . sekwebu was picking up english, and becoming a favorite with both men and officers. he seemed a little bewildered, every thing on board a man-of-war being so new and strange; but he remarked to me several times, "your countrymen are very agreeable," and, "what a strange country this is--all water together!" he also said that he now understood why i used the sextant. when we reached the mauritius a steamer came out to tow us into the harbor. the constant strain on his untutored mind seemed now to reach a climax, for during the night he became insane. i thought at first that he was intoxicated. he had descended into a boat, and, when i attempted to go down and bring him into the ship, he ran to the stern and said, "no! no! it is enough that i die alone. you must not perish; if you come, i shall throw myself into the water." perceiving that his mind was affected, i said, "now, sekwebu, we are going to ma robert." this struck a chord in his bosom, and he said, "oh yes; where is she, and where is robert?" and he seemed to recover. the officers proposed to secure him by putting him in irons; but, being a gentleman in his own country, i objected, knowing that the insane often retain an impression of ill treatment, and i could not bear to have it said in sekeletu's country that i had chained one of his principal men as they had seen slaves treated. i tried to get him on shore by day, but he refused. in the evening a fresh accession of insanity occurred; he tried to spear one of the crew, then leaped overboard, and, though he could swim well, pulled himself down hand under hand by the chain cable. we never found the body of poor sekwebu. at the mauritius i was most hospitably received by major general c. m. hay, and he generously constrained me to remain with him till, by the influence of the good climate and quiet english comfort, i got rid of an enlarged spleen from african fever. in november i came up the red sea; escaped the danger of shipwreck through the admirable management of captain powell, of the peninsular and oriental steam company's ship "candia", and on the th of december was once more in dear old england. the company most liberally refunded my passage-money. i have not mentioned half the favors bestowed, but i may just add that no one has cause for more abundant gratitude to his fellow-men and to his maker than i have; and may god grant that the effect on my mind be such that i may be more humbly devoted to the service of the author of all our mercies! appendix.--latitudes and longitudes of positions. [the "remarks" column has been replaced, where needed, with remarks listed below the corresponding line, and inclosed in square brackets.] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ positions. latitude. longitude. date. no. of sets south. east. of lunar distances. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ d ' " d ' " w. e. manakalongwe pass. . . . , jan. letloche. . . . jan. kanne. . . . jan. lotlokane, where the first . . . feb. , palmyra-trees occur. hence path to nchokotsa n.n.w., thence to kobe n.w. kobe ( st group). feb. , kama kama, from whence . . . mar. traveled in magnetic meridian ( st group). fever ponds ( st group). mar. , ten miles s. of hill n'gwa apr. ( st group). n'gwa hill (a central apr. , occultation of b.a.c. gemini). n'gwa valley, half mile apr. n. of hill. e. of and in parallel of . . . apr. wagon station of . wagon station on the chobe, . . . three miles s. of sekeletu's town. sekeletu's town ( st group). |june | |july , | [ boiling-point of water = - / deg.; alt. = feet. ] island mahonta. the chobe ( ) apr. runs here in d '. banks of sanshureh river, apr. a branch of the chobe ( st group). [ at a well-known baobab-tree ' south of mahonta island. ] town of sesheke , aug. . on the zambesi. sekhosi's town on . . . , july , the zambesi (about miles w. of sesheke). cataract of nambwe. . . . july confluence of . . . , aug. . njoko and zambesi. cataract of bombwe. . . . , aug. kale cataract. . . . , aug. . falls of gonye. | , aug. | | , aug. | nameta. . . . aug. . seori sa mei, . . . , aug. or island of water. litofe island, town of. . . . aug. loyela, s. end of this . . . aug. island, town of mamochisane. naliele or nariele, aug. , chief town of barotse (occultation of jupiter) ( st group). linangelo, old town . . . aug. of santuru (site nearly swallowed up). katongo (near slave . . . aug. merchants' stockade). point of junction of nariele . . . aug. branch with the main stream. quando village. . . . aug. town of libonta. . . . aug. island of tongane. . . . aug. cowrie island. . . . aug. junction of the loeti . . . aug. with the main stream (leeambye, zambesi). [ boiling-point of water = deg. = feet. ] confluence of the leeba aug. , or lonta with the leeambye ( st group). kabompo, near the leeba. | , jan. | | , july | . village about ' n.w. , feb. of the leeba after leaving kabompo town: the hill peeri, or piri, bearing s.s.e., distant about '. village of soana molopo, feb. ' from lokalueje river. village of quendende, . . . feb. about ' s.e. of the ford of the lotembwa, and about ' from the town of katema. banks of the lovoa. . . . , june . lofuje river flows into july . the leeba; nyamoana's village. confluence of the makondo . . . july and leeba rivers. katema's town, ' s. of lake , feb. . dilolo, the source of the lotembwa, one of the principal feeders of the leeba. lake dilolo (station about . . . , june . half a mile s. of the lake). june . . [ boiling-point of water = deg. = feet. ] village near the ford of . . . , feb. the river kasai, kasye, or loke. the ford is in latitude d '. bango's village, about ' , may . w. of the loembwe. banks of the stream chihune. ( )* * , mar. [ the longitude doubtful. ] ionga panza's village. * * mar. ford of the river quango. ( ) apr. cassange, about or apr. , miles w. of the river quango, and situated in a deep valley. tala mungongo, ' e. ( ) jan. , of following station. [ longitude not observed: water boils-- top of = deg., height feet. bottom of descent = deg. = feet. bottom of east ascent = deg. = feet. top " " " = deg. = feet. ] banks of the quinze, , jan. . near the source, ' w. of the sudden descent which forms the valley of cassange. sanza, on the river quize jan. . (about yards wide). pungo andongo, , dec. . on the river coanza. [ on the top of the rocks water boils at deg. = feet. ] on the river coanza, . . . dec. ' w. of pungo andongo. candumba, miles e. of . . . , jan. pungo andongo, yards n. of the coanza. confluence of the lombe . . . jan. and coanza, ' or ' e. of candumba, and at house of m. pires, taken at about half a mile n. of confluence. [ here the coanza takes its southern bend. ] golungo alto, about midway ,|oct. | between ambaca and loanda. |may | "aguaes doces" in cassange, . . . oct. , . ' w. of golungo alto. [ at the confluence of the luinha and luce. ] confluence of the luinha . . . and lucalla. confluence of the lucalla . . . oct. , and coanza, massangano town and fort. [ a prominent hill in cazengo, called zungo, is about ' s.s.w. of "aguaes doces", and it bears n.e. by e. from the house of the commandant at massangano. ] ambaca, residence of the dec. commandant of the district. kalai, , nov. near the mosioatunya falls. lekone rivulet. nov. [ water boils at - / deg. = feet. between lekone and kalomo, marimba - / deg. = feet. ] kalomo river. ( ) . . . nov. . [ the lat. and long. doubtful. top of ridge, water boils at deg. = feet. ] rivulet of dela, dec. . called mozuma. kise kise hills. . . . dec. nakachinto rivulet. . . . dec. [ on eastern descent from ridge, water boils at deg. = feet. ] elephant's grave. ( ) ( ) dec. . [ the latitude not observed. ] kenia hills, rivulet losito ( ) ( ) dec. . on their western flank. [ the latitude not observed. ] ' e. of bolengwe gorge, dec. and on the banks of the kafue. ' or ' n.e. or e.n.e. ( ) ( ) * * dec. . of the confluence of the kafue and zambesi, at a rivulet called kambare. [ the lat. not observed; water boils - / deg. = feet. top of the hills semalembue, water boils - / deg. = feet. bottom of ditto, - / deg. = feet. ] confluence of kafue . . . and zambesi. banks of zambesi, . . . dec. ' or ' below confluence. [ water boils at deg. = feet. ] village of ma-mburuma, , jan. about miles from zumbo. zumbo station, ruins of a jan. church on the right bank of the loangwa, about yards from confluence with zambesi. [ water boils at - / deg. = feet. ] chilonda's village, quarter jan. . of a mile n. of zambesi, near the kabanka hill. opposite hill pinkwe. ( ) * * feb. . [ long. doubtful; the moon's alt. only deg. ] moshua rivulet. * * feb. tangwe rivulet, or feb. sand river, / mile broad. tete or nyungwe station, mar. , house of commandant. hot spring makorozi, . . . mar. about m. up the river. below tete, island of apr. . mozambique, on the zambesi. island of nkuesa. . . . apr. senna, yards s.w. * * |april | of the mud fort on the bank |may , | of the river. islet of shupanga. . . . may small islet in the middle of . . . may the zambesi, and six or eight miles below shupanga. mazaro or mutu, may where the kilimane river branches off the zambesi. kilimane village, * * june , , at the house of senor galdino jose nunes, colonel of militia. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ positions. latitude. longitude. date. no. of sets south. east. of lunar distances. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ * * probably d '.--i. a. * * probably d '.--i. a. * * probably d '.--i. a. * * probably d ' ".--i. a. * * probably d '.--i. a. * * probably d ' ".--i. a. * * probably d ' ".--i. a. appendix.--book review in harper's new monthly magazine, february, . [this review is provided to allow the reader to view livingstone's achievement as it was seen by a contemporary.--a. l., .] livingstone's travels in south africa.* * 'missionary travels and researches in south africa'. by david livingstone, ll.d., d.c.l. vol. vo. with maps and numerous illustrations. harper and brothers. 'travels and discoveries in north and central africa'. by henry barth, ph.d., d.c.l. vols. vo. with map and numerous illustrations. harper and brothers. these two works, each embodying the results of years of travel and research, entirely revolutionize all our theories as to the geographical and physical character of central africa. instead of lofty mountains and sandy deserts, we have a wide basin, or rather series of basins, with lakes and great rivers, and a soil fertile even when compared with the abounding exuberance of our own western valleys and prairies. barth, traveling southward from the mediterranean, explored this region till within eight degrees of the equator. livingstone, traveling northward from the cape of good hope, approached the equator from the south as nearly as barth did from the north. he then traversed the whole breadth of the continent diagonally from the west to the east. his special researches cover the entire space between the eighth and fifteenth parallels of south latitude. between the regions explored by barth and livingstone lies an unexplored tract extending eight degrees on each side of the equator, and occupying the whole breadth of the continent from east to west. lieutenant burton, famous for his expedition to mecca and medina, set out from zanzibar a few months since, with the design of traversing this very region. if he succeeds in his purpose his explorations will fill up the void between those of barth and livingstone. dr. livingstone, with whose travels we are at present specially concerned, is no ordinary man. the son of a presbyterian deacon and small trader in glasgow; set to work in a cotton factory at ten years old; buying a latin grammar with his first earnings; working from six in the morning till eight at night, then attending evening-school till ten, and pursuing his studies till midnight; at sixteen a fair classical scholar, with no inconsiderable reading in books of science and travels, gained, sentence by sentence, with the book open before him on his spinning-jenny; botanizing and geologizing on holidays and at spare hours; poring over books of astrology till he was startled by inward suggestions to sell his soul to the evil one as the price of the mysterious knowledge of the stars; soundly flogged by the good deacon his father by way of imparting to him a liking for boston's "fourfold state" and wilberforce's "practical christianity"; then convinced by the writings of the worthy thomas dick that there was no hostility between science and religion, embracing with heart and mind the doctrines of evangelical christianity, and resolving to devote his life to their extension among the heathen--such are the leading features of the early life of david livingstone. he would equip himself for the warfare and afterward fight with the powers of darkness at his own cost. so at the age of nineteen--a slim, loose-jointed lad--he commenced the study of medicine and greek, and afterward of theology, in the university of glasgow, attending lectures in the winter, paying his expenses by working as a cotton-spinner during the summer, without receiving a farthing of aid from any one. his purpose was to go to china as a medical missionary, and he would have accomplished his object solely by his own efforts had not some friends advised him to join the london missionary society. he offered himself, with a half hope that his application would be rejected, for it was not quite agreeable to one accustomed to work his own way to become dependent in a measure upon others. by the time when his medical and theological studies were completed, the opium war had rendered it inexpedient to go to china, and his destination was fixed for southern africa. he reached his field of labor in . having tarried for three months at the head station at kuruman, and taken to wife a daughter of the well-known missionary mr. moffat, he pushed still farther into the country, and attached himself to the band of sechele, chief of the bakwains, or "alligators", a bechuana tribe. here, cutting himself for six months wholly off from all european society, he gained an insight into the language, laws, modes of life, and habits of the bechuanas, which proved of incalculable advantage in all his subsequent intercourse with them. sechele gave a ready ear to the missionary's instructions. "did your forefathers know of a future judgment?" he asked. "they knew of it," replied the missionary, who proceeded to describe the scenes of the last great day. "you startle me: these words make all my bones to shake; i have no more strength in me. but my forefathers were living at the same time yours were; and how is it that they did not send them word about these terrible things? they all passed away into darkness without knowing whither they were going." mr. moffat had translated the bible into the bechuana language, which he had reduced to writing, and sechele set himself to learn to read, with so much assiduity that he began to grow corpulent from lack of his accustomed exercise. his great favorite was isaiah. "he was a fine man, that isaiah; he knew how to speak," he was wont to say, using the very words applied by the glasgow professor to the apostle paul. having become convinced of the truth of christianity, he wished his people also to become christians. "i will call them together," he said, "and with our rhinoceros-skin whips we will soon make them all believe together." livingstone, mindful, perhaps, of the ill success of his worthy father in the matter of wilberforce on "practical christianity", did not favor the proposed line of argument. he was, in fact, in no great haste to urge sechele to make a full profession of faith by receiving the ordinance of baptism; for the chief had, in accordance with the customs of his people, taken a number of wives, of whom he must, in this case, put away all except one. the head-wife was a greasy old jade, who was in the habit of attending church without her gown, and when her husband sent her home to make her toilet, she would pout out her thick lips in unutterable disgust at his new-fangled notions, while some of the other wives were the best scholars in the school. after a while sechele took the matter into his own hands, sent his supernumerary wives back to their friends--not empty-handed--and was baptized. mr. livingstone's station was in the region since rendered famous by the hunting exploits of gordon cumming. he vouches for the truth of the wonderful stories told by that redoubtable nimrod, who visited him during each of his excursions. he himself, indeed, had an adventure with a lion quite equal to any thing narrated by cumming or andersson, the result of which was one dead lion, two bechuanas fearfully wounded, his own arm marked with eleven distinct teeth-marks, the bone crunched to splinters, and the formation of a false joint, which marred his shooting ever after. mr. livingstone has a republican contempt for the "king of beasts". he is nothing better than an overgrown hulking dog, not a match, in fair fight, for a buffalo. if a traveler encounter him by daylight, he turns tail and sneaks out of sight like a scared greyhound. all the talk about his majestic roar is sheer twaddle. it takes a keen ear to distinguish the voice of the lion from that of the silly ostrich. when he is gorged he falls asleep, and a couple of natives approach him without fear. one discharges an arrow, the point of which has been anointed with a subtle poison, made of the dried entrails of a species of caterpillar, while the other flings his skin cloak over his head. the beast bolts away incontinently, but soon dies, howling and biting the ground in agony. in the dark, or at all hours when breeding, the lion is an ugly enough customer; but if a man will stay at home by night, and does not go out of his way to attack him, he runs less risk in africa of being devoured by a lion than he does in our cities of being run over by an omnibus--so says mr. livingstone. when the lion grows old he leads a miserable life. unable to master the larger game, he prowls about the villages in the hope of picking up a stray goat. a woman of child venturing out at night does not then come amiss. when the natives hear of one prowling about the villages, they say, "his teeth are worn; he will soon kill men," and thereupon turn out to kill him. this is the only foundation for the common belief that when the lion has once tasted human flesh he will eat nothing else. a "man-eater" is always an old lion, who takes to cannibalism to avoid starvation. when he lives far from human habitations, and so can not get goats or children, an old lion is often reduced to such straits as to be obliged to live upon mice, and such small deer. mr. livingstone's strictly missionary life among the bakwains lasted eight or nine years. the family arose early, and, after prayers and breakfast, went to the school-room, where men, women, and children were assembled. school was over at eleven, when the husband set about his work as gardener, smith, or carpenter, while his wife busied herself with domestic matters--baking bread, a hollow in a deserted ant-hill serving for an oven; churning butter in an earthen jar; running candles; making soap from ashes containing so little alkaline matter that the ley had to be kept boiling for a month or six weeks before it was strong enough for use. the wife was maid-of-all-work in doors, while the husband was jack-at-all-trades outside. three several times the tribe removed their place of residence, and he was so many times compelled to build for himself a house, every stick and brick of which was put in place by his own hands. the heat of the day past, and dinner over, the wife betook herself to the infant and sewing schools, while the husband walked down to the village to talk with the natives. three nights in the week, after the cows had been milked, public meetings were held for instruction in religious and secular matters. all these multifarious duties were diversified by attendance upon the sick, and in various ways aiding the poor and wretched. being in so many ways helpful to them, and having, besides, shown from the first that he could knock them up at hard work or traveling, we can not wonder that livingstone was popular among the bakwains, though conversions seem to have been of the rarest. indeed, we are not sure but sechele's was the only case. a great drought set in the very first year of his residence among them, which increased year by year. the river ran dry; the canals which he had induced them to dig for the purpose of irrigating their gardens were useless; the fish died in such numbers that the congregated hyenas of the country were unable to devour the putrid masses. the rain-makers tried their spells in vain. the clouds sometimes gathered promisingly overhead, but only to roll away without discharging a drop upon the scorched plains. the people began to suspect some connection between the new religion and the drought. "we like you," they said, "but we wish you would give up this everlasting preaching and praying. you see that we never get any rain, while the tribes who never pray have an abundance." livingstone could not deny the fact, and he was sometimes disposed to attribute it to the malevolence of the "prince of the power of the air", eager to frustrate the good work. the people behaved wonderfully well, though the scarcity amounted almost to famine. the women sold their ornaments to buy corn from the more fortunate tribes around; the children scoured the country for edible roots; the men betook themselves to hunting. they constructed great traps, called 'hopos', consisting of two lines of hedges, a mile long, far apart at the extremities, but converging like the sides of the letter v, with a deep pit at the narrow end. then forming a circuit for miles around, they drove the game--buffaloes, zebras, gnus, antelopes, and the like--into the mouth of the hopo, and along its narrowing lane, until they plunged pell-mell in one confused, writhing, struggling mass into the pit, where they were speared at leisure. the precarious mode of life occasioned by the long drought interfered sadly with the labors of the mission. still worse was the conduct of boers who had pushed their way into the bechuana country. their theory was very simple: "we are the people of god, and the heathen are given to us for an inheritance." of this inheritance they proceeded to make the most. they compelled the natives to work for them without pay, in consideration of the privilege of living in "their country". they made regular forays, carrying off the women and children as slaves. they were cowardly as well as brutal, compelling friendly tribes to accompany them on their excursions, putting them in front as a shield, and coolly firing over their heads, till the enemy fled in despair, leaving their women, children, and cattle as a prey. so long as fire-arms could be kept from the natives the boers were sure of having it all their own way. but traders came in the train of the missionaries, and sold guns and powder to the bechuanas. sechele's tribe procured no less than five muskets. the boers were alarmed, and determined to drive missionaries and traders from the country. in course of time mr. livingstone became convinced that bibles and preaching were not all that was necessary. civilization must accompany christianization; and commerce was essential to civilization; for commerce, more speedily than any thing else, would break down the isolation of the tribes, by making them mutually dependent upon and serviceable to each other. it was well known that northward, beyond the desert, lay a great lake, in the midst of a country rich in ivory and other articles of commerce. in former years, when rains had been more abundant, the natives had frequently crossed this desert; and somewhere near the lake dwelt a famous chief, named sebituane, who had once lived on friendly terms in the neighborhood of sechele, who was anxious to renew the old acquaintance. mr. livingstone determined to open intercourse with this region, in spite of the threats and opposition of the boers. so the missionary became a traveler and explorer. while laying his plans and gathering information, the opportune arrival of messrs. oswell and murray, two wealthy englishmen who had become enamored with african hunting, enabled him to undertake the proposed expedition, mr. oswell agreeing to pay the guides, who were furnished by sechele. this expedition, which resulted in the discovery of lake ngami, set out from the missionary station at kolobeng on the st of june, . the way lay across the great kalahari desert, seven hundred miles in breadth. this is a singular region. though it has no running streams, and few and scanty wells, it abounds in animal and vegetable life. men, animals, and plants accommodate themselves singularly to the scarcity of water. grass is abundant, growing in tufts; bulbous plants abound, among which are the 'leroshua', which sends up a slender stalk not larger than a crow quill, with a tuber, a foot or more below the surface, as large as a child's head, consisting of a mass of cellular tissue filled with a cool and refreshing fluid; and the 'mokuri', which deposits under ground, within a circle of a yard from its stem, a mass of tubers of the size of a man's head. during years when the rains are unusually abundant, the kalahari is covered with the 'kengwe', a species of water-melon. animals and men rejoice in the rich supply; antelopes, lions, hyenas, jackals, mice, and men devour it with equal avidity. the people of the desert conceal their wells with jealous care. they fill them with sand, and place their dwellings at a distance, that their proximity may not betray the precious secret. the women repair to the wells with a score or so of ostrich shells in a bag slung over their shoulders. digging down an arm's-length, they insert a hollow reed, with a bunch of grass tied to the end, then ram the sand firmly around the tube. the water slowly filters into the bunch of grass, and is sucked up through the reed, and squirted mouthful by mouthful into the shells. when all are filled, the women gather up their load and trudge homeward. elands, springbucks, koodoos, and ostriches somehow seem to get along very well without any moisture, except that contained in the grass which they eat. they appear to live for months without drinking; but whenever rhinoceroses, buffaloes, or gnus are seen, it is held to be certain proof that water exists within a few miles. the passage of the kalahari was effected, not without considerable difficulty, in two months, the expedition reaching lake ngami on the st of august. as they approached it, they came upon a considerable river. "whence does this come?" asked livingstone. "from a country full of rivers," was the reply; "so many that no man can tell their number, and full of large trees." this was the first actual confirmation of the report of the bakwains that the country beyond was not the large "sandy plateau" of geographers. the prospect of a highway capable of being traversed by boats to an unexplored fertile region so filled the mind of livingstone that, when he came to the lake, this discovery seemed of comparatively little importance. to us, indeed, whose ideas of a lake are formed from superior and huron, the ngami seems but an insignificant affair. its circumference may be seventy or a hundred miles, and its mean depth is but a few feet. it lies two thousand feet above the level of the sea, and as much below the southern border of the kalahari, which slopes gradually toward the interior. their desire to visit sebituane, whose residence was considerably farther in the interior, was frustrated by the jealousy of lechulatebe, a chief near the lake, and the expedition returned to the station at kolobeng. the attempt was renewed the following year. mrs. livingstone, their three children, and sechele accompanied him. the lake was reached. lechulatebe, propitiated by the present of a valuable gun, agreed to furnish guides to sebituane's country; but the children and servants fell ill, and the attempt was for the time abandoned. a third expedition was successful, although the whole party came near perishing for want of water, and their cattle, which had been bitten by the 'tsetse', died. this insect--the 'glossina moritans' of the naturalists--deserves a special paragraph. it is a brown insect about as large as our common house-fly, with three or four yellow bars across its hinder part. a lively, buzzing, harmless-looking fellow is the tsetse. its bite produces a slight itching similar to that caused by the mosquito, and in the case of men and some species of animals no further ill effects follow. but woe to the horse, the ox, and the dog, when once bitten by the tsetse. no immediate harm appears; the animal is not startled as by the gad-fly; but in a few days the eyes and the nose begin to run; the jaws and navel swell; the animal grazes for a while as usual, but grows emaciated and weak, and dies, it may be, weeks or months after. when dissected, the cellular tissue seems injected with air, the fat is green and oily, the muscles are flabby, the heart is so soft that the finger may be pushed through it. the antelope and buffalo, the zebra and goat, are not affected by its bite; while to the ox, the horse, and the dog it is certain death. the mule and donkey are not troubled by it, nor are sucking calves, while dogs, though fed upon milk, perish. such different effects produced upon animals whose nature is similar, constitute one of the most curious phenomena in natural history. sebituane, who had heard of the approach of his visitors, came more than a hundred miles to meet them. he was a tall, wiry, coffee-and-milk colored man, of five-and-forty. his original home was a thousand miles to the south, in the bakwain country, whence he had been driven by the griquas a quarter of a century before. he fled northward, fighting his way, sometimes reduced to the utmost straits, but still keeping his people together. at length he crossed the desert, and conquered the country around lake ngami; then having heard of white men living on the west coast, he passed southwestward into the desert, hoping to be able to open intercourse with them. there suffering from the thirst, he came to a small well; the water was not sufficient for his men and his cattle; one or the other must perish; he ordered the men to drink, for if they survived they could fight for more cattle. in the morning his cattle were all gone, and he returned to the north. here a long course of warfare awaited him, but in the end he triumphed over his enemies, and established himself for a time on the great river zambesi. haunted with a longing for intercourse with the whites, he proposed to descend the river to the eastern coast. he was dissuaded from this purpose by the warnings of a native prophet. "the gods say, go not thither!" he cried; then turning to the west, "i see a city and a nation of black men--men of the water; their cattle are red; thine own tribe are perishing, and will all be consumed; thou wilt govern black men, and when thy warriors have captured the red cattle, let not their owners be killed; they are thy future tribe; let them be spared to cause thee to build." so sebituane went westward, conquered the blacks of an immense region, spared the lives of the men, and made them his subjects, ruling them gently. his original people are called the makololo; the subject tribes are styled makalaka. sebituane, though the greatest warrior in the south, always leading his men to battle in person, was still anxious for peace. he had heard of cannon, and had somehow acquired the idea that if he could only procure one he might live in quiet. he received his visitors with much favor. "your cattle have all been bitten by the tsetse," he said, "and will die; but never mind, i will give you as many as you want." he offered to conduct them through his country that they might choose a site for a missionary station. but at this moment he fell ill of an inflammation of the lungs, from which he soon died. "he was," writes mr. livingstone, "the best specimen of a native chief i ever met; and it was impossible not to follow him in thought into the world of which he had just heard when he was called away, and to realize somewhat of the feeling of those who pray for the dead. the deep, dark question of what is to become of such as he must be left where we find it, believing that assuredly the judge of all the earth will do right." although he had sons, sebituane left the chieftainship to his daughter mamochisane, who confirmed her father's permission that the missionaries might visit her country. they proceeded a hundred and thirty miles farther, and were rewarded by the discovery of the great river zambesi, the very existence of which, in central africa, had never been suspected. it was the dry season, and the river was at its lowest; but it was from three to six hundred yards broad, flowing with a deep current toward the east. a grander idea than the mere founding of a missionary station now developed itself in the mind of mr. livingstone. european goods had just begun to be introduced into this region from the portuguese settlements on the coast; at present slaves were the only commodity received in payment for them. livingstone thought if a great highway could be opened, ivory, and the other products of the country, might be bartered for these goods, and the traffic in slaves would come to an end. he therefore resolved to take his family to cape town, and thence send them to england, while he returned alone to the interior, with the purpose of making his way either to the east or the west coast. he reached the cape in april, , being the first time during eleven years that he had visited the scenes of civilization, and placed his family on board a ship bound for england, promising to rejoin them in two years. in june he set out from cape town upon that long journey which was to occupy five years. when he approached the missionary stations in the interior, he learned that the long-threatened attack by the boers had taken place. a letter from sechele to mr. moffat told the story. thus it ran: "friend of my heart's love and of all the confidence of my heart, i am sechele. i am undone by the boers, who attacked me, though i had no guilt with them. they demanded that i should be in their kingdom, and i refused. they demanded that i should prevent the english and griquas from passing. i replied, these are my friends, and i can not prevent them. they came on saturday, and i besought them not to fight on sunday, and they assented. they began on monday morning at twilight, and fired with all their might, and burned the town with fire, and scattered us. they killed sixty of my people, and captured women, and children, and men. they took all the cattle and all the goods of the bakwains; and the house of livingstone they plundered, taking away all his goods. of the boers we killed twenty-eight." two hundred children, who had been gathered into schools, were carried away as slaves. mr. livingstone's library was wantonly destroyed, not carried away; his stock of medicines was smashed, and his furniture and clothing sold at auction to defray the expenses of the foray. mr. pretorius, the leader of the marauding party, died not long after, and an obituary notice of him was published, ending with the words, "blessed are the dead who die in the lord." leaving his desolate home, livingstone proceeded on his journey. on the way he met sechele, who was going, he said, to see the queen of england. livingstone tried to dissuade him. "will not the queen listen to me?" asked the chief. "i believe she would listen, but the difficulty is to get to her." "well, i shall reach her." and so they parted. sechele actually made his way to the cape, a distance of a thousand miles, but could get no farther, and returned to his own country. the remnants of the tribes who had formerly lived among the boers gathered around him, and he is now more powerful than ever. it is slow traveling in africa. livingstone was almost a year in accomplishing the miles between cape town and the country of the makololo. he found that mamochisane, the daughter of sebituane, had voluntarily resigned the chieftainship to her younger brother, sekeletu. she wished to be married, she said, and have a family like other women. the young chief sekeletu was very friendly, but showed no disposition to become a convert. he refused to learn to read the bible, for fear it might change his heart, and make him content with only one wife, like sechele. for his part he wanted at least five. some months were passed in this country, which is described as fertile and well-cultivated--producing millet, maize, yams, sweet potatoes, cassava, beans, pumpkins, water-melons, and the like. the sugar-cane grows plentifully, but the people had never learned the process of making sugar. they have great numbers of cattle, and game of various species abounds. on one occasion a troop of eighty-one buffaloes defiled slowly before their evening fire, while herds of splendid elands stood, without fear, at two hundred yards' distance. the country is rather unhealthy, from the mass of decayed vegetation exposed to the torrid sun. after due consideration, livingstone resolved to make his way to loanda, a portuguese settlement on the western coast. sekeletu, anxious to open a trade with the coast, appointed twenty-seven men to accompany the traveler; and on the th of november, , he set out on his journey. three or four small boxes contained all the baggage of the party. the only provisions were a few pounds of biscuits, coffee, tea, and sugar; their main reliance being upon the game which they expected to kill, and, this failing, upon the proceeds of about ten dollars' worth of beads. they also took with them a few elephants' tusks, which sekeletu sent by way of a trading venture. the river up which they paddled abounds in hippopotami. these are in general harmless, though now and then a solitary old bull who has been expelled from the herd vents his spleen by pitching into every canoe that passes. once their canoe was attacked by a female whose calf had been speared, and nearly overturned. the female carries her young upon her back, its little round head first appearing above the surface when she comes up to breathe. by the order of the chief the party had been furnished with eight oxen for riding, and seven intended for slaughter. some of the troop paddled the canoes, while others drove the cattle along the bank. african etiquette requires that a company of travelers, when they come in sight of a village, shall seat themselves under a tree, and send forward a messenger to announce their arrival and state their object. the chief then gives them a ceremonious reception, with abundance of speech-making and drumming. it is no easy matter to get away from these villages, for the chiefs esteem it an honor to have strangers with them. these delays, and the frequent heavy rains, greatly retarded the progress of the travelers. they had traveled four months, and accomplished half of their journey before encountering any show of hostility from the tribes through which they passed. a chief, named njambi, then demanded tribute for passing through his country; when this was refused he said that one of livingstone's men had spit on the leg of one of his people, and this crime must be paid for by a fine of a man, an ox, or a gun. this reasonable demand was likewise refused, and the natives seemed about to commence hostilities; but changed their minds upon witnessing the determined attitude of the strangers. livingstone at last yielded to the entreaties of his men and gave them an ox, upon the promise that food should be sent in exchange. the niggardly chief sent them only a small bag of meal, and two or three pounds of the meat of their own ox. from this time they were subject to frequent attempts at extortion. the last of these was made on the banks of the river quango, the boundary of the portuguese possessions. a bashinje chief, whose portrait is given by mr. livingstone, made the usual demand of a man, a gun, or an ox, otherwise they must return the way they came. while negotiations were in progress the opportune arrival of a portuguese sergeant freed the travelers from their troubles. the river was crossed, and once on portuguese territory their difficulties were over. at cassange, the frontier settlement, they sold sekeletu's ivory. the makololo, who had been accustomed to give two tusks for one gun, were delighted at the prices they obtained. for one tusk they got two muskets, three kegs of powder, large bunches of beads, and calico and baize enough to clothe all the party. on the st of may, after more than six months' travel, livingstone and his companions reached the portuguese sea-port of loanda. the makololo were lost in wonder when they first caught sight of the sea. "we marched along," they said, "believing that what the ancients had told us was true, that the world has no end; but all at once the world said to us, i am finished, there is no more of me." still greater was their wonder when they beheld the large stone houses of the town. "these are not huts," they said, "but mountains with caves in them." livingstone had in vain tried to make them comprehend a house of two stories. they knew of no dwellings except their own conical huts, made of poles stuck into the ground, and could not conceive how one hut could be built on the top of another, or how people could live in the upper story, with the pointed roof of the lower one sticking up in the middle of the floor. the vessels in the harbor were, they said, not canoes, but towns, into which one must climb by a rope. at loanda livingstone was attacked by a fever, which reduced him to a skeleton, and for a while rendered him unable to attend to his companions. but they managed very well alone. some went to the forest, cut firewood, and brought it to town for sale; others unloaded a coal-vessel in the harbor, at the magnificent wages of a sixpence a day. the proceeds of their labor were shrewdly invested in cloth and beads which they would take home with them in confirmation of the astounding stories they would have to tell; "for," said they, "in coming to the white man's country, we have accomplished what no other people in the world could have done; we are the true ancients, who can tell wonderful things." the two years, at the close of which livingstone had promised to rejoin his family, had almost expired, and he was offered a passage home from loanda. but the great object of his expedition was only partially attained. though he had reached the west coast in safety, he had found that the forests, swamps, and rivers must render a wagon-road from the interior impracticable. he feared also that his native attendants would not be able to make their way alone back to their own country, through the unfriendly tribes. so he resolved, feeble as he was, to return to sekeletu's dominions, and thence proceed to the eastern coast. in september he started on his return journey, bearing considerable presents for sekeletu from the portuguese, who were naturally anxious to open a trade with the rich ivory region of the interior. the board of public works sent a colonel's uniform and a horse, which unfortunately died on the way. the merchants contributed specimens of all their articles of trade, and a couple of donkeys, which would have a special value on account of their immunity from the bite of the tsetse. the men were made happy by the acquisition of a suit of european clothes and a gun apiece, in addition to their own purchases. in the bashinje country he again encountered hostile demonstrations. one chief, who came riding into the camp upon the shoulders of an attendant, was especially annoying in his demands for tribute. another, who had quarreled with one of livingstone's attendants, waylaid and fired upon the party. livingstone, who was ill of a fever, staggered up to the chief, revolver in hand. the sight of the six mouths of that convenient implement gaping at his breast wrought an instant revolution in his martial ideas; he fell into a fit of trembling, protesting that he had just come to have a quiet talk, and wanted only peace. these bashinje have more of the low negro character and physiognomy than any tribe encountered by livingstone. their color is a dirty black; they have low foreheads and flat noses, artificially enlarged by sticks run through the septum, and file their teeth down to a point. a little further to the south the complexion of the natives is much lighter, and their features are strikingly like those depicted upon the egyptian monuments, the resemblance being still further increased by some of their modes of wearing the hair. livingstone indeed affirms that the egyptian paintings and sculptures present the best type of the general physiognomy of the central tribes. the return journey was still slower than the advance had been; and it was not till late in the summer of that they reached the villages of the makololo, having been absent more than eighteen months. they were received as men risen from the dead, for the diviners had declared that they had perished long ago. the returned adventurers were the lions of the day. they strutted around in their gay european suits, with their guns over their shoulders, to the abounding admiration of the women and children, calling themselves livingstone's "braves", who had gone over the whole world, turning back only when there was no more land. to be sure they returned about as poor as they went, for their gun and their one suit of red and white cotton were all that they had saved, every thing else having been expended during their long journey. "but never mind," they said; "we have not gone in vain, you have opened a path for us." there was one serious drawback from their happiness. some of their wives, like those of the companions of ulysses of old, wearied by their long absence, had married other husbands. they took this misfortune much to heart. "wives," said one of the bereaved husbands, "are as plenty as grass--i can get another; but," he added bitterly, "if i had that fellow i would slit his ears for him." livingstone did the best he could for them. he induced the chiefs to compel the men who had taken the only wife of any one to give her up to her former husband. those--and they were the majority--who had still a number left, he consoled by telling them that they had quite as many as was good for them--more than he himself had. so, undeterred by this single untoward result of their experiment, the adventurers one and all set about gathering ivory for another adventure to the west. livingstone had satisfied himself that the great river leeambye, up which he had paddled so many miles on his way to the west, was identical with the zambesi, which he had discovered four years previously. the two names are indeed the same, both meaning simply "the river", in different dialects spoken on its banks. this great river is an object of wonder to the natives. they have a song which runs, "the leeambye! nobody knows whence it comes, and whither it goes." livingstone had pursued it far up toward its source, and knew whence it came; and now he resolved to follow it down to the sea, trusting that it would furnish a water communication into the very heart of the continent. it was now october--the close of the hot season. the thermometer stood at deg. in the shade; in the sun it sometimes rose to deg. during the day the people kept close in their huts, guzzling a kind of beer called 'boyola', and seeming to enjoy the copious perspiration which it induces. as evening set in the dance began, which was kept up in the moonlight till long after midnight. sekeletu, proud of his new uniform, and pleased with the prospect of trade which had been opened, entertained livingstone hospitably, and promised to fit him out for his eastern journey as soon as the rains had commenced, and somewhat cooled the burning soil. he set out early in november, the chief with a large body of retainers accompanying him as far as the falls of mosioatunye, the most remarkable piece of natural scenery in all africa, which no european had ever seen or heard of. the zambesi, here a thousand yards broad, seems all at once to lose itself in the earth. it tumbles into a fissure in the hard basaltic rock, running at a right-angle with the course of the stream, and prolonged for thirty miles through the hills. this fissure, hardly eighty feet broad, with sides perfectly perpendicular, is fully a hundred feet in depth down to the surface of the water, which shows like a white thread at its bottom. the noise made by the descent of such a mass of water into this seething abyss is heard for miles, and five distinct columns of vapor rise like pillars of smoke to an enormous height. hence the makololo name for the cataract, 'mosi oa tunye'--"smoke sounds there!"--for which livingstone, with questionable taste, proposes to substitute the name of "victoria falls"--a change which we trust the world will not sanction. from these falls the country gradually ascends toward the east, the river finding its way by this deep fissure through the hills. every thing shows that this whole region, for hundreds of miles, was once the bed of an immense fresh-water lake. by some convulsion of nature, occurring at a period geologically recent, this fissure was formed, and through it the lake was drained, with the exception of its deepest part, which constitutes the present lake ngami. similar indications exist of the former existence of other immense bodies of water, which have in like manner been drained by fissures through the surrounding elevations, leaving shallow lakes at the lowest points. such are, undoubtedly, tsad at the north, ngami at the south, dilolo at the west, and taganyika and nyanja, of which we have only vague reports, at the east. this great lake region of former days seems to have extended miles from north to south, with an average breadth, from east to west, of or miles. the true theory of the african continent is, that it consists of a well-watered trough, surrounded on all sides by an elevated rim, composed in part of mountain ranges, and in part of high sandy deserts. livingstone, who had wrought out this theory from his own personal observations, was almost disappointed when, on returning to england, he found that the same theory had been announced on purely geological grounds by sir roderick murchison, the same philosopher who had averred that gold must exist in australia, long before the first diggings had been discovered there. sekeletu had commissioned livingstone, when he reached his own country, to purchase for him a sugar-mill, a good rifle, different kinds of clothing, brass wire, beads, and, in a word, "any other beautiful thing he might see," furnishing him with a considerable quantity of ivory to pay for them. their way lay through the country of the batoka, a fierce tribe who had a few years before attempted "to eat up" sebituane, with ill success, for he dispersed them and took away their cattle. their country, once populous, is now almost desolate. at one of their ruined villages livingstone saw five-and-forty human skulls bleaching upon stakes stuck in the ground. in the old times the chiefs used to vie with each other as to whose village should be ornamented with the greatest number of these ghastly trophies; and a skull was the most acceptable present from any one who wished to curry favor with a chief. the batoka have an odd custom of knocking out the front teeth from the upper jaw. the lower ones, relieved from the attrition and pressure of the upper, grow long and protruding, forcing the lower lip out in a hideous manner. they say that they wish their mouths to be like those of oxen, and not like those of zebras. no young batoka female can lay any claim to being a belle until she has thus acquired an "ox-mouth". "look at the great teeth!" is the disparaging criticism made upon those who neglect to remove their incisors. the women wear a little clothing, but the men disdain even the paradisiacal fig-leaf, and go about in a state of absolute nudity. livingstone told them that he should come back some day with his family, when none of them must come near without at least putting on a bunch of grass. they thought it a capital joke. their mode of salutation is to fling themselves flat on their backs, and roll from side to side, slapping the outside of their naked thighs. the country abounds with game. buffaloes and zebras by the hundred grazed on the open spaces. at one time their procession was interrupted by three buffaloes who came dashing through their ranks. livingstone's ox set off at a furious gallop. looking back, he saw one of his men flung up into the air by a toss from one of the beasts, who had carried him on his horns for twenty yards before giving the final pitch. the fellow came down flat on his face, but the skin was not pierced, and no bone was broken. his comrades gave him a brisk shampooing, and in a week he was as well as ever. the border country passed, the natives grew more friendly, and gladly supplied all the wants of the travelers. about the middle of december, when their journey was half over, they came upon the first traces of europeans--a deserted town, a ruined church, and a broken bell inscribed with a cross and the letters i. h. s., but bearing no date. a few days after they met a man wearing a hat and jacket. he had come from the portuguese settlement of tete, far down the river. from him they learned that a war was going on below, between the portuguese and the natives. a chief, named mpende, showed signs of hostility. livingstone's men, who had become worn and ragged by their long journey, rejoiced at the prospect of a fight. "now," said they, "we shall get corn and clothes in plenty. you have seen us with elephants, but you don't know what we can do with men." after a while two old men made their appearance, to find out who the strangers were. "i am a lekoa (englishman)," said livingstone. "we don't know that tribe," they replied; "we suppose you are a mozunga (portuguese)." upon livingstone's showing them his long hair and the white skin of his bosom they exclaimed, "we never saw so white a skin as that. you must be one of that tribe that loves the black men." livingstone eagerly assured him that such was the case. sekwebu, the leader of his men, put in a word: "ah, if you only knew him as well as we do, who have lived with him, you would know how highly he values your friendship; and as he is a stranger he trusts in you to direct him." the chief, convinced that he was an englishman, received the party hospitably and forwarded them on their way. the frequent appearance of english goods showed that they were approaching the coast, and not long afterward livingstone met a couple of native traders, from whom, for two small tusks, he bought a quantity of american cotton marked "lawrence mills, lowell", which he distributed among his men. for another month they traveled slowly on through a fertile country, abounding in animal life, bagging an elephant or a buffalo when short of meat. lions are numerous, but the natives, believing that the souls of their dead chiefs enter the bodies of these animals, into which they also have the power, when living, of transforming themselves at will, never kill them. when they meet a lion they salute him by clapping their hands--a courtesy which his highness frequently returns by making a meal of them. in this region the women are decidedly in the ascendant. the bridegroom is obliged to come to the village of the bride to live. here he must perform certain services for his mother-in-law, such as keeping her always supplied with fire-wood. above all things, he must always, when in her presence, sit with his legs bent under him, it being considered a mark of disrespect to present his feet toward her. if he wishes to leave the village, he must not take his children with him; they belong to his wife, or, rather, to her family. he can, however, by the payment of a certain number of cattle, "buy up" his wife and children. when a man is desired to perform any service he always asks his wife's consent; if she refuses, no amount of bribery or coaxing will induce him to disobey her. on the evening of march , livingstone, tired and hungry, came within eight miles of the portuguese settlement of tete. he sent forward the letters of recommendation which he had received from the portuguese on the other side of the continent. before daylight the following morning he was aroused by two officers and a company of soldiers, who brought the materials for a civilized breakfast--the first of which he had partaken since he left loanda, eighteen months before. "it was," he says, "the most refreshing breakfast of which i ever partook." tete stands on the zambesi, three hundred miles from its mouth. the commandant received livingstone kindly, supplied his men with provisions for immediate use, gave them land upon which to raise future supplies, and granted them permission to hunt elephants in the neighborhood on their own account. before long they had established a brisk trade in fire-wood, as their countrymen had done at loanda. they certainly manifested none of the laziness which has been said to be characteristic of the african races. thirty elephant tusks remained of those forwarded by sekeletu. ten of these were sold for cotton cloth for the men. the others were deposited with the authorities, with directions that in case livingstone should never return they should be sold, and the proceeds given to the men. he told them that death alone should prevent him from coming back. "nay, father," said the men, "you will not die; you will return, and take us back to sekeletu." he remained at tete a month, waiting for the close of the sickly season in the low delta at the mouths of the river, and then descended to the portuguese town of kilimane. here he remained six weeks, when an english vessel arrived with supplies and money for him. two of his attendants only had come down the river. they begged hard to be allowed to accompany him to england. in vain livingstone told them that they would die if they went to so cold a country. "that is nothing," said one; "let me die at your feet." he at last decided to take with him sekwebu, the leader of the party, to whose good sense, bravery, and tact he owed much of his success. the sea-waves rose high, as the boat conveyed them to the ship. sekwebu, who had never seen a larger body of water than the shallow lake ngami, was terrified. "is this the way you go?" he inquired. "yes; don't you see it is?" replied livingstone, encouragingly. when livingstone reached his countrymen on the ship he could scarcely speak his native language; the words would not come at his call. he had spoken it but little for thirteen years; and for three and a half, except for a short time at loanda, not at all. sekwebu became a great favorite on shipboard, but he was bewildered by the crowd of new ideas that rushed upon his mind. "what a strange country this is," he said, "all water!" when they reached mauritius, he became insane, and tried to jump overboard. livingstone's wife had, during her visit to their country, become a great favorite with the makololo, who called her 'ma robert'--"robert's mother"--in honor of her young son. "come, sekwebu," said livingstone, "we are going to ma robert." this struck a chord in his bosom. "oh yes," said he; "where is she? where is robert?" and for the moment he seemed to recover. but in the evening a fresh accession of insanity occurred. he attempted to spear one of the crew, and then leaped overboard, and, though he could swim well, pulled himself down, hand over hand, by the cable. his body was never recovered. from mauritius livingstone sailed for england, which he reached on the th of december, --four and a half years after he had parted from his family at cape town. he was received with unwonted honors. the president of the royal geographical society, at a special meeting held to welcome him, formally invited him to give to the world a narrative of his travels. some knavish booksellers paid him the less acceptable compliment of putting forth spurious accounts of his adventures, one at least of which has been republished in this country. livingstone, so long accustomed to a life of action, found the preparation of his book a harder task than he had imagined. "i think," he says, "that i would rather cross the african continent again than undertake to write another book." we trust that he will yet do both. he would indeed have set out on another african journey nearly a year ago to conduct his faithful makololo attendants back to their own country, had not the king of portugal relieved him from all anxiety on their account, by sending out directions that they should be supported at tete until his return. our abstract does, at best, but scanty justice to the most interesting, as well as most valuable, of modern works of travel. it has revolutionized our ideas of african character as well as of african geography. it shows that central africa is peopled by tribes barbarous, indeed, but far from manifesting those savage and degrading traits which we are wont to associate with the negro race. in all his long pilgrimage livingstone saw scarcely a trace of the brutal rites and bloody superstitions of dahomey and ashanti. the natives every where long for intercourse with the whites, and eagerly seek the products of civilized labor. in regions where no white men had ever been seen the cottons of lowell and manchester, passed from tribe to tribe, are even now the standard currency. civilized nations have an equal interest in opening intercourse with these countries, for they are capable of supplying those great tropical staples which the industrious temperate zones must have, but can not produce. livingstone found cotton growing wild all along his route from loanda to kilimane; the sugar-cane flourishes spontaneously in the valley of "the river"; coffee abounds on the west coast; and indigo is a weed in the delta of the zambesi. barth also finds these products abundant on the banks of the benuwe and shari, and around lake tsad. the prevalent idea of the inherent laziness of the africans must be abandoned, for, scattered through the narratives of both these intrepid explorers are abundant testimonies of the industrious disposition of the natives. livingstone, as befits his profession, regards his discoveries from a religious stand-point. "the end of the geographical feat," he says, "is the beginning of the missionary enterprise." but he is a philosopher as well as a preacher, recognizing as true missionaries the man of science who searches after hidden truths, the soldier who fights against tyranny, the sailor who puts down the slave-trade, and the merchant who teaches practically the mutual dependence of the nations of the earth. his idea of missionary labor looks to this world as well as the next. had the bakwains possessed rifles as well as bibles--had they raised cotton as well as attended prayer-meetings--it would have been better for them. he is clearly of the opinion that decent clothing is of more immediate use to the heathen than doctrinal sermons. "we ought," he says, "to encourage the africans to cultivate for our markets, as the most effectual means, next to the gospel, of their elevation." his practical turn of mind suffers him to present no fancy pictures of barbarous nations longing for the gospel. his makololo friends, indeed, listened respectfully when he discoursed of the saviour, but were all earnestness when he spoke of cotton cloths and muskets. sekeletu favored the missionary, not as the man who could give him bibles and tracts, but as the one by whose help he hoped to sell his ivory for a rifle, a sugar-mill, and brass wire. livingstone's missionary scheme is accommodated to the actual state of things. it rests quite as much upon traders as preachers. he would open a communication by the zambesi to the heart of the continent. upon the healthy, elevated region overlooking the low, fertile basin he would establish trading posts, supplied with european wares. we can not wonder that the directors of the missionary society looked coldly upon this scheme, and wrote to him that they were "restricted in their power of aiding plans connected only remotely with the spread of the gospel;" nor can we regret that livingstone, feeling his old love of independence revive, withdrew from his connection with the society, for the purpose of carrying out his own plans. with all respect for the worthy persons who manage missionary societies, we can not but believe that the man who led so large a party across the african continent will accomplish more for the good cause when working out his own plans than he would do by following out their ideas. appendix.--notes to etext. words: the names loanda and zambesi are given in most modern texts as luanda and zambezi. in three cases, the spelling used in the original was distracting enough that it has been changed: musquito > mosquito, hachshish > hashish, and nomade > nomad. in three other cases, two variant spellings of a word were used in the text. these were made uniform in accordance with the modern standard. they were: water-buck > waterbuck, mosambique > mozambique, and imbody > embody. other notes on terms: livingstone often refers to ground-nuts--this is the british term for a peanut. mutokwane ('cannabis sativa') must be some variety of marijuana. symbols: as the symbols for the british pound (a crossed l), degrees (small circle, in the upper half of the line of text), and fractions cannot be represented in ascii, the following standards have been used: pounds: written out, and capitalized, after the number of pounds, rather than before it. hence "l " becomes pounds. (where l represents the pound symbol.) degrees, minutes, seconds: "degrees", when used alone, is either spelled out or abbreviated "deg."--but is always capitalized where it replaces the symbol. when a location is given with a combination of degrees and minutes, or degrees, minutes, and seconds, [d] is used to denote the symbol for degrees, ['] represents minutes, and ["] represents seconds--these latter two are the common symbols, or at least as similar as ascii can represent. for an example, lat. d ' " s. would be latitude degrees minutes seconds south. all temperatures given are in fahrenheit. fractions: where whole numbers and fractions are combined, the whole number is separated from the fraction with a dash. for example, in chapter : ounces and - / drams would translate as ounces and two-and-nineteen-twentieths drams. incidentally, livingstone uses british measurements, which sometimes differ from the american. corrected errors: errors in the original text were corrected when the context presented compelling evidence that there was in fact an error. when possible, proper names were checked against the index for extra surety. chapter , "all around scroti the country is perfectly flat" changed to "all around serotli". chapter , "one species of plants" changed to "one species of plant". chapter , "a fire specimen of arboreal beauty" changed to "a fine specimen". chapter , "till a stranger, happening to come to visit santaru" changed to "to visit santuru". chapter , "the orders of sekeletu as as to our companions" changed to "the orders of sekeletu as to our companions". chapter , "while mashuana plants the poles" changed to "while mashauana". chapter , "in other cases i have known them turn back" changed to "in other cases i have known them to turn back". chapter , p. , "to make a canal from calumbo to loando" changed to "from calumbo to loanda". (loando, while correct, is otherwise only given in the full portuguese name.) chapter , "we saw the batoko" changed to "we saw the batoka". chapter , "with whom lekwebu had lived" changed to "with whom sekwebu". accented characters in words: to maintain an easily searchable text, accented or special characters have been discarded. the following is a pretty complete list of the words in the text which were originally accented. they appear more or less in the order in which they first appeared with the accent--often the accents were dropped in the original. in each case, the accent follows the appropriate letter, the "ae" and "oe" combinations are represented as (ae) and (oe), [\], [/], [~], [^] and [-] represent the accent that looks like them which would appear above the preceding letter. [=] represents an accent that looks like the bottom half of a circle, also appearing above the letter, ["] is an umlaut, and [,] represents a cedilla. athen(ae)um > athenaeum bakwa/in > bakwain mabo/tsa > mabotsa bechua/na > bechuana seche/le > sechele chonua/ne > chonuane bakalaha/ri > bakalahari hy(ae)na > hyaena tse/tse > tsetse banajo/a > banajoa man(oe)uvre > manoeuvre bato-ka > batoka loye/lo > loyelo mamba/ri > mambari mopane/ > mopane balo=nda > balonda sekele/nke > sekelenke mane/nko > manenko sheako/ndo > sheakondo nyamoa/na > nyamoana kolimbo/ta > kolimbota samba/nza > sambanza n~uana loke/ > nyuana loke larv(ae) > larvae de/tour > detour cicad(ae) > cicadae korwe/ > korwe moni/na > monina bonya/i > bonyai conge/ > conge bua/ze > buaze leche/ > leche bakue/na > bakuena shokua/ne > shokuane lepelo/le > lepelole litubaru/ba > litubaruba baka/a > bakaa bamangwa/to > bamangwato makala/ka > makalaka letlo/che > letloche n~ami > nyami n~aka > nyaka matebe/le > matebele seko/mi > sekomi baka/tla > bakatla meba/lwe > mebalwe batla/pi > batlapi bata/u > batau bano/ga > banoga mokwa/in > mokwain leko/a > lekoa mako/a > makoa mochoase/le > mochoasele limpo/po > limpopo bangwake/tse > bangwaketse sebitua/ne > sebituane makolo/lo > makololo kalaha/ri > kalahari mimos(ae) > mimosae vertebr(ae) > vertebrae thoae/la > thoaela tsesse/be > tsessebe mosilika/tze > mosilikatze batlo/kua > batlokua bahu/keng > bahukeng bamose/tla > bamosetla manta/tees > mantatees ka-ke > kake matlame/tlo > matlametlo (ae)sop > aesop cucurbitace(ae) > cucurbitaceae leroshu/a > leroshua ke-me > keme simi(ae) > simiae du"iker > duiker mona/to > monato boatlana/ma > boatlanama lope/pe > lopepe mashu"e > mashue lobota/ni > lobotani leguminos(ae) > leguminosae ramoto/bi > ramotobi mohotlua/ni > mohotluani "kia itume/la" > "kia itumela" "kia time/la" > "kia timela" "ki time/tse" > "ki timetse" moko/ko > mokoko mathulua/ni > mathuluani mokokonya/ni > mokokonyani lotlaka/ni > lotlakani ngabisa/ne > ngabisane bako/ba > bakoba tzo- > tzo bataua/na > batauana lechulate/be > lechulatebe more/mi > moremi moheto/lo > mohetolo kuabao-ba > kuabaoba tumo-go > tumogo ife/ > ife bakuru/tse > bakurutse ntwe/twe > ntwetwe matlomagan-ya/na > matlomagan-yana sichua/na > sichuana maha/be > mahabe aroid(oe)a > aroidoea maja/ne > majane moro/a > moroa baro/tse > barotse nalie/le > naliele seshe/ke > sesheke e- e- e- > ee ee ee (ae) (ae) (ae) > ae ae ae maha/le > mahale namaga/ri > namagari basu/tu > basutu sikonye/le > sikonyele maka/be > makabe damara/s > damaras bashubi/a > bashubia c(ae)sar > caesar kafu/e > kafue tlapa/ne > tlapane ramosi/nii/ > ramosinii baloia/na > baloiana bihe/ > bihe tse/pe > tsepe acme/ > acme lamell(ae) > lamellae ngotuane/ > ngotuane diarrh(oe)a > diarrhoea natur(ae) > naturae herni(ae) > herniae serina/ne > serinane lesho/nya > leshonya ka/ma > kama ta-ri > tari formul(ae) > formulae prote/ge/es > protegees prim(ae)val > primaeval lamin(ae) > laminae lopane/ > lopane kandeha/i > kandehai mamochisa/ne > mamochisane mpe/pe > mpepe nokua/ne > nokuane "nsepi/sa" > "nsepisa" banye/ti > banyeti boya/loa > boyaloa o-a/lo > o-alo bu/za > buza minuti(ae) > minutiae moti/be > motibe hypog(oe)a > hypogoea bapa/lleng > bapalleng cho- > cho tso- > tso "ho-o-!" > "ho-o!" mako-a > makoa seko-a > sekoa makolo/kue > makolokue bape-ri > baperi bapo- > bapo narie/le > nariele giraff(ae) > giraffae lechwe/s > lechwes luambe/ji > luambeji luambe/si > luambesi ambe/zi > ambezi ojimbe/si > ojimbesi zambe/si > zambesi tianya/ne > tianyane lebeo/le > lebeole sisinya/ne > sisinyane molo=iana > moloiana "tau e to=na" > "tau e tona" "sau e to=na" > "sau e tona" lo=nda > londa ambo=nda > ambonda n~ake > nyake "kua-!" > "kua!" moshe/ba > mosheba name/ta > nameta masi/ko > masiko pitsa/ne > pitsane sekobinya/ne > sekobinyane mashaua/na > mashauana mogame/tsa > mogametsa mamo/sho > mamosho moshomo/sho > moshomosho babi/mpe > babimpe mosa/ntu > mosantu mosioatu/nya > mosioatunya sima/h > simah bo=nda > bonda lonko/nye > lonkonye leko/to > lekoto shinte/ > shinte kabo/mpo > kabompo samoa/na > samoana baloba/le > balobale hakite/nwe > hakitenwe polu/ma > poluma matia/mvo > matiamvo monaka/dzi > monakadzi inteme/se > intemese saloi/sho > saloisho scottice\ > scottice mokwa/nkwa > mokwankwa "moka/la a ma/ma" > "mokala a mama" n~uana kalueje > nyuana kalueje typhoi"deum > typhoideum loke/sh > lokesh soa/na molo/po > soana molopo mozi/nkwa > mozinkwa livo/a > livoa chifuma/dze > chifumadze shakatwa/la > shakatwala quende/nde > quendende muata ya/nvo > muata yanvo mua/ta > muata kange/nke > kangenke moe/ne > moene lo=lo= > lolo lishi/sh > lishish li/ss > liss kalile/me > kalileme ishidi/sh > ishidish molo/ng > molong sela/li > selali mone/nga > monenga moso/go > mosogo monenga-wo-o- > monenga-wo-o kasimaka/te > kasimakate ilo/lo > ilolo kate/nde > katende loke/ > loke kalo/mba > kalomba tote/lo > totelo averie/ > averie loze/ze > lozeze kasa/bi > kasabi kalu/ze > kaluze chihune/ > chihune chiho/mbo > chihombo banga/la > bangala chika/pa > chikapa loya/nke > loyanke sakanda/la > sakandala bashinje/ > bashinje babinde/le > babindele kamboe/la > kamboela caba/ngo > cabango qua/ngo > quango sansa/we/ > sansawe cyclop(ae)dia > cyclopaedia kassanje/ > kassanje catende/ > catende via^ > via laurence jose/ marquis > laurence jose marquis el(ae)is > elaeis salvador correa de sa/ benevides > salvador correa de sa benevides algoda~o americana > algodao americana cercopid(ae) > cercopidae graminace(ae) > graminaceae pedro joa~o baptista > pedro joao baptista antonio jose/ > antonio jose senhor grac,a > senhor graca al(ae) > alae kama/ue > kamaue sylviad(ae) > sylviadae muanza/nza > muanzanza zaire/ > zaire zere/zere/ > zerezere alg(ae) > algae tanganye/nka > tanganyenka ae"rial > aerial arac,a > araca limbo-a > limboa lofuje/ > lofuje boie/ > boie hygie\ne > hygiene sekwe/bu > sekwebu ntlarie/ > ntlarie nkwatle/le > nkwatlele moriantsa/ne > moriantsane nampe/ne > nampene leko/ne > lekone seko/te > sekote kala/i > kalai "motse/ oa barimo" > "motse oa barimo" loye/la > loyela mokwine/ > mokwine mane/ko > maneko motsintse/la > motsintsela pup(ae) > pupae pelop(ae)us > pelopaeus mburu/ma > mburuma nyungwe/ > nyungwe sindese oale/a > sindese oalea ae"rolites > aerolites chowe/ > chowe banya/i > banyai moho/hu > mohohu cho/be > chobe boro/ma > boroma nyampu/ngo > nyampungo katolo/sa > katolosa monomota/pa > monomotapa su/sa > susa nyate/we > nyatewe more/na > morena monomoi/zes > monomoizes monemui/ges > monemuiges monomui/zes > monomuizes monomota/pistas > monomotapistas mota/pe > motape babi/sa > babisa bazizu/lu > bazizulu masho/na > mashona moruru/rus > morururus boro/mo > boromo nyako/ba > nyakoba moku/ri > mokuri shekabaka/dzi > shekabakadzi loko/le > lokole mazo/e > mazoe te/te > tete te/tte > tette hom(oe)opathic > homoeopathic chrysomelid(ae) > chrysomelidae lofu/bu > lofubu revu/bu > revubu morongo/zi > morongozi nyamboro/nda > nyamboronda brac,a > braca mashi/nga > mashinga shindu/ndo > shindundo missa/la > missala kapa/ta > kapata ma/no > mano ja/wa > jawa panya/me > panyame dambara/ri > dambarari abu/tua > abutua mani/ca > manica hypog(ae)a > hypogaea kansa/la > kansala luapu/ra > luapura luame/ji > luameji muro/mbo > murombo shitakote/ko > shitakoteko mpa/mbe > mpambe nya/mpi > nyampi za/mbi > zambi e/clat > eclat pharmacop(oe)ia > pharmacopoeia goo- > go-o amenorrh(oe)a > amenorrhoea inya/kanya/nya > inyakanyanya morumba/la > morumbala nyamo/nga > nyamonga gorongo/zo > gorongozo sofa/la > sofala sabi/a > sabia senhor ferra~o > senhor ferrao nje/fu > njefu maza/ro > mazaro baro/ro > baroro lu/abo > luabo muse/lo > muselo nyangu/e > nyangue sen~or > senor aseve/do > asevedo mu/tu > mutu panga/zi > pangazi lua/re > luare likua/re > likuare maiu"do > maiudo livingstone's expedition to the zambesi and its tributaries*** transcribed from the john murray edition by david price, email ccx @coventry.ac.uk a popular account of dr. livingstone's expedition to the zambesi and its tributaries: and the discovery of lakes shirwa and nyassa - to the right hon. lord palmerston, k.g., g.c.b. my lord, i beg leave to dedicate this volume to your lordship, as a tribute justly due to the great statesman who has ever had at heart the amelioration of the african race; and as a token of admiration of the beneficial effects of that policy which he has so long laboured to establish on the west coast of africa; and which, in improving that region, has most forcibly shown the need of some similar system on the opposite side of the continent. david livingstone. notice to this work. the name of the late mr. charles livingstone takes a prominent place amongst those who acted under the leadership of dr. livingstone during the adventurous sojourn of the "zambesi expedition" in east africa. in laying the result of their discoveries before the public, it was arranged that mr. charles livingstone should place his voluminous notes at the disposal of his brother: they are incorporated in the present work, but in a necessarily abridged form. preface. it has been my object in this work to give as clear an account as i was able of tracts of country previously unexplored, with their river systems, natural productions, and capabilities; and to bring before my countrymen, and all others interested in the cause of humanity, the misery entailed by the slave-trade in its inland phases; a subject on which i and my companions are the first who have had any opportunities of forming a judgment. the eight years spent in africa, since my last work was published, have not, i fear, improved my power of writing english; but i hope that, whatever my descriptions want in clearness, or literary skill, may in a measure be compensated by the novelty of the scenes described, and the additional information afforded on that curse of africa, and that shame, even now, in the th century, of an european nation,--the slave-trade. i took the "lady nyassa" to bombay for the express purpose of selling her, and might without any difficulty have done so; but with the thought of parting with her arose, more strongly than ever, the feeling of disinclination to abandon the east coast of africa to the portuguese and slave-trading, and i determined to run home and consult my friends before i allowed the little vessel to pass from my hands. after, therefore, having put two ajawa lads, chuma and wakatani, to school under the eminent missionary the rev. dr. wilson, and having provided satisfactorily for the native crew, i started homewards with the three white sailors, and reached london july th, . mr. and mrs. webb, my much-loved friends, wrote to bombay inviting me, in the event of my coming to england, to make newstead abbey my headquarters, and on my arrival renewed their invitation: and though, when i accepted it, i had no intention of remaining so long with my kind-hearted generous friends, i stayed with them until april, , and under their roof transcribed from my own and my brother's journal the whole of this present book. it is with heartfelt gratitude i would record their unwearied kindness. my acquaintance with mr. webb began in africa, where he was a daring and successful hunter, and his continued friendship is most valuable because he has seen missionary work, and he would not accord his respect and esteem to me had he not believed that i, and my brethren also, were to be looked on as honest men earnestly trying to do our duty. the government have supported the proposal of the royal geographical society made by my friend sir roderick murchison, and have united with that body to aid me in another attempt to open africa to civilizing influences, and a valued private friend has given a thousand pounds for the same object. i propose to go inland, north of the territory which the portuguese in europe claim, and endeavour to commence that system on the east which has been so eminently successful on the west coast; a system combining the repressive efforts of h.m. cruisers with lawful trade and christian missions--the moral and material results of which have been so gratifying. i hope to ascend the rovuma, or some other river north of cape delgado, and, in addition to my other work, shall strive, by passing along the northern end of lake nyassa and round the southern end of lake tanganyika, to ascertain the watershed of that part of africa. in so doing, i have no wish to unsettle what with so much toil and danger was accomplished by speke and grant, but rather to confirm their illustrious discoveries. i have to acknowledge the obliging readiness of lord russell in lending me the drawings taken by the artist who was in the first instance attached to the expedition. these sketches, with photographs by charles livingstone and dr. kirk, have materially assisted in the illustrations. i would also very sincerely thank my friends professor owen and mr. oswell for many valuable hints and other aid in the preparation of this volume. newstead abbey, april , . the zambesi and its tributaries. introduction. objects of the expedition--personal interest shown by naval authorities--members of the zambesi expedition. when first i determined on publishing the narrative of my "missionary travels," i had a great misgiving as to whether the criticism my endeavours might provoke would be friendly or the reverse, more particularly as i felt that i had then been so long a sojourner in the wilderness, as to be quite a stranger to the british public. but i am now in this, my second essay at authorship, cheered by the conviction that very many readers, who are personally unknown to me, will receive this narrative with the kindly consideration and allowances of friends; and that many more, under the genial influences of an innate love of liberty, and of a desire to see the same social and religious blessings they themselves enjoy, disseminated throughout the world, will sympathize with me in the efforts by which i have striven, however imperfectly, to elevate the position and character of our fellow-men in africa. this knowledge makes me doubly anxious to render my narrative acceptable to all my readers; but, in the absence of any excellence in literary composition, the natural consequence of my pursuits, i have to offer only a simple account of a mission which, with respect to the objects proposed to be thereby accomplished, formed a noble contrast to some of the earlier expeditions to eastern africa. i believe that the information it will give, respecting the people visited and the countries traversed, will not be materially gainsaid by any future commonplace traveller like myself, who may be blest with fair health and a gleam of sunshine in his breast. this account is written in the earnest hope that it may contribute to that information which will yet cause the great and fertile continent of africa to be no longer kept wantonly sealed, but made available as the scene of european enterprise, and will enable its people to take a place among the nations of the earth, thus securing the happiness and prosperity of tribes now sunk in barbarism or debased by slavery; and, above all, i cherish the hope that it may lead to the introduction of the blessings of the gospel. in order that the following narrative may be clearly understood, it is necessary to call to mind some things which took place previous to the zambesi expedition being sent out. most geographers are aware that, before the discovery of lake ngami and the well-watered country in which the makololo dwell, the idea prevailed that a large part of the interior of africa consisted of sandy deserts, into which rivers ran and were lost. during my journey in - , from sea to sea, across the south intertropical part of the continent, it was found to be a well-watered country, with large tracts of fine fertile soil covered with forest, and beautiful grassy valleys, occupied by a considerable population; and one of the most wonderful waterfalls in the world was brought to light. the peculiar form of the continent was then ascertained to be an elevated plateau, somewhat depressed in the centre, and with fissures in the sides by which the rivers escaped to the sea; and this great fact in physical geography can never be referred to without calling to mind the remarkable hypothesis by which the distinguished president of the royal geographical society (sir roderick i. murchison) clearly indicated this peculiarity, before it was verified by actual observation of the altitudes of the country and by the courses of the rivers. new light was thrown on other portions of the continent by the famous travels of dr. barth, by the researches of the church of england missionaries krapf, erkhardt, and rebman, by the persevering efforts of dr. baikie, the last martyr to the climate and english enterprise, by the journey of francis galton, and by the most interesting discoveries of lakes tanganyika and victoria nyanza by captain burton, and by captain speke, whose untimely end we all so deeply deplore. then followed the researches of van der decken, thornton, and others; and last of all the grand discovery of the main source of the nile, which every englishman must feel an honest pride in knowing was accomplished by our gallant countrymen, speke and grant. the fabulous torrid zone, of parched and burning sand, was now proved to be a well-watered region resembling north america in its fresh-water lakes, and india in its hot humid lowlands, jungles, ghauts, and cool highland plains. the main object of this zambesi expedition, as our instructions from her majesty's government explicitly stated, was to extend the knowledge already attained of the geography and mineral and agricultural resources of eastern and central africa--to improve our acquaintance with the inhabitants, and to endeavour to engage them to apply themselves to industrial pursuits and to the cultivation of their lands, with a view to the production of raw material to be exported to england in return for british manufactures; and it was hoped that, by encouraging the natives to occupy themselves in the development of the resources of the country, a considerable advance might be made towards the extinction of the slave- trade, as they would not be long in discovering that the former would eventually be a more certain source of profit than the latter. the expedition was sent in accordance with the settled policy of the english government; and the earl of clarendon, being then at the head of the foreign office, the mission was organized under his immediate care. when a change of government ensued, we experienced the same generous countenance and sympathy from the earl of malmesbury, as we had previously received from lord clarendon; and, on the accession of earl russell to the high office he has so long filled, we were always favoured with equally ready attention and the same prompt assistance. thus the conviction was produced that our work embodied the principles, not of any one party, but of the hearts of the statesmen and of the people of england generally. the expedition owes great obligations to the lords of the admiralty for their unvarying readiness to render us every assistance in their power; and to the warm-hearted and ever-obliging hydrographer to the admiralty, the late admiral washington, as a subordinate, but most effective agent, our heartfelt gratitude is also due; and we must ever thankfully acknowledge that our efficiency was mainly due to the kind services of admirals sir frederick grey, sir baldwin walker, and all the naval officers serving under them on the east coast. nor must i omit to record our obligations to mr. skead, r.n. the luawe was carefully sounded and surveyed by this officer, whose skilful and zealous labours, both on that river, and afterwards on the lower zambesi, were deserving of all praise. in speaking of what has been done by the expedition, it should always be understood that dr. kirk, mr. charles livingstone, mr. r. thornton, and others composed it. in using the plural number they are meant, and i wish to bear testimony to the untiring zeal, energy, courage, and perseverance with which my companions laboured; undaunted by difficulties, dangers, or hard fare. it is my firm belief that, were their services required in any other capacity, they might be implicitly relied on to perform their duty like men. the reason why dr. kirk's name does not appear on the title-page of this narrative is, because it is hoped that he may give an account of the botany and natural history of the expedition in a separate work from his own pen. he collected above four thousand species of plants, specimens of most of the valuable woods, of the different native manufactures, of the articles of food, and of the different kinds of cotton from every spot we visited, and a great variety of birds and insects; besides making meteorological observations, and affording, as our instructions required, medical assistance to the natives in every case where he could be of any use. charles livingstone was also fully occupied in his duties in following out the general objects of our mission, in encouraging the culture of cotton, in making many magnetic and meteorological observations, in photographing so long as the materials would serve, and in collecting a large number of birds, insects, and other objects of interest. the collections, being government property, have been forwarded to the british museum, and to the royal botanic, gardens at kew; and should dr. kirk undertake their description, three or four years will be required for the purpose. though collections were made, it was always distinctly understood that, however desirable these and our explorations might be, "her majesty's government attached more importance to the moral influence that might be exerted on the minds of the natives by a well-regulated and orderly household of europeans setting an example of consistent moral conduct to all who might witness it; treating the people with kindness, and relieving their wants, teaching them to make experiments in agriculture, explaining to them the more simple arts, imparting to them religious instruction as far as they are capable of receiving it, and inculcating peace and good will to each other." it would be tiresome to enumerate in detail all the little acts which were performed by us while following out our instructions. as a rule, whenever the steamer stopped to take in wood, or for any other purpose, dr. kirk and charles livingstone went ashore to their duties: one of our party, who it was intended should navigate the vessel and lay down the geographical positions, having failed to answer the expectations formed of him, these duties fell chiefly to my share. they involved a considerable amount of night work, in which i was always cheerfully aided by my companions, and the results were regularly communicated to our warm and ever-ready friend, sir thomas maclear of the royal observatory, cape of good hope. while this work was going through the press, we were favoured with the longitudes of several stations determined from observed occultations of stars by the moon, and from eclipses and reappearances of jupiter's satellites, by mr. mann, the able assistant to the cape astronomer royal; the lunars are still in the hands of mr. g. w. h. maclear of the same observatory. in addition to these, the altitudes, variations of the compass, latitudes and longitudes, as calculated on the spot, appear in the map by mr. arrowsmith, and it is hoped may not differ much from the results of the same data in abler bands. the office of "skipper," which, rather than let the expedition come to a stand, i undertook, required no great ability in one "not too old to learn:" it saved a salary, and, what was much more valuable than gold, saved the expedition from the drawback of any one thinking that he was indispensable to its further progress. the office required attention to the vessel both at rest and in motion. it also involved considerable exposure to the sun; and to my regret kept me from much anticipated intercourse with the natives, and the formation of full vocabularies of their dialects. i may add that all wearisome repetitions are as much as possible avoided in the narrative; and, our movements and operations having previously been given in a series of despatches, the attempt is now made to give as fairly as possible just what would most strike any person of ordinary intelligence in passing through the country. for the sake of the freshness which usually attaches to first impressions, the journal of charles livingstone has been incorporated in the narrative; and many remarks made by the natives, which ho put down at the moment of translation, will convey to others the same ideas as they did to ourselves. some are no doubt trivial; but it is by the little acts and words of every-day life that character is truly and best known. and doubtless many will prefer to draw their own conclusions from them rather than to be schooled by us. chapter i. arrival at the zambesi--rebel warfare--wild animals--shupanga--hippopotamus hunters--the makololo--crocodiles. the expedition left england on the th of march, , in her majesty's colonial steamer "pearl," commanded by captain duncan; and, after enjoying the generous hospitality of our friends at cape town, with the obliging attentions of sir george grey, and receiving on board mr. francis skead, r.n., as surveyor, we reached the east coast in the following may. our first object was to explore the zambesi, its mouths and tributaries, with a view to their being used as highways for commerce and christianity to pass into the vast interior of africa. when we came within five or six miles of the land, the yellowish-green tinge of the sea in soundings was suddenly succeeded by muddy water with wrack, as of a river in flood. the two colours did not intermingle, but the line of contact was as sharply defined as when the ocean meets the land. it was observed that under the wrack--consisting of reeds, sticks, and leaves,--and even under floating cuttlefish bones and portuguese "men-of-war" (physalia), numbers of small fish screen themselves from the eyes of birds of prey, and from the rays of the torrid sun. we entered the river luawe first, because its entrance is so smooth and deep, that the "pearl," drawing feet inches, went in without a boat sounding ahead. a small steam launch having been brought out from england in three sections on the deck of the "pearl" was hoisted out and screwed together at the anchorage, and with her aid the exploration was commenced. she was called the "ma robert," after mrs. livingstone, to whom the natives, according to their custom, gave the name ma (mother) of her eldest son. the harbour is deep, but shut in by mangrove swamps; and though the water a few miles up is fresh, it is only a tidal river; for, after ascending some seventy miles, it was found to end in marshes blocked up with reeds and succulent aquatic plants. as the luawe had been called "west luabo," it was supposed to be a branch of the zambesi, the main stream of which is called "luabo," or "east luabo." the "ma robert" and "pearl" then went to what proved to be a real mouth of the river we sought. the zambesi pours its waters into the ocean by four mouths, namely, the milambe, which is the most westerly, the kongone, the luabo, and the timbwe (or muselo). when the river is in flood, a natural canal running parallel with the coast, and winding very much among the swamps, forms a secret way for conveying slaves from quillimane to the bays massangano and nameara, or to the zambesi itself. the kwakwa, or river of quillimane, some sixty miles distant from the mouth of the zambesi, has long been represented as the principal entrance to the zambesi, in order, as the portuguese now maintain, that the english cruisers might be induced to watch the false mouth, while slaves were quietly shipped from the true one; and, strange to say, this error has lately been propagated by a map issued by the colonial minister of portugal. after the examination of three branches by the able and energetic surveyor, francis skead, r.n., the kongone was found to be the best entrance. the immense amount of sand brought down by the zambesi has in the course of ages formed a sort of promontory, against which the long swell of the indian ocean, beating during the prevailing winds, has formed bars, which, acting against the waters of the delta, may have led to their exit sideways. the kongone is one of those lateral branches, and the safest; inasmuch as the bar has nearly two fathoms on it at low water, and the rise at spring tides is from twelve to fourteen feet. the bar is narrow, the passage nearly straight, and, were it buoyed and a beacon placed on pearl island, would always be safe to a steamer. when the wind is from the east or north, the bar is smooth; if from the south and south-east, it has a heavy break on it, and is not to be attempted in boats. a strong current setting to the east when the tide is flowing, and to the west when ebbing, may drag a boat or ship into the breakers. if one is doubtful of his longitude and runs east, he will soon see the land at timbwe disappear away to the north; and coming west again, he can easily make out east luabo from its great size; and kongone follows several miles west. east luabo has a good but long bar, and not to be attempted unless the wind be north-east or east. it has sometimes been called "barra catrina," and was used in the embarkations of slaves. this may have been the "river of good signs," of vasco da gama, as the mouth is more easily seen from the seaward than any other; but the absence of the pillar dedicated by that navigator to "st. raphael," leaves the matter in doubt. no portuguese live within eighty miles of any mouth of the zambesi. the kongone is five miles east of the milambe, or western branch, and seven miles west from east luabo, which again is five miles from the timbwe. we saw but few natives, and these, by escaping from their canoes into the mangrove thickets the moment they caught sight of us, gave unmistakeable indications that they had no very favourable opinion of white men. they were probably fugitives from portuguese slavery. in the grassy glades buffaloes, wart-hogs, and three kinds of antelope were abundant, and the latter easily obtained. a few hours' hunting usually provided venison enough for a score of men for several days. on proceeding up the kongone branch it was found that, by keeping well in the bends, which the current had worn deep, shoals were easily avoided. the first twenty miles are straight and deep; then a small and rather tortuous natural canal leads off to the right, and, after about five miles, during which the paddles almost touch the floating grass of the sides, ends in the broad zambesi. the rest of the kongone branch comes out of the main stream considerably higher up as the outgoing branch called doto. the first twenty miles of the kongone are enclosed in mangrove jungle; some of the trees are ornamented with orchilla weed, which appears never to have been gathered. huge ferns, palm bushes, and occasionally wild date-palms peer out in the forest, which consists of different species of mangroves; the bunches of bright yellow, though scarcely edible fruit, contrasting prettily with the graceful green leaves. in some spots the milola, an umbrageous hibiscus, with large yellowish flowers, grows in masses along the bank. its bark is made into cordage, and is especially valuable for the manufacture of ropes attached to harpoons for killing the hippopotamus. the pandanus or screw-palm, from which sugar bags are made in the mauritius, also appears, and on coming out of the canal into the zambesi many are so tall as in the distance to remind us of the steeples of our native land, and make us relish the remark of an old sailor, "that but one thing was wanting to complete the picture, and that was a 'grog-shop near the church.'" we find also a few guava and lime- trees growing wild, but the natives claim the crops. the dark woods resound with the lively and exultant song of the kinghunter (_halcyon striolata_), as he sits perched on high among the trees. as the steamer moves on through the winding channel, a pretty little heron or bright kingfisher darts out in alarm from the edge of the bank, flies on ahead a short distance, and settles quietly down to be again frightened off in a few seconds as we approach. the magnificent fishhawk (_halietus vocifer_) sits on the top of a mangrove-tree, digesting his morning meal of fresh fish, and is clearly unwilling to stir until the imminence of the danger compels him at last to spread his great wings for flight. the glossy ibis, acute of ear to a remarkable degree, hears from afar the unwonted sound of the paddles, and, springing from the mud where his family has been quietly feasting, is off, screaming out his loud, harsh, and defiant ha! ha! ha! long before the danger is near. several native huts now peep out from the bananas and cocoa-palms on the right bank; they stand on piles a few feet above the low damp ground, and their owners enter them by means of ladders. the soil is wonderfully rich, and the gardens are really excellent. rice is cultivated largely; sweet potatoes, pumpkins, tomatoes, cabbages, onions (shalots), peas, a little cotton, and sugar-cane are also raised. it is said that english potatoes, when planted at quillimane on soil resembling this, in the course of two years become in taste like sweet potatoes (_convolvulus batatas_), and are like our potato frosted. the whole of the fertile region extending from the kongone canal to beyond mazaro, some eighty miles in length, and fifty in breadth, is admirably adapted for the growth of sugar-cane; and were it in the hands of our friends at the cape, would supply all europe with sugar. the remarkably few people seen appear to be tolerably well fed, but there was a dearth of clothing among them; all were blacks, and nearly all portuguese "colonos" or serfs. they manifested no fear of white men, and stood in groups on the bank gazing in astonishment at the steamers, especially at the "pearl," which accompanied us thus far up the river. one old man who came on board remarked that never before had he seen any vessel so large as the "pearl," it was like a village, "was it made out of one tree?" all were eager traders, and soon came off to the ship in light swift canoes with every kind of fruit and food they possessed; a few brought honey and beeswax, which are found in quantities in the mangrove forests. as the ships steamed off, many anxious sellers ran along the bank, holding up fowls, baskets of rice and meal, and shouting "malonda, malonda," "things for sale," while others followed in canoes, which they sent through the water with great velocity by means of short broad-bladed paddles. finding the "pearl's" draught too great for that part of the river near the island of simbo, where the branch called the doto is given off to the kongone on the right bank, and another named chinde departs to the secret canal already mentioned on the left, the goods belonging to the expedition were taken out of her, and placed on one of the grassy islands about forty miles from the bar. the "pearl" then left us, and we had to part with our good friends duncan and skead; the former for ceylon, the latter to return to his duties as government surveyor at the cape. of those who eventually did the work of the expedition the majority took a sober common-sense view of the enterprise in which we were engaged. some remained on expedition island from the th june until the th august, while the launch and pinnace were carrying the goods up to shupanga and senna. the country was in a state of war, our luggage was in danger, and several of our party were exposed to disease from inactivity in the malaria of the delta. here some had their first introduction to african life, and african fever. those alone were safe who were actively employed with the vessels, and of course, remembering the perilous position of their fellows, they strained every nerve to finish the work and take them away. large columns of smoke rose daily from different points of the horizon, showing that the natives were burning off the immense crops of tall grass, here a nuisance, however valuable elsewhere. a white cloud was often observed to rest on the head of the column, as if a current of hot damp air was sent up by the heat of the flames and its moisture was condensed at the top. rain did not follow, though theorists have imagined that in such cases it ought. large game, buffaloes, and zebras, were abundant abreast the island, but no men could be seen. on the mainland, over on the right bank of the river, we were amused by the eccentric gyrations and evolutions of flocks of small seed-eating birds, who in their flight wheeled into compact columns with such military precision as to give us the impression that they must be guided by a leader, and all directed by the same signal. several other kinds of small birds now go in flocks, and among others the large senegal swallow. the presence of this bird, being clearly in a state of migration from the north, while the common swallow of the country, and the brown kite are away beyond the equator, leads to the conjecture that there may be a double migration, namely, of birds from torrid climates to the more temperate, as this now is, as well as from severe winters to sunny regions; but this could not be verified by such birds of passage as ourselves. on reaching mazaro, the mouth of a narrow creek which in floods communicates with the quillimane river, we found that the portuguese were at war with a half-caste named mariano _alias_ matakenya, from whom they had generally fled, and who, having built a stockade near the mouth of the shire, owned all the country between that river and mazaro. mariano was best known by his native name matakenya, which in their tongue means "trembling," or quivering as trees do in a storm. he was a keen slave- hunter, and kept a large number of men, well armed with muskets. it is an entire mistake to suppose that the slave trade is one of buying and selling alone; or that engagements can be made with labourers in africa as they are in india; mariano, like other portuguese, had no labour to spare. he had been in the habit of sending out armed parties on slave- hunting forays among the helpless tribes to the north-east, and carrying down the kidnapped victims in chains to quillimane, where they were sold by his brother-in-law cruz coimbra, and shipped as "free emigrants" to the french island of bourbon. so long as his robberies and murders were restricted to the natives at a distance, the authorities did not interfere; but his men, trained to deeds of violence and bloodshed in their slave forays, naturally began to practise on the people nearer at hand, though belonging to the portuguese, and even in the village of senna, under the guns of the fort. a gentleman of the highest standing told us that, while at dinner with his family, it was no uncommon event for a slave to rush into the room pursued by one of mariano's men with spear in hand to murder him. the atrocities of this villain, aptly termed by the late governor of quillimane a "notorious robber and murderer," became at length intolerable. all the portuguese spoke of him as a rare monster of inhumanity. it is unaccountable why half-castes, such as he, are so much more cruel than the portuguese, but such is undoubtedly the case. it was asserted that one of his favourite modes of creating an impression in the country, and making his name dreaded, was to spear his captives with his own hands. on one occasion he is reported to have thus killed forty poor wretches placed in a row before him. we did not at first credit these statements, and thought that they were merely exaggerations of the incensed portuguese, who naturally enough were exasperated with him for stopping their trade, and harbouring their runaway slaves; but we learned afterwards from the natives, that the accounts given us by the portuguese had not exceeded the truth; and that mariano was quite as great a ruffian as they had described him. one expects slave-owners to treat their human chattels as well as men do other animals of value, but the slave-trade seems always to engender an unreasoning ferocity, if not blood-thirstiness. war was declared against mariano, and a force sent to take him; he resisted for a time; but seeing that he was likely to get the worst of it, and knowing that the portuguese governors have small salaries, and are therefore "disposed to be reasonable," he went down to quillimane to "arrange" with the governor, as it is termed here; but colonel da silva put him in prison, and then sent him for trial to mozambique. when we came into the country, his people were fighting under his brother bonga. the war had lasted six months and stopped all trade on the river during that period. on the th june we first came into contact with the "rebels." they appeared as a crowd of well-armed and fantastically-dressed people under the trees at mazaro. on explaining that we were english, some at once came on board and called to those on shore to lay aside their arms. on landing among them we saw that many had the branded marks of slaves on their chests, but they warmly approved our objects, and knew well the distinctive character of our nation on the slave question. the shout at our departure contrasted strongly with the suspicious questioning on our approach. hence-forward we were recognized as friends by both parties. at a later period we were taking in wood within a mile of the scene of action, but a dense fog prevented our hearing the noise of a battle at mazaro; and on arriving there, immediately after, many natives and portuguese appeared on the bank. dr. livingstone, landing to salute some of his old friends among the latter, found himself in the sickening smell, and among the mutilated bodies of the slain; he was requested to take the governor, who was very ill of fever, across to shupanga, and just as he gave his assent, the rebels renewed the fight, and the balls began to whistle about in all directions. after trying in vain to get some one to assist the governor down to the steamer, and unwilling to leave him in such danger, as the officer sent to bring our kroomen did not appear, he went into the hut, and dragged along his excellency to the ship. he was a very tall man, and as he swayed hither and thither from weakness, weighing down dr. livingstone, it must have appeared like one drunken man helping another. some of the portuguese white soldiers stood fighting with great bravery against the enemy in front, while a few were coolly shooting at their own slaves for fleeing into the river behind. the rebels soon retired, and the portuguese escaped to a sandbank in the zambesi, and thence to an island opposite shupanga, where they lay for some weeks, looking at the rebels on the mainland opposite. this state of inactivity on the part of the portuguese could not well be helped, as they had expended all their ammunition and were waiting anxiously for supplies; hoping, no doubt sincerely, that the enemy might not hear that their powder had failed. luckily their hopes were not disappointed; the rebels waited until a supply came, and were then repulsed after three-and-a-half hours' hard fighting. two months afterwards mariano's stockade was burned, the garrison having fled in a panic; and as bonga declared that he did not wish to fight with this governor, with whom he had no quarrel, the war soon came to an end. his excellency meanwhile, being a disciple of raspail, had taken nothing for the fever but a little camphor, and after he was taken to shupanga became comatose. more potent remedies were administered to him, to his intense disgust, and he soon recovered. the colonel in attendance, whom he never afterwards forgave, encouraged the treatment. "give what is right; never mind him; he is very (_muito_) impertinent:" and all night long, with every draught of water the colonel gave a quantity of quinine: the consequence was, next morning the patient was cinchonized and better. for sixty or seventy miles before reaching mazaro, the scenery is tame and uninteresting. on either hand is a dreary uninhabited expanse, of the same level grassy plains, with merely a few trees to relieve the painful monotony. the round green top of the stately palm-tree looks at a distance, when its grey trunk cannot be seen, as though hung in mid- air. many flocks of busy sand-martins, which here, and as far south as the orange river, do not migrate, have perforated the banks two or three feet horizontally, in order to place their nests at the ends, and are now chasing on restless wing the myriads of tropical insects. the broad river has many low islands, on which are seen various kinds of waterfowl, such as geese, spoonbills, herons, and flamingoes. repulsive crocodiles, as with open jaws they sleep and bask in the sun on the low banks, soon catch the sound of the revolving paddles and glide quietly into the stream. the hippopotamus, having selected some still reach of the river to spend the day, rises out of the bottom, where he has been enjoying his morning bath after the labours of the night on shore, blows a puff of spray from his nostrils, shakes the water out of his ears, puts his enormous snout up straight and yawns, sounding a loud alarm to the rest of the herd, with notes as of a monster bassoon. as we approach mazaro the scenery improves. we see the well-wooded shupanga ridge stretching to the left, and in front blue hills rise dimly far in the distance. there is no trade whatever on the zambesi below mazaro. all the merchandise of senna and tette is brought to that point in large canoes, and thence carried six miles across the country on men's heads to be reshipped on a small stream that flows into the kwakwa, or quillimane river, which is entirely distinct from the zambesi. only on rare occasions and during the highest floods can canoes pass from the zambesi to the quillimane river through the narrow natural canal _mutu_. the natives of maruru, or the country around mazaro, the word mazaro meaning the "mouth of the creek" mutu, have a bad name among the portuguese; they are said to be expert thieves, and the merchants sometimes suffer from their adroitness while the goods are in transit from one river to the other. in general they are trained canoe-men, and man many of the canoes that ply thence to senna and tette; their pay is small, and, not trusting the traders, they must always have it before they start. africans being prone to assign plausible reasons for their conduct, like white men in more enlightened lands, it is possible they may be good-humouredly giving their reason for insisting on being invariably paid in advance in the words of their favourite canoe-song, "uachingere, uachingere kale," "you cheated me of old;" or, "thou art slippery slippery truly." the landeens or zulus are lords of the right bank of the zambesi; and the portuguese, by paying this fighting tribe a pretty heavy annual tribute, practically admit this. regularly every year come the zulus in force to senna and shupanga for the accustomed tribute. the few wealthy merchants of senna groan under the burden, for it falls chiefly on them. they submit to pay annually pieces of cloth, of sixteen yards each, besides beads and brass wire, knowing that refusal involves war, which might end in the loss of all they possess. the zulus appear to keep as sharp a look out on the senna and shupanga people as ever landlord did on tenant; the more they cultivate, the more tribute they have to pay. on asking some of them why they did not endeavour to raise certain highly profitable products, we were answered, "what's the use of our cultivating any more than we do? the landeens would only come down on us for more tribute." in the forests of shupanga the mokundu-kundu tree abounds; its bright yellow wood makes good boat-masts, and yields a strong bitter medicine for fever; the gunda-tree attains to an immense size; its timber is hard, rather cross-grained, with masses of silica deposited in its substance; the large canoes, capable of carrying three or four tons, are made of its wood. for permission to cut these trees, a portuguese gentleman of quillimane was paying the zulus, in , two hundred dollars a year, and his successor now pays three hundred. at shupanga, a one-storied stone house stands on the prettiest site on the river. in front a sloping lawn, with a fine mango orchard at its southern end, leads down to the broad zambesi, whose green islands repose on the sunny bosom of the tranquil waters. beyond, northwards, lie vast fields and forests of palm and tropical trees, with the massive mountain of morambala towering amidst the white clouds; and further away more distant hills appear in the blue horizon. this beautifully situated house possesses a melancholy interest from having been associated in a most mournful manner with the history of two english expeditions. here, in , poor kirkpatrick, of captain owen's surveying expedition, died of fever; and here, in , died, of the same fatal disease, the beloved wife of dr. livingstone. a hundred yards east of the house, under a large baobab-tree, far from their native land, both are buried. the shupanga-house was the head-quarters of the governor during the mariano war. he told us that the province of mosambique costs the home government between _l_. and _l_. annually, and east africa yields no reward in return to the mother country. we met there several other influential portuguese. all seemed friendly, and expressed their willingness to assist the expedition in every way in their power; and better still, colonel nunes and major sicard put their good-will into action, by cutting wood for the steamer and sending men to help in unloading. it was observable that not one of them knew anything about the kongone mouth; all thought that we had come in by the "barra catrina," or east luabo. dr. kirk remained here a few weeks; and, besides exploring a small lake twenty miles to the south-west, had the sole medical care of the sick and wounded soldiers, for which valuable services he received the thanks of the portuguese government. we wooded up at this place with african ebony or black wood, and lignum vitae; the latter tree attains an immense size, sometimes as much as four feet in diameter; our engineer, knowing what ebony and lignum vitae cost at home, said it made his heart sore to burn wood so valuable. though botanically different, they are extremely alike; the black wood as grown in some districts is superior, and the lignum vitae inferior in quality, to these timbers brought from other countries. caoutchouc, or india-rubber, is found in abundance inland from shupanga-house, and calumba-root is plentiful in the district; indigo, in quantities, propagates itself close to the banks of the aver, and was probably at some time cultivated, for manufactured indigo was once exported. the india-rubber is made into balls for a game resembling "fives," and calumba-root is said to be used as a mordant for certain colours, but not as a dye itself. we started for tette on the th august, ; the navigation was rather difficult, the zambesi from shupanga to senna being wide and full of islands; our black pilot, john scisssors, a serf, sometimes took the wrong channel and ran us aground. nothing abashed, he would exclaim in an aggrieved tone, "this is not the path, it is back yonder." "then why didn't you go yonder at first?" growled out our kroomen, who had the work of getting the vessel off. when they spoke roughly to poor scissors, the weak cringing slave-spirit came forth in, "those men scold me so, i am ready to run away." this mode of finishing up an engagement is not at all uncommon on the zambesi; several cases occurred, when we were on the river, of hired crews decamping with most of the goods in their charge. if the trader cannot redress his own wrongs, he has to endure them. the landeens will not surrender a fugitive slave, even to his master. one belonging to mr. azevedo fled, and was, as a great favour only, returned after a present of much more than his value. we landed to wood at shamoara, just below the confluence of the shire. its quartz hills are covered with trees and gigantic grasses; the buaze, a small forest-tree, grows abundantly; it is a species of polygala; its beautiful clusters of sweet-scented pinkish flowers perfume the air with a rich fragrance; its seeds produce a fine drying oil, and the bark of the smaller branches yields a fibre finer and stronger than flax; with which the natives make their nets for fishing. bonga, the brother of the rebel mariano, and now at the head of the revolted natives, with some of his principal men came to see us, and were perfectly friendly, though told of our having carried the sick governor across to shupanga, and of our having cured him of fever. on our acquainting bonga with the object of the expedition, he remarked that we should suffer no hindrance from his people in our good work. he sent us a present of rice, two sheep, and a quantity of firewood. he never tried to make any use of us in the strife; the other side showed less confidence, by carefully cross-questioning our pilot whether we had sold any powder to the enemy. we managed, however, to keep on good terms with both rebels and portuguese. senna is built on a low plain, on the right bank of the zambesi, with some pretty detached hills in the background; it is surrounded by a stockade of living trees to protect its inhabitants from their troublesome and rebellious neighbours. it contains a few large houses, some ruins of others, and a weather-beaten cross, where once stood a church; a mound shows the site of an ancient monastery, and a mud fort by the river is so dilapidated, that cows were grazing peacefully over its prostrate walls. the few senna merchants, having little or no trade in the village, send parties of trusted slaves into the interior to hunt for and purchase ivory. it is a dull place, and very conducive to sleep. one is sure to take fever in senna on the second day, if by chance one escapes it on the first day of a sojourn there; but no place is entirely bad. senna has one redeeming feature: it is the native village of the large-hearted and hospitable senhor h. a. ferrao. the benevolence of this gentleman is unbounded. the poor black stranger passing through the town goes to him almost as a matter of course for food, and is never sent away hungry. in times of famine the starving natives are fed by his generosity; hundreds of his own people he never sees except on these occasions; and the only benefit derived from being their master is, that they lean on him as a patriarchal chief, and he has the satisfaction of settling their differences, and of saving their lives in seasons of drought and scarcity. senhor ferrao received us with his usual kindness, and gave us a bountiful breakfast. during the day the principal men of the place called, and were unanimously of opinion that the free natives would willingly cultivate large quantities of cotton, could they find purchasers. they had in former times exported largely both cotton and cloth to manica and even to brazil. "on their own soil," they declared, "the natives are willing to labour and trade, provided only they can do so to advantage: when it is for their interest, blacks work very hard." we often remarked subsequently that this was the opinion of men of energy; and that all settlers of activity, enterprise, and sober habits had become rich, while those who were much addicted to lying on their backs smoking, invariably complained of the laziness of the negroes, and were poor, proud, and despicable. beyond pita lies the little island nyamotobsi, where we met a small fugitive tribe of hippopotamus hunters, who had been driven by war from their own island in front. all were busy at work; some were making gigantic baskets for grain, the men plaiting from the inside. with the civility so common among them the chief ordered a mat to be spread for us under a shed, and then showed us the weapon with which they kill the hippopotamus; it is a short iron harpoon inserted in the end of a long pole, but being intended to unship, it is made fast to a strong cord of milola, or hibiscus, bark, which is wound closely round the entire length of the shaft, and secured at its opposite end. two men in a swift canoe steal quietly down on the sleeping animal. the bowman dashes the harpoon into the unconscious victim, while the quick steersman sweeps the light craft back with his broad paddle; the force of the blow separates the harpoon from its corded handle, which, appearing on the surface, sometimes with an inflated bladder attached, guides the hunters to where the wounded beast hides below until they despatch it. these hippopotamus hunters form a separate people, called akombwi, or mapodzo, and rarely--the women it is said never--intermarry with any other tribe. the reason for their keeping aloof from certain of the natives on the zambesi is obvious enough, some having as great an abhorrence of hippopotamus meat as mahomedans have of swine's flesh. our pilot, scissors, was one of this class; he would not even cook his food in a pot which had contained hippopotamus meat, preferring to go hungry till he could find another; and yet he traded eagerly in the animal's tusks, and ate with great relish the flesh of the foul-feeding marabout. these hunters go out frequently on long expeditions, taking in their canoes their wives and children, cooking-pots, and sleeping-mats. when they reach a good game district, they erect temporary huts on the bank, and there dry the meat they have killed. they are rather a comely-looking race, with very black smooth skins, and never disfigure themselves with the frightful ornaments of some of the other tribes. the chief declined to sell a harpoon, because they could not now get the milola bark from the coast on account of mariano's war. he expressed some doubts about our being children of the same almighty father, remarking that "they could not become white, let them wash ever so much." we made him a present of a bit of cloth, and he very generously gave us in return some fine fresh fish and indian corn. the heat of the weather steadily increases during this month (august), and foggy mornings are now rare. a strong breeze ending in a gale blows up stream every night. it came in the afternoon a few weeks ago, then later, and at present its arrival is near midnight; it makes our frail cabin-doors fly open before it, but continues only for a short time, and is succeeded by a dead calm. game becomes more abundant; near our wooding-places we see herds of zebras, both burchell's and the mountain variety, pallahs (_antelope melampus_), waterbuck, and wild hogs, with the spoor of buffaloes and elephants. shiramba dembe, on the right bank, is deserted; a few old iron guns show where a rebel stockade once stood; near the river above this, stands a magnificent baobab hollowed out into a good-sized hut, with bark inside as well as without. the old oaks in sherwood forest, when hollow, have the inside dead or rotten; but the baobab, though stripped of its bark outside, and hollowed to a cavity inside, has the power of exuding new bark from its substance to both the outer and inner surfaces; so, a hut made like that in the oak called the "forest queen," in sherwood, would soon all be lined with bark. the portions of the river called shigogo and shipanga are bordered by a low level expanse of marshy country, with occasional clumps of palm-trees and a few thorny acacias. the river itself spreads out to a width of from three to four miles, with many islands, among which it is difficult to navigate, except when the river is in flood. in front, a range of high hills from the north-east crosses and compresses it into a deep narrow channel, called the lupata gorge. the portuguese thought the steamer would not stem the current here; but as it was not more than about three knots, and as there was a strong breeze in our favour, steam and sails got her through with ease. heavy-laden canoes take two days to go up this pass. a current sweeps round the little rocky promontories chifura and kangomba, forming whirlpools and eddies dangerous for the clumsy craft, which are dragged past with long ropes. the paddlers place meal on these rocks as an offering to the turbulent deities, which they believe preside over spots fatal to many a large canoe. we were slily told that native portuguese take off their hats to these river gods, and pass in solemn silence; when safely beyond the promontories, they fire muskets, and, as we ought to do, give the canoe- men grog. from the spoor of buffaloes and elephants it appears that these animals frequent lupata in considerable numbers, and--we have often observed the association--the tsetse fly is common. a horse for the governor of tette was sent in a canoe from quillimane; and, lest it should be wrecked on the chifura and kangomba rocks, it was put on shore and sent in the daytime through the pass. it was of course bitten by the tsetse, and died soon after; it was thought that the _air_ of tette had not agreed with it. the currents above lupata are stronger than those below; the country becomes more picturesque and hilly, and there is a larger population. the ship anchored in the stream, off tette, on the th september, , and dr. livingstone went ashore in the boat. no sooner did the makololo recognize him, than they rushed to the water's edge, and manifested great joy at seeing him again. some were hastening to embrace him, but others cried out, "don't touch him, you will spoil his new clothes." the five headmen came on board and listened in quiet sadness to the story of poor sekwebu, who died at the mauritius on his way to england. "men die in any country," they observed, and then told us that thirty of their own number had died of smallpox, having been bewitched by the people of tette, who envied them because, during the first year, none of their party had died. six of their young men, becoming tired of cutting firewood for a meagre pittance, proposed to go and dance for gain before some of the neighbouring chiefs. "don't go," said the others, "we don't know the people of this country;" but the young men set out and visited an independent half-caste chief, a few miles to the north, named chisaka, who some years ago burned all the portuguese villas on the north bank of the river; afterwards the young men went to bonga, son of another half- caste chief, who bade defiance to the tette authorities, and had a stockade at the confluence of the zambesi and luenya, a few miles below that village. asking the makololo whence they came, bonga rejoined, "why do you come from my enemy to me? you have brought witchcraft medicine to kill me." in vain they protested that they did not belong to the country; they were strangers, and had come from afar with an englishman. the superstitious savage put them all to death. "we do not grieve," said their companions, "for the thirty victims of the smallpox, who were taken away by morimo (god); but our hearts are sore for the six youths who were murdered by bonga." any hope of obtaining justice on the murderer was out of the question. bonga once caught a captain of the portuguese army, and forced him to perform the menial labour of pounding maize in a wooden mortar. no punishment followed on this outrage. the government of lisbon has since given bonga the honorary title of captain, by way of coaxing him to own their authority; but he still holds his stockade. tette stands on a succession of low sandstone ridges on the right bank of the zambesi, which is here nearly a thousand yards wide ( yards). shallow ravines, running parallel with the river, form the streets, the houses being built on the ridges. the whole surface of the streets, except narrow footpaths, were overrun with self-sown indigo, and tons of it might have been collected. in fact indigo, senna, and stramonium, with a species of cassia, form the weeds of the place, which are annually hoed off and burned. a wall of stone and mud surrounds the village, and the native population live in huts outside. the fort and the church, near the river, are the strongholds; the natives having a salutary dread of the guns of the one, and a superstitious fear of the unknown power of the other. the number of white inhabitants is small, and rather select, many of them having been considerately sent out of portugal "for their country's good." the military element preponderates in society; the convict and "incorrigible" class of soldiers, receiving very little pay, depend in great measure on the produce of the gardens of their black wives; the moral condition of the resulting population may be imagined. droughts are of frequent occurrence at tette, and the crops suffer severely. this may arise partly from the position of the town between the ranges of hills north and south, which appear to have a strong attraction for the rain-clouds. it is often seen to rain on these hills when not a drop falls at tette. our first season was one of drought. thrice had the women planted their gardens in vain, the seed, after just vegetating, was killed by the intense dry heat. a fourth planting shared the same hard fate, and then some of the knowing ones discovered the cause of the clouds being frightened away: our unlucky rain-gauge in the garden. we got a bad name through that same rain-gauge, and were regarded by many as a species of evil omen. the makololo in turn blamed the people of tette for drought: "a number of witches live here, who won't let it rain." africans in general are sufficiently superstitious, but those of tette are in this particular pre-eminent above their fellows. coming from many different tribes, all the rays of the separate superstitions converge into a focus at tette, and burn out common sense from the minds of the mixed breed. they believe that many evil spirits live in the air, the earth, and the water. these invisible malicious beings are thought to inflict much suffering on the human race; but, as they have a weakness for beer and a craving for food, they may be propitiated from time to time by offerings of meat and drink. the serpent is an object of worship, and hideous little images are hung in the huts of the sick and dying. the uncontaminated africans believe that morungo, the great spirit who formed all things, lives above the stars; but they never pray to him, and know nothing of their relation to him, or of his interest in them. the spirits of their departed ancestors are all good, according to their ideas, and on special occasions aid them in their enterprises. when a man has his hair cut, he is careful to burn it, or bury it secretly, lest, falling into the hands of one who has an evil eye, or is a witch, it should be used as a charm to afflict him with headache. they believe, too, that they will live after the death of the body, but do not know anything of the state of the barimo (gods, or departed spirits). the mango-tree grows luxuriantly above lupata, and furnishes a grateful shade. its delicious fruit is superior to that on the coast. for weeks the natives who have charge of the mangoes live entirely on the fruit, and, as some trees bear in november and some in march, while the main crop comes between, fruit in abundance may easily be obtained during four months of the year; but no native can be induced to plant a mango. a wide-spread superstition has become riveted in the native mind, that if any one plants this tree he will soon die. the makololo, like other natives, were very fond of the fruit; but when told to take up some mango- stones, on their return, and plant them in their own country--they too having become deeply imbued with the belief that it was a suicidal act to do so--replied "they did not wish to die too soon." there is also a superstition even among the native portuguese of tette, that if a man plants coffee he will never afterwards be happy: they drink it, however, and seem the happier for it. the portuguese of tette have many slaves, with all the usual vices of their class, as theft, lying, and impurity. as a general rule the real portuguese are tolerably humane masters and rarely treat a slave cruelly; this may be due as much to natural kindness of heart as to a fear of losing the slaves by their running away. when they purchase an adult slave they buy at the same time, if possible, all his relations along with him. they thus contrive to secure him to his new home by domestic ties. running away then would be to forsake all who hold a place in his heart, for the mere chance of acquiring a freedom, which would probably be forfeited on his entrance into the first native village, for the chief might, without compunction, again sell him into slavery. a rather singular case of voluntary slavery came to our knowledge: a free black, an intelligent active young fellow, called chibanti, who had been our pilot on the river, told us that he had sold himself into slavery. on asking why he had done this, he replied that he was all alone in the world, had neither father nor mother, nor any one else to give him water when sick, or food when hungry; so he sold himself to major sicard, a notoriously kind master, whose slaves had little to do, and plenty to eat. "and how much did you get for yourself?" we asked. "three thirty- yard pieces of cotton cloth," he replied; "and i forthwith bought a man, a woman, and child, who cost me two of the pieces, and i had one piece left." this, at all events, showed a cool and calculating spirit; he afterwards bought more slaves, and in two years owned a sufficient number to man one of the large canoes. his master subsequently employed him in carrying ivory to quillimane, and gave him cloth to hire mariners for the voyage; he took his own slaves, of course, and thus drove a thriving business; and was fully convinced that he had made a good speculation by the sale of himself, for had he been sick his master must have supported him. occasionally some of the free blacks become slaves voluntarily by going through the simple but significant ceremony of breaking a spear in the presence of their future master. a portuguese officer, since dead, persuaded one of the makololo to remain in tette, instead of returning to his own country, and tried also to induce him to break a spear before him, and thus acknowledge himself his slave, but the man was too shrewd for this; he was a great elephant doctor, who accompanied the hunters, told them when to attack the huge beast, and gave them medicine to ensure success. unlike the real portuguese, many of the half-castes are merciless slave-holders; their brutal treatment of the wretched slaves is notorious. what a humane native of portugal once said of them is appropriate if not true: "god made white men, and god made black men, but the devil made half-castes." the officers and merchants send parties of slaves under faithful headmen to hunt elephants and to trade in ivory, providing them with a certain quantity of cloth, beads, etc., and requiring so much ivory in return. these slaves think that they have made a good thing of it, when they kill an elephant near a village, as the natives give them beer and meal in exchange for some of the elephant's meat, and over every tusk that is brought there is expended a vast amount of time, talk, and beer. most of the africans are natural-born traders, they love trade more for the sake of trading than for what they make by it. an intelligent gentleman of tette told us that native traders often come to him with a tusk for sale, consider the price he offers, demand more, talk over it, retire to consult about it, and at length go away without selling it; next day they try another merchant, talk, consider, get puzzled and go off as on the previous day, and continue this course daily until they have perhaps seen every merchant in the village, and then at last end by selling the precious tusk to some one for even less than the first merchant had offered. their love of dawdling in the transaction arises from the self- importance conferred on them by their being the object of the wheedling and coaxing of eager merchants, a feeling to which even the love of gain is subordinate. the native medical profession is reasonably well represented. in addition to the regular practitioners, who are a really useful class, and know something of their profession, and the nature and power of certain medicines, there are others who devote their talents to some speciality. the elephant doctor prepares a medicine which is considered indispensable to the hunters when attacking that noble and sagacious beast; no hunter is willing to venture out before investing in this precious nostrum. the crocodile doctor sells a charm which is believed to possess the singular virtue of protecting its owner from crocodiles. unwittingly we offended the crocodile school of medicine while at tette, by shooting one of these huge reptiles as it lay basking in the sun on a sandbank; the doctors came to the makololo in wrath, clamouring to know why the white man had shot their crocodile. a shark's hook was baited one evening with a dog, of which the crocodile is said to be particularly fond; but the doctors removed the bait, on the principle that the more crocodiles the more demand for medicine, or perhaps because they preferred to eat the dog themselves. many of the natives of this quarter are known, as in the south seas, to eat the dog without paying any attention to its feeding. the dice doctor or diviner is an important member of the community, being consulted by portuguese and natives alike. part of his business is that of a detective, it being his duty to discover thieves. when goods are stolen, he goes and looks at the place, casts his dice, and waits a few days, and then, for a consideration, tells who is the thief: he is generally correct, for he trusts not to his dice alone; he has confidential agents all over the village, by whose inquiries and information he is enabled to detect the culprit. since the introduction of muskets, gun doctors have sprung up, and they sell the medicine which professes to make good marksmen; others are rain doctors, etc., etc. the various schools deal in little charms, which are hung round the purchaser's neck to avert evil: some of them contain the medicine, others increase its power. indigo, about three or four feet high, grows in great luxuriance in the streets of tette, and so does the senna plant. the leaves are undistinguishable from those imported in england. a small amount of first-rate cotton is cultivated by the native population for the manufacture of a coarse cloth. a neighbouring tribe raises the sugar- cane, and makes a little sugar; but they use most primitive wooden rollers, and having no skill in mixing lime with the extracted juice, the product is of course of very inferior quality. plenty of magnetic iron ore is found near tette, and coal also to any amount; a single cliff-seam measuring twenty-five feet in thickness. it was found to burn well in the steamer on the first trial. gold is washed for in the beds of rivers, within a couple of days of tette. the natives are fully aware of its value, but seldom search for it, and never dig deeper than four or five feet. they dread lest the falling in of the sand of the river's bed should bury them. in former times, when traders went with hundreds of slaves to the washings, the produce was considerable. it is now insignificant. the gold-producing lands have always been in the hands of independent tribes. deep cuttings near the sources of the gold-yielding streams seem never to have been tried here, as in california and australia, nor has any machinery been used save common wooden basins for washing. chapter ii. kebrabasa rapids--tette--african fever--exploration of the shire--discovery of lake shirwa. our curiosity had been so much excited by the reports we had heard of the kebrabasa rapids, that we resolved to make a short examination of them, and seized the opportunity of the zambesi being unusually low, to endeavour to ascertain their character while uncovered by the water. we reached them on the th of november. the country between tette and panda mokua, where navigation ends, is well wooded and hilly on both banks. panda mokua is a hill two miles below the rapids, capped with dolomite containing copper ore. conspicuous among the trees, for its gigantic size, and bark coloured exactly like egyptian syenite, is the burly baobab. it often makes the other trees of the forest look like mere bushes in comparison. a hollow one, already mentioned, is feet in circumference, another was , and some have been found on the west coast which measure feet. the lofty range of kebrabasa, consisting chiefly of conical hills, covered with scraggy trees, crosses the zambesi, and confines it within a narrow, rough, and rocky dell of about a quarter of a mile in breadth; over this, which may be called the flood-bed of the river, large masses of rock are huddled in indescribable confusion. the drawing, for the use of which, and of others, our thanks are due to lord russell, conveys but a faint idea of the scene, inasmuch as the hills which confine the river do not appear in the sketch. the chief rock is syenite, some portions of which have a beautiful blue tinge like _lapis lazuli_ diffused through them; others are grey. blocks of granite also abound, of a pinkish tinge; and these with metamorphic rocks, contorted, twisted, and thrown into every conceivable position, afford a picture of dislocation or unconformability which would gladden a geological lecturer's heart; but at high flood this rough channel is all smoothed over, and it then conforms well with the river below it, which is half a mile wide. in the dry season the stream runs at the bottom of a narrow and deep groove, whose sides are polished and fluted by the boiling action of the water in flood, like the rims of ancient eastern wells by the draw-ropes. the breadth of the groove is often not more than from forty to sixty yards, and it has some sharp turnings, double channels, and little cataracts in it. as we steamed up, the masts of the "ma robert," though some thirty feet high, did not reach the level of the flood-channel above, and the man in the chains sung out, "no bottom at ten fathoms." huge pot-holes, as large as draw-wells, had been worn in the sides, and were so deep that in some instances, when protected from the sun by overhanging boulders, the water in them was quite cool. some of these holes had been worn right through, and only the side next the rock remained; while the sides of the groove of the flood-channel were polished as smooth as if they had gone through the granite-mills of aberdeen. the pressure of the water must be enormous to produce this polish. it had wedged round pebbles into chinks and crannies of the rocks so firmly that, though they looked quite loose, they could not be moved except with a hammer. the mighty power of the water here seen gave us an idea of what is going on in thousands of cataracts in the world. all the information we had been able to obtain from our portuguese friends amounted to this, that some three or four detached rocks jutted out of the river in kebrabasa, which, though dangerous to the cumbersome native canoes, could be easily passed by a steamer, and that if one or two of these obstructions were blasted away with gunpowder, no difficulty would hereafter be experienced. after we had painfully explored seven or eight miles of the rapid, we returned to the vessel satisfied that much greater labour was requisite for the mere examination of the cataracts than our friends supposed necessary to remove them; we therefore went down the river for fresh supplies, and made preparation for a more serious survey of this region. the steamer having returned from the bar, we set out on the nd of november to examine the rapids of kebrabasa. we reached the foot of the hills again, late in the afternoon of the th, and anchored in the stream. canoe-men never sleep on the river, but always spend the night on shore. the natives on the right bank, in the country called shidima, who are banyai, and even at this short distance from tette, independent, and accustomed to lord it over portuguese traders, wondered what could be our object in remaining afloat, and were naturally suspicious at our departing from the universal custom. they hailed us from the bank in the evening with "why don't you come and sleep onshore like other people?" the answer they received from our makololo, who now felt as independent as the banyai, was, "we are held to the bottom with iron; you may see we are not like your bazungu." this hint, a little amplified, saved us from the usual exactions. it is pleasant to give a present, but that pleasure the banyai usually deny to strangers by making it a fine, and demanding it in such a supercilious way, that only a sorely cowed trader could bear it. they often refuse to touch what is offered--throw it down and leave it--sneer at the trader's slaves, and refuse a passage until the tribute is raised to the utmost extent of his means. leaving the steamer next morning, we proceeded on foot, accompanied by a native portuguese and his men and a dozen makololo, who carried our baggage. the morning was pleasant, the hills on our right furnished for a time a delightful shade; but before long the path grew frightfully rough, and the hills no longer shielded us from the blazing sun. scarcely a vestige of a track was now visible; and, indeed, had not our guide assured us to the contrary, we should have been innocent of even the suspicion of a way along the patches of soft yielding sand, and on the great rocks over which we so painfully clambered. these rocks have a singular appearance, from being dislocated and twisted in every direction, and covered with a thin black glaze, as if highly polished and coated with lamp-black varnish. this seems to have been deposited while the river was in flood, for it covers only those rocks which lie between the highest water-mark and a line about four feet above the lowest. travellers who have visited the rapids of the orinoco and the congo say that the rocks there have a similar appearance, and it is attributed to some deposit from the water, formed only when the current is strong. this may account for it in part here, as it prevails only where the narrow river is confined between masses of rock, backed by high hills, and where the current in floods is known to be the strongest; and it does not exist where the rocks are only on one side, with a sandy beach opposite, and a broad expanse of river between. the hot rocks burnt the thick soles of our men's feet, and sorely fatigued ourselves. our first day's march did not exceed four miles in a straight line, and that we found more than enough to be pleasant. the state of insecurity in which the badema tribe live is indicated by the habit of hiding their provisions in the hills, and keeping only a small quantity in their huts; they strip a particular species of tree of its bitter bark, to which both mice and monkeys are known to have an antipathy, and, turning the bark inside out, sew it into cylindrical vessels for their grain, and bury them in holes and in crags on the wooded hill-sides. by this means, should a marauding party plunder their huts, they save a supply of corn. they "could give us no information, and they had no food; chisaka's men had robbed them a few weeks before." "never mind," said our native portuguese, "they will sell you plenty when you return, they are afraid of you now, as yet they do not know who you are." we slept under trees in the open air, and suffered no inconvenience from either mosquitoes or dew: and no prowling wild beast troubled us; though one evening, while we were here, a native sitting with some others on the opposite bank was killed by a leopard. one of the tette slaves, who wished to be considered a great traveller, gave us, as we sat by our evening fire, an interesting account of a strange race of men whom he had seen in the interior; they were only three feet high, and had horns growing out of their heads; they lived in a large town and had plenty of food. the makololo pooh-poohed this story, and roundly told the narrator that he was telling a downright lie. "_we_ come from the interior," cried out a tall fellow, measuring some six feet four, "are _we_ dwarfs? have _we_ horns on our heads?" and thus they laughed the fellow to scorn. but he still stoutly maintained that he had seen these little people, and had actually been in their town; thus making himself the hero of the traditional story, which before and since the time of herodotus has, with curious persistency, clung to the native mind. the mere fact that such absurd notions are permanent, even in the entire absence of literature, invests the religious ideas of these people also with importance, as fragments of the wreck of the primitive faith floating down the stream of time. we waded across the rapid luia, which took us up to the waist, and was about forty yards wide. the water was discoloured at the time, and we were not without apprehension that a crocodile might chance to fancy a white man for dinner. next day one of the men crawled over the black rocks to within ten yards of a sleeping hippopotamus, and shot him through the brain. the weather being warm, the body floated in a few hours, and some of us had our first trial of hippopotamus flesh. it is a cross-grained meat, something between pork and beef,--pretty good food when one is hungry and can get nothing better. when we reached the foot of the mountain named chipereziwa, whose perpendicular rocky sides are clothed with many-coloured lichens, our portuguese companion informed us there were no more obstructions to navigation, the river being all smooth above; he had hunted there and knew it well. supposing that the object of our trip was accomplished we turned back; but two natives, who came to our camp at night, assured us that a cataract, called morumbwa, did still exist in front. drs. livingstone and kirk then decided to go forward with three makololo and settle the question for themselves. it was as tough a bit of travel as they ever had in africa, and after some painful marching the badema guides refused to go further; "the banyai," they said, "would be angry if they showed white men the country; and there was besides no practicable approach to the spot, neither elephant, nor hippopotamus, nor even a crocodile could reach the cataract." the slopes of the mountains on each side of the river, now not yards wide, and without the flattish flood-channel and groove, were more than feet from the sky-line down, and were covered either with dense thornbush or huge black boulders; this deep trough-like shape caused the sun's rays to converge as into a focus, making the surface so hot that the soles of the feet of the makololo became blistered. around, and up and down, the party clambered among these heated blocks, at a pace not exceeding a mile an hour; the strain upon the muscles in jumping from crag to boulder, and wriggling round projections, took an enormous deal out of them, and they were often glad to cower in the shadow formed by one rock overhanging and resting on another; the shelter induced the peculiarly strong and overpowering inclination to sleep, which too much sun sometimes causes. this sleep is curative of what may be incipient sunstroke: in its first gentle touches, it caused the dream to flit over the boiling brain, that they had become lunatics and had been sworn in as members of the alpine club; and then it became so heavy that it made them feel as if a portion of existence had been cut out from their lives. the sun is excessively hot, and feels sharp in africa; but, probably from the greater dryness of the atmosphere, we never heard of a single case of sunstroke, so common in india. the makololo told dr. livingstone they "always thought he had a heart, but now they believed he had none," and tried to persuade dr. kirk to return, on the ground that it must be evident that, in attempting to go where no living foot could tread, his leader had given unmistakeable signs of having gone mad. all their efforts of persuasion, however, were lost upon dr. kirk, as he had not yet learned their language, and his leader, knowing his companion to be equally anxious with himself to solve the problem of the navigableness of kebrabasa, was not at pains to enlighten him. at one part a bare mountain spur barred the way, and had to be surmounted by a perilous and circuitous route, along which the crags were so hot that it was scarcely possible for the hand to hold on long enough to ensure safety in the passage; and had the foremost of the party lost his hold, he would have hurled all behind him into the river at the foot of the promontory; yet in this wild hot region, as they descended again to the river, they met a fisherman casting his hand-net into the boiling eddies, and he pointed out the cataract of morumbwa; within an hour they were trying to measure it from an overhanging rock, at a height of about one hundred feet. when you stand facing the cataract, on the north bank, you see that it is situated in a sudden bend of the river, which is flowing in a short curve; the river above it is jammed between two mountains in a channel with perpendicular sides, and less than fifty yards wide; one or two masses of rock jut out, and then there is a sloping fall of perhaps twenty feet in a distance of thirty yards. it would stop all navigation, except during the highest floods; the rocks showed that the water then rises upwards of eighty feet perpendicularly. still keeping the position facing the cataract, on its right side rises mount morumbwa from to feet high, which gives the name to the spot. on the left of the cataract stands a noticeable mountain which may be called onion-shaped, for it is partly conical and a large concave flake has peeled off, as granite often does, and left a broad, smooth convex face as if it were an enormous bulb. these two mountains extend their bases northwards about half a mile, and the river in that distance, still very narrow, is smooth, with a few detached rocks standing out from its bed. they climbed as high up the base of mount morumbwa, which touches the cataract, as they required. the rocks were all water-worn and smooth, with huge potholes, even at feet above low water. when at a later period they climbed up the north-western base of this same mountain, the familiar face of the onion-shaped one opposite was at once recognised; one point of view on the talus of mount morumbwa was not more than or yards distant from the other, and they then completed the survey of kebrabasa from end to end. they did not attempt to return by the way they came, but scaled the slope of the mountain on the north. it took them three hours' hard labour in cutting their way up through the dense thornbush which covered the ascent. the face of the slope was often about an angle of degrees, yet their guide shokumbenla, whose hard, horny soles, resembling those of elephants, showed that he was accustomed to this rough and hot work, carried a pot of water for them nearly all the way up. they slept that night at a well in a tufaceous rock on the n.w. of chipereziwa, and never was sleep more sweet. a band of native musicians came to our camp one evening, on our own way down, and treated us with their wild and not unpleasant music on the marimba, an instrument formed of bars of hard wood of varying breadth and thickness, laid on different-sized hollow calabashes, and tuned to give the notes; a few pieces of cloth pleased them, and they passed on. the rainy season of tette differs a little from that of some of the other intertropical regions; the quantity of rain-fall being considerably less. it begins in november and ends in april. during our first season in that place, only a little over nineteen inches of rain fell. in an average year, and when the crops are good, the fall amounts to about thirty-five inches. on many days it does not rain at all, and rarely is it wet all day; some days have merely a passing shower, preceded and followed by hot sunshine; occasionally an interval of a week, or even a fortnight, passes without a drop of rain, and then the crops suffer from the sun. these partial droughts happen in december and january. the heat appears to increase to a certain point in the different latitudes so as to necessitate a change, by some law similar to that which regulates the intense cold in other countries. after several days of progressive heat here, on the hottest of which the thermometer probably reaches degrees in the shade, a break occurs in the weather, and a thunderstorm cools the air for a time. at kuruman, when the thermometer stood above degrees, rain might be expected; at kolobeng, the point at which we looked for a storm was degrees. the zambesi is in flood twice in the course of the year; the first flood, a partial one, attains its greatest height about the end of december or beginning of january; the second, and greatest, occurs after the river inundates the interior, in a manner similar to the overflow of the nile, this rise not taking place at tette until march. the portuguese say that the greatest height which the march floods attain is thirty feet at tette, and this happens only about every fourth year; their observations, however, have never been very accurate on anything but ivory, and they have in this case trusted to memory alone. the only fluviometer at tette, or anywhere else on the river, was set up at our suggestion; and the first flood was at its greatest height of thirteen feet six inches on the th january, , and then gradually fell a few feet, until succeeded by the greater flood of march. the river rises suddenly, the water is highly discoloured and impure, and there is a four-knot current in many places; but in a day or two after the first rush of waters is passed, the current becomes more equally spread over the whole bed of the river, and resumes its usual rate in the channel, although continuing in flood. the zambesi water at other times is almost chemically pure, and the photographer would find that it is nearly as good as distilled water for the nitrate of silver bath. a third visit to kebrabasa was made for the purpose of ascertaining whether it might be navigable when the zambesi was in flood, the chief point of interest being of course morumbwa; it was found that the rapids observed in our first trip had disappeared, and that while they were smoothed over, in a few places the current had increased in strength. as the river fell rapidly while we were on the journey, the cataract of morumbwa did not differ materially from what it was when discovered. some fishermen assured us that it was not visible when the river was at its fullest, and that the current was then not very strong. on this occasion we travelled on the right bank, and found it, with the additional inconvenience of rain, as rough and fatiguing as the left had been. our progress was impeded by the tall wet grass and dripping boughs, and consequent fever. during the earlier part of the journey we came upon a few deserted hamlets only; but at last in a pleasant valley we met some of the people of the country, who were miserably poor and hungry. the women were gathering wild fruits in the woods. a young man having consented for two yards of cotton cloth to show us a short path to the cataract led us up a steep hill to a village perched on the edge of one of its precipices; a thunderstorm coming on at the time, the headman invited us to take shelter in a hut until it had passed. our guide having informed him of what he knew and conceived to be our object, was favoured in return with a long reply in well-sounding blank verse; at the end of every line the guide, who listened with deep attention, responded with a grunt, which soon became so ludicrous that our men burst into a loud laugh. neither the poet nor the responsive guide took the slightest notice of their rudeness, but kept on as energetically as ever to the end. the speech, or more probably our bad manners, made some impression on our guide, for he declined, although offered double pay, to go any further. a great deal of fever comes in with march and april; in march, if considerable intervals take place between the rainy days, and in april always, for then large surfaces of mud and decaying vegetation are exposed to the hot sun. in general an attack does not continue long, but it pulls one down quickly; though when the fever is checked the strength is as quickly restored. it had long been observed that those who were stationed for any length of time in one spot, and lived sedentary lives, suffered more from fever than others who moved about and had both mind and body occupied; but we could not all go in the small vessel when she made her trips, during which the change of place and scenery proved so conducive to health; and some of us were obliged to remain in charge of the expedition's property, making occasional branch trips to examine objects of interest in the vicinity. whatever may be the cause of the fever, we observed that all were often affected at the same time, as if from malaria. this was particularly the case during a north wind: it was at first commonly believed that a daily dose of quinine would prevent the attack. for a number of months all our men, except two, took quinine regularly every morning. the fever some times attacked the believers in quinine, while the unbelievers in its prophylactic powers escaped. whether we took it daily, or omitted it altogether for months, made no difference; the fever was impartial, and seized us on the days of quinine as regularly and as severely as when it remained undisturbed in the medicine chest, and we finally abandoned the use of it as a prophylactic altogether. the best preventive against fever is plenty of interesting work to do, and abundance of wholesome food to eat. to a man well housed and clothed, who enjoys these advantages, the fever at tette will not prove a more formidable enemy than a common cold; but let one of these be wanting--let him be indolent, or guilty of excesses in eating or drinking, or have poor, scanty fare,--and the fever will probably become a more serious matter. it is of a milder type at tette than at quillimane or on the low sea-coast; and, as in this part of africa one is as liable to fever as to colds in england, it would be advisable for strangers always to hasten from the coast to the high lands, in order that when the seizure does take place, it may be of the mildest type. although quinine was not found to be a preventive, except possibly in the way of acting as a tonic, and rendering the system more able to resist the influence of malaria, it was found invaluable in the cure of the complaint, as soon as pains in the back, sore bones, headache, yawning, quick and sometimes intermittent pulse, noticeable pulsations of the jugulars, with suffused eyes, hot skin, and foul tongue, began. { } very curious are the effects of african fever on certain minds. cheerfulness vanishes, and the whole mental horizon is overcast with black clouds of gloom and sadness. the liveliest joke cannot provoke even the semblance of a smile. the countenance is grave, the eyes suffused, and the few utterances are made in the piping voice of a wailing infant. an irritable temper is often the first symptom of approaching fever. at such times a man feels very much like a fool, if he does not act like one. nothing is right, nothing pleases the fever- stricken victim. he is peevish, prone to find fault and to contradict, and think himself insulted, and is exactly what an irish naval surgeon before a court-martial defined a drunken man to be: "a man unfit for society." finding that it was impossible to take our steamer of only ten-horse power through kebrabasa, and convinced that, in order to force a passage when the river was in flood, much greater power was required, due information was forwarded to her majesty's government, and application made for a more suitable vessel. our attention was in the mean time turned to the exploration of the river shire, a northern tributary of the zambesi, which joins it about a hundred miles from the sea. we could learn nothing satisfactory from the portuguese regarding this affluent; no one, they said, had ever been up it, nor could they tell whence it came. years ago a portuguese expedition is said, however, to have attempted the ascent, but to have abandoned it on account of the impenetrable duckweed (_pistia stratiotes_.) we could not learn from any record that the shire had ever been ascended by europeans. as far, therefore, as we were concerned, the exploration was absolutely new. all the portuguese believed the manganja to be brave but bloodthirsty savages; and on our return we found that soon after our departure a report was widely spread that our temerity had been followed by fatal results, dr. livingstone having been shot, and dr. kirk mortally wounded by poisoned arrows. our first trip to the shire was in january, . a considerable quantity of weed floated down the river for the first twenty-five miles, but not sufficient to interrupt navigation with canoes or with any other craft. nearly the whole of this aquatic plant proceeds from a marsh on the west, and comes into the river a little beyond a lofty hill called mount morambala. above that there is hardly any. as we approached the villages, the natives collected in large numbers, armed with bows and poisoned arrows; and some, dodging behind trees, were observed taking aim as if on the point of shooting. all the women had been sent out of the way, and the men were evidently prepared to resist aggression. at the village of a chief named tingane, at least five hundred natives collected and ordered us to stop. dr. livingstone went ashore; and on his explaining that we were english and had come neither to take slaves nor to fight, but only to open a path by which our countrymen might follow to purchase cotton, or whatever else they might have to sell, except slaves, tingane became at once quite friendly. the presence of the steamer, which showed that they had an entirely new people to deal with, probably contributed to this result; for tingane was notorious for being the barrier to all intercourse between the portuguese black traders and the natives further inland; none were allowed to pass him either way. he was an elderly, well-made man, grey-headed, and over six feet high. though somewhat excited by our presence, he readily complied with the request to call his people together, in order that all might know what our objects were. in commencing intercourse with any people we almost always referred to the english detestation of slavery. most of them already possess some information respecting the efforts made by the english at sea to suppress the slave-trade; and our work being to induce them to raise and sell cotton, instead of capturing and selling their fellow-men, our errand appears quite natural; and as they all have clear ideas of their own self- interest, and are keen traders, the reasonableness of the proposal is at once admitted; and as a belief in a supreme being, the maker and ruler of all things, and in the continued existence of departed spirits, is universal, it becomes quite appropriate to explain that we possess a book containing a revelation of the will of him to whom in their natural state they recognise no relationship. the fact that his son appeared among men, and left his words in his book, always awakens attention; but the great difficulty is to make them feel that they have any relationship to him, and that he feels any interest in them. the numbness of moral perception exhibited, is often discouraging; but the mode of communication, either by interpreters, or by the imperfect knowledge of the language, which not even missionaries of talent can overcome save by the labour of many years, may, in part, account for the phenomenon. however, the idea of the father of all being displeased with his children, for selling or killing each other, at once gains their ready assent: it harmonizes so exactly with their own ideas of right and wrong. but, as in our own case at home, nothing less than the instruction and example of many years will secure their moral elevation. the dialect spoken here closely resembles that used at senna and tette. we understood it at first only enough to know whether our interpreter was saying what we bade him, or was indulging in his own version. after stating pretty nearly what he was told, he had an inveterate tendency to wind up with "the book says you are to grow cotton, and the english are to come and buy it," or with some joke of his own, which might have been ludicrous, had it not been seriously distressing. in the first ascent of the shire our attention was chiefly directed to the river itself. the delight of threading out the meanderings of upwards of miles of a hitherto unexplored river must be felt to be appreciated. all the lower part of the river was found to be at least two fathoms in depth. it became shallower higher up, where many departing and re-entering branches diminished the volume of water, but the absence of sandbanks made it easy of navigation. we had to exercise the greatest care lest anything we did should be misconstrued by the crowds who watched us. after having made, in a straight line, one hundred miles, although the windings of the river had fully doubled the distance, we found further progress with the steamer arrested, in degrees minutes south, by magnificent cataracts, which we called, "the murchison," after one whose name has already a world-wide fame, and whose generous kindness we can never repay. the native name of that figured in the woodcut is mamvira. it is that at which the progress of the steamer was first stopped. the angle of descent is much smaller than that of the five cataracts above it; indeed, so small as compared with them, that after they were discovered this was not included in the number. a few days were spent here in the hope that there might be an opportunity of taking observations for longitude, but it rained most of the time, or the sky was overcast. it was deemed imprudent to risk a land journey whilst the natives were so very suspicious as to have a strong guard on the banks of the river night and day; the weather also was unfavourable. after sending presents and messages to two of the chiefs, we returned to tette. in going down stream our progress was rapid, as we were aided by the current. the hippopotami never made a mistake, but got out of our way. the crocodiles, not so wise, sometimes rushed with great velocity at us, thinking that we were some huge animal swimming. they kept about a foot from the surface, but made three well-defined ripples from the feet and body, which marked their rapid progress; raising the head out of the water when only a few yards from the expected feast, down they went to the bottom like a stone, without touching the boat. in the middle of march of the same year ( ), we started again for a second trip on the shire. the natives were now friendly, and readily sold us rice, fowls, and corn. we entered into amicable relations with the chief, chibisa, whose village was about ten miles below the cataract. he had sent two men on our first visit to invite us to drink beer; but the steamer was such a terrible apparition to them, that, after shouting the invitation, they jumped ashore, and left their canoe to drift down the stream. chibisa was a remarkably shrewd man, the very image, save his dark hue, of one of our most celebrated london actors, { } and the most intelligent chief, by far, in this quarter. a great deal of fighting had fallen to his lot, he said; but it was always others who began; he was invariably in the right, and they alone were to blame. he was moreover a firm believer in the divine right of kings. he was an ordinary man, he said, when his father died, and left him the chieftainship; but directly he succeeded to the high office, he was conscious of power passing into his head, and down his back; he felt it enter, and knew that he was a chief, clothed with authority, and possessed of wisdom; and people then began to fear and reverence him. he mentioned this, as one would a fact of natural history, any doubt being quite out of the question. his people, too, believed in him, for they bathed in the river without the slightest fear of crocodiles, the chief having placed a powerful medicine there, which protected them from the bite of these terrible reptiles. leaving the vessel opposite chibisa's village, drs. livingstone and kirk and a number of the makololo started on foot for lake shirwa. they travelled in a northerly direction over a mountainous country. the people were far from being well-disposed to them, and some of their guides tried to mislead them, and could not be trusted. masakasa, a makololo headman, overheard some remarks which satisfied him that the guide was leading them into trouble. he was quiet till they reached a lonely spot, when he came up to dr. livingstone, and said, "that fellow is bad, he is taking us into mischief; my spear is sharp, and there is no one here; shall i cast him into the long grass?" had the doctor given the slightest token of assent, or even kept silence, never more would any one have been led by that guide, for in a twinkling he would have been where "the wicked cease from troubling." it was afterwards found that in this case there was no treachery at all, but a want of knowledge on their part of the language and of the country. they asked to be led to "nyanja mukulu," or great lake, meaning, by this, lake shirwa; and the guide took them round a terribly rough piece of mountainous country, gradually edging away towards a long marsh, which from the numbers of those animals we had seen there we had called the elephant marsh, but which was really the place known to him by the name "nyanja mukulu," or great lake. nyanja or nyanza means, generally, a marsh, lake, river, or even a mere rivulet. the party pushed on at last without guides, or only with crazy ones; for, oddly enough, they were often under great obligations to the madmen of the different villages: one of these honoured them, as they slept in the open air, by dancing and singing at their feet the whole night. these poor fellows sympathized with the explorers, probably in the belief that they belonged to their own class; and, uninfluenced by the general opinion of their countrymen, they really pitied, and took kindly to the strangers, and often guided them faithfully from place to place, when no sane man could be hired for love or money. the bearing of the manganja at this time was very independent; a striking contrast to the cringing attitude they afterwards assumed, when the cruel scourge of slave-hunting passed over their country. signals were given from the different villages by means of drums, and notes of defiance and intimidation were sounded in the travellers' ears by day; and occasionally they were kept awake the whole night, in expectation of an instant attack. drs. livingstone and kirk were desirous that nothing should occur to make the natives regard them as enemies; masakasa, on the other hand, was anxious to show what he could do in the way of fighting them. the perseverance of the party was finally crowned with success; for on the th of april they discovered lake shirwa, a considerable body of bitter water, containing leeches, fish, crocodiles, and hippopotami. from having probably no outlet, the water is slightly brackish, and it appears to be deep, with islands like hills rising out of it. their point of view was at the base of mount pirimiti or mopeu-peu, on its s.s.w. side. thence the prospect northwards ended in a sea horizon with two small islands in the distance--a larger one, resembling a hill-top and covered with trees, rose more in the foreground. ranges of hills appeared on the east; and on the west stood mount chikala, which seems to be connected with the great mountain-mass called zomba. the shore, near which they spent two nights, was covered with reeds and papyrus. wishing to obtain the latitude by the natural horizon, they waded into the water some distance towards what was reported to be a sandbank, but were so assaulted by leeches, they were fain to retreat; and a woman told them that in enticing them into the water the men only wanted to kill them. the information gathered was that this lake was nothing in size compared to another in the north, from which it is separated by only a tongue of land. the northern end of shirwa has not been seen, though it has been passed; the length of the lake may probably be or miles, and about broad. the height above the sea is feet, and the taste of the water is like a weak solution of epsom salts. the country around is very beautiful, and clothed with rich vegetation; and the waves, at the time they were there breaking and foaming over a rock on the south-eastern side, added to the beauty of the picture. exceedingly lofty mountains, perhaps feet above the sea-level, stand near the eastern shore. when their lofty steep-sided summits appear, some above, some below the clouds, the scene is grand. this range is called milanje; on the west stands mount zomba, feet in height, and some twenty miles long. their object being rather to gain the confidence of the people by degrees than to explore, they considered that they had advanced far enough into the country for one trip; and believing that they could secure their end by a repetition of their visit, as they had done on the shire, they decided to return to the vessel at dakanamoio island; but, instead of returning by the way they came, they passed down southwards close by mount chiradzuru, among the relatives of chibisa, and thence by the pass zedi, down to the shire. the kroomen had, while we were away, cut a good supply of wood for steaming, and we soon proceeded down the river. the steamer reached tette on the rd of june, and, after undergoing repairs, proceeded to the kongone to receive provisions from one of h.m. cruisers. we had been very abundantly supplied with first-rate stores, but were unfortunate enough to lose a considerable portion of them, and had now to bear the privation as best we could. on the way down, we purchased a few gigantic cabbages and pumpkins at a native village below mazaro. our dinners had usually consisted of but a single course; but we were surprised the next day by our black cook from sierra leone bearing in a second course. "what have you got there?" was asked in wonder. "a tart, sir." "a tart! of what is it made?" "of cabbage, sir." as we had no sugar, and could not "make believe," as in the days of boyhood, we did not enjoy the feast that tom's genius had prepared. her majesty's brig "persian," lieutenant saumarez commanding, called on her way to the cape; and, though somewhat short of provisions herself, generously gave us all she could spare. we now parted with our kroomen, as, from their inability to march, we could not use them in our land journeys. a crew was picked out from the makololo, who, besides being good travellers, could cut wood, work the ship, and required only native food. while at the kongone it was found necessary to beach the steamer for repairs. she was built of a newly invented sort of steel plates, only a sixteenth of an inch in thickness, patented, but unfortunately never tried before. to build an exploring ship of untried material was a mistake. some chemical action on this preparation of steel caused a minute hole; from this point, branches like lichens, or the little ragged stars we sometimes see in thawing ice, radiated in all directions. small holes went through wherever a bend occurred in these branches. the bottom very soon became like a sieve, completely full of minute holes, which leaked perpetually. the engineer stopped the larger ones, but the vessel was no sooner afloat, than new ones broke out. the first news of a morning was commonly the unpleasant announcement of another leak in the forward compartment, or in the middle, which was worse still. frequent showers fell on our way up the zambesi, in the beginning of august. on the th we had upwards of three inches of rain, which large quantity, more than falls in any single rainy day during the season at tette, we owed to being near the sea. sometimes the cabin was nearly flooded; for, in addition to the leakage from below, rain poured through the roof, and an umbrella had to be used whenever we wished to write: the mode of coupling the compartments, too, was a new one, and the action of the hinder compartment on the middle one pumped up the water of the river, and sent it in streams over the floor and lockers, where lay the cushions which did double duty as chairs and beds. in trying to form an opinion of the climate, it must be recollected that much of the fever, from which we suffered, was caused by sleeping on these wet cushions. many of the botanical specimens, laboriously collected and carefully prepared by dr. kirk, were destroyed, or double work imposed, by their accidentally falling into wet places in the cabin. about the middle of august, after cutting wood at shamoara, we again steamed up the shire, with the intention of becoming better acquainted with the people, and making another and longer journey on foot to the north of lake shirwa, in search of lake nyassa, of which we had already received some information, under the name nyinyesi (the stars). the shire is much narrower than the zambesi, but deeper, and more easily navigated. it drains a low and exceedingly fertile valley of from fifteen to twenty miles in breadth. ranges of wooded hills bound this valley on both sides. for the first twenty miles the hills on the left bank are close to the river; then comes morambala, a detached mountain yards from the river's brink, which rises, with steep sides on the west, to feet in height, and is about seven miles in length. it is wooded up to the very top, and very beautiful. the southern end, seen from a distance, has a fine gradual slope, and looks as if it might be of easy ascent; but the side which faces the shire is steep and rocky, especially in the upper half. a small village peeps out about halfway up the mountain; it has a pure and bracing atmosphere; and is perched above mosquito range. the people on the summit have a very different climate and vegetation from those of the plains; but they have to spend a great portion of their existence amidst white fleecy clouds, which, in the rainy season, rest daily on the top of their favourite mountain. we were kindly treated by these mountaineers on our first ascent; before our second they were nearly all swept away by mariano. dr. kirk found upwards of thirty species of ferns on this and other mountains, and even good-sized tree-ferns; though scarcely a single kind is to be met with on the plains. lemon and orange trees grew wild, and pineapples had been planted by the people. many large hornbills, hawks, monkeys, antelopes, and rhinoceroses found a home and food among the great trees round its base. a hot fountain boils up on the plain near the north end. it bubbles out of the earth, clear as crystal, at two points, or eyes, a few yards apart from each other, and sends off a fine flowing stream of hot water. the temperature was found to be degrees fahr., and it boiled an egg in about the usual time. our guide threw in a small branch to show us how speedily the madse-awira (boiling water) could kill the leaves. unlucky lizards and insects did not seem to understand the nature of a hot-spring, as many of their remains were lying at the bottom. a large beetle had alighted on the water, and been killed before it had time to fold its wings. an incrustation, smelling of sulphur, has been deposited by the water on the stones. about a hundred feet from the eye of the fountain the mud is as hot as can be borne by the body. in taking a bath there, it makes the skin perfectly clean, and none of the mud adheres: it is strange that the portuguese do not resort to it for the numerous cutaneous diseases with which they are so often afflicted. a few clumps of the palm and acacia trees appear west of morambala, on the rich plain forming the tongue of land between the rivers shire and zambesi. this is a good place for all sorts of game. the zambesi canoe- men were afraid to sleep on it from the idea of lions being there; they preferred to pass the night on an island. some black men, who accompanied us as volunteer workmen from shupanga, called out one evening that a lion stood on the bank. it was very dark, and we could only see two sparkling lights, said to be the lion's eyes looking at us; for here, as elsewhere, they have a theory that the lion's eyes always flash fire at night. not being fireflies--as they did not move when a shot was fired in their direction--they were probably glowworms. beyond morambala the shire comes winding through an extensive marsh. for many miles to the north a broad sea of fresh green grass extends, and is so level, that it might be used for taking the meridian altitude of the sun. ten or fifteen miles north of morambala, stands the dome-shaped mountain makanga, or chi-kanda; several others with granitic-looking peaks stretch away to the north, and form the eastern boundary of the valley; another range, but of metamorphic rocks, commencing opposite senna, bounds the valley on the west. after streaming through a portion of this marsh, we came to a broad belt of palm and other trees, crossing the fine plain on the right bank. marks of large game were abundant. elephants had been feeding on the palm nuts, which have a pleasant fruity taste, and are used as food by man. two pythons were observed coiled together among the branches of a large tree, and were both shot. the larger of the two, a female, was ten feet long. they are harmless, and said to be good eating. the makololo having set fire to the grass where they were cutting wood, a solitary buffalo rushed out of the conflagration, and made a furious charge at an active young fellow named mantlanyane. never did his fleet limbs serve him better than during the few seconds of his fearful flight before the maddened animal. when he reached the bank, and sprang into the river, the infuriated beast was scarcely six feet behind him. towards evening, after the day's labour in wood-cutting was over, some of the men went fishing. they followed the common african custom of agitating the water, by giving it a few sharp strokes with the top of the fishing-rod, immediately after throwing in the line, to attract the attention of the fish to the bait. having caught nothing, the reason assigned was the same as would have been given in england under like circumstances, namely, that "the wind made the fish cold, and they would not bite." many gardens of maize, pumpkins, and tobacco, fringed the marshy banks as we went on. they belong to natives of the hills, who come down in the dry season, and raise a crop on parts at other times flooded. while the crops are growing, large quantities of fish are caught, chiefly _clarias capensis_, and _mugil africanus_; they are dried for sale or future consumption. as we ascended, we passed a deep stream about thirty yards wide, flowing in from a body of open water several miles broad. numbers of men were busy at different parts of it, filling their canoes with the lotus root, called _nyika_, which, when boiled or roasted, resembles our chestnuts, and is extensively used in africa as food. out of this lagoon, and by this stream, the chief part of the duckweed of the shire flows. the lagoon itself is called nyanja ea motope (lake of mud). it is also named nyanja pangono (little lake), while the elephant marsh goes by the name of nyanja mukulu (great lake). it is evident from the shore line still to be observed on the adjacent hills, that in ancient times these were really lakes, and the traditional names thus preserved are only another evidence of the general desiccation which africa has undergone. chapter iii. the steamer in difficulties--elephant hunting--arrival at chibisa's--search for lake nyassa--the manganja country--weavers and smelters--lake pamalombe. late in the afternoon of the first day's steaming, after we left the wooding-place, we called at the village of chikanda-kadze, a female chief, to purchase rice for our men; but we were now in the blissful region where time is absolutely of no account, and where men may sit down and rest themselves when tired; so they requested us to wait till next day, and they would then sell us some food. as our forty black men, however, had nothing to cook for supper, we were obliged to steam on to reach a village a few miles above. when we meet those who care not whether we purchase or let it alone, or who think men ought only to be in a hurry when fleeing from an enemy, our ideas about time being money, and the power of the purse, receives a shock. the state of eager competition, which in england wears out both mind and body, and makes life bitter, is here happily unknown. the cultivated spots are mere dots compared to the broad fields of rich soil which is never either grazed or tilled. pity that the plenty in store for all, from our father's bountiful hands, is not enjoyed by more. the wretched little steamer could not carry all the hands we needed; so, to lighten her, we put some into the boats and towed them astern. in the dark, one of the boats was capsized; but all in it, except one poor fellow who could not swim, were picked up. his loss threw a gloom over us all, and added to the chagrin we often felt at having been so ill-served in our sorry craft. next day we arrived at the village of mboma ( degrees minutes seconds s.), where the people raised large quantities of rice, and were eager traders; the rice was sold at wonderfully low rates, and we could not purchase a tithe of the food brought for sale. a native minstrel serenaded us in the evening, playing several quaint tunes on a species of one stringed fiddle, accompanied by wild, but not unmusical songs. he told the makololo that he intended to play all night to induce us to give him a present. the nights being cold, the thermometer falling to degrees, with occasional fogs, he was asked if he was not afraid of perishing from cold; but, with the genuine spirit of an italian organ-grinder, he replied, "oh, no; i shall spend the night with my white comrades in the big canoe; i have often heard of the white men, but have never seen them till now, and i must sing and play well to them." a small piece of cloth, however, bought him off, and he moved away in good humour. the water of the river was degrees at sunrise, which was degrees warmer than the air at the same time, and this caused fogs, which rose like steam off the river. when this is the case cold bathing in the mornings at this time of the year is improper, for, instead of a glow on coming out, one is apt to get a chill; the air being so much colder than the water. a range of hills, commencing opposite senna, comes to within two or three miles of mboma village, and then runs in a north-westerly direction; the principal hill is named malawe; a number of villages stand on its tree- covered sides, and coal is found cropping out in the rocks. the country improves as we ascend, the rich valley becoming less swampy, and adorned with a number of trees. both banks are dotted with hippopotamus traps, over every track which these animals have made in going up out of the water to graze. the hippopotamus feeds on grass alone, and, where there is any danger, only at night. its enormous lips act like a mowing-machine, and form a path of short-cropped grass as it feeds. we never saw it eat aquatic plants or reeds. the tusks seem weapons of both offence and defence. the hippopotamus trap consists of a beam five or six feet long, armed with a spear-head or hard-wood spike, covered with poison, and suspended to a forked pole by a cord, which, coming down to the path, is held by a catch, to be set free when the beast treads on it. being wary brutes, they are still very numerous. one got frightened by the ship, as she was steaming close to the bank. in its eager hurry to escape it rushed on shore, and ran directly under a trap, when down came the heavy beam on its back, driving the poisoned spear-head a foot deep into its flesh. in its agony it plunged back into the river, to die in a few hours, and afterwards furnished a feast for the natives. the poison on the spear- head does not affect the meat, except the part around the wound, and that is thrown away. in some places the descending beam is weighted with heavy stones, but here the hard heavy wood is sufficient. "she is leaking worse than ever forward, sir, and there is a foot of water in the hold," was our first salutation on the morning of the th. but we have become accustomed to these things now; the cabin-floor is always wet, and one is obliged to mop up the water many times a day, giving some countenance to the native idea that englishmen live in or on the water, and have no houses but ships. the cabin is now a favourite breeding-place for mosquitoes, and we have to support both the ship-bred and shore-bred bloodsuckers, of which several species show us their irritating attentions. a large brown sort, called by the portuguese _mansos_ (tame), flies straight to its victim, and goes to work at once, as though it were an invited guest. some of the small kinds carry uncommonly sharp lancets, and very potent poison. "what would these insects eat, if we did not pass this way?" becomes a natural question. the juices of plants, and decaying vegetable matter in the mud, probably form the natural food of mosquitoes, and blood is not necessary for their existence. they appear so commonly at malarious spots, that their presence may be taken as a hint to man to be off to more healthy localities. none appear on the high lands. on the low lands they swarm in myriads. the females alone are furnished with the biting apparatus, and their number appears to be out of all proportion in excess of the males. at anchor, on a still evening, they were excessively annoying; and the sooner we took refuge under our mosquito curtains, the better. the miserable and sleepless night that only one mosquito inside the curtain can cause, is so well known, and has been so often described, that it is needless to describe it here. one soon learns, from experience, that to beat out the curtains thoroughly before entering them, so that not one of these pests can possibly be harboured within, is the only safeguard against such severe trials to one's tranquillity and temper. a few miles above mboma we came again to the village ( degrees minutes seconds s.) of the chief tingane, the beat of whose war-drums can speedily muster some hundreds of armed men. the bows and poisoned arrows here are of superior workmanship to those below. mariano's slave- hunting parties stood in great awe of these barbed arrows, and long kept aloof from tingane's villages. his people were friendly enough with us now, and covered the banks with a variety of articles for sale. the majestic mountain, chipirone, to which we have given the name of mount clarendon, now looms in sight, and further to the n.w. the southern end of the grand milanje range rises in the form of an unfinished sphinx looking down on lake shirwa. the ruo ( degrees minutes seconds s.) is said to have its source in the milanje mountains, and flows to the s.w., to join the shire some distance above tingane's. a short way beyond the ruo lies the elephant marsh, or nyanja mukulu, which is frequented by vast herds of these animals. we believe that we counted eight hundred elephants in sight at once. in the choice of such a strong hold, they have shown their usual sagacity, for no hunter can get near them through the swamps. they now keep far from the steamer; but, when she first came up, we steamed into the midst of a herd, and some were shot from the ship's deck. a single lesson was sufficient to teach them that the steamer was a thing to be avoided; and at the first glimpse they are now off two or three miles to the midst of the marsh, which is furrowed in every direction by wandering branches of the shire. a fine young elephant was here caught alive, as he was climbing up the bank to follow his retreating dam. when laid hold of, he screamed with so much energy that, to escape a visit from the enraged mother, we steamed off, and dragged him through the water by the proboscis. as the men were holding his trunk over the gunwale, monga, a brave makololo elephant-hunter, rushed aft, and drew his knife across it in a sort of frenzy peculiar to the chase. the wound was skilfully sewn up, and the young animal soon became quite tame, but, unfortunately the breathing prevented the cut from healing, and he died in a few days from loss of blood. had he lived, and had we been able to bring him home, he would have been the first _african_ elephant ever seen in england. the african male elephant is from ten to a little over eleven feet in height, and differs from the asiatic species more particularly in the convex shape of his forehead, and the enormous size of his ears. in asia many of the males, and all the females, are without tusks, but in africa both sexes are provided with these weapons. the enamel in the molar teeth is arranged differently in the two species. by an admirable provision, new teeth constantly come up at the part where in man the wisdom teeth appear, and these push the others along, and out at the front end of the jaws, thus keeping the molars sound by renewal, till the animal attains a very great age. the tusks of animals from dry rocky countries are very munch more dense and heavier than those from wet and marshy districts, but the latter attain much the larger size. the shire marshes support prodigious numbers of many kinds of water-fowl. an hour at the mast-head unfolds novel views of life in an african marsh. near the edge, and on the branches of some favourite tree, rest scores of plotuses and cormorants, which stretch their snake-like necks, and in mute amazement turn one eye and then another towards the approaching monster. by and-by the timid ones begin to fly off, or take "headers" into the stream; but a few of the bolder, or more composed, remain, only taking the precaution to spread their wings ready for instant flight. the pretty ardetta (_herodias bubulcus_), of a light yellow colour when at rest, but seemingly of a pure white when flying, takes wing, and sweeps across the green grass in large numbers, often showing us where buffaloes and elephants are, by perching on their backs. flocks of ducks, of which the kind called "soriri" (_dendrocygna personata_) is most abundant, being night feeders, meditate quietly by the small lagoons, until startled by the noise of the steam machinery. pelicans glide over the water, catching fish, while the scopus (_scopus umbretta_) and large herons peer intently into pools. the large black and white spur-winged goose (a constant marauder of native gardens) springs up, and circles round to find out what the disturbance can be, and then settles down again with a splash. hundreds of linongolos (_anastomus lamelligerus_) rise on the wing from the clumps of reeds, or low trees (the _eschinomena_, from which pith hats are made), on which they build in colonies, and are speedily high in mid-air. charming little red and yellow weavers (_ploceidae_) remind one of butterflies, as they fly in and out of the tall grass, or hang to the mouths of their pendent nests, chattering briskly to their mates within. these weavers seem to have "cock nests," built with only a roof, and a perch beneath, with a doorway on each side. the natives say they are made to protect the bird from the rain. though her husband is very attentive, we have seen the hen bird tearing her mate's nest to pieces, but why we cannot tell. kites and vultures are busy overhead, beating the ground for their repast of carrion; and the solemn-looking, stately-stepping marabout, with a taste for dead fish, or men, stalks slowly along the almost stagnant channels. groups of men and boys are searching diligently in various places for lotus and other roots. some are standing in canoes, on the weed-covered ponds, spearing fish, while others are punting over the small intersecting streams, to examine their sunken fish-baskets. towards evening, hundreds of pretty little hawks (_erythropus vespertinus_) are seen flying in a southerly direction, and feeding on dragon-flies and locusts. they come, apparently, from resting on the palm-trees during the heat of the day. flocks of scissor-bills (_rhyncops_) are then also on the wing, and in search of food, ploughing the water with their lower mandibles, which are nearly half an inch longer than the upper ones. at the north-eastern end of the marsh, and about three miles from the river, commences a great forest of palm-trees (_borassus aethiopium_). it extends many miles, and at one point comes close to the river. the grey trunks and green tops of this immense mass of trees give a pleasing tone of colour to the view. the mountain-range, which rises close behind the palms, is generally of a cheerful green, and has many trees, with patches of a lighter tint among them, as if spots of land had once been cultivated. the sharp angular rocks and dells on its sides have the appearance of a huge crystal broken; and this is so often the case in africa, that one can guess pretty nearly at sight whether a range is of the old crystalline rocks or not. the borassus, though not an oil-bearing palm, is a useful tree. the fibrous pulp round the large nuts is of a sweet fruity taste, and is eaten by men and elephants. the natives bury the nuts until the kernels begin to sprout; when dug up and broken, the inside resembles coarse potatoes, and is prized in times of scarcity as nutritious food. during several months of the year, palm- wine, or sura, is obtained in large quantities; when fresh, it is a pleasant drink, somewhat like champagne, and not at all intoxicating; though, after standing a few hours, it becomes highly so. sticks, a foot long, are driven into notches in the hard outside of the tree--the inside being soft or hollow--to serve as a ladder; the top of the fruit-shoot is cut off, and the sap, pouring out at the fresh wound, is caught in an earthen pot, which is hung at the point. a thin slice is taken off the end, to open the pores, and make the juice flow every time the owner ascends to empty the pot. temporary huts are erected in the forest, and men and boys remain by their respective trees day and night; the nuts, fish, and wine, being their sole food. the portuguese use the palm-wine as yeast, and it makes bread so light, that it melts in the mouth like froth. beyond the marsh the country is higher, and has a much larger population. we passed a long line of temporary huts, on a plain on the right bank, with crowds of men and women hard at work making salt. they obtain it by mixing the earth, which is here highly saline, with water, in a pot with a small hole in it, and then evaporating the liquid, which runs through, in the sun. from the number of women we saw carrying it off in bags, we concluded that vast quantities must be made at these works. it is worth observing that on soils like this, containing salt, the cotton is of larger and finer staple than elsewhere. we saw large tracts of this rich brackish soil both in the shire and zambesi valleys, and hence, probably, sea-island cotton would do well; a single plant of it, reared by major sicard, flourished and produced the long staple and peculiar tinge of this celebrated variety, though planted only in the street at tette; and there also a salt efflorescence appears, probably from decomposition of the rock, off which the people scrape it for use. the large village of the chief, mankokwe, occupies a site on the right bank; he owns a number of fertile islands, and is said to be the rundo, or paramount chief, of a large district. being of an unhappy suspicious disposition, he would not see us; so we thought it best to move on, rather than spend time in seeking his favour. on the th august we reached dakanamoio island, opposite the perpendicular bluff on which chibisa's village stands; he had gone, with most of his people, to live near the zambesi, but his headman was civil, and promised us guides and whatever else we needed. a few of the men were busy cleaning, sorting, spinning, and weaving cotton. this is a common sight in nearly every village, and each family appears to have its patch of cotton, as our own ancestors in scotland had each his patch of flax. near sunset an immense flock of the large species of horn-bill (_buceros cristatus_) came here to roost on the great trees which skirt the edge of the cliff. they leave early in the morning, often before sunrise, for their feeding-places, coming and going in pairs. they are evidently of a loving disposition, and strongly attached to each other, the male always nestling close beside his mate. a fine male fell to the ground, from fear, at the report of dr. kirk's gun; it was caught and kept on board; the female did not go off in the mornings to feed with the others, but flew round the ship, anxiously trying, by her plaintive calls, to induce her beloved one to follow her: she came again in the evenings to repeat the invitations. the poor disconsolate captive soon refused to eat, and in five days died of grief, because he could not have her company. no internal injury could be detected after death. chibisa and his wife, with a natural show of parental feeling, had told the doctor, on his previous visit, that a few years before some of chisaka's men had kidnapped and sold their little daughter, and that she was now a slave to the padre at tette. on his return to tette, the doctor tried hard to ransom and restore the girl to her parents, and offered twice the value of a slave; the padre seemed willing, but she could not be found. this padre was better than the average men of the country; and, being always civil and obliging, would probably have restored her gratuitously, but she had been sold, it might be to the distant tribe bazizulu, or he could not tell where. custom had rendered his feelings callous, and chibisa had to be told that his child would never return. it is this callous state of mind which leads some of our own blood to quote scripture in support of slavery. if we could afford to take a backward step in civilization, we might find men among ourselves who would in like manner prove mormonism or any other enormity to be divine. we left the ship on the th of august, , for the discovery of lake nyassa. our party numbered forty-two in all--four whites, thirty-six makololo, and two guides. we did not actually need so many, either for carriage or defence; but took them because we believed that, human nature being everywhere the same, blacks are as ready as whites to take advantage of the weak, and are as civil and respectful to the powerful. we armed our men with muskets, which gave us influence, although it did not add much to our strength, as most of the men had never drawn a trigger, and in any conflict would in all probability have been more dangerous to us than the enemy. our path crossed the valley, in a north-easterly direction, up the course of a beautiful flowing stream. many of the gardens had excellent cotton growing in them. an hour's march brought us to the foot of the manganja hills, up which lay the toilsome road. the vegetation soon changed; as we rose bamboos appeared, and new trees and plants were met with, which gave such incessant employment to dr. kirk, that he travelled the distance three times over. remarkably fine trees, one of which has oil- yielding seeds, and belongs to the mahogany family, grow well in the hollows along the rivulet courses. the ascent became very fatiguing, and we were glad of a rest. looking back from an elevation of a thousand feet, we beheld a lovely prospect. the eye takes in at a glance the valley beneath, and the many windings of its silver stream makubula, or kubvula, from the shady hill-side, where it emerges in foaming haste, to where it slowly glides into the tranquil shire; then the shire itself is seen for many a mile above and below chibisa's, and the great level country beyond, with its numerous green woods; until the prospect, west and north-west, is bounded far away by masses of peaked and dome-shaped blue mountains, that fringe the highlands of the maravi country. after a weary march we halted at makolongwi, the village of chitimba. it stands in a woody hollow on the first of the three terraces of the manganja hills, and, like all other manganja villages, is surrounded by an impenetrable hedge of poisonous euphorbia. this tree casts a deep shade, which would render it difficult for bowmen to take aim at the villagers inside. the grass does not grow beneath it, and this may be the reason why it is so universally used, for when dry the grass would readily convey fire to the huts inside; moreover, the hedge acts as a fender to all flying sparks. as strangers are wont to do, we sat down under some fine trees near the entrance of the village. a couple of mats, made of split reeds, were spread for the white men to sit on; and the headman brought a seguati, or present, of a small goat and a basket of meal. the full value in beads and cotton cloth was handed to him in return. he measured the cloth, doubled it, and then measured that again. the beads were scrutinized; he had never seen beads of that colour before, and should like to consult with his comrades before accepting them, and this, after repeated examinations and much anxious talk, he concluded to do. meal and peas were then brought for sale. a fathom of blue cotton cloth, a full dress for man or woman, was produced. our makololo headman, sininyane, thinking a part of it was enough for the meal, was proceeding to tear it, when chitimba remarked that it was a pity to cut such a nice dress for his wife, he would rather bring more meal. "all right," said sininyane; "but look, the cloth is very wide, so see that the basket which carries the meal be wide too, and add a cock to make the meal taste nicely." a brisk trade sprang up at once, each being eager to obtain as fine things as his neighbour,--and all were in good humour. women and girls began to pound and grind meal, and men and boys chased the screaming fowls over the village, until they ran them down. in a few hours the market was completely glutted with every sort of native food; the prices, however, rarely fell, as they could easily eat what was not sold. we slept under the trees, the air being pheasant, and no mosquitoes on the hills. according to our usual plan of marching, by early dawn our camp was in motion. after a cup of coffee and a bit of biscuit we were on the way. the air was deliciously cool, and the path a little easier than that of yesterday. we passed a number of villages, occupying very picturesque spots among the hills, and in a few hours gained the upper terrace, feet above the level of the sea. the plateau lies west of the milanje mountains, and its north-eastern border slopes down to lake shirwa. we were all charmed with the splendid country, and looked with never-failing delight on its fertile plains, its numerous hills, and majestic mountains. in some of the passes we saw bramble-berries growing; and the many other flowers, though of great beauty, did not remind us of youth and of home like the ungainly thorny bramble-bushes. we were a week in crossing the highlands in a northerly direction; then we descended into the upper shire valley, which is nearly feet above the level of the sea. this valley is wonderfully fertile, and supports a large population. after leaving the somewhat flat-topped southern portion, the most prominent mountain of the zomba range is njongone, which has a fine stream running past its northern base. we were detained at the end of the chain some days by one of our companions being laid up with fever. one night we were suddenly aroused by buffaloes rushing close by the sick-bed. we were encamped by a wood on the border of a marsh, but our patient soon recovered, notwithstanding the unfavourable situation, and the poor accommodation. the manganja country is delightfully well watered. the clear, cool, gushing streams are very numerous. once we passed seven fine brooks and a spring in a single hour, and this, too, near the close of the dry season. mount zomba, which is twenty miles long, and from to feet high, has a beautiful stream flowing through a verdant valley on its summit, and running away down into lake shirwa. the highlands are well wooded, and many trees, admirable for their height and timber, grow on the various watercourses. "is this country good for cattle?" we inquired of a makololo herdsman, whose occupation had given him skill in pasturage. "truly," he replied, "do you not see abundance of those grasses which the cattle love, and get fat upon?" yet the people have but few goats, and fewer sheep. with the exception of an occasional leopard, there are no beasts of prey to disturb domestic animals. wool- sheep would, without doubt, thrive on these highlands. part of the upper shire valley has a lady paramount, named nyango; and in her dominions women rank higher and receive more respectful treatment than their sisters on the hills. the hill chief, mongazi, called his wife to take charge of a present we had given him. she dropped down on her knees, clapping her hands in reverence, before and after receiving our presents from his lordly hands. it was painful to see the abject manner in which the women of the hill tribes knelt beside the path as we passed; but a great difference took place when we got into nyango's country. on entering a village, we proceeded, as all strangers do, at once to the boalo: mats of split reeds or bamboo were usually spread for us to sit on. our guides then told the men who might be there, who we were, whence we had come, whither we wanted to go, and what were our objects. this information was duly carried to the chief, who, if a sensible man, came at once; but, if he happened to be timid and suspicious, waited until he had used divination, and his warriors had time to come in from outlying hamlets. when he makes his appearance, all the people begin to clap their hands in unison, and continue doing so till he sits down opposite to us. his counsellors take their places beside him. he makes a remark or two, and is then silent for a few seconds. our guides then sit down in front of the chief and his counsellors, and both parties lean forward, looking earnestly at each other; the chief repeats a word, such as "ambuiatu" (our father, or master)--or "moio" (life), and all clap their hands. another word is followed by two claps, a third by still more clapping, when each touches the ground with both hands placed together. then all rise and lean forward with measured clap, and sit down again with clap, clap, clap, fainter, and still fainter, till the last dies away, or is brought to an end by a smart loud clap from the chief. they keep perfect time in this species of court etiquette. our guides now tell the chief, often in blank verse, all they have already told his people, with the addition perhaps of their own suspicions of the visitors. he asks some questions, and then converses with us through the guides. direct communication between the chief and the head of the stranger party is not customary. in approaching they often ask who is the spokesman, and the spokesman of the chief addresses the person indicated exclusively. there is no lack of punctilious good manners. the accustomed presents are exchanged with civil ceremoniousness; until our men, wearied and hungry, call out, "english do not buy slaves, they buy food," and then the people bring meal, maize, fowls, batatas, yams, beans, beer, for sale. the manganja are an industrious race; and in addition to working in iron, cotton, and basket-making, they cultivate the soil extensively. all the people of a village turn out to labour in the fields. it is no uncommon thing to see men, women, and children hard at work, with the baby lying close by beneath a shady bush. when a new piece of woodland is to be cleared, they proceed exactly as farmers do in america. the trees are cut down with their little axes of soft native iron; trunks and branches are piled up and burnt, and the ashes spread on the soil. the corn is planted among the standing stumps which are left to rot. if grass land is to be brought under cultivation, as much tall grass as the labourer can conveniently lay hold of is collected together and tied into a knot. he then strikes his hoe round the tufts to sever the roots, and leaving all standing, proceeds until the whole ground assumes the appearance of a field covered with little shocks of corn in harvest. a short time before the rains begin, these grass shocks are collected in small heaps, covered with earth, and burnt, the ashes and burnt soil being used to fertilize the ground. large crops of the mapira, or egyptian dura (_holcus sorghum_), are raised, with millet, beans, and ground-nuts; also patches of yams, rice, pumpkins, cucumbers, cassava, sweet potatoes, tobacco, and hemp, or bang (_cannabis setiva_). maize is grown all the year round. cotton is cultivated at almost every village. three varieties of cotton have been found in the country, namely, two foreign and one native. the "tonje manga," or foreign cotton, the name showing that it has been introduced, is of excellent quality, and considered at manchester to be nearly equal to the best new orleans. it is perennial, but requires replanting once in three years. a considerable amount of this variety is grown in the upper and lower shire valleys. every family of any importance owns a cotton patch which, from the entire absence of weeds, seemed to be carefully cultivated. most were small, none seen on this journey exceeding half an acre; but on the former trip some were observed of more than twice that size. the "tonje cadja," or indigenous cotton, is of shorter staple, and feels in the hand like wool. this kind has to be planted every season in the highlands; yet, because it makes stronger cloth, many of the people prefer it to the foreign cotton; the third variety is not found here. it was remarked to a number of men near the shire lakelet, a little further on towards nyassa, "you should plant plenty of cotton, and probably the english will come and buy it." "truly," replied a far-travelled babisa trader to his fellows, "the country is full of cotton, and if these people come to buy they will enrich us." our own observation on the cotton cultivated convinced us that this was no empty flourish, but a fact. everywhere we met with it, and scarcely ever entered a village without finding a number of men cleaning, spinning, and weaving. it is first carefully separated from the seed by the fingers, or by an iron roller, on a little block of wood, and rove out into long soft bands without twist. then it receives its first twist on the spindle, and becomes about the thickness of coarse candlewick; after being taken off and wound into a large ball, it is given the final hard twist, and spun into a firm cop on the spindle again: all the processes being painfully slow. iron ore is dug out of the hills, and its manufacture is the staple trade of the southern highlands. each village has its smelting-house, its charcoal-burners, and blacksmiths. they make good axes, spears, needles, arrowheads, bracelets and anklets, which, considering the entire absence of machinery, are sold at surprisingly low rates; a hoe over two pounds in weight is exchanged for calico of about the value of fourpence. in villages near lake shirwa and elsewhere, the inhabitants enter pretty largely into the manufacture of crockery, or pottery, making by hand all sorts of cooking, water, and grain pots, which they ornament with plumbago found in the hills. some find employment in weaving neat baskets from split bamboos, and others collect the fibre of the buaze, which grows abundantly on the hills, and make it into fish-nets. these they either use themselves, or exchange with the fishermen on the river or lakes for dried fish and salt. a great deal of native trade is carried on between the villages, by means of barter in tobacco, salt, dried fish, skins, and iron. many of the men are intelligent-looking, with well-shaped heads, agreeable faces, and high foreheads. we soon learned to forget colour, and we frequently saw countenances resembling those of white people we had known in england, which brought back the looks of forgotten ones vividly before the mind. the men take a good deal of pride in the arrangement of their hair; the varieties of style are endless. one trains his long locks till they take the admired form of the buffalo's horns; others prefer to let their hair hang in a thick coil down their backs, like that animal's tail; while another wears it in twisted cords, which, stiffened by fillets of the inner bark of a tree wound spirally round each curl, radiate from the head in all directions. some have it hanging all round the shoulders in large masses; others shave it off altogether. many shave part of it into ornamental figures, in which the fancy of the barber crops out conspicuously. about as many dandies run to seed among the blacks as among the whites. the man ganja adorn their bodies extravagantly, wearing rings on their fingers and thumbs, besides throatlets, bracelets, and anklets of brass, copper, or iron. but the most wonderful of ornaments, if such it may be called, is the pelele, or upper-lip ring of the women. the middle of the upper lip of the girls is pierced close to the septum of the nose, and a small pin inserted to prevent the puncture closing up. after it has healed, the pin is taken out and a larger one is pressed into its place, and so on successively for weeks, and months, and years. the process of increasing the size of the lip goes on till its capacity becomes so great that a ring of two inches diameter can be introduced with ease. all the highland women wear the pelele, and it is common on the upper and lower shire. the poorer classes make them of hollow or of solid bamboo, but the wealthier of ivory or tin. the tin pelele is often made in the form of a small dish. the ivory one is not unlike a napkin-ring. no woman ever appears in public without the pelele, except in times of mourning for the dead. it is frightfully ugly to see the upper lip projecting two inches beyond the tip of the nose. when an old wearer of a hollow bamboo ring smiles, by the action of the muscles of the cheeks, the ring and lip outside it are dragged back and thrown above the eyebrows. the nose is seen through the middle of the ring, amid the exposed teeth show how carefully they have been chipped to look like those of a cat or crocodile. the pelele of an old lady, chikanda kadze, a chieftainess, about twenty miles north of morambala, hung down below her chin, with, of course, a piece of the upper lip around its border. the labial letters cannot be properly pronounced, but the under lip has to do its best for them, against the upper teeth and gum. tell them it makes them ugly; they had better throw it away; they reply, "kodi! really! it is the fashion." how this hideous fashion originated is an enigma. can thick lips ever have been thought beautiful, and this mode of artificial enlargement resorted to in consequence? the constant twiddling of the pelele with the tongue by the younger women suggested the irreverent idea that it might have been invented to give safe employment to that little member. "why do the women wear these things?" we inquired of the old chief, chinsunse. evidently surprised at such a stupid question, he replied, "for beauty, to be sure! men have beards and whiskers; women have none; and what kind of creature would a woman be without whiskers, and without the pelele? she would have a mouth like a man, and no beard; ha! ha! ha!" afterwards on the rovuma, we found men wearing the pelele, as well as women. an idea suggested itself on seeing the effects of the slight but constant pressure exerted on the upper gum and front teeth, of which our medical brethren will judge the value. in many cases the upper front teeth, instead of the natural curve outwards, which the row presents, had been pressed so as to appear as if the line of alveoli in which they were planted had an inward curve. as this was produced by the slight pressure of the pelele backwards, persons with too prominent teeth might by slight, but long-continued pressure, by some appliance only as elastic as the lip, have the upper gum and teeth depressed, especially in youth, more easily than is usually imagined. the pressure should be applied to the upper gum more than to the teeth. the manganja are not a sober people: they brew large quantities of beer, and like it well. having no hops, or other means of checking fermentation, they are obliged to drink the whole brew in a few days, or it becomes unfit for use. great merry-makings take place on these occasions, and drinking, drumming, and dancing continue day and night, till the beer is gone. in crossing the hills we sometimes found whole villages enjoying this kind of mirth. the veteran traveller of the party remarked, that he had not seen so much drunkenness during all the sixteen years he had spent in africa. as we entered a village one afternoon, not a man was to be seen; but some women were drinking beer under a tree. in a few moments the native doctor, one of the innocents, "nobody's enemy but his own," staggered out of a hut, with his cupping-horn dangling from his neck, and began to scold us for a breach of etiquette. "is this the way to come into a man's village, without sending him word that you are coming?" our men soon pacified the fuddled but good-humoured medico, who, entering his beer-cellar, called on two of them to help him to carry out a huge pot of beer, which he generously presented to us. while the "medical practitioner" was thus hospitably employed, the chief awoke in a fright, and shouted to the women to run away, or they would all be killed. the ladies laughed at the idea of their being able to run away, and remained beside the beer-pots. we selected a spot for our camp, our men cooked the dinner as usual, and we were quietly eating it, when scores of armed men, streaming with perspiration, came pouring into the village. they looked at us, then at each other, and turning to the chief upbraided him for so needlessly sending for them. "these people are peaceable; they do not hurt you; you are killed with beer:" so saying, they returned to their homes. native beer has a pinkish colour, and the consistency of gruel. the grain is made to vegetate, dried in the sun, pounded into meal, and gently boiled. when only a day or two old, the beer is sweet, with a slight degree of acidity, which renders it a most grateful beverage in a hot climate, or when fever begets a sore craving for acid drinks. a single draught of it satisfies this craving at once. only by deep and long-continued potations can intoxication be produced: the grain being in a minutely divided state, it is a good way of consuming it, and the decoction is very nutritious. at tette a measure of beer is exchanged for an equal-sized pot full of grain. a present of this beer, so refreshing to our dark comrades, was brought to us in nearly every village. beer-drinking does not appear to produce any disease, or to shorten life on the hills. never before did we see so many old, grey- headed men and women; leaning on their staves they came with the others to see the white men. the aged chief, muata manga, could hardly have been less than ninety years of age; his venerable appearance struck the makololo. "he is an old man," said they, "a very old man; his skin hangs in wrinkles, just like that on elephants' hips." "did you never," he was asked, "have a fit of travelling come over you; a desire to see other lands and people?" no, he had never felt that, and had never been far from home in his life. for long life they are not indebted to frequent ablutions. an old man told us that he remembered to have washed once in his life, but it was so long since that he had forgotten how it felt. "why do you wash?" asked chinsunse's women of the makololo; "our men never do." the superstitious ordeal, by drinking the poisonous muave, obtains credit here; and when a person is suspected of crime, this ordeal is resorted to. if the stomach rejects the poison, the accused is pronounced innocent; but if it is retained, guilt is believed to be demonstrated. their faith is so firm in its discriminating power, that the supposed criminal offers of his own accord to drink it, and even chiefs are not exempted. chibisa, relying on its efficacy, drank it several times, in order to vindicate his character. when asserting that all his wars had been just, it was hinted that, as every chief had the same tale of innocence to tell, we ought to suspend our judgment. "if you doubt my word," said he, "give me the muave to drink." a chief at the foot of mount zomba successfully went through the ordeal the day we reached his village; and his people manifested their joy at his deliverance by drinking beer, dancing, and drumming for two days and nights. it is possible that the native doctor, who mixes the ingredients of the poisoned bowl, may be able to save those whom he considers innocent; but it is difficult to get the natives to speak about the matter, and no one is willing to tell what the muave poison consists of. we have been shown trees said to be used, but had always reason to doubt the accuracy of our informants. we once found a tree in a village, with many pieces of the bark chipped off, closely allied to the tangena or tanghina, the ordeal poison tree of madagascar; but we could not ascertain any particulars about it. death is inflicted on those found guilty of witchcraft, by the muave. the women wail for the dead two days. seated on the ground they chant a few plaintive words, and end each verse with the prolonged sound of a--a, or o--o, or ea-ea-ea--a. whatever beer is in the house of the deceased, is poured out on the ground with the meal, and all cooking and water pots are broken, as being of no further use. both men and women wear signs of mourning for their dead relatives. these consist of narrow strips of the palm-leaf wound round the head, the arms, legs, neck, and breasts, and worn till they drop off from decay. they believe in the existence of a supreme being, called mpambe, and also morungo, and in a future state. "we live only a few days here," said old chinsunse, "but we live again after death: we do not know where, or in what condition, or with what companions, for the dead never return to tell us. sometimes the dead do come back, and appear to us in dreams; but they never speak nor tell us where they have gone, nor how they fare." chapter iv. the upper shire--discovery of lake nyassa--distressing exploration--return to zambesi--unpleasant visitors--start for sekeletu's country in the interior. our path followed the shire above the cataracts, which is now a broad deep river, with but little current. it expands in one place into a lakelet, called pamalombe, full of fine fish, and ten or twelve miles long by five or six in breadth. its banks are low, and a dense wall of papyrus encircles it. on its western shore rises a range of hills running north. on reaching the village of the chief muana-moesi, and about a day's march distant from nyassa, we were told that no lake had ever been heard of there; that the river shire stretched on as we saw it now to a distance of "two months," and then came out from between perpendicular rocks, which towered almost to the skies. our men looked blank at this piece of news, and said, "let us go back to the ship, it is of no use trying to find the lake." "we shall go and see those wonderful rocks at any rate," said the doctor. "and when you see them," replied masakasa, "you will just want to see something else. but there _is_ a lake," rejoined masakasa, "for all their denying it, for it is down in a book." masakasa, having unbounded faith in whatever was in a book, went and scolded the natives for telling him an untruth. "there is a lake," said he, "for how could the white men know about it in a book if it did not exist?" they then admitted that there was a lake a few miles off. subsequent inquiries make it probable that the story of the "perpendicular rocks" may have had reference to a fissure, known to both natives and arabs, in the north-eastern portion of the lake. the walls rise so high that the path along the bottom is said to be underground. it is probably a crack similar to that which made the victoria falls, and formed the shire valley. the chief brought a small present of meal in the evening, and sat with us for a few minutes. on leaving us he said that he wished we might sleep well. scarce had he gone, when a wild sad cry arose from the river, followed by the shrieking of women. a crocodile had carried off his principal wife, as she was bathing. the makololo snatched up their arms, and rushed to the bank, but it was too late, she was gone. the wailing of the women continued all night, and next morning we met others coming to the village to join in the general mourning. their grief was evidently heartfelt, as we saw the tears coursing down their cheeks. in reporting this misfortune to his neighbours, muana-moesi said, "that white men came to his village; washed themselves at the place where his wife drew water and bathed; rubbed themselves with a white medicine (soap); and his wife, having gone to bathe afterwards, was taken by a crocodile; he did not know whether in consequence of the medicine used or not." this we could not find fault with. on our return we were viewed with awe, and all the men fled at our approach; the women remained; and this elicited the remark from our men, "the women have the advantage of men, in not needing to dread the spear." the practice of bathing, which our first contact with chinsunse's people led us to believe was unknown to the natives, we afterwards found to be common in other parts of the manganja country. we discovered lake nyassa a little before noon of the th september, . its southern end is in degrees minutes s. lat., and degrees minutes e. long. at this point the valley is about twelve miles wide. there are hills on both sides of the lake, but the haze from burning grass prevented us at the time from seeing far. a long time after our return from nyassa, we received a letter from captain r. b. oldfield, r.n., then commanding h.m.s. "lyra," with the information that dr. roscher, an enterprising german who unfortunately lost his life in his zeal for exploration, had also reached the lake, but on the th november following our discovery; and on his arrival had been informed by the natives that a party of white men were at the southern extremity. on comparing dates ( th september and th november) we were about two months before dr. roscher. it is not known where dr. roscher first saw its waters; as the exact position of nusseewa on the borders of the lake, where he lived some time, is unknown. he was three days north-east of nusseewa, and on the arab road back to the usual crossing-place of the rovuma, when he was murdered. the murderers were seized by one of the chiefs, sent to zanzibar, and executed. he is said to have kept his discoveries to himself, with the intention of publishing in europe the whole at once, in a splendid book of travels. the chief of the village near the confluence of the lake and river shire, an old man, called mosauka, hearing that we were sitting under a tree, came and kindly invited us to his village. he took us to a magnificent banyan-tree, of which he seemed proud. the roots had been trained down to the ground into the form of a gigantic arm-chair, without the seat. four of us slept in the space betwixt its arms. mosauka brought us a present of a goat and basket of meal "to comfort our hearts." he told us that a large slave party, led by arabs, were encamped close by. they had been up to cazembe's country the past year, and were on their way back, with plenty of slaves, ivory, and malachite. in a few minutes half a dozen of the leaders came over to see us. they were armed with long muskets, and, to our mind, were a villanous-looking lot. they evidently thought the same of us, for they offered several young children for sale, but, when told that we were english, showed signs of fear, and decamped during the night. on our return to the kongone, we found that h.m.s. "lynx" had caught some of these very slaves in a dhow; for a woman told us she first saw us at mosauka's, and that the arabs had fled for fear of an _uncanny_ sort of basungu. this is one of the great slave-paths from the interior, others cross the shire a little below, and some on the lake itself. we might have released these slaves but did not know what to do with them afterwards. on meeting men, led in slave-sticks, the doctor had to bear the reproaches of the makololo, who never slave, "ay, you call us bad, but are we yellow-hearted, like these fellows--why won't you let us choke them?" to liberate and leave them, would have done but little good, as the people of the surrounding villages would soon have seized them, and have sold them again into slavery. the manganja chiefs sell their own people, for we met ajawa and slave-dealers in several highland villages, who had certainly been encouraged to come among them for slaves. the chiefs always seemed ashamed of the traffic, and tried to excuse themselves. "we do not sell many, and only those who have committed crimes." as a rule the regular trade is supplied by the low and criminal classes, and hence the ugliness of slaves. others are probably sold besides criminals, as on the accusation of witchcraft. friendless orphans also sometimes disappear suddenly, and no one inquires what has become of them. the temptation to sell their people is peculiarly great, as there is but little ivory on the hills, and often the chief has nothing but human flesh with which to buy foreign goods. the ajawa offer cloth, brass rings, pottery, and sometimes handsome young women, and agree to take the trouble of carrying off by night all those whom the chief may point out to them. they give four yards of cotton cloth for a man, three for a woman, and two for a boy or girl, to be taken to the portuguese at mozambique, iboe, and quillimane. the manganja were more suspicious and less hospitable than the tribes on the zambesi. they were slow to believe that our object in coming into their country was really what we professed it to be. they naturally judge us by the motives which govern themselves. a chief in the upper shire valley, whose scared looks led our men to christen him kitlabolawa (i shall be killed), remarked that parties had come before, with as plausible a story as ours, and, after a few days, had jumped up and carried off a number of his people as slaves. we were not allowed to enter some of the villages in the valley, nor would the inhabitants even sell us food; zimika's men, for instance, stood at the entrance of the euphorbia hedge, and declared we should not pass in. we sat down under a tree close by. a young fellow made an angry oration, dancing from side to side with his bow and poisoned arrows, and gesticulating fiercely in our faces. he was stopped in the middle of his harangue by an old man, who ordered him to sit down, and not talk to strangers in that way; he obeyed reluctantly, scowling defiance, and thrusting out his large lips very significantly. the women were observed leaving the village; and, suspecting that mischief might ensue, we proceeded on our journey, to the great disgust of our men. they were very angry with the natives for their want of hospitality to strangers, and with us, because we would not allow them to give "the things a thrashing." "this is what comes of going with white men," they growled out; "had we been with our own chief, we should have eaten their goats to-night, and had some of themselves to carry the bundles for us to-morrow." on our return by a path which left his village on our right, zimika sent to apologize, saying that "he was ill, and in another village at the time; it was not by his orders we were sent away; his men did not know that we were a party wishing the land to dwell in peace." we were not able, when hastening back to the men left in the ship, to remain in the villages belonging to this chief; but the people came after us with things for sale, and invited us to stop, and spend the night with them, urging, "are we to have it said that white people passed through our country and we did not see them?" we rested by a rivulet to gratify these sight-seers. we appear to them to be red rather than white; and, though light colour is admired among themselves, our clothing renders us uncouth in aspect. blue eyes appear savage, and a red beard hideous. from the numbers of aged persons we saw on the highlands, and the increase of mental and physical vigour we experienced on our ascent from the lowlands, we inferred that the climate was salubrious, and that our countrymen might there enjoy good health, and also be of signal benefit, by leading the multitude of industrious inhabitants to cultivate cotton, buaze, sugar, and other valuable produce, to exchange for goods of european manufacture; at the same time teaching them, by precept and example, the great truths of our holy religion. our stay at the lake was necessarily short. we had found that the best plan for allaying any suspicions, that might arise in the minds of a people accustomed only to slave-traders, was to pay a hasty visit, and then leave for a while, and allow the conviction to form among the people that, though our course of action was so different from that of others, we were not dangerous, but rather disposed to be friendly. we had also a party at the vessel, and any indiscretion on their part might have proved fatal to the character of the expedition. the trade of cazembe and katanga's country, and of other parts of the interior, crosses nyassa and the shire, on its way to the arab port, kilwa, and the portuguese ports of iboe and mozambique. at present, slaves, ivory, malachite, and copper ornaments, are the only articles of commerce. according to information collected by colonel rigby at zanzibar, and from other sources, nearly all the slaves shipped from the above-mentioned ports come from the nyassa district. by means of a small steamer, purchasing the ivory of the lake and river above the cataracts, which together have a shore-line of at least miles, the slave-trade in this quarter would be rendered unprofitable,--for it is only by the ivory being carried by the slaves, that the latter do not eat up all the profits of a trip. an influence would be exerted over an enormous area of country, for the mazitu about the north end of the lake will not allow slave-traders to pass round that way through their country. they would be most efficient allies to the english, and might themselves be benefited by more intercourse. as things are now, the native traders in ivory and malachite have to submit to heavy exactions; and if we could give them the same prices which they at present get after carrying their merchandise miles beyond this to the coast, it might induce them to return without going further. it is only by cutting off the supplies in the interior, that we can crush the slave-trade on the coast. the plan proposed would stop the slave-trade from the zambesi on one side and kilwa on the other; and would leave, beyond this tract, only the portuguese port of inhambane on the south, and a portion of the sultan of zanzibar's dominion on the north, for our cruisers to look after. the lake people grow abundance of cotton for their own consumption, and can sell it for a penny a pound or even less. water-carriage exists by the shire and zambesi all the way to england, with the single exception of a portage of about thirty-five miles past the murchison cataracts, along which a road of less than forty miles could be made at a trifling expense; and it seems feasible that a legitimate and thriving trade might, in a short time, take the place of the present unlawful traffic. colonel rigby, captains wilson, oldfield, and chapman, and all the most intelligent officers on the coast, were unanimous in the belief, that one small vessel on the lake would have decidedly more influence, and do more good in suppressing the slave-trade, than half a dozen men-of-war on the ocean. by judicious operations, therefore, on a small scale inland, little expense would be incurred, and the english slave-trade policy on the east would have the same fair chance of success, as on the west coast. after a land-journey of forty days, we returned to the ship on the th of october, , in a somewhat exhausted condition, arising more from a sort of poisoning, than from the usual fatigue of travel. we had taken a little mulligatawney paste, for making soup, in case of want of time to cook other food. late one afternoon, at the end of an unusually long march, we reached mikena, near the base of mount njongone to the north of zomba, and the cook was directed to use a couple of spoonfuls of the paste; but, instead of doing so, he put in the whole potful. the soup tasted rather hot, but we added boiled rice to it, and, being very hungry, partook freely of it; and, in consequence of the overdose, we were delayed several days in severe suffering, and some of the party did not recover till after our return to the ship. our illness may partly have arisen from another cause. one kind of cassava (_jatropha maligna_) is known to be, in its raw state, poisonous, but by boiling it carefully in two waters, which must be thrown off, the poison is extracted and the cassava rendered fit for food. the poisonous sort is easily known by raising a bit of the bark of the root, and putting the tongue to it. a bitter taste shows poison, but it is probable that even the sweet kind contains an injurious principle. the sap, which, like that of our potatoes, is injurious as an article of food, is used in the "pepper-pot" of the west indies, under the name of "cassereep," as a perfect preservative of meat. this juice put into an earthen vessel with a little water and chili pepper is said to keep meat, that is immersed in it, good for a great length of time; even for years. no iron or steel must touch the mixture, or it will become sour. this "pepper-pot," of which we first heard from the late archbishop whately, is a most economical meat-safe in a hot climate; any beef, mutton, pork, or fowl that may be left at dinner, if put into the mixture and a little fresh cassereep added, keeps perfectly, though otherwise the heat of the climate or flies would spoil it. our cook, however, boiled the cassava root as he was in the habit of cooking meat, namely, by filling the pot with it, and then pouring in water, which he allowed to stand on the fire until it had become absorbed and boiled away. this method did not expel the poisonous properties of the root, or render it wholesome; for, notwithstanding our systematic caution in purchasing only the harmless sort, we suffered daily from its effects, and it was only just before the end of our trip that this pernicious mode of boiling it was discovered by us. in ascending feet from the lowlands to the highlands, or on reaching the low valley of the shire from the higher grounds, the change of climate was very marked. the heat was oppressive below, the thermometer standing at from degrees to degrees in the shade; and our spirits were as dull and languid as they had been exhilarated on the heights in a temperature cooler by some degrees. the water of the river was sometimes degrees or higher, whilst that we had been drinking in the hill streams was only degrees. it was found necessary to send two of our number across from the shire to tette; and dr. kirk, with guides from chibisa, and accompanied by mr. rae, the engineer, accomplished the journey. we had found the country to the north and east so very well watered, that no difficulty was anticipated in this respect in a march of less than a hundred miles; but on this occasion our friends suffered severely. the little water to be had at this time of the year, by digging in the beds of dry watercourses, was so brackish as to increase thirst--some of the natives indeed were making salt from it; and when at long intervals a less brackish supply was found, it was nauseous and muddy from the frequent visits of large game. the tsetse abounded. the country was level, and large tracts of it covered with mopane forest, the leaves of which afford but scanty shade to the baked earth, so that scarcely any grass grows upon it. the sun was so hot, that the men frequently jumped from the path, in the vain hope of cooling, for a moment, their scorched feet under the almost shadeless bushes; and the native who carried the provision of salt pork got lost, and came into tette two days after the rest of the party, with nothing but the fibre of the meat left, the fat, melted by the blazing sun, having all run down his back. this path was soon made a highway for slaving parties by captain raposo, the commandant. the journey nearly killed our two active young friends; and what the slaves must have since suffered on it no one can conceive; but slaving probably can never be conducted without enormous suffering and loss of life. mankokwe now sent a message to say that he wished us to stop at his village on our way down. he came on board on our arrival there with a handsome present, and said that his young people had dissuaded him from visiting us before; but now he was determined to see what every one else was seeing. a bald square-headed man, who had been his prime minister when we came up, was now out of office, and another old man, who had taken his place accompanied the chief. in passing the elephant marsh, we saw nine large herds of elephants; they sometimes formed a line two miles long. on the nd of november we anchored off shamoara, and sent the boat to senna for biscuit and other provisions. senhor ferrao, with his wonted generosity, gave us a present of a bullock, which he sent to us in a canoe. wishing to know if a second bullock would be acceptable to us, he consulted his portuguese and english dictionary, and asked the sailor in charge if he would take _another_; but jack, mistaking the portuguese pronunciation of the letter h, replied, "oh no, sir, thank you, i don't want an _otter_ in the boat, they are such terrible biters!" we had to ground the vessel on a shallow sandbank every night; she leaked so fast, that in deep water she would have sunk, and the pump had to be worked all day to keep her afloat. heavy rains fell daily, producing the usual injurious effects in the cabin; and, unable to wait any longer for our associates, who had gone overland from the shire to tette, we ran down the kongone and beached her for repairs. her majesty's ship "lynx," lieut. berkeley commanding, called shortly afterwards with supplies; the bar, which had been perfectly smooth for some time before, became rather rough just before her arrival, so that it was two or three days before she could communicate with us. two of her boats tried to come in on the second day, and one of them, mistaking the passage, capsized in the heavy breakers abreast of the island. mr. hunt, gunner, the officer in charge of the second boat, behaved nobly, and by his skilful and gallant conduct succeeded in rescuing every one of the first boat's crew. of course the things that they were bringing to us were lost, but we were thankful that all the men were saved. the loss of the mail-bags, containing government despatches and our friends' letters for the past year, was felt severely, as we were on the point of starting on an expedition into the interior, which might require eight or nine months; and twenty months is a weary time to be without news of friends and family. in the repairing of our crazy craft, we received kind and efficient aid from lieutenant berkeley, and we were enabled to leave for tette on december th. we had now frequent rains, and the river rose considerably; our progress up the stream was distressingly slow, and it was not until the nd of february, , that we reached tette. mr. thornton returned on the same day from a geological tour, by which some portuguese expected that a fabulous silver-mine would be rediscovered. the tradition in the country is, that the jesuits formerly knew and worked a precious lode at chicova. mr. thornton had gone beyond zumbo, in company with a trader of colour; he soon after this left the zambesi and, joining the expedition of the baron van der decken, explored the snow mountain kilimanjaro, north-west of zanzibar. mr. thornton's companion, the trader, brought back much ivory, having found it both abundant and cheap. he was obliged, however, to pay heavy fines to the banyai and other tribes, in the country which is coolly claimed in europe as portuguese. during this trip of six mouths pieces of cotton cloth of sixteen yards each, besides beads and brass wire, were paid to the different chiefs, for leave to pass through their country. in addition to these sufficiently weighty exactions, the natives of _this dominion_ have got into the habit of imposing fines for alleged milandos, or crimes, which the traders' men may have unwittingly committed. the merchants, however, submit rather than run the risk of fighting. the general monotony of existence at tette is sometimes relieved by an occasional death or wedding. when the deceased is a person of consequence, the quantity of gunpowder his slaves are allowed to expend is enormous. the expense may, in proportion to their means, resemble that incurred by foolishly gaudy funerals in england. when at tette, we always joined with sympathizing hearts in aiding, by our presence at the last rites, to soothe the sorrows of the surviving relatives. we are sure that they would have done the same to us had we been the mourners. we never had to complain of want of hospitality. indeed, the great kindness shown by many of whom we have often spoken, will never be effaced from our memory till our dying day. when we speak of their failings it is in sorrow, not in anger. their trading in slaves is an enormous mistake. their government places them in a false position by cutting them off from the rest of the world; and of this they always speak with a bitterness which, were it heard, might alter the tone of the statesmen of lisbon. but here there is no press, no booksellers' shops, and scarcely a schoolmaster. had we been born in similar untoward circumstances--we tremble to think of it! the weddings are celebrated with as much jollity as weddings are anywhere. we witnessed one in the house of our friend the padre. it being the marriage of his goddaughter, he kindly invited us to be partakers in his joy; and we there became acquainted with old donna engenia, who was a married wife and had children, when the slaves came from cassange, before any of us were born. the whole merry-making was marked by good taste amid propriety. about the only interesting object in the vicinity of tette is the coal a few miles to the north. there, in the feeders of the stream revubue, it crops out in cliff sections. the seams are from four to seven feet in thickness; one measured was found to be twenty-five feet thick. learning that it would be difficult for our party to obtain food beyond kebrabasa before the new crop came in and knowing the difficulty of hunting for so many men in the wet season, we decided on deferring our departure for the interior until may, and in the mean time to run down once more to the kongone, in the hopes of receiving letters and despatches from the man-of-war that was to call in march. we left tette on the th, and at senna heard that our lost mail had been picked up on the beach by natives, west of the milambe; carried to quillimane, sent thence to senna, and, passing us somewhere on the river, on to tette. at shupanga the governor informed us that it was a very large mail; no great comfort, seeing it was away up the river. mosquitoes were excessively troublesome at the harbour, and especially when a light breeze blew from the north over the mangroves. we lived for several weeks in small huts, built by our men. those who did the hunting for the party always got wet, and were attacked by fever, but generally recovered in time to be out again before the meat was all consumed. no ship appearing, we started off on the th of march, and stopped to wood on the luabo, near an encampment of hippopotamus hunters; our men heard again, through them, of the canoe path from this place to quillimane, but they declined to point it out. we found our friend major sicard at mazaro with picks, shovels, hurdles, and slaves, having come to build a fort and custom-house at the kongone. as we had no good reason to hide the harbour, but many for its being made known, we supplied him with a chart of the tortuous branches, which, running among the mangroves, perplex the search; and with such directions as would enable him to find his way down to the river. he had brought the relics of our fugitive mail, and it was a disappointment to find that all had been lost, with the exception of a bundle of old newspapers, two photographs, and three letters, which had been written before we left england. the distance from mazaro, on the zambesi side, to the kwakwa at nterra, is about six miles, over a surprisingly rich dark soil. we passed the night in the long shed, erected at nterra, on the banks of this river, for the use of travellers, who have often to wait several days for canoes; we tried to sleep, but the mosquitoes and rats were so troublesome as to render sleep impossible. the rats, or rather large mice, closely resembling _mus pumilio_ (smith), of this region, are quite facetious, and, having a great deal of fun in them, often laugh heartily. again and again they woke us up by scampering over our faces, and then bursting into a loud laugh of he! he! he! at having performed the feat. their sense of the ludicrous appears to be exquisite; they screamed with laughter at the attempts which disturbed and angry human nature made in the dark to bring their ill-timed merriment to a close. unlike their prudent european cousins, which are said to leave a sinking ship, a party of these took up their quarters in our leaky and sinking vessel. quiet and invisible by day, they emerged at night, and cut their funny pranks. no sooner were we all asleep, than they made a sudden dash over the lockers and across our faces for the cabin door, where all broke out into a loud he! he! he! he! he! he! showing how keenly they enjoyed the joke. they next went forward with as much delight, and scampered over the men. every night they went fore and aft, rousing with impartial feet every sleeper, and laughing to scorn the aimless blows, growls, and deadly rushes of outraged humanity. we observed elsewhere a species of large mouse, nearly allied to _euryotis unisulcatus_ (f. cuvier), escaping up a rough and not very upright wall, with six young ones firmly attached to the perineum. they were old enough to be well covered with hair, and some were not detached by a blow which disabled the dam. we could not decide whether any involuntary muscles were brought into play in helping the young to adhere. their weight seemed to require a sort of cataleptic state of the muscles of the jaw, to enable them to hold on. scorpions, centipedes, and poisonous spiders also were not unfrequently brought into the ship with the wood, and occasionally found their way into our beds; but in every instance we were fortunate enough to discover and destroy them before they did any harm. naval officers on this coast report that, when scorpions and centipedes remain a few weeks after being taken on board in a similar manner, their poison loses nearly all its virulence; but this we did not verify. snakes sometimes came in with the wood, but oftener floated down the river to us, climbing on board with ease by the chain-cable, and some poisonous ones were caught in the cabin. a green snake lived with us several weeks, concealing himself behind the casing of the deckhouse in the daytime. to be aroused in the dark by five feet of cold green snake gliding over one's face is rather unpleasant, however rapid the movement may be. myriads of two varieties of cockroaches infested the vessel; they not only ate round the roots of our nails, but even devoured and defiled our food, flannels, and boots. vain were all our efforts to extirpate these destructive pests; if you kill one, say the sailors, a hundred come down to his funeral! in the work of commodore owen it is stated that cockroaches, pounded into a paste, form a powerful carminative; this has not been confirmed, but when monkeys are fed on them they are sure to become lean. on coming to senna, we found that the zulus had arrived in force for their annual tribute. these men are under good discipline, and never steal from the people. the tax is claimed on the ground of conquest, the zulus having formerly completely overcome the senna people, and chased them on to the islands in the zambesi. fifty-four of the portuguese were slain on the occasion, and, notwithstanding the mud fort, the village has never recovered its former power. fever was now very prevalent, and most of the portuguese were down with it. for a good view of the adjacent scenery, the hill, baramuana, behind the village, was ascended. a caution was given about the probability of an attack of fever from a plant that grows near the summit. dr. kirk discovered it to be the _paedevia foetida_, which, when smelt, actually does give headache and fever. it has a nasty fetor, as its name indicates. this is one instance in which fever and a foul smell coincide. in a number of instances offensive effluvia and fever seems to have no connection. owing to the abundant rains, the crops in the senna district were plentiful; this was fortunate, after the partial failure of the past two years. it was the th of april, , before we reached tette; here also the crops were luxuriant, and the people said that they had not had such abundance since , the year when dr. livingstone came down the river. it is astonishing to any one who has seen the works for irrigation in other countries, as at the cape and in egypt, that no attempt has ever been made to lead out the water either of the zambesi or any of its tributaries; no machinery has ever been used to raise it even from the stream, but droughts and starvations are endured, as if they were inevitable dispensations of providence, incapable of being mitigated. feeling in honour bound to return with those who had been the faithful companions of dr. livingstone, in , and to whose guardianship and services was due the accomplishment of a journey which all the portuguese at tette had previously pronounced impossible, the requisite steps were taken to convey them to their homes. we laid the ship alongside of the island kanyimbe, opposite tette; and, before starting for the country of the makololo, obtained a small plot of land, to form a garden for the two english sailors who were to remain in charge during our absence. we furnished them with a supply of seeds, and they set to work with such zeal, that they certainly merited success. their first attempt at african horticulture met with failure from a most unexpected source; every seed was dug up and the inside of it eaten by mice. "yes," said an old native, next morning, on seeing the husks, "that is what happens this month; for it is the mouse month, and the seed should have been sown last mouth, when i sowed mine." the sailors, however, sowed more next day; and, being determined to outwit the mice, they this time covered the beds over with grass. the onions, with other seeds of plants cultivated by the portuguese, are usually planted in the beginning of april, in order to have the advantage of the cold season; the wheat a little later, for the same reason. if sown at the beginning of the rainy season in november, it runs, as before remarked, entirely to straw; but as the rains are nearly over in may, advantage is taken of low- lying patches, which have been flooded by the river. a hole is made in the mud with a hoe, a few seeds dropped in, and the earth shoved back with the foot. if not favoured with certain misty showers, which, lower down the river, are simply fogs, water is borne from the river to the roots of the wheat in earthern pots; and in about four months the crop is ready for the sickle. the wheat of tette is exported, as the best grown in the country; but a hollow spot at maruru, close by mazaro, yielded very good crops, though just at the level of the sea, as a few inches rise of tide shows. a number of days were spent in busy preparation for our journey; the cloth, beads, and brass wire, for the trip were sewn up in old canvas, and each package had the bearer's name printed on it. the makololo, who had worked for the expedition, were paid for their services, and every one who had come down with the doctor from the interior received a present of cloth and ornaments, in order to protect them from the greater cold of their own country, and to show that they had not come in vain. though called makololo by courtesy, as they were proud of the name, kanyata, the principal headman, was the only real makololo of the party; and he, in virtue of his birth, had succeeded to the chief place on the death of sekwebu. the others belonged to the conquered tribes of the batoka, bashubia, ba-selea, and barotse. some of these men had only added to their own vices those of the tette slaves; others, by toiling during the first two years in navigating canoes, and hunting elephants, had often managed to save a little, to take back to their own country, but had to part with it all for food to support the rest in times of hunger, and, latterly, had fallen into the improvident habits of slaves, and spent their surplus earnings in beer and agua ardiente. everything being ready on the th of may, we started at p.m. from the village where the makololo had dwelt. a number of the men did not leave with the goodwill which their talk for months before had led us to anticipate; but some proceeded upon being told that they were not compelled to go unless they liked, though others altogether declined moving. many had taken up with slave-women, whom they assisted in hoeing, and in consuming the produce of their gardens. some fourteen children had been born to them; and in consequence of now having no chief to order them, or to claim their services, they thought that they were about as well off as they had been in their own country. they knew and regretted that they could call neither wives nor children their own; the slave-owners claimed the whole; but their natural affections had been so enchained, that they clave to the domestic ties. by a law of portugal the baptized children of slave women are all free; by the custom of the zambesi that law is void. when it is referred to, the officers laugh and say, "these lisbon-born laws are very stringent, but somehow, possibly from the heat of the climate, here they lose all their force." only one woman joined our party--the wife of a batoka man: she had been given to him, in consideration of his skilful dancing, by the chief, chisaka. a merchant sent three of his men along with us, with a present for sekeletu, and major sicard also lent us three more to assist us on our return, and two portuguese gentleman kindly gave us the loan of a couple of donkeys. we slept four miles above tette, and hearing that the banyai, who levy heavy fines on the portuguese traders, lived chiefly on the right bank, we crossed over to the left, as we could not fully trust our men. if the banyai had come in a threatening manner, our followers might, perhaps, from having homes behind them, have even put down their bundles and run. indeed, two of them at this point made up their minds to go no further, and turned back to tette. another, monga, a batoka, was much perplexed, and could not make out what course to pursue, as he had, three years previously, wounded kanyata, the headman, with a spear. this is a capital offence among the makololo, and he was afraid of being put to death for it on his return. he tried, in vain, to console himself with the facts that he had neither father, mother, sisters, nor brothers to mourn for him, and that he could die but once. he was good, and would go up to the stars to yesu, and therefore did not care for death. in spite, however, of these reflections, he was much cast down, until kanyata assured him that he would never mention his misdeed to the chief; indeed, he had never even mentioned it to the doctor, which he would assuredly have done had it lain heavy on his heart. we were right glad of monga's company, for he was a merry good-tempered fellow, and his lithe manly figure had always been in the front in danger; and, from being left-handed, had been easily recognized in the fight with elephants. we commenced, for a certain number of days, with short marches, walking gently until broken in to travel. this is of so much importance, that it occurs to us that more might be made out of soldiers if the first few days' marches were easy, and gradually increased in length and quickness. the nights were cold, with heavy dews and occasional showers, and we had several cases of fever. some of the men deserted every night, and we fully expected that all who had children would prefer to return to tette, for little ones are well known to prove the strongest ties, even to slaves. it was useless informing them, that if they wanted to return they had only to come and tell us so; we should not be angry with them for preferring tette to their own country. contact with slaves had destroyed their sense of honour; they would not go in daylight, but decamped in the night, only in one instance, however, taking our goods, though, in two more, they carried off their comrades' property. by the time we had got well into the kebrabasa hills thirty men, nearly a third of the party, had turned back, and it became evident that, if many more left us, sekeletu's goods could not be carried up. at last, when the refuse had fallen away, no more desertions took place. stopping one afternoon at a kebrabasa village, a man, who pretended to be able to change himself into a lion, came to salute us. smelling the gunpowder from a gun which had been discharged, he went on one side to get out of the wind of the piece, trembling in a most artistic manner, but quite overacting his part. the makololo explained to us that he was a pondoro, or a man who can change his form at will, and added that he trembles when he smells gunpowder. "do you not see how he is trembling now?" we told them to ask him to change himself at once into a lion, and we would give him a cloth for the performance. "oh no," replied they; "if we tell him so, he may change himself and come when we are asleep and kill us." having similar superstitions at home, they readily became as firm believers in the pondoro as the natives of the village. we were told that he assumes the form of a lion and remains in the woods for days, and is sometimes absent for a whole month. his considerate wife had built him a hut or den, in which she places food and beer for her transformed lord, whose metamorphosis does not impair his human appetite. no one ever enters this hut except the pondoro and his wife, and no stranger is allowed even to rest his gun against the baobab-tree beside it: the mfumo, or petty chief, of another small village wished to fine our men for placing their muskets against an old tumble-down hut, it being that of the pondoro. at times the pondoro employs his acquired powers in hunting for the benefit of the village; and after an absence of a day or two, his wife smells the lion, takes a certain medicine, places it in the forest, and there quickly leaves it, lest the lion should kill even her. this medicine enables the pondoro to change himself back into a man, return to the village, and say, "go and get the game that i have killed for you." advantage is of course taken of what a lion has done, and they go and bring home the buffalo or antelope killed when he was a lion, or rather found when he was patiently pursuing his course of deception in the forest. we saw the pondoro of another village dressed in a fantastic style, with numerous charms hung round him, and followed by a troop of boys who were honouring him with rounds of shrill cheering. it is believed also that the souls of departed chiefs enter into lions, and render them sacred. on one occasion, when we had shot a buffalo in the path beyond the kafue, a hungry lion, attracted probably by the smell of the meat, came close to our camp, and roused up all hands by his roaring. tuba mokoro, imbued with the popular belief that the beast was a chief in disguise, scolded him roundly during his brief intervals of silence. "you a chief, eh? you call yourself a chief, do you? what kind of chief are you to come sneaking about in the dark, trying to steal our buffalo meat! are you not ashamed of yourself? a pretty chief truly; you are like the scavenger beetle, and think of yourself only. you have not the heart of a chief; why don't you kill your own beef? you must have a stone in your chest, and no heart at all, indeed!" tuba mokoro producing no impression on the transformed chief, one of the men, the most sedate of the party, who seldom spoke, took up the matter, and tried the lion in another strain. in his slow quiet way he expostulated with him on the impropriety of such conduct to strangers, who had never injured him. "we were travelling peaceably through the country back to our own chief. we never killed people, nor stole anything. the buffalo meat was ours, not his, and it did not become a great chief like him to be prowling round in the dark, trying, like a hyena, to steal the meat of strangers. he might go and hunt for himself, as there was plenty of game in the forest." the pondoro, being deaf to reason, and only roaring the louder, the men became angry, and threatened to send a ball through him if he did not go away. they snatched up their guns to shoot him, but he prudently kept in the dark, outside the luminous circle made by our camp fires, and there they did not like to venture. a little strychnine was put into a piece of meat, and thrown to him, when he soon departed, and we heard no more of the majestic sneaker. the kebrabasa people were now plumper and in better condition than on our former visits; the harvest had been abundant; they had plenty to eat and drink, and they were enjoying life as much as ever they could. at defwe's village, near where the ship lay on her first ascent, we found two mfumos or headmen, the son and son-in-law of the former chief. a sister's son has much more chance of succeeding to a chieftainship than the chief's own offspring, it being unquestionable that the sister's child has the family blood. the men are all marked across the nose and up the middle of the forehead with short horizontal bars or cicatrices; and a single brass earring of two or three inches diameter, like the ancient egyptian, is worn by the men. some wear the hair long like the ancient assyrians and egyptians, and a few have eyes with the downward and inward slant of the chinese. after fording the rapid luia, we left our former path on the banks of the zambesi, and struck off in a n.w. direction behind one of the hill ranges, the eastern end of which is called mongwa, the name of an acacia, having a peculiarly strong fetor, found on it. our route wound up a valley along a small mountain-stream which was nearly dry, and then crossed the rocky spurs of some of the lofty hills. the country was all very dry at the time, and no water was found except in an occasional spring and a few wells dug in the beds of watercourses. the people were poor, and always anxious to convince travellers of the fact. the men, unlike those on the plains, spend a good deal of their time in hunting; this may be because they have but little ground on the hill-sides suitable for gardens, and but little certainty of reaping what may be sown in the valleys. no women came forward in the hamlet, east of chiperiziwa, where we halted for the night. two shots had been fired at guinea-fowl a little way off in the valley; the women fled into the woods, and the men came to know if war was meant, and a few of the old folks only returned after hearing that we were for peace. the headman, kambira, apologized for not having a present ready, and afterwards brought us some meal, a roasted coney (_hyrax capensis_), and a pot of beer; he wished to be thought poor. the beer had come to him from a distance; he had none of his own. like the manganja, these people salute by clapping their hands. when a man comes to a place where others are seated, before sitting down he claps his hands to each in succession, and they do the same to him. if he has anything to tell, both speaker and hearer clap their hands at the close of every paragraph, and then again vigorously at the end of the speech. the guide, whom the headman gave us, thus saluted each of his comrades before he started off with us. there is so little difference in the language, that all the tribes of this region are virtually of one family. we proceeded still in the same direction, and passed only two small hamlets during the day. except the noise our men made on the march, everything was still around us: few birds were seen. the appearance of a whydahbird showed that he had not yet parted with his fine long plumes. we passed immense quantities of ebony and lignum-vitae, and the tree from whose smooth and bitter bark granaries are made for corn. the country generally is clothed with a forest of ordinary-sized trees. we slept in the little village near sindabwe, where our men contrived to purchase plenty of beer, and were uncommonly boisterous all the evening. we breakfasted next morning under green wild date-palms, beside the fine flowery stream, which runs through the charming valley of zibah. we now had mount chiperiziwa between us, and part of the river near morumbwa, having in fact come north about in order to avoid the difficulties of our former path. the last of the deserters, a reputed thief, took french leave of us here. he left the bundle of cloth he was carrying in the path a hundred yards in front of where we halted, but made off with the musket and most of the brass rings and beads of his comrade shirimba, who had unsuspectingly intrusted them to his care. proceeding s.w. up this lovely valley, in about an hour's time we reached sandia's village. the chief was said to be absent hunting, and they did not know when he would return. this is such a common answer to the inquiry after a headman, that one is inclined to think that it only means that they wish to know the stranger's object before exposing their superior to danger. as some of our men were ill, a halt was made here. as we were unable to march next morning, six of our young men, anxious to try their muskets, went off to hunt elephants. for several hours they saw nothing, and some of them, getting tired, proposed to go to a village and buy food. "no!" said mantlanyane, "we came to hunt, so let us go on." in a short time they fell in with a herd of cow elephants and calves. as soon as the first cow caught sight of the hunters on the rocks above her, she, with true motherly instinct, placed her young one between her fore-legs for protection. the men were for scattering, and firing into the herd indiscriminately. "that won't do," cried mantlanyane, "let us all fire at this one." the poor beast received a volley, and ran down into the plain, where another shot killed her; the young one escaped with the herd. the men were wild with excitement, and danced round the fallen queen of the forest, with loud shouts and exultant songs. they returned, bearing as trophies the tail and part of the trunk, and marched into camp as erect as soldiers, and evidently feeling that their stature had increased considerably since the morning. sandia's wife was duly informed of their success, as here a law decrees that half the elephant belongs to the chief on whose ground it has been killed. the portuguese traders always submit to this tax, and, were it of native origin, it could hardly be considered unjust. a chief must have some source of revenue; and, as many chiefs can raise none except from ivory or slaves, this tax is more free from objections than any other that a black chancellor of the exchequer could devise. it seems, however, to have originated with the portuguese themselves, and then to have spread among the adjacent tribes. the governors look sharply after any elephant that may be slain on the crown lands, and demand one of the tusks from their vassals. we did not find the law in operation in any tribe beyond the range of portuguese traders, or further than the sphere of travel of those arabs who imitated portuguese customs in trade. at the kafue in the chiefs bought the meat we killed, and demanded nothing as their due; and so it was up the shire during our visits. the slaves of the portuguese, who are sent by their masters to shoot elephants, probably connive at the extension of this law, for they strive to get the good will of the chiefs to whose country they come, by advising them to make a demand of half of each elephant killed, and for this advice they are well paid in beer. when we found that the portuguese argued in favour of this law, we told the natives that they might exact tusks from _them_, but that the english, being different, preferred the pure native custom. it was this which made sandia, as afterwards mentioned, hesitate; but we did not care to insist on exemption in our favour, where the prevalence of the custom might have been held to justify the exaction. the cutting up of an elephant is quite a unique spectacle. the men stand remind the animal in dead silence, while the chief of the travelling party declares that, according to ancient law, the head and right hind- leg belong to him who killed the beast, that is, to him who inflicted the first wound; the left leg to bins who delivered the second, or first touched the animal after it fell. the meat around the eye to the english, or chief of the travellers, and different parts to the headmen of the different fires, or groups, of which the camp is composed; not forgetting to enjoin the preservation of the fat and bowels for a second distribution. this oration finished, the natives soon become excited, and scream wildly as they cut away at the carcass with a score of spears, whose long handles quiver in the air above their heads. their excitement becomes momentarily more and more intense, and reaches the culminating point when, as denoted by a roar of gas, the huge mass is laid fairly open. some jump inside, and roll about there in their eagerness to seize the precious fat, while others run off, screaming, with pieces of the bloody meat, throw it on the grass, and run back for more: all keep talking and shouting at the utmost pitch of their voices. sometimes two or three, regardless of all laws, seize the same piece of meat, and have a brief fight of words over it. occasionally an agonized yell bursts forth, and a native emerges out of the moving mass of dead elephant and wriggling humanity, with his hand badly cut by the spear of his excited friend and neighbour: this requires a rag and some soothing words to prevent bad blood. in an incredibly short time tons of meat are cut up, and placed in separate heaps around. sandia arrived soon after the beast was divided: he is an elderly man, and wears a wig made of "ife" fibre (_sanseviera_) dyed black, and of a fine glossy appearance. this plant is allied to the aloes, and its thick fleshy leaves, in shape somewhat like our sedges, when bruised yield much fine strong fibre, which is made into ropes, nets, and wigs. it takes dyes readily, and the fibre might form a good article of commerce. "ife" wigs, as we afterwards saw, are not uncommon in this country, though perhaps not so common as hair wigs at home. sandia's mosamela, or small carved wooden pillow, exactly resembling the ancient egyptian one, was hung from the back of his neck; this pillow and a sleeping mat are usually carried by natives when on hunting excursions. we had the elephant's fore-foot cooked for ourselves, in native fashion. a large hole was dug in the ground, in which a fire was made; and, when the inside was thoroughly heated, the entire foot was placed in it, and covered over with the hot ashes and soil; another fire was made above the whole, and kept burning all night. we had the foot thus cooked for breakfast next morning, and found it delicious. it is a whitish mass, slightly gelatinous, and sweet, like marrow. a long march, to prevent biliousness, is a wise precaution after a meal of elephant's foot. elephant's trunk and tongue are also good, and, after long simmering, much resemble the hump of a buffalo and the tongue of an ox; but all the other meat is tough, and, from its peculiar flavour, only to be eaten by a hungry man. the quantities of meat our men devour is quite astounding. they boil as much as their pots will hold, and eat till it becomes physically impossible for them to stow away any more. an uproarious dance follows, accompanied with stentorian song; and as soon as they have shaken their first course down, and washed off the sweat and dust of the after performance, they go to work to roast more: a short snatch of sleep succeeds, and they are up and at it again; all night long it is boil and eat, roast and devour, with a few brief interludes of sleep. like other carnivora, these men can endure hunger for a much longer period than the mere porridge-eating tribes. our men can cook meat as well as any reasonable traveller could desire; and, boiled in earthen pots, like indian chatties, it tastes much better than when cooked in iron ones. chapter v. magnificent scenery--method of marching--hippopotamus killed--lions and buffalo--sequasha the ivory-trader. sandia gave us two guides; and on the th of june we left the elephant valley, taking a westerly course; and, after crossing a few ridges, entered the chingerere or paguruguru valley, through which, in the rainy season, runs the streamlet pajodze. the mountains on our left, between us and the zambesi, our guides told us have the same name as the valley, but that at the confluence of the pajodze is called morumbwa. we struck the river at less than half a mile to the north of the cataract morumbwa. on climbing up the base of this mountain at pajodze, we found that we were distant only the diameter of the mountain from the cataract. in measuring the cataract we formerly stood on its southern flank; now we were perched on its northern flank, and at once recognized the onion-shaped mountain, here called zakavuma, whose smooth convex surface overlooks the broken water. its bearing by compass was l degrees from the spot to which we had climbed, and or yards distant. we now, from this standing-point, therefore, completed our inspection of all kebrabasa, and saw what, as a whole, was never before seen by europeans so far as any records show. the remainder of the kebrabasa path, on to chicova, was close to the compressed and rocky river. ranges of lofty tree-covered mountains, with deep narrow valleys, in which are dry watercourses, or flowing rivulets, stretch from the north-west, and are prolonged on the opposite side of the river in a south-easterly direction. looking back, the mountain scenery in kebrabasa was magnificent; conspicuous from their form and steep sides, are the two gigantic portals of the cataract; the vast forests still wore their many brilliant autumnal-coloured tints of green, yellow, red, purple, and brown, thrown into relief by the grey bark of the trunks in the background. among these variegated trees were some conspicuous for their new livery of fresh light-green leaves, as though the winter of others was their spring. the bright sunshine in these mountain forests, and the ever-changing forms of the cloud shadows, gliding over portions of the surface, added fresh charms to scenes already surpassingly beautiful. from what we have seen of the kebrabasa rocks and rapids, it appears too evident that they must always form a barrier to navigation at the ordinary low water of the river; but the rise of the water in this gorge being as much as eighty feet perpendicularly, it is probable that a steamer might be taken up at high flood, when all the rapids are smoothed over, to run on the upper zambesi. the most formidable cataract in it, morumbwa, has only about twenty feet of fall, in a distance of thirty yards, and it must entirely disappear when the water stands eighty feet higher. those of the makololo who worked on board the ship were not sorry at the steamer being left below, as they had become heartily tired of cutting the wood that the insatiable furnace of the "asthmatic" required. mbia, who was a bit of a wag, laughingly exclaimed in broken english, "oh, kebrabasa good, very good; no let shippee up to sekeletu, too muchee work, cuttee woodyee, cuttee woodyee: kebrabasa good." it is currently reported, and commonly believed, that once upon a time a portuguese named jose pedra,--by the natives called nyamatimbira,--chief, or capitao mor, of zumbo, a man of large enterprise and small humanity,--being anxious to ascertain if kebrabasa could be navigated, made two slaves fast to a canoe, and launched it from chicova into kebrabasa, in order to see if it would come out at the other end. as neither slaves nor canoe ever appeared again, his excellency concluded that kebrabasa was unnavigable. a trader had a large canoe swept away by a sudden rise of the river, and it was found without damage below; but the most satisfactory information was that of old sandia, who asserted that in flood all kebrabasa became quite smooth, and he had often seen it so. we emerged from the thirty-five or forty miles of kebrabasa hills into the chicova plains on the th of june, , having made short marches all the way. the cold nights caused some of our men to cough badly, and colds in this country almost invariably become fever. the zambesi suddenly expands at chicova, and assumes the size and appearance it has at tette. near this point we found a large seam of coal exposed in the left bank. we met with native travellers occasionally. those on a long journey carry with them a sleeping-mat and wooden pillow, cooking-pot and bag of meal, pipe and tobacco-pouch, a knife, bow, and arrows, and two small sticks, of from two to three feet in length, for making fire, when obliged to sleep away from human habitations. dry wood is always abundant, and they get fire by the following method. a notch is cut in one of the sticks, which, with a close-grained outside, has a small core of pith, and this notched stick is laid horizontally on a knife-blade on the ground; the operator squatting, places his great toes on each end to keep all steady, and taking the other wand which is of very hard wood cut to a blunt point, fits it into the notch at right angles; the upright wand is made to spin rapidly backwards and forwards between the palms of the hands, drill fashion, and at the same time is pressed downwards; the friction, in the course of a minute or so, ignites portions of the pith of the notched stick, which, rolling over like live charcoal on to the knife-blade, are lifted into a handful of fine dry grass, and carefully blown, by waving backwards and forwards in the air. it is hard work for the hands to procure fire by this process, as the vigorous drilling and downward pressure requisite soon blister soft palms. having now entered a country where lions were numerous, our men began to pay greater attention to the arrangements of the camp at night. as they are accustomed to do with their chiefs, they place the white men in the centre; kanyata, his men, and the two donkeys, camp on our right; tuba mokoro's party of bashubia are in front; masakasa, and sininyane's body of batoka, on the left; and in the rear six tette men have their fires. in placing their fires they are careful to put them where the smoke will not blow in our faces. soon after we halt, the spot for the english is selected, and all regulate their places accordingly, and deposit their burdens. the men take it by turns to cut some of the tall dry grass, and spread it for our beds on a spot, either naturally level, or smoothed by the hoe; some, appointed to carry our bedding, then bring our rugs and karosses, and place the three rugs in a row on the grass; dr. livingstone's being in the middle, dr. kirk's on the right, and charles livingstone's on the left. our bags, rifles, and revolvers are carefully placed at our heads, and a fire made near our feet. we have no tent nor covering of any kind except the branches of the tree under which we may happen to lie; and it is a pretty sight to look up and see every branch, leaf, and twig of the tree stand out, reflected against the clear star- spangled and moonlit sky. the stars of the first magnitude have names which convey the same meaning over very wide tracts of country. here when venus comes out in the evenings, she is called ntanda, the eldest or first-born, and manjika, the first-born of morning, at other times: she has so much radiance when shining alone, that she casts a shadow. sirius is named kuewa usiko, "drawer of night," because supposed to draw the whole night after it. the moon has no evil influence in this country, so far as we know. we have lain and looked up at her, till sweet sleep closed our eyes, unharmed. four or five of our men were affected with moon-blindness at tette; though they had not slept out of doors there, they became so blind that their comrades had to guide their hands to the general dish of food; the affection is unknown in their own country. when our posterity shall have discovered what it is which, distinct from foul smells, causes fever, and what, apart from the moon, causes men to be moon-struck, they will pity our dulness of perception. the men cut a very small quantity of grass for themselves, and sleep in fumbas or sleeping-bags, which are double mats of palm-leaf, six feet long by four wide, and sewn together round three parts of the square, and left open only on one side. they are used as a protection from the cold, wet, and mosquitoes, and are entered as we should get into our beds, were the blankets nailed to the top, bottom, and one side of the bedstead. a dozen fires are nightly kindled in the camp; and these, being replenished from time to time by the men who are awakened by the cold, are kept burning until daylight. abundance of dry hard wood is obtained with little trouble; and burns beautifully. after the great business of cooking and eating is over, all sit round the camp-fires, and engage in talking or singing. every evening one of the batoka plays his "sansa," and continues at it until far into the night; he accompanies it with an extempore song, in which he rehearses their deeds ever since they left their own country. at times animated political discussions spring up, and the amount of eloquence expended on these occasions is amazing. the whole camp is aroused, and the men shout to one another from the different fires; whilst some, whose tongues are never heard on any other subject, burst forth into impassioned speech. as a specimen of our mode of marching, we rise about five, or as soon as dawn appears, take a cup of tea and a bit of biscuit; the servants fold up the blankets and stow them away in the bags they carry; the others tie their fumbas and cooking-pots to each end of their carrying-sticks, which are borne on the shoulder; the cook secures the dishes, and all are on the path by sunrise. if a convenient spot can be found we halt for breakfast about nine a.m. to save time, this meal is generally cooked the night before, and has only to be warmed. we continue the march after breakfast, rest a little in the middle of the day, and break off early in the afternoon. we average from two to two-and-a-half miles an hour in a straight line, or as the crow flies, and seldom have more than five or six hours a day of actual travel. this in a hot climate is as much as a man can accomplish without being oppressed; and we always tried to make our progress more a pleasure than a toil. to hurry over the ground, abuse, and look ferocious at one's native companions, merely for the foolish vanity of boasting how quickly a distance was accomplished, is a combination of silliness with absurdity quite odious; while kindly consideration for the feelings of even blacks, the pleasure of observing scenery and everything new as one moves on at an ordinary pace, and the participation in the most delicious rest with our fellows, render travelling delightful. though not given to over haste, we were a little surprised to find that we could tire our men out; and even the headman, who carried but little more than we did, and never, as we often had to do, hunted in the afternoon, was no better than his comrades. our experience tends to prove that the european constitution has a power of endurance, even in the tropics, greater than that of the hardiest of the meat-eating africans. after pitching our camp, one or two of us usually go off to hunt, more as a matter of necessity than of pleasure, for the men, as well as ourselves, must have meat. we prefer to take a man with us to carry home the game, or lead the others to where it lies; but as they frequently grumble and complain of being tired, we do not particularly object to going alone, except that it involves the extra labour of our making a second trip to show the men where the animal that has been shot is to be found. when it is a couple of miles off it is rather fatiguing to have to go twice; more especially on the days when it is solely to supply their wants that, instead of resting ourselves, we go at all. like those who perform benevolent deeds at home, the tired hunter, though trying hard to live in charity with all men, is strongly tempted to give it up by bringing only sufficient meat for the three whites and leaving the rest; thus sending the "idle ungrateful poor" supperless to bed. and yet it is only by continuance in well-doing, even to the length of what the worldly-wise call weakness, that the conviction is produced anywhere, that our motives are high enough to secure sincere respect. a jungle of mimosa, ebony, and "wait-a-bit" thorn lies between the chicova flats and the cultivated plain, on which stand the villages of the chief, chitora. he brought us a present of food and drink, because, as he, with the innate politeness of an african, said, he "did not wish us to sleep hungry: he had heard of the doctor when he passed down, and had a great desire to see and converse with him; but he was a child then, and could not speak in the presence of great men. he was glad that he had seen the english now, and was sorry that his people were away, or he should have made them cook for us." all his subsequent conduct showed him to be sincere. many of the african women are particular about the water they use for drinking and cooking, and prefer that which is filtered through sand. to secure this, they scrape holes in the sandbanks beside the stream, and scoop up the water, which slowly filters through, rather than take it from the equally clear and limpid river. this practice is common in the zambesi, the rovuma, and lake nyassa; and some of the portuguese at tette have adopted the native custom, and send canoes to a low island in the middle of the river for water. chitora's people also obtained their supply from shallow wells in the sandy bed of a small rivulet close to the village. the habit may have arisen from observing the unhealthiness of the main stream at certain seasons. during nearly nine months in the year, ordure is deposited around countless villages along the thousands of miles drained by the zambesi. when the heavy rains come down, and sweep the vast fetid accumulation into the torrents, the water is polluted with filth; and, but for the precaution mentioned, the natives would prove themselves as little fastidious as those in london who drink the abomination poured into the thames by reading and oxford. it is no wonder that sailors suffered so much from fever after drinking african river water, before the present admirable system of condensing it was adopted in our navy. the scent of man is excessively terrible to game of all kinds, much more so, probably, than the sight of him. a herd of antelopes, a hundred yards off, gazed at us as we moved along the winding path, and timidly stood their ground until half our line had passed, but darted off the instant they "got the wind," or caught the flavour of those who had gone by. the sport is all up with the hunter who gets to the windward of the african beast, as it cannot stand even the distant aroma of the human race, so much dreaded by all wild animals. is this the fear and the dread of man, which the almighty said to noah was to be upon every beast of the field? a lion may, while lying in wait for his prey, leap on a human being as he would on any other animal, save a rhinoceros or an elephant, that happened to pass; or a lioness, when she has cubs, might attack a man, who, passing "up the wind of her," had unconsciously, by his scent, alarmed her for the safety of her whelps; or buffaloes, amid other animals, might rush at a line of travellers, in apprehension of being surrounded by them; but neither beast nor snake will, as a general rule, turn on man except when wounded, or by mistake. if gorillas, unwounded, advance to do battle with him, and beat their breasts in defiance, they are an exception to all wild beasts known to us. from the way an elephant runs at the first glance of man, it is inferred that this huge brute, though really king of beasts, would run even from a child. our two donkeys caused as much admiration as the three white men. great was the astonishment when one of the donkeys began to bray. the timid jumped more than if a lion had roared beside them. all were startled, and stared in mute amazement at the harsh-voiced one, till the last broken note was uttered; then, on being assured that nothing in particular was meant, they looked at each other, and burst into a loud laugh at their common surprise. when one donkey stimulated the other to try his vocal powers, the interest felt by the startled visitors, must have equalled that of the londoners, when they first crowded to see the famous hippopotamus. we were now, when we crossed the boundary rivulet nyamatarara, out of chicova and amongst sandstone rocks, similar to those which prevail between lupata and kebrabasa. in the latter gorge, as already mentioned, igneous and syenitic masses have been acted on by some great fiery convulsion of nature; the strata are thrown into a huddled heap of confusion. the coal has of course disappeared in kebrabasa, but is found again in chicova. tette grey sandstone is common about sinjere, and wherever it is seen with fossil wood upon it, coal lies beneath; and here, as at chicova, some seams crop out on the banks of the zambesi. looking southwards, the country is open plain and woodland, with detached hills and mountains in the distance; but the latter are too far off, the natives say, for them to know their names. the principal hills on our right, as we look up stream, are from six to twelve miles away, and occasionally they send down spurs to the river, with brooks flowing through their narrow valleys. the banks of the zambesi show two well- defined terraces; the first, or lowest, being usually narrow, and of great fertility, while the upper one is a dry grassy plain, a thorny jungle, or a mopane (_bauhinia_) forest. one of these plains, near the kafue, is covered with the large stumps and trunks of a petrified forest. we halted a couple of days by the fine stream sinjere, which comes from the chiroby-roby hills, about eight miles to the north. many lumps of coal, brought down by the rapid current, lie in its channel. the natives never seem to have discovered that coal would burn, and, when informed of the fact, shook their heads, smiled incredulously, and said "_kodi_" (really), evidently regarding it as a mere traveller's tale. they were astounded to see it burning freely on our fire of wood. they told us that plenty of it was seen among the hills; but, being long ago aware that we were now in an immense coalfield, we did not care to examine it further. a dyke of black basaltic rock, called kakolole, crosses the river near the mouth of the sinjere; but it has two open gateways in it of from sixty to eighty yards in breadth, and the channel is very deep. on a shallow sandbank, under the dyke, lay a herd of hippopotami in fancied security. the young ones were playing with each other like young puppies, climbing on the backs of their dams, trying to take hold of one another by the jaws and tumbling over into the water. mbia, one of the makololo, waded across to within a dozen yards of the drowsy beasts, and shot the father of the herd; who, being very fat, soon floated, and was secured at the village below. the headman of the village visited us while we were at breakfast. he wore a black "ife" wig and a printed shirt. after a short silence he said to masakasa, "you are with the white people, so why do you not tell them to give me a cloth?" "we are strangers," answered masakasa, "why do you not bring us some food?" he took the plain hint, and brought us two fowls, in order that we should not report that in passing him we got nothing to eat; and, as usual, we gave a cloth in return. in reference to the hippopotamus he would make no demand, but said he would take what we chose to give him. the men gorged themselves with meat for two days, and cut large quantities into long narrow strips, which they half-dried and half-roasted on wooden frames over the fire. much game is taken in this neighbourhood in pitfalls. sharp-pointed stakes are set in the bottom, on which the game tumbles and gets impaled. the natives are careful to warn strangers of these traps, and also of the poisoned beams suspended on the tall trees for the purpose of killing elephants and hippopotami. it is not difficult to detect the pitfalls after one's attention has been called to them; but in places where they are careful to carry the earth off to a distance, and a person is not thinking of such things, a sudden descent of nine feet is an experience not easily forgotten by the traveller. the sensations of one thus instantaneously swallowed up by the earth are peculiar. a momentary suspension of consciousness is followed by the rustling sound of a shower of sand and dry grass, and the half-bewildered thought of where he is, and how he came into darkness. reason awakes to assure him that he must have come down through that small opening of daylight overhead, and that he is now where a hippopotamus ought to have been. the descent of a hippopotamus pitfall is easy, but to get out again into the upper air is a work of labour. the sides are smooth and treacherous, and the cross reeds, which support the covering, break in the attempt to get out by clutching them. a cry from the depths is unheard by those around, and it is only by repeated and most desperate efforts that the buried alive can regain the upper world. at tette we are told of a white hunter, of unusually small stature, who plumped into a pit while stalking a guinea-fowl on a tree. it was the labour of an entire forenoon to get out; and he was congratulating himself on his escape, and brushing off the clay from his clothes, when down he went into a second pit, which happened, as is often the case, to be close beside the first, and it was evening before he could work himself out of _that_. elephants and buffaloes seldom return to the river by the same path on two successive nights, they become so apprehensive of danger from this human art. an old elephant will walk in advance of the herd, and uncover the pits with his trunk, that the others may see the openings and tread on firm ground. female elephants are generally the victims: more timid by nature than the males, and very motherly in their anxiety for their calves, they carry their trunks up, trying every breeze for fancied danger, which often in reality lies at their feet. the tusker, fearing less, keeps his trunk down, and, warned in time by that exquisitely sensitive organ, takes heed to his ways. our camp on the sinjere stood under a wide-spreading wild fig-tree. from the numbers of this family, of large size, dotted over the country, the fig or banyan species would seem to have been held sacred in africa from the remotest times. the soil teemed with white ants, whose clay tunnels, formed to screen them from the eyes of birds, thread over the ground, up the trunks of trees, and along the branches, from which the little architects clear away all rotten or dead wood. very often the exact shape of branches is left in tunnels on the ground and not a bit of the wood inside. the first night we passed here these destructive insects ate through our grass-beds, and attacked our blankets, and certain large red-headed ones even bit our flesh. on some days not a single white ant is to be seen abroad; and on others, and during certain hours, they appear out of doors in myriads, and work with extraordinary zeal and energy in carrying bits of dried grass down into their nests. during these busy reaping-fits the lizards and birds have a good time of it, and enjoy a rich feast at the expense of thousands of hapless workmen; and when they swarm they are caught in countless numbers by the natives, and their roasted bodies are spoken of in an unctuous manner as resembling grains of soft rice fried in delicious fresh oil. a strong marauding party of large black ants attacked a nest of white ones near the camp: as the contest took place beneath the surface, we could not see the order of the battle; but it soon became apparent that the blacks had gained the day, and sacked the white town, for they returned in triumph, bearing off the eggs, and choice bits of the bodies of the vanquished. a gift, analogous to that of language, has not been withheld from ants: if part of their building is destroyed, an official is seen coming out to examine the damage; and, after a careful survey of the ruins, he chirrups a few clear and distinct notes, and a crowd of workers begin at once to repair the breach. when the work is completed, another order is given, and the workmen retire, as will appear on removing the soft freshly-built portion. we tried to sleep one rainy might in a native hut, but could not because of attacks by the fighting battalions of a very small species of formica, not more than one-sixteenth of an inch in length. it soon became obvious that they were under regular discipline, and even attempting to carry out the skilful plans and stratagems of some eminent leader. our hands and necks were the first objects of attack. large bodies of these little pests were massed in silence round the point to be assaulted. we could hear the sharp shrill word of command two or three times repeated, though until then we had not believed in the vocal power of an ant; the instant after we felt the storming hosts range over head and neck, biting the tender skin, clinging with a death-grip to the hair, and parting with their jaws rather than quit their hold. on our lying down again in the hope of their having been driven off, no sooner was the light out, and all still, than the manoeuvre was repeated. clear and audible orders were issued, and the assault renewed. it was as hard to sleep in that hut as in the trenches before sebastopol. the white ant, being a vegetable feeder, devours articles of vegetable origin only, and leather, which, by tanning, is imbued with a vegetable flavour. "a man may be rich to-day and poor to-morrow, from the ravages of white ants," said a portuguese merchant. "if he gets sick, and unable to look after his goods, his slaves neglect them, and they are soon destroyed by these insects." the reddish ant, in the west called drivers, crossed our path daily, in solid columns an inch wide, and never did the pugnacity of either man or beast exceed theirs. it is a sufficient cause of war if you only approach them, even by accident. some turn out of the ranks and stand with open mandibles, or, charging with extended jaws, bite with savage ferocity. when hunting, we lighted among them too often; while we were intent on the game, and without a thought of ants, they quietly covered us from head to foot, then all began to bite at the same instant; seizing a piece of the skin with their powerful pincers, they twisted themselves round with it, as if determined to tear it out. their bites are so terribly sharp that the bravest must run, and then strip to pick off those that still cling with their hooked jaws, as with steel forceps. this kind abounds in damp places, and is usually met with on the banks of streams. we have not heard of their actually killing any animal except the python, and that only when gorged and quite lethargic, but they soon clear away any dead animal matter; this appears to be their principal food, and their use in the economy of nature is clearly in the scavenger line. we started from the sinjere on the th of june, our men carrying with them bundles of hippopotamus meat for sale, and for future use. we rested for breakfast opposite the kakolole dyke, which confines the channel, west of the manyerere mountain. a rogue monkey, the largest by far that we ever saw, and very fat and tame, walked off leisurely from a garden as we approached. the monkey is a sacred animal in this region, and is never molested or killed, because the people believe devoutly that the souls of their ancestors now occupy these degraded forms, and anticipate that they themselves must, sooner or later, be transformed in like manner; a future as cheerless for the black as the spirit-rapper's heaven is for the whites. the gardens are separated from each other by a single row of small stones, a few handfuls of grass, or a slight furrow made by the hoe. some are enclosed by a reed fence of the flimsiest construction, yet sufficient to keep out the ever wary hippopotamus, who dreads a trap. his extreme caution is taken advantage of by the women, who hang, as a miniature trap-beam, a kigelia fruit with a bit of stick in the end. this protects the maize, of which he is excessively fond. the quantity of hippopotamus meat eaten by our men made some of them ill, and our marches were necessarily short. after three hours' travel on the th, we spent the remainder of the day at the village of chasiribera, on a rivulet flowing through a beautiful valley to the north, which is bounded by magnificent mountain-ranges. pinkwe, or mbingwe, otherwise moeu, forms the south-eastern angle of the range. on the th june we were at the flourishing village of senga, under the headman manyame, which lies at the foot of the mount motemwa. nearly all the mountains in this country are covered with open forest and grass, in colour, according to the season, green or yellow. many are between and feet high, with the sky line fringed with trees; the rocks show just sufficiently for one to observe their stratification, or their granitic form, and though not covered with dense masses of climbing plants, like those in moister eastern climates, there is still the idea conveyed that most of the steep sides are fertile, and none give the impression of that barrenness which, in northern mountains, suggests the idea that the bones of the world are sticking through its skin. the villagers reported that we were on the footsteps of a portuguese half- caste, who, at senga, lately tried to purchase ivory, but, in consequence of his having murdered a chief near zumbo and twenty of his men, the people declined to trade with him. he threatened to take the ivory by force, if they would not sell it; but that same night the ivory and the women were spirited out of the village, and only a large body of armed men remained. the trader, fearing that he might come off second best if it came to blows, immediately departed. chikwanitsela, or sekuanangila, is the paramount chief of some fifty miles of the northern bank of the zambesi in this locality. he lives on the opposite, or southern side, and there his territory is still more extensive. we sent him a present from senga, and were informed by a messenger next morning that he had a cough and could not come over to see us. "and has his present a cough too," remarked one of our party, "that it does not come to us? is this the way your chief treats strangers, receives their present, and sends them no food in return?" our men thought chikwanitsela an uncommonly stingy fellow; but, as it was possible that some of them might yet wish to return this way, they did not like to scold him more than this, which was sufficiently to the point. men and women were busily engaged in preparing the ground for the november planting. large game was abundant; herds of elephants and buffaloes came down to the river in the night, but were a long way off by daylight. they soon adopt this habit in places where they are hunted. the plains we travel over are constantly varying in breadth, according as the furrowed and wooded hills approach or recede from the river. on the southern side we see the hill bungwe, and the long, level, wooded ridge nyangombe, the first of a series bending from the s.e. to the n.w. past the zambesi. we shot an old pallah on the th, and found that the poor animal had been visited with more than the usual share of animal afflictions. he was stone-blind in both eyes, had several tumours, and a broken leg, which showed no symptoms of ever having begun to heal. wild animals sometimes suffer a great deal from disease, and wearily drag on a miserable existence before relieved of it by some ravenous beast. once we drove off a maneless lion and lioness from a dead buffalo, which had been in the last stage of a decline. they had watched him staggering to the river to quench his thirst, and sprang on him as he was crawling up the bank. one had caught him by the throat, and the other by his high projecting backbone, which was broken by the lion's powerful fangs. the struggle, if any, must have been short. they had only eaten the intestines when we frightened them off. it is curious that this is the part that wild animals always begin with, and that it is also the first choice of our men. were it not a wise arrangement that only the strongest males should continue the breed, one could hardly help pitying the solitary buffalo expelled from the herd for some physical blemish, or on account of the weakness of approaching old age. banished from female society, he naturally becomes morose and savage; the necessary watchfulness against enemies is now never shared by others; disgusted, he passes into a state of chronic war with all who enjoy life, and the sooner after his expulsion that he fills the lion's or the wild-dog's maw, the better for himself and for the peace of the country. we encamped on the th of june at a spot where dr. livingstone, on his journey from the west to the east coast, was formerly menaced by a chief named mpende. no offence had been committed against him, but he had firearms, and, with the express object of showing his power, he threatened to attack the strangers. mpende's counsellors having, however, found out that dr. livingstone belonged to a tribe of whom they had heard that "they loved the black man and did not make slaves," his conduct at once changed from enmity to kindness, and, as the place was one well selected for defence, it was perhaps quite as well for mpende that he decided as he did. three of his counsellors now visited us, and we gave them a handsome present for their chief, who came himself next morning and made us a present of a goat, a basket of boiled maize, and another of vetches. a few miles above this the headman, chilondo of nyamasusa, apologized for not formerly lending us canoes. "he was absent, and his children were to blame for not telling him when the doctor passed; he did not refuse the canoes." the sight of our men, now armed with muskets, had a great effect. without any bullying, firearms command respect, and lead men to be reasonable who might otherwise feel disposed to be troublesome. nothing, however, our fracas with mpende excepted, could be more peaceful than our passage through this tract of country in . we then had nothing to excite the cupidity of the people, and the men maintained themselves, either by selling elephant's meat, or by exhibiting feats of foreign dancing. most of the people were very generous and friendly; but the banyai, nearer to tette than this, stopped our march with a threatening war-dance. one of our party, terrified at this, ran away, as we thought, insane, and could not, after a painful search of three days, be found. the banyai, evidently touched by our distress, allowed us to proceed. through a man we left on an island a little below mpende's, we subsequently learned that poor monaheng had fled thither, and had been murdered by the headman for no reason except that he was defenceless. this headman had since become odious to his countrymen, and had been put to death by them. on the rd of june we entered pangola's principal village, which is upwards of a mile from the river. the ruins of a mud wall showed that a rude attempt had been made to imitate the portuguese style of building. we established ourselves under a stately wild fig-tree, round whose trunk witchcraft medicine had been tied, to protect from thieves the honey of the wild bees, which had their hive in one of the limbs. this is a common device. the charm, or the medicine, is purchased of the dice doctors, and consists of a strip of palm-leaf smeared with something, and adorned with a few bits of grass, wood, or roots. it is tied round the tree, and is believed to have the power of inflicting disease and death on the thief who climbs over it. superstition is thus not without its uses in certain states of society; it prevents many crimes and misdemeanours, which would occur but for the salutary fear that it produces. pangola arrived, tipsy and talkative.--"we are friends, we are great friends; i have brought you a basket of green maize--here it is!" we thanked him, and handed him two fathoms of cotton cloth, four times the market-value of his present. no, he would not take so small a present; he wanted a double-barrelled rifle--one of dixon's best. "we are friends, you know; we are all friends together." but although we were willing to admit that, we could not give him our best rifle, so he went off in high dudgeon. early next morning, as we were commencing divine service, pangola returned, sober. we explained to him that we wished to worship god, and invited him to remain; he seemed frightened, and retired: but after service he again importuned us for the rifle. it was of no use telling him that we had a long journey before us, and needed it to kill game for ourselves.--"he too must obtain meat for himself and people, for they sometimes suffered from hunger." he then got sulky, and his people refused to sell food except at extravagant prices. knowing that we had nothing to eat, they felt sure of starving us into compliance. but two of our young men, having gone off at sunrise, shot a fine waterbuck, and down came the provision market to the lower figure; they even became eager to sell, but our men were angry with them for trying compulsion, and would not buy. black greed had outwitted itself, as happens often with white cupidity; and not only here did the traits of africans remind us of anglo-saxons elsewhere: the notoriously ready world- wide disposition to take an unfair advantage of a man's necessities shows that the same mean motives are pretty widely diffused among all races. it may not be granted that the same blood flows in all veins, or that all have descended from the same stock; but the traveller has no doubt that, practically, the white rogue and black are men and brothers. pangola is the child or vassal of mpende. sandia and mpende are the only independent chiefs from kebrabasa to zumbo, and belong to the tribe manganja. the country north of the mountains here in sight from the zambesi is called senga, and its inhabitants asenga, or basenga, but all appear to be of the same family as the rest of the manganja and maravi. formerly all the manganja were united under the government of their great chief, undi, whose empire extended from lake shirwa to the river loangwa; but after undi's death it fell to pieces, and a large portion of it on the zambesi was absorbed by their powerful southern neighbours the banyai. this has been the inevitable fate of every african empire from time immemorial. a chief of more than ordinary ability arises and, subduing all his less powerful neighbours, founds a kingdom, which he governs more or less wisely till he dies. his successor not having the talents of the conqueror cannot retain the dominion, and some of the abler under-chiefs set up for themselves, and, in a few years, the remembrance only of the empire remains. this, which may be considered as the normal state of african society, gives rise to frequent and desolating wars, and the people long in vain for a power able to make all dwell in peace. in this light, a european colony would be considered by the natives as an inestimable boon to intertropical africa. thousands of industrious natives would gladly settle round it, and engage in that peaceful pursuit of agriculture and trade of which they are so fond, and, undistracted by wars or rumours of wars, might listen to the purifying and ennobling truths of the gospel of jesus christ. the manganja on the zambesi, like their countrymen on the shire, are fond of agriculture; and, in addition to the usual varieties of food, cultivate tobacco and cotton in quantities more than equal to their wants. to the question, "would they work for europeans?" an affirmative answer may be given, if the europeans belong to the class which can pay a reasonable price for labour, and not to that of adventurers who want employment for themselves. all were particularly well clothed from sandia's to pangola's; and it was noticed that all the cloth was of native manufacture, the product of their own looms. in senga a great deal of iron is obtained from the ore and manufactured very cleverly. as is customary when a party of armed strangers visits the village, pangola took the precaution of sleeping in one of the outlying hamlets. no one ever knows, or at any rate will tell, where the chief sleeps. he came not next morning, so we went our way; but in a few moments we saw the rifle-loving chief approaching with some armed men. before meeting us, he left the path and drew up his "following" under a tree, expecting us to halt, and give him a chance of bothering us again; but, having already had enough of that, we held right on: he seemed dumbfoundered, and could hardly believe his own eyes. for a few seconds he was speechless, but at last recovered so far as to be able to say, "you are passing pangola. do you not see pangola?" mbia was just going by at the time with the donkey, and, proud of every opportunity of airing his small stock of english, shouted in reply, "all right! then get on." "click, click, click." on the th june we breakfasted at zumbo, on the left bank of the loangwa, near the ruins of some ancient portuguese houses. the loangwa was too deep to be forded, and there were no canoes on our side. seeing two small ones on the opposite shore, near a few recently erected huts of two half-castes from tette, we halted for the ferry-men to come over. from their movements it was evident that they were in a state of rollicking drunkenness. having a waterproof cloak, which could be inflated into a tiny boat, we sent mantlanyane across in it. three half- intoxicated slaves then brought us the shaky canoes, which we lashed together and manned with our own canoe-men. five men were all that we could carry over at a time; and after four trips had been made the slaves began to clamour for drink; not receiving any, as we had none to give, they grew more insolent, and declared that not another man should cross that day. sininyane was remonstrating with them, when a loaded musket was presented at him by one of the trio. in an instant the gun was out of the rascal's hands, a rattling shower of blows fell on his back, and he took an involuntary header into the river. he crawled up the bank a sad and sober man, and all three at once tumbled from the height of saucy swagger to a low depth of slavish abjectness. the musket was found to have an enormous charge, and might have blown our man to pieces, but for the promptitude with which his companions administered justice in a lawless land. we were all ferried safely across by o'clock in the evening. in illustration of what takes place where no government, or law exists, the two half-castes, to whom these men belonged, left tette, with four hundred slaves, armed with the old sepoy brown bess, to hunt elephants and trade in ivory. on our way up, we heard from natives of their lawless deeds, and again, on our way down, from several, who had been eyewitnesses of the principal crime, and all reports substantially agreed. the story is a sad one. after the traders reached zumbo, one of them, called by the natives sequasha, entered into a plot with the disaffected headman, namakusuru, to kill his chief, mpangwe, in order that namakusuru might seize upon the chieftainship; and for the murder of mpangwe the trader agreed to receive ten large tusks of ivory. sequasha, with a picked party of armed slaves, went to visit mpangwe who received him kindly, and treated him with all the honour and hospitality usually shown to distinguished strangers, and the women busied themselves in cooking the best of their provisions for the repast to be set before him. of this, and also of the beer, the half-caste partook heartily. mpangwe was then asked by sequasha to allow his men to fire their guns in amusement. innocent of any suspicion of treachery, and anxious to hear the report of firearms, mpangwe at once gave his consent; and the slaves rose and poured a murderous volley into the merry group of unsuspecting spectators, instantly killing the chief and twenty of his people. the survivors fled in horror. the children and young women were seized as slaves, and the village sacked. sequasha sent the message to namakusuru: "i have killed the lion that troubled you; come and let us talk over the matter." he came and brought the ivory. "no," said the half-caste, "let us divide the land:" and he took the larger share for himself, and compelled the would-be usurper to deliver up his bracelets, in token of subjection on becoming the child or vassal of sequasha. these were sent in triumph to the authorities at tette. the governor of quillimane had told us that he had received orders from lisbon to take advantage of our passing to re-establish zumbo; and accordingly these traders had built a small stockade on the rich plain of the right bank of loangwa, a mile above the site of the ancient mission church of zumbo, as part of the royal policy. the bloodshed was quite unnecessary, because, the land at zumbo having of old been purchased, the natives would have always of their own accord acknowledged the right thus acquired; they pointed it out to dr. livingstone in that, though they were cultivating it, is was not theirs, but white man's land. sequasha and his mate had left their ivory in charge of some of their slaves, who, in the absence of their masters, were now having a gay time of it, and getting drunk every day with the produce of the sacked villages. the head slave came and begged for the musket of the delinquent ferryman, which was returned. he thought his master did perfectly right to kill mpangwe, when asked to do it for the fee of ten tusks, and he even justified it thus: "if a man invites you to eat, will you not partake?" we continued our journey on the th of june. game was extremely abundant, and there were many lions. mbia drove one off from his feast on a wild pig, and appropriated what remained of the pork to his own use. lions are particularly fond of the flesh of wild pigs and zebras, and contrive to kill a large number of these animals. in the afternoon we arrived at the village of the female chief, ma-mburuma, but she herself was now living on the opposite side of the river. some of her people called, and said she had been frightened by seeing her son and other children killed by sequasha, and had fled to the other bank; but when her heart was healed, she would return and live in her own village, and among her own people. she constantly inquired of the black traders, who came up the river, if they had any news of the white man who passed with the oxen. "he has gone down into the sea," was their reply, "but we belong to the same people." "oh no; you need not tell me that; he takes no slaves, but wishes peace: you are not of his tribe." this antislavery character excites such universal attention, that any missionary who winked at the gigantic evils involved in the slave-trade would certainly fail to produce any good impression on the native mind. chapter vi. illness--the honey-guide--abundance of game--the baenda pezi--the batoka. we left the river here, and proceeded up the valley which leads to the mburuma or mohango pass. the nights were cold, and on the th of june the thermometer was as low as degrees at sunrise. we passed through a village of twenty large huts, which sequasha had attacked on his return from the murder of the chief, mpangwe. he caught the women and children for slaves, and carried off all the food, except a huge basket of bran, which the natives are wont to save against a time of famine. his slaves had broken all the water-pots and the millstones for grinding meal. the buaze-trees and bamboos are now seen on the hills; but the jujube or zisyphus, which has evidently been introduced from india, extends no further up the river. we had been eating this fruit, which, having somewhat the taste of apples, the portuguese call macaas, all the way from tette; and here they were larger than usual, though immediately beyond they ceased to be found. no mango-tree either is to be met with beyond this point, because the portuguese traders never established themselves anywhere beyond zumbo. tsetse flies are more numerous and troublesome than we have ever before found them. they accompany us on the march, often buzzing round our heads like a swarm of bees. they are very cunning, and when intending to bite, alight so gently that their presence is not perceived till they thrust in their lance-like proboscis. the bite is acute, but the pain is over in a moment; it is followed by a little of the disagreeable itching of the mosquito's bite. this fly invariably kills all domestic animals except goats and donkeys; man and the wild animals escape. we ourselves were severely bitten on this pass, and so were our donkeys, but neither suffered from any after effects. water is scarce in the mburuma pass, except during the rainy season. we however halted beside some fine springs in the bed of the now dry rivulet, podebode, which is continued down to the end of the pass, and yields water at intervals in pools. here we remained a couple of days in consequence of the severe illness of dr. kirk. he had several times been attacked by fever; and observed that when we were on the cool heights he was comfortable, but when we happened to descend from a high to a lower altitude, he felt chilly, though the temperature in the latter case was degrees higher than it was above; he had been trying different medicines of reputed efficacy with a view to ascertain whether other combinations might not be superior to the preparation we generally used; in halting by this water he suddenly became blind, and unable to stand from faintness. the men, with great alacrity, prepared a grassy bed, on which we laid our companion, with the sad forebodings which only those who have tended the sick in a wild country can realize. we feared that in experimenting he had over-drugged himself; but we gave him a dose of our fever pills; on the third day he rode the one of the two donkeys that would allow itself to be mounted, and on the sixth he marched as well as any of us. this case is mentioned in order to illustrate what we have often observed, that moving the patient from place to place is most conducive to the cure; and the more pluck a man has--the less he gives in to the disease--the less likely he is to die. supplied with water by the pools in the podebode, we again joined the zambesi at the confluence of the rivulet. when passing through a dry district the native hunter knows where to expect water by the animals he sees. the presence of the gemsbuck, duiker or diver, springbucks, or elephants, is no proof that water is near; for these animals roam over vast tracts of country, and may be met scores of miles from it. not so, however, the zebra, pallah, buffalo, and rhinoceros; their spoor gives assurance that water is not far off, as they never stray any distance from its neighbourhood. but when amidst the solemn stillness of the woods, the singing of joyous birds falls upon the ear, it is certain that water is close at hand. our men in hunting came on an immense herd of buffaloes, quietly resting in the long dry grass, and began to blaze away furiously at the astonished animals. in the wild excitement of the hunt, which heretofore had been conducted with spears, some forgot to load with ball, and, firing away vigorously with powder only, wondered for the moment that the buffaloes did not fall. the slayer of the young elephant, having buried his four bullets in as many buffaloes, fired three charges of no. shot he had for killing guinea-fowl. the quaint remarks and merriment after these little adventures seemed to the listener like the pleasant prattle of children. mbia and mantlanyane, however, killed one buffalo each; both the beasts were in prime condition; the meat was like really excellent beef, with a smack of venison. a troop of hungry, howling hyenas also thought the savour tempting, as they hung round the camp at night, anxious to partake of the feast. they are, fortunately, arrant cowards, and never attack either men or beasts except they can catch them asleep, sick, or at some other disadvantage. with a bright fire at our feet their presence excites no uneasiness. a piece of meat hung on a tree, high enough to make him jump to reach it, and a short spear, with its handle firmly planted in the ground beneath, are used as a device to induce the hyena to commit suicide by impalement. the honey-guide is an extraordinary bird; how is it that every member of its family has learned that all men, white or black, are fond of honey? the instant the little fellow gets a glimpse of a man, he hastens to greet him with the hearty invitation to come, as mbia translated it, to a bees' hive, and take some honey. he flies on in the proper direction, perches on a tree, and looks back to see if you are following; then on to another and another, until he guides you to the spot. if you do not accept his first invitation he follows you with pressing importunities, quite as anxious to lure the stranger to the bees' hive as other birds are to draw him away from their own nest. except while on the march, our men were sure to accept the invitation, and manifested the same by a peculiar responsive whistle, meaning, as they said, "all right, go ahead; we are coming." the bird never deceived them, but always guided them to a hive of bees, though some had but little honey in store. has this peculiar habit of the honey-guide its origin, as the attachment of dogs, in friendship for man, or in love for the sweet pickings of the plunder left on the ground? self-interest aiding in preservation from danger seems to be the rule in most cases, as, for instance, in the bird that guards the buffalo and rhinoceros. the grass is often so tall and dense that one could go close up to these animals quite unperceived; but the guardian bird, sitting on the beast, sees the approach of danger, flaps its wings and screams, which causes its bulky charge to rush off from a foe he has neither seen nor heard; for his reward the vigilant little watcher has the pick of the parasites on his fat friend. in other cases a chance of escape must be given even by the animal itself to its prey; as in the rattle-snake, which, when excited to strike, cannot avoid using his rattle, any more than the cat can resist curling its tail when excited in the chase of a mouse, or the cobra can refrain from inflating the loose skin of the neck and extending it laterally, before striking its poison fangs into its victim. there are many snakes in parts of this pass; they basked in the warm sunshine, but rustled off through the leaves as we approached. we observed one morning a small one of a deadly poisonous species, named kakone, on a bush by the wayside, quietly resting in a horizontal position, digesting a lizard for breakfast. though openly in view, its colours and curves so closely resembled a small branch that some failed to see it, even after being asked if they perceived anything on the bush. here also one of our number had a glance at another species, rarely seen, and whose swift lightning-like motion has given rise to the native proverb, that when a man sees this snake he will forthwith become a rich man. we slept near the ruined village of the murdered chief, mpangwe, a lovely spot, with the zambesi in front, and extensive gardens behind, backed by a semicircle of hills receding up to lofty mountains. our path kept these mountains on our right, and crossed several streamlets, which seemed to be perennial, and among others the selole, which apparently flows past the prominent peak chiarapela. these rivulets have often human dwellings on their banks; but the land can scarcely be said to be occupied. the number of all sorts of game increases wonderfully every day. as a specimen of what may be met with where there are no human habitations, and where no firearms have been introduced, we may mention what at times has actually been seen by us. on the morning of july rd a herd of elephants passed within fifty yards of our sleeping-place, going down to the river along the dry bed of a rivulet. starting a few minutes before the main body, we come upon large flocks of guinea-fowl, shoot what may be wanted for dinner, or next morning's breakfast, and leave them in the path to be picked up by the cook and his mates behind. as we proceed, francolins of three varieties run across the path, and hundreds of turtle-doves rise, with great blatter of wing, and fly off to the trees. guinea-fowls, francolins, turtle-doves, ducks, and geese are the game birds of this region. at sunrise a herd of pallahs, standing like a flock of sheep, allow the first man of our long indian file to approach within about fifty yards; but having meat, we let them trot off leisurely and unmolested. soon afterwards we come upon a herd of waterbucks, which here are very much darker in colour, and drier in flesh, than the same species near the sea. they look at us and we at them; and we pass on to see a herd of doe koodoos, with a magnificently horned buck or two, hurrying off to the dry hill-sides. we have ceased shooting antelopes, as our men have been so often gorged with meat that they have become fat and dainty. they say that they do not want more venison, it is so dry and tasteless, and ask why we do not give them shot to shoot the more savoury guinea-fowl. about eight o'clock the tsetse commence to buzz about us, and bite our hands and necks sharply. just as we are thinking of breakfast, we meet some buffaloes grazing by the path; but they make off in a heavy gallop at the sight of man. we fire, and the foremost, badly wounded, separates from the herd, and is seen to stop amongst the trees; but, as it is a matter of great danger to follow a wounded buffalo, we hold on our way. it is this losing of wounded animals which makes firearms so annihilating to these beasts of the field, and will in time sweep them all away. the small enfield bullet is worse than the old round one for this. it often goes through an animal without killing him, and he afterwards perishes, when he is of no value to man. after breakfast we draw near a pond of water; a couple of elephants stand on its bank, and, at a respectful distance behind these monarchs of the wilderness, is seen a herd of zebras, and another of waterbucks. on getting our wind the royal beasts make off at once; but the zebras remain till the foremost man is within eighty yards of them, when old and young canter gracefully away. the zebra has a great deal of curiosity; and this is often fatal to him, for he has the habit of stopping to look at the hunter. in this particular he is the exact opposite of the diver antelope, which rushes off like the wind, and never for a moment stops to look behind, after having once seen or smelt danger. the finest zebra of the herd is sometimes shot, our men having taken a sudden fancy to the flesh, which all declare to be the "king of good meat." on the plains of short grass between us and the river many antelopes of different species are calmly grazing, or reposing. wild pigs are common, and walk abroad during the day; but are so shy as seldom to allow a close approach. on taking alarm they erect their slender tails in the air, and trot off swiftly in a straight line, keeping their bodies as steady as a locomotive on a railroad. a mile beyond the pool three cow buffaloes with their calves come from the woods, and move out into the plain. a troop of monkeys, on the edge of the forest, scamper back to its depths on hearing the loud song of singeleka, and old surly fellows, catching sight of the human party, insult it with a loud and angry bark. early in the afternoon we may see buffaloes again, or other animals. we camp on the dry higher ground, after, as has happened, driving off a solitary elephant. the nights are warmer now, and possess nearly as much of interest and novelty as the days. a new world awakes and comes forth, more numerous, if we may judge by the noise it makes, than that which is abroad by sunlight. lions and hyenas roar around us, and sometimes come disagreeably near, though they have never ventured into our midst. strange birds sing their agreeable songs, while others scream and call harshly as if in fear or anger. marvellous insect-sounds fall upon the ear; one, said by natives to proceed from a large beetle, resembles a succession of measured musical blows upon an anvil, while many others are perfectly indescribable. a little lemur was once seen to leap about from branch to branch with the agility of a frog; it chirruped like a bird, and is not larger than a robin red-breast. reptiles, though numerous, seldom troubled us; only two men suffered from stings, and that very slightly, during the entire journey, the one supposed that he was bitten by a snake, and the other was stung by a scorpion. grass-burning has begun, and is producing the blue hazy atmosphere of the american indian summer, which in western africa is called the "smokes." miles of fire burn on the mountain-sides in the evenings, but go out during the night. from their height they resemble a broad zigzag line of fire in the heavens. we slept on the night of the th of july on the left bank of the chongwe, which comes through a gap in the hills on our right, and is twenty yards wide. a small tribe of the bazizulu, from the south, under dadanga, have recently settled here and built a village. some of their houses are square, and they seem to be on friendly terms with the bakoa, who own the country. they, like the other natives, cultivate cotton, but of a different species from any we have yet seen in africa, the staple being very long, and the boll larger than what is usually met with; the seeds cohere as in the pernambuco kind. they brought the seed with them from their own country, the distant mountains of which in the south, still inhabited by their fellow-countrymen, who possess much cattle and use shields, can be seen from this high ground. these people profess to be children of the great paramount chief, kwanyakarombe, who is said to be lord of all the bazizulu. the name of this tribe is known to geographers, who derive their information from the portuguese, as the _morusurus_, and the hills mentioned above are said to have been the country of changamira, the warrior-chief of history, whom no portuguese ever dared to approach. the bazizulu seem, by report, to be brave mountaineers; nearer the river, the sidima inhabit the plains; just as on the north side, the babimpe live on the heights, about two days off, and the makoa on or near the river. the chief of the bazizulu we were now with was hospitable and friendly. a herd of buffaloes came trampling through the gardens and roused up our men; a feat that roaring lions seldom achieved. our course next day passed over the upper terrace and through a dense thorn jungle. travelling is always difficult where there is no path, but it is even more perplexing where the forest is cut up by many game-tracks. here we got separated from one another, and a rhinoceros with angry snort dashed at dr. livingstone as he stooped to pick up a specimen of the wild fruit morula; but she strangely stopped stock-still when less than her own length distant, and gave him time to escape; a branch pulled out his watch as he ran, and turning half round to grasp it, he got a distant glance of her and her calf still standing on the selfsame spot, as if arrested in the middle of her charge by an unseen hand. when about fifty yards off, thinking his companions close behind, he shouted "look out there!" when off she rushed, snorting loudly, in another direction. the doctor usually went unarmed before this, but never afterwards. a fine eland was shot by dr. kirk this afternoon, the first we have killed. it was in first-rate condition, and remarkably fat; but the meat, though so tempting in appearance, severely deranged all who partook of it heartily, especially those who ate of the fat. natives who live in game countries, and are acquainted with the different kinds of wild animals, have a prejudice against the fat of the eland, the pallah, the zebra, hippopotamus, and pig; they never reject it, however, the climate making the desire for all animal food very strong; but they consider that it causes ulcers and leprosy, while the fat of sheep and of oxen never produces any bad effects, unless the animal is diseased. on the morning of the th, after passing four villages, we breakfasted at an old friend's, tombanyama, who lives now on the mainland, having resigned the reedy island, where he was first seen, to the buffaloes, which used to take his crops and show fight to his men. he keeps a large flock of tame pigeons, and some fine fat capons, one of which he gave us, with a basket of meal. they have plenty of salt in this part of the country, obtaining it from the plains in the usual way. the half-caste partner of sequasha and a number of his men were staying near. the fellow was very munch frightened when he saw us, and trembled so much when he spoke, that the makololo and other natives noticed and remarked on it. his fears arose from a sense of guilt, as we said nothing to frighten him, and did not allude to the murder till a few minutes before starting; when it was remarked that dr. livingstone having been accredited to the murdered chief, it would be his duty to report on it; and that not even the portuguese government would approve of the deed. he defended it by saying that they had put in the right man, the other was a usurper. he was evidently greatly relieved when we departed. in the afternoon we came to an outlying hamlet of kambadzo, whose own village is on an island, nyampungo, or nyangalule, at the confluence of the kafue. the chief was on a visit here, and they had been enjoying a regular jollification. there had been much mirth, music, drinking, and dancing. the men, and women too, had taken "a wee drap too much," but had not passed the complimentary stage. the wife of the headman, after looking at us a few moments, called out to the others, "black traders have come before, calling themselves bazungu, or white men, but now, for the first time, have we seen the real bazungu." kambadzo also soon appeared; he was sorry that we had not come before the beer was all done, but he was going back to see if it was all really and entirely finished, and not one little potful left somewhere. this was, of course, mere characteristic politeness, as he was perfectly aware that every drop had been swallowed; so we proceeded on to the kafue, or kafuje, accompanied by the most intelligent of his headmen. a high ridge, just before we reached the confluence, commands a splendid view of the two great rivers, and the rich country beyond. behind, on the north and east, is the high mountain-range, along whose base we have been travelling; the whole range is covered with trees, which appear even on the prominent peaks, chiarapela, morindi, and chiava; at this last the chain bends away to the n.w., and we could see the distant mountains where the chief, semalembue, gained all our hearts in . on the th of july we tried to send semalembue a present, but the people here refused to incur the responsibility of carrying it. we, who have the art of writing, cannot realize the danger one incurs of being accused of purloining a portion of goods sent from one person to another, when the carrier cannot prove that he delivered all committed to his charge. rumours of a foray having been made, either by makololo or batoka, as far as the fork of the kafue, were received here by our men with great indignation, as it looked as if the marauders were shutting up the country, which they had been trying so much to open. below the junction of the rivers, on a shallow sandbank, lay a large herd of hippopotami, their bodies out of the water, like masses of black rock. kambadzo's island, called nyangalule, a name which occurs again at the mouth of the zambesi, has many choice motsikiri (_trachelia_) trees on it; and four very conspicuous stately palms growing out of a single stem. the kafue reminds us a little of the shire, flowing between steep banks, with fertile land on both sides. it is a smaller river, and has less current. here it seems to come from the west. the headman of the village, near which we encamped, brought a present of meal, fowls, and sweet potatoes. they have both the red and white varieties of this potato. we have, on several occasions during this journey, felt the want of vegetables, in a disagreeable craving which our diet of meat and native meal could not satisfy. it became worse and worse till we got a meal of potatoes, which allayed it at once. a great scarcity of vegetables prevails in these parts of africa. the natives collect several kinds of wild plants in the woods, which they use no doubt for the purpose of driving off cravings similar to those we experienced. owing to the strength of the wind, and the cranky state of the canoes, it was late in the afternoon of the th before our party was ferried over the kafue. after crossing, we were in the bawe country. fishhooks here, of native workmanship, were observed to have barbs like the european hooks: elsewhere the point of the hook is merely bent in towards the shank, to have the same effect in keeping on the fish as the barb. we slept near a village a short distance above the ford. the people here are of batoka origin, the same as many of our men, and call themselves batonga (independents), or balengi, and their language only differs slightly from that of the bakoa, who live between the two rivers kafue and loangwa. the paramount chief of the district lives to the west of this place, and is called nchomokela--an hereditary title: the family burying-place is on a small hill near this village. the women salute us by clapping their hands and lullilooing as we enter and leave a village, and the men, as they think, respectfully clap their hands on their hips. immense crops of mapira (_holcus sorghum_) are raised; one species of it forms a natural bend on the seed-stalk, so that the massive ear hangs down. the grain was heaped up on wooden stages, and so was a variety of other products. the men are skilful hunters, and kill elephants and buffaloes with long heavy spears. we halted a few minutes on the morning of the th july, opposite the narrow island of sikakoa, which has a village on its lower end. we were here told that moselekatse's chief town is a month's distance from this place. they had heard, moreover, that the english had come to moselekatse, and told him it was wrong to kill men; and he had replied that he was born to kill people, but would drop the habit; and, since the english came, he had sent out his men, not to kill as of yore, but to collect tribute of cloth and ivory. this report referred to the arrival of the rev. r. moffat, of kuruman, who, we afterwards found, had established a mission. the statement is interesting as showing that, though imperfectly expressed, the purport of the missionaries' teaching had travelled, in a short time, over miles, and we know not how far the knowledge of the english operations on the coast spread inland. when abreast of the high wooded island kalabi we came in contact with one of the game-laws of the country, which has come down from the most ancient times. an old buffalo crossed the path a few yards in front of us; our guide threw his small spear at its hip, and it was going off scarcely hurt, when three rifle balls knocked it over. "it is mine," said the guide. he had wounded it first, and the established native game- law is that the animal belongs to the man who first draws blood; the two legs on one side, by the same law, belonged to us for killing it. this beast was very old, blind of one eye, and scabby; the horns, mere stumps, not a foot long, must have atrophied, when by age he lost the strength distinctive of his sex; some eighteen or twenty inches of horn could not well be worn down by mere rubbing against the trees. we saw many buffaloes next day, standing quietly amidst a thick thorn-jungle, through which we were passing. they often stood until we were within fifty or a hundred yards of them. on the th july we left the river at the mountain-range, which, lying north-east and south-west across the river, forms the kariba gorge. near the upper end of the kariba rapids, the stream sanyati enters from the south, and is reported to have moselekatse's principal cattle-posts at its sources; our route went round the end of the mountains, and we encamped beside the village of the generous chief moloi, who brought us three immense baskets of fine mapira meal, ten fowls, and two pots of beer. on receiving a present in return, he rose, and, with a few dancing gestures, said or sang, "motota, motota, motota," which our men translated into "thanks." he had visited moselekatse a few months before our arrival, and saw the english missionaries, living in their wagons. "they told moselekatse," said he, "they were of his family, or friends, and would plough the land and live at their own expense;" and he had replied, "the land is before you, and i shall come and see you plough." this again was substantially what took place, when mr. moffat introduced the missionaries to his old friend, and shows still further that the notion of losing their country by admitting foreigners does not come as the first idea to the native mind. one might imagine that, as mechanical powers are unknown to the heathen, the almost magic operations of machinery, the discoveries of modern science and art, or the presence of the prodigious force which, for instance, is associated with the sight of a man-of-war, would have the effect which miracles once had of arresting the attention and inspiring awe. but, though we have heard the natives exclaim in admiration at the sight of even small illustrations of what science enables us to do--"ye are gods, and not men"--the heart is unaffected. in attempting their moral elevation, it is always more conducive to the end desired, that the teacher should come unaccompanied by any power to cause either jealousy or fear. the heathen, who have not become aware of the greed and hate which too often characterize the advancing tide of emigration, listen with most attention to the message of divine love when delivered by men who evidently possess the same human sympathies with themselves. a chief is rather envied his good fortune in first securing foreigners in his town. jealousy of strangers belongs more to the arab than to the african character; and if the women are let alone by the traveller, no danger need be apprehended from any save the slave-trading tribes, and not often even from them. we passed through a fertile country, covered with open forest, accompanied by the friendly bawe. they are very hospitable; many of them were named, among themselves, "the baenda pezi," or "go-nakeds," their only clothing being a coat of red ochre. occasionally stopping at their villages we were duly lullilooed, and regaled with sweet new-made beer, which, being yet unfermented, was not intoxicating. it is in this state called liting or makonde. some of the men carry large shields of buffalo- hide, and all are well supplied with heavy spears. the vicinity of the villages is usually cleared and cultivated in large patches; but nowhere can the country be said to be stocked with people. at every village stands were erected, and piles of the native corn, still unthrashed, placed upon them; some had been beaten out, put into oblong parcels made of grass, and stacked in wooden frames. we crossed several rivulets in our course, as the mandora, the lofia, the manzaia (with brackish water), the rimbe, the chibue, the chezia, the chilola (containing fragments of coal), which did little more than mark our progress. the island and rapid of nakansalo, of which we had formerly heard, were of no importance, the rapid being but half a mile long, and only on one side of the island. the island kaluzi marks one of the numerous places where astronomical observations were made; mozia, a station where a volunteer poet left us; the island mochenya, and mpande island, at the mouth of the zungwe rivulet, where we left the zambesi. when favoured with the hospitality and company of the "go-nakeds," we tried to discover if nudity were the badge of a particular order among the bawe, but they could only refer to custom. some among them had always liked it for no reason in particular: shame seemed to lie dormant, and the sense could not be aroused by our laughing and joking them on their appearance. they evidently felt no less decent than we did with our clothes on; but, whatever may be said in favour of nude statues, it struck us that man, in a state of nature, is a most ungainly animal. could we see a number of the degraded of our own lower classes in like guise, it is probable that, without the black colour which acts somehow as a dress, they would look worse still. in domestic contentions the bawe are careful not to kill each other; but, when one village goes to war with another, they are not so particular. the victorious party are said to quarter one of the bodies of the enemies they may have killed, and to perform certain ceremonies over the fragments. the vanquished call upon their conquerors to give them a portion also; and, when this request is complied with, they too perform the same ceremonies, and lament over their dead comrade, after which the late combatants may visit each other in peace. sometimes the head of the slain is taken and buried in an ant-hill, till all the flesh is gone; and the lower jaw is then worn as a trophy by the slayer; but this we never saw, and the foregoing information was obtained only through an interpreter. we left the zambesi at the mouth of the zungwe or mozama or dela rivulet, up which we proceeded, first in a westerly and then in a north-westerly direction. the zungwe at this time had no water in its sandy channel for the first eight or ten miles. willows, however, grow on the banks, and water soon began to appear in the hollows; and a few miles further up it was a fine flowing stream deliciously cold. as in many other streams from chicova to near sinamane shale and coal crop out in the bank; and here the large roots of stigmaria or its allied plants were found. we followed the course of the zungwe to the foot of the batoka highlands, up whose steep and rugged sides of red and white quartz we climbed till we attained an altitude of upwards of feet. here, on the cool and bracing heights, the exhilaration of mind and body was delightful, as we looked back at the hollow beneath covered with a hot sultry glare, not unpleasant now that we were in the mild radiance above. we had a noble view of the great valley in which the zambesi flows. the cultivated portions are so small in comparison to the rest of the landscape that the valley appears nearly all forest, with a few grassy glades. we spent the night of the th july high above the level of the sea, by the rivulet tyotyo, near tabacheu or chirebuechina, names both signifying white mountain; in the morning hoar frost covered the ground, and thin ice was on the pools. skirting the southern flank of tabacheu, we soon passed from the hills on to the portion of the vast table-land called mataba, and looking back saw all the way across the zambesi valley to the lofty ridge some thirty miles off, which, coming from the mashona, a country in the s.e., runs to the n.w. to join the ridge at the angle of which are the victoria falls, and then bends far to the n.e. from the same point. only a few years since these extensive highlands were peopled by the batoka; numerous herds of cattle furnished abundance of milk, and the rich soil amply repaid the labour of the husbandman; now large herds of buffaloes, zebras, and antelopes fatten on the excellent pasture; and on that land, which formerly supported multitudes, not a man is to been seen. in travelling from monday morning till late on saturday afternoon, all the way from tabacheu to moachemba, which is only twenty-one miles of latitude from the victoria falls, and constantly passing the ruined sites of utterly deserted botoka villages, we did not fall in with a single person. the batoka were driven out of their noble country by the invasions of moselekatse and sebetuane. several tribes of bechuana and basutu, fleeing from the zulu or matebele chief moselekatse reached the zambesi above the falls. coming from a land without rivers, none of them knew how to swim; and one tribe, called the bamangwato, wishing to cross the zambesi, was ferried over, men and women separately, to different islands, by one of the batoka chiefs; the men were then left to starve and the women appropriated by the ferryman and his people. sekomi, the present chief of the bamangwato, then an infant in his mother's arms, was enabled, through the kindness of a private batoka, to escape. this act seems to have made an indelible impression on sekomi's heart, for though otherwise callous, he still never fails to inquire after the welfare of his benefactor. sebetuane, with his wonted ability, outwitted the treacherous batoka, by insisting in the politest manner on their chief remaining at his own side until the people and cattle were all carried safe across; the chief was then handsomely rewarded, both with cattle and brass rings off sebetuane's own wives. no sooner were the makololo, then called basuto, safely over, than they were confronted by the whole batoka nation; and to this day the makololo point with pride to the spot on the lekone, near to which they were encamped, where sebetuane, with a mere handful of warriors in comparison to the vast horde that surrounded him, stood waiting the onslaught, the warriors in one small body, the women and children guarding the cattle behind them. the batoka, of course, melted away before those who had been made veterans by years of continual fighting, and sebetuane always justified his subsequent conquests in that country by alleging that the batoka had come out to fight with a man fleeing for his life, who had never done them any wrong. they seem never to have been a warlike race; passing through their country, we once observed a large stone cairn, and our guide favoured us with the following account of it:--"once upon a time, our forefathers were going to fight another tribe, and here they halted and sat down. after a long consultation, they came to the unanimous conclusion that, instead of proceeding to fight and kill their neighbours, and perhaps be killed themselves, it would be more like men to raise this heap of stones, as their protest against the wrong the other tribe had done them, which, having accomplished, they returned quietly home." such men of peace could not stand before the makololo, nor, of course, the more warlike matebele, who coming afterwards, drove even their conquerors, the makololo, out of the country. sebetuane, however, profiting by the tactics which he had learned of the batoka, inveigled a large body of this new enemy on to another island, and after due starvation there overcame the whole. a much greater army of "moselekatse's own" followed with canoes, but were now baffled by sebetuane's placing all his people and cattle on an island and so guarding it that none could approach. dispirited, famished, borne down by fever, they returned to the falls, and all except five were cut off. but though the batoka appear never to have had much inclination to fight with men, they are decidedly brave hunters of buffaloes and elephants. they go fearlessly close up to these formidable animals, and kill them with large spears. the banyai, who have long bullied all portuguese traders, were amazed at the daring and bravery of the batoka in coming at once to close quarters with the elephant; and chisaka, a portuguese rebel, having formerly induced a body of this tribe to settle with him, ravaged all the portuguese villas around tette. they bear the name of basimilongwe, and some of our men found relations among them. sininyane and matenga also, two of our party, were once inveigled into a portuguese expedition against mariano, by the assertion that the doctor had arrived and had sent for them to come down to senna. on finding that they were entrapped to fight, they left, after seeing an officer with a large number of tette slaves killed. the batoka had attained somewhat civilized ideas, in planting and protecting various fruit and oil-seed yielding trees of the country. no other tribe either plants or abstains from cutting down fruit trees, but here we saw some which had been planted in regular rows, and the trunks of which were quite two feet in diameter. the grand old mosibe, a tree yielding a bean with a thin red pellicle, said to be very fattening, had probably seen two hundred summers. dr. kirk found that the mosibe is peculiar, in being allied to a species met with only in the west indies. the motsikiri, sometimes called mafuta, yields a hard fat, and an oil which is exported from inhambane. it is said that two ancient batoka travellers went down as far as the loangwa, and finding the macaa tree (_jujube_ or _zisyphus_) in fruit, carried the seed all the way back to the great falls, in order to plant them. two of these trees are still to be seen there, the only specimens of the kind in that region. the batoka had made a near approach to the custom of more refined nations and had permanent graveyards, either on the sides of hills, thus rendered sacred, or under large old shady trees; they reverence the tombs of their ancestors, and plant the largest elephants' tusks, as monuments at the head of the grave, or entirely enclose it with the choicest ivory. some of the other tribes throw the dead body into the river to be devoured by crocodiles, or, sewing it up in a mat, place it on the branch of a baobab, or cast it in some lonely gloomy spot, surrounded by dense tropical vegetation, where it affords a meal to the foul hyenas; but the batoka reverently bury their dead, and regard the spot henceforth as sacred. the ordeal by the poison of the muave is resorted to by the batoka, as well as by the other tribes; but a cock is often made to stand proxy for the supposed witch. near the confluence of the kafue the mambo, or chief, with some of his headmen, came to our sleeping-place with a present; their foreheads were smeared with white flour, and an unusual seriousness marked their demeanour. shortly before our arrival they had been accused of witchcraft; conscious of innocence, they accepted the ordeal, and undertook to drink the poisoned muave. for this purpose they made a journey to the sacred hill of nchomokela, on which repose the bodies of their ancestors; and, after a solemn appeal to the unseen spirits to attest the innocence of their children, they swallowed the muave, vomited, and were therefore declared not guilty. it is evident that they believe that the soul has a continued existence; and that the spirits of the departed know what those they have left behind them are doing, and are pleased or not according as their deeds are good or evil; this belief is universal. the owner of a large canoe refused to sell it, because it belonged to the spirit of his father, who helped him when he killed the hippopotamus. another, when the bargain for his canoe was nearly completed, seeing a large serpent on a branch of the tree overhead, refused to complete the sale, alleging that this was the spirit of his father come to protest against it. some of the batoka chiefs must have been men of considerable enterprise; the land of one, in the western part of this country, was protected by the zambesi on the s., and on the n. and e. lay an impassable reedy marsh, filled with water all the year round, leaving only his western border open to invasion: he conceived the idea of digging a broad and deep canal nearly a mile in length, from the reedy marsh to the zambesi, and, having actually carried the scheme into execution, he formed a large island, on which his cattle grazed in safety, and his corn ripened from year to year secure from all marauders. another chief, who died a number of years ago, believed that he had discovered a remedy for tsetse-bitten cattle; his son moyara showed us a plant, which was new to our botanist, and likewise told us how the medicine was prepared; the bark of the root, and, what might please our homoeopathic friends, a dozen of the tsetse are dried, and ground together into a fine powder. this mixture is administered internally; and the cattle are fumigated by burning under them the rest of the plant collected. the treatment must be continued for weeks, whenever the symptoms of poison appear. this medicine, he frankly admitted, would not cure all the bitten cattle. "for," said he, "cattle, and men too, die in spite of medicine; but should a herd by accident stray into a tsetse district and be bitten, by this medicine of my father, kampa-kampa, some of them could be saved, while, without it, all would inevitably die." he stipulated that we were not to show the medicine to other people, and if ever we needed it in this region we must employ him; but if we were far off we might make it ourselves; and when we saw it cure the cattle think of him, and send him a present. our men made it known everywhere that we wished the tribes to live in peace, and would use our influence to induce sekeletu to prevent the batoka of moshobotwane and the makololo under-chiefs making forays into their country: they had already suffered severely, and their remonstrances with their countryman, moshobotwane, evoked only the answer, "the makololo have given me a spear; why should i not use it?" he, indeed, it was who, being remarkably swift of foot, first guided the makololo in their conquest of the country. in the character of peacemakers, therefore, we experienced abundant hospitality; and, from the kafue to the falls, none of our party was allowed to suffer hunger. the natives sent to our sleeping-places generous presents of the finest white meal, and fat capons to give it a relish, great pots of beer to comfort our hearts, together with pumpkins, beans, and tobacco, so that we "should sleep neither hungry nor thirsty." in travelling from the kafue to the zungwe we frequently passed several villages in the course of a day's march. in the evening came deputies from the villages, at which we could not stay to sleep, with liberal presents of food. it would have pained them to have allowed strangers to pass without partaking of their hospitality; repeatedly were we hailed from huts, and asked to wait a moment and drink a little of the beer, which was brought with alacrity. our march resembled a triumphant procession. we entered and left every village amidst the cheers of its inhabitants; the men clapping their hands, and the women lullilooing, with the shrill call, "let us sleep," or "peace." passing through a hamlet one day, our guide called to the people, "why do you not clap your hands and salute when you see men who are wishing to bring peace to the land?" when we halted for the night it was no uncommon thing for the people to prepare our camp entirely of their own accord; some with hoes quickly smoothed the ground for our beds, others brought dried grass and spread it carefully over the spot; some with their small axes speedily made a bush fence to shield us from the wind; and if, as occasionally happened, the water was a little distance off, others hastened and brought it with firewood to cook our food with. they are an industrious people, and very fond of agriculture. for hours together we marched through unbroken fields of mapira, or native corn, of a great width; but one can give no idea of the extent of land under the hoe as compared with any european country. the extent of surface is so great that the largest fields under culture, when viewed on a wide landscape, dwindle to mere spots. when taken in connection with the wants of the people, the cultivation on the whole is most creditable to their industry. they erect numerous granaries which give their villages the appearance of being large; and, when the water of the zambesi has subsided, they place large quantities of grain, tied up in bundles of grass, and well plastered over with clay, on low sand islands for protection from the attacks of marauding mice and men. owing to the ravages of the weevil, the native corn can hardly be preserved until the following crop comes in. however largely they may cultivate, and however abundant the harvest, it must all be consumed in a year. this may account for their making so much of it into beer. the beer these batoka or bawe brew is not the sour and intoxicating boala or pombe found among some other tribes, but sweet, and highly nutritive, with only a slight degree of acidity, sufficient to render it a pleasant drink. the people were all plump, and in good condition; and we never saw a single case of intoxication among them, though all drank abundance of this liting, or sweet beer. both men and boys were eager to work for very small pay. our men could hire any number of them to carry their burdens for a few beads a day. our miserly and dirty ex-cook had an old pair of trousers that some one had given to him; after he had long worn them himself, with one of the sorely decayed legs he hired a man to carry his heavy load a whole day; a second man carried it the next day for the other leg, and what remained of the old garment, without the buttons, procured the labour of another man for the third day. men of remarkable ability have risen up among the africans from time to time, as amongst other portions of the human family. some have attracted the attention, and excited the admiration of large districts by their wisdom. others, apparently by the powers of ventriloquism, or by peculiar dexterity in throwing the spear, or shooting with the bow, have been the wonder of their generation; but the total absence of literature leads to the loss of all former experience, and the wisdom of the wise has not been handed down. they have had their minstrels too, but mere tradition preserves not their effusions. one of these, and apparently a genuine poet, attached himself to our party for several days, and whenever we halted, sang our praises to the villagers, in smooth and harmonious numbers. it was a sort of blank verse, and each line consisted of five syllables. the song was short when it first began, but each day he picked up more information about us, and added to the poem until our praises became an ode of respectable length. when distance from home compelled his return he expressed his regret at leaving us, and was, of course, paid for his useful and pleasant flatteries. another, though a less gifted son of song, belonged to the batoka of our own party. every evening, while the others were cooking, talking, or sleeping, he rehearsed his songs, containing a history of everything he had seen in the land of the white men, and on the way back. in composing, extempore, any new piece, he was never at a loss; for if the right word did not come he halted not, but eked out the measure with a peculiar musical sound meaning nothing at all. he accompanied his recitations on the _sansa_, an instrument figured in the woodcut, the nine iron keys of which are played with the thumbs, while the fingers pass behind to hold it. the hollow end and ornaments face the breast of the player. persons of a musical turn, if too poor to buy a sansa, may be seen playing vigorously on an instrument made with a number of thick corn-stalks sewn together, as a sansa frame, and keys of split bamboo, which, though making but little sound, seems to soothe the player himself. when the instrument is played with a calabash as a sounding board, it emits a greater volume of sound. pieces of shells and tin are added to make a jingling accompaniment, and the calabash is also ornamented. after we had passed up, a party of slaves, belonging to the two native portuguese who assassinated the chief, mpangwe, and took possession of his lands at zumbo, followed on our footsteps, and representing themselves to be our "children," bought great quantities of ivory from the bawe, for a few coarse beads a tusk. they also purchased ten large new canoes to carry it, at the rate of six strings of red or white beads, or two fathoms of grey calico, for each canoe, and, at the same cheap rate, a number of good-looking girls. chapter vii. the victoria falls of the zambesi--marvellous grandeur of the cataracts--the makololo's town--the chief sekeletu. during the time we remained at motunta a splendid meteor was observed to lighten the whole heavens. the observer's back was turned to it, but on looking round the streak of light was seen to remain on its path some seconds. this streak is usually explained to be only the continuance of the impression made by the shining body on the retina. this cannot be, as in this case the meteor was not actually seen and yet the streak was clearly perceived. the rays of planets and stars also require another explanation than that usually given. fruit-trees and gigantic wild fig-trees, and circles of stones on which corn safes were placed, with worn grindstones, point out where the villages once stood. the only reason now assigned for this fine country remaining desolate is the fear of fresh visitations by the matebele. the country now slopes gradually to the west into the makololo valley. two days' march from the batoka village nearest the highlands, we met with some hunters who were burning the dry grass, in order to attract the game by the fresh vegetation which speedily springs up afterwards. the grass, as already remarked, is excellent for cattle. one species, with leaves having finely serrated edges, and of a reddish-brown colour, we noticed our men eating: it tastes exactly like liquorice-root, and is named kezu- kezu. the tsetse, known to the batoka by the name "ndoka," does not exist here, though buffaloes and elephants abound. a small trap in the path, baited with a mouse, to catch spotted cats (_f. genetta_), is usually the first indication that we are drawing near to a village; but when we get within the sounds of pounding corn, cockcrowing, or the merry shouts of children at play, we know that the huts are but a few yards off, though the trees conceal them from view. we reached, on the th of august, moachemba, the first of the batoka villages which now owe allegiance to sekeletu, and could see distinctly with the naked eye, in the great valley spread out before us, the columns of vapour rising from the victoria falls, though upwards of miles distant. we were informed that, the rains having failed this year, the corn crops had been lost, and great scarcity and much hunger prevailed from sesheke to linyanti. some of the reports which the men had heard from the batoka of the hills concerning their families, were here confirmed. takelang's wife had been killed by mashotlane, the headman at the falls, on a charge, as usual, of witchcraft. inchikola's two wives, believing him to be dead, had married again; and masakasa was intensely disgusted to hear that two years ago his friends, upon a report of his death, threw his shield over the falls, slaughtered all his oxen, and held a species of wild irish wake, in honour of his memory: he said he meant to disown them, and to say, when they come to salute him, "i am dead. i am not here. i belong to another world, and should stink if i came among you." all the sad news we had previously heard, of the disastrous results which followed the attempt of a party of missionaries, under the rev. h. helmore, to plant the gospel at linyanti, were here fully confirmed. several of the missionaries and their native attendants, from kuruman, had succumbed to the fever, and the survivors had retired some weeks before our arrival. we remained the whole of the th beside the village of the old batoka chief, moshobotwane, the stoutest man we have seen in africa. the cause of our delay here was a severe attack of fever in charles livingstone. he took a dose of our fever pills; was better on the th, and marched three hours; then on the th marched eight miles to the great falls, and spent the rest of the day in the fatiguing exercise of sight-seeing. we were in the very same valley as linyanti, and this was the same fever which treated, or rather maltreated, with only a little dover's powder, proved so fatal to poor helmore; the symptoms, too, were identical with those afterwards described by non-medical persons as those of poison. we gave moshobotwane a present, and a pretty plain exposition of what we thought of his bloody forays among his batoka brethren. a scolding does most good to the recipient, when put alongside some obliging act. he certainly did not take it ill, as was evident from what he gave us in return; which consisted of a liberal supply of meal, milk, and an ox. he has a large herd of cattle, and a tract of fine pasture-land on the beautiful stream lekone. a home-feeling comes over one, even in the interior of africa, at seeing once more cattle grazing peacefully in the meadows. the tsetse inhabits the trees which bound the pasture-land on the west; so, should the herdsman forget his duty, the cattle straying might be entirely lost. the women of this village were more numerous than the men, the result of the chief's marauding. the batoko wife of sima came up from the falls, to welcome her husband back, bringing a present of the best fruits of the country. her husband was the only one of the party who had brought a wife from tette, namely, the girl whom he obtained from chisaka for his feats of dancing. according to our ideas, his first wife could hardly have been pleased at seeing the second and younger one; but she took her away home with her, while the husband remained with us. in going down to the fall village we met several of the real makololo. they are lighter in colour than the other tribes, being of a rich warm brown; and they speak in a slow deliberate manner, distinctly pronouncing every word. on reaching the village opposite kalai, we had an interview with the makololo headman, mashotlane: he came to the shed in which we were seated, a little boy carrying his low three- legged stool before him: on this he sat down with becoming dignity, looked round him for a few seconds, then at us, and, saluting us with "rumela" (good morning, or hail), he gave us some boiled hippopotamus meat, took a piece himself, and then handed the rest to his attendants, who soon ate it up. he defended his forays on the ground that, when he went to collect tribute, the batoka attacked him, and killed some of his attendants. the excuses made for their little wars are often the very same as those made by caesar in his "commentaries." few admit, like old moshobotwane, that they fought because they had the power, and a fair prospect of conquering. we found here pitsane, who had accompanied the doctor to st. paul de loanda. he had been sent by sekeletu to purchase three horses from a trading party of griquas from kuruman, who charged nine large tusks apiece for very wretched animals. in the evening, when all was still, one of our men, takelang, fired his musket, and cried out, "i am weeping for my wife: my court is desolate: i have no home;" and then uttered a loud wail of anguish. we proceeded next morning, th august, , to see the victoria falls. mosi-oa-tunya is the makololo name and means smoke sounding; seongo or chongwe, meaning the rainbow, or the place of the rainbow, was the more ancient term they bore. we embarked in canoes, belonging to tuba mokoro, "smasher of canoes," an ominous name; but he alone, it seems, knew the medicine which insures one against shipwreck in the rapids above the falls. for some miles the river was smooth and tranquil, and we glided pleasantly over water clear as crystal, and past lovely islands densely covered with a tropical vegetation. noticeable among the many trees were the lofty hyphaene and borassus palms; the graceful wild date-palm, with its fruit in golden clusters, and the umbrageous mokononga, of cypress form, with its dark-green leaves and scarlet fruit. many flowers peeped out near the water's edge, some entirely new to us, and others, as the convolvulus, old acquaintances. but our attention was quickly called from the charming islands to the dangerous rapids, down which tuba might unintentionally shoot us. to confess the truth, the very ugly aspect of these roaring rapids could scarcely fail to cause some uneasiness in the minds of new-comers. it is only when the river is very low, as it was now, that any one durst venture to the island to which we were bound. if one went during the period of flood, and fortunately hit the island, he would be obliged to remain there till the water subsided again, if he lived so long. both hippopotami and elephants have been known to be swept over the falls, and of course smashed to pulp. before entering the race of waters, we were requested not to speak, as our talking might diminish the virtue of the medicine; and no one with such boiling eddying rapids before his eyes, would think of disobeying the orders of a "canoe-smasher." it soon became evident that there was sound sense in this request of tuba's, although the reason assigned was not unlike that of the canoe-man from sesheke, who begged one of our party not to whistle, because whistling made the wind come. it was the duty of the man at the bow to look out ahead for the proper course, and when he saw a rock or snag, to call out to the steersman. tuba doubtless thought that talking on board might divert the attention of his steersman, at a time when the neglect of an order, or a slight mistake, would be sure to spill us all into the chafing river. there were places where the utmost exertions of both men had to be put forth in order to force the canoe to the only safe part of the rapid, and to prevent it from sweeping down broadside on, where in a twinkling we should have found ourselves floundering among the plotuses and cormorants, which were engaged in diving for their breakfast of small fish. at times it seemed as if nothing could save us from dashing in our headlong race against the rocks which, now that the river was low, jutted out of the water; but just at the very nick of time, tuba passed the word to the steersman, and then with ready pole turned the canoe a little aside, and we glided swiftly past the threatened danger. never was canoe more admirably managed: once only did the medicine seem to have lost something of its efficacy. we were driving swiftly down, a black rock over which the white foam flew, lay directly in our path, the pole was planted against it as readily as ever, but it slipped, just as tuba put forth his strength to turn the bow off. we struck hard, and were half-full of water in a moment; tuba recovered himself as speedily, shoved off the bow, and shot the canoe into a still shallow place, to bale out the water. here we were given to understand that it was not the medicine which was at fault; that had lost none of its virtue; the accident was owing entirely to tuba having started without his breakfast. need it be said we never let tuba go without that meal again? we landed at the head of garden island, which is situated near the middle of the river and on the lip of the falls. on reaching that lip, and peering over the giddy height, the wondrous and unique character of the magnificent cascade at once burst upon us. it is rather a hopeless task to endeavour to convey an idea of it in words, since, as was remarked on the spot, an accomplished painter, even by a number of views, could but impart a faint impression of the glorious scene. the probable mode of its formation may perhaps help to the conception of its peculiar shape. niagara has been formed by a wearing back of the rock over which the river falls; and during a long course of ages, it has gradually receded, and left a broad, deep, and pretty straight trough in front. it goes on wearing back daily, and may yet discharge the lakes from which its river--the st. lawrence--flows. but the victoria falls have been formed by a crack right across the river, in the hard, black, basaltic rock which there formed the bed of the zambesi. the lips of the crack are still quite sharp, save about three feet of the edge over which the river rolls. the walls go sheer down from the lips without any projecting crag, or symptoms of stratification or dislocation. when the mighty rift occurred, no change of level took place in the two parts of the bed of the river thus rent asunder, consequently, in coming down the river to garden island, the water suddenly disappears, and we see the opposite side of the cleft, with grass and trees growing where once the river ran, on the same level as that part of its bed on which we sail. the first crack is, in length, a few yards more than the breadth of the zambesi, which by measurement we found to be a little over yards, but this number we resolved to retain as indicating the year in which the fall was for the first time carefully examined. the main stream here runs nearly north and south, and the cleft across it is nearly east and west. the depth of the rift was measured by lowering a line, to the end of which a few bullets and a foot of white cotton cloth were tied. one of us lay with his head over a projecting crag, and watched the descending calico, till, after his companions had paid out feet, the weight rested on a sloping projection, probably feet from the water below, the actual bottom being still further down. the white cloth now appeared the size of a crown-piece. on measuring the width of this deep cleft by sextant, it was found at garden island, its narrowest part, to be eighty yards, and at its broadest somewhat more. into this chasm, of twice the depth of niagara-fall, the river, a full mile wide, rolls with a deafening roar; and this is mosi-oa-tunya, or the victoria falls. looking from garden island, down to the bottom of the abyss, nearly half a mile of water, which has fallen over that portion of the falls to our right, or west of our point of view, is seen collected in a narrow channel twenty or thirty yards wide, and flowing at exactly right angles to its previous course, to our left; while the other half, or that which fell over the eastern portion of the falls, is seen in the left of the narrow channel below, coming towards our right. both waters unite midway, in a fearful boiling whirlpool, and find an outlet by a crack situated at right angles to the fissure of the falls. this outlet is about yards from the western end of the chasm, and some from its eastern end; the whirlpool is at its commencement. the zambesi, now apparently not more than twenty or thirty yards wide, rushes and surges south, through the narrow escape-channel for yards; then enters a second chasm somewhat deeper, and nearly parallel with the first. abandoning the bottom of the eastern half of this second chasm to the growth of large trees, it turns sharply off to the west, and forms a promontory, with the escape-channel at its point, of yards long, and yards broad at the base. after reaching this base, the river runs abruptly round the head of another promontory, and flows away to the east, in a third chasm; then glides round a third promontory, much narrower than the rest, and away back to the west, in a fourth chasm; and we could see in the distance that it appeared to round still another promontory, and bend once more in another chasm towards the east. in this gigantic, zigzag, yet narrow trough, the rocks are all so sharply cut and angular, that the idea at once arises that the hard basaltic trap must have been riven into its present shape by a force acting from beneath, and that this probably took place when the ancient inland seas were let off by similar fissures nearer the ocean. the land beyond, or on the south of the falls, retains, as already remarked, the same level as before the rent was made. it is as if the trough below niagara were bent right and left, several times before it reached the railway bridge. the land in the supposed bends being of the same height as that above the fall, would give standing-places, or points of view, of the same nature as that from the railway-bridge, but the nearest would be only eighty yards, instead of two miles (the distance to the bridge) from the face of the cascade. the tops of the promontories are in general flat, smooth, and studded with trees. the first, with its base on the east, is at one place so narrow, that it would be dangerous to walk to its extremity. on the second, however, we found a broad rhinoceros path and a hut; but, unless the builder were a hermit, with a pet rhinoceros, we cannot conceive what beast or man ever went there for. on reaching the apex of this second eastern promontory we saw the great river, of a deep sea-green colour, now sorely compressed, gliding away, at least feet below us. garden island, when the river is low, commands the best view of the great fall chasm, as also of the promontory opposite, with its grove of large evergreen trees, and brilliant rainbows of three-quarters of a circle, two, three, and sometimes even four in number, resting on the face of the vast perpendicular rock, down which tiny streams are always running to be swept again back by the upward rushing vapour. but as, at niagara, one has to go over to the canadian shore to see the chief wonder--the great horse-shoe fall--so here we have to cross over to moselekatse's side to the promontory of evergreens, for the best view of the principal falls of mosi-oa-tunya. beginning, therefore, at the base of this promontory, and facing the cataract, at the west end of the chasm, there is, first, a fall of thirty-six yards in breadth, and of course, as they all are, upwards of feet in depth. then boaruka, a small island, intervenes, and next comes a great fall, with a breadth of yards; a projecting rock separates this from a second grand fall of yards broad; in all, upwards of yards of perennial falls. further east stands garden island; then, as the river was at its lowest, came a good deal of the bare rock of its bed, with a score of narrow falls, which, at the time of flood, constitute one enormous cascade of nearly another half-mile. near the east end of the chasm are two larger falls, but they are nothing at low water compared to those between the islands. the whole body of water rolls clear over, quite unbroken; but, after a descent of ten or more feet, the entire mass suddenly becomes like a huge sheet of driven snow. pieces of water leap off it in the form of comets with tails streaming behind, till the whole snowy sheet becomes myriads of rushing, leaping, aqueous comets. this peculiarity was not observed by charles livingstone at niagara, and here it happens, possibly from the dryness of the atmosphere, or whatever the cause may be which makes every drop of zambesi water appear to possess a sort of individuality. it runs off the ends of the paddles, and glides in beads along the smooth surface, like drops of quicksilver on a table. here we see them in a conglomeration, each with a train of pure white vapour, racing down till lost in clouds of spray. a stone dropped in became less and less to the eye, and at last disappeared in the dense mist below. charles livingstone had seen niagara, and gave mosi-oa-tunya the palm, though now at the end of a drought, and the river at its very lowest. many feel a disappointment on first seeing the great american falls, but mosi-oa-tunya is so strange, it must ever cause wonder. in the amount of water, niagara probably excels, though not during the months when the zambesi is in flood. the vast body of water, separating in the comet- like forms described, necessarily encloses in its descent a large volume of air, which, forced into the cleft, to an unknown depth, rebounds, and rushes up loaded with vapour to form the three or even six columns, as if of steam, visible at the batoka village moachemba, twenty-one miles distant. on attaining a height of , or at most feet from the level of the river above the cascade, this vapour becomes condensed into a perpetual shower of fine rain. much of the spray, rising to the west of garden island, falls on the grove of evergreen trees opposite; and from their leaves, heavy drops are for ever falling, to form sundry little rills, which, in running down the steep face of rock, are blown off and turned back, or licked off their perpendicular bed, up into the column from which they have just descended. the morning sun gilds these columns of watery smoke with all the glowing colours of double or treble rainbows. the evening sun, from a hot yellow sky, imparts a sulphureous hue, and gives one the impression that the yawning gulf might resemble the mouth of the bottomless pit. no bird sits and sings on the branches of the grove of perpetual showers, or ever builds its nest there. we saw hornbills and flocks of little black weavers flying across from the mainland to the islands, and from the islands to the points of the promontories and back again, but they uniformly shunned the region of perpetual rain, occupied by the evergreen grove. the sunshine, elsewhere in this land so overpowering, never penetrates the deep gloom of that shade. in the presence of the strange mosi-oa-tunya, we can sympathize with those who, when the world was young, peopled earth, air, and river, with beings not of mortal form. sacred to what deity would be this awful chasm and that dark grove, over which hovers an ever-abiding "pillar of cloud"? the ancient batoka chieftains used kazeruka, now garden island, and boaruka, the island further west, also on the lip of the falls, as sacred spots for worshipping the deity. it is no wonder that under the cloudy columns, and near the brilliant rainbows, with the ceaseless roar of the cataract, with the perpetual flow, as if pouring forth from the hand of the almighty, their souls should be filled with reverential awe. it inspired wonder in the native mind throughout the interior. among the first questions asked by sebituane of mr. oswell and dr. livingstone, in , was, "have you any smoke soundings in your country," and "what causes the smoke to rise for ever so high out of water?" in that year its fame was heard miles off, and it was approached within two days; but it was seen by no european till , when dr. livingstone visited it on his way to the east coast. being then accompanied as far as this fall by sekeletu and followers, his stay was necessarily short; and the two days there were employed in observations for fixing the geographical position of the place, and turning the showers, that at times sweep from the columns of vapour across the island, to account, in teaching the makololo arboriculture, and making that garden from which the natives named the island; so that he did not visit the opposite sides of the cleft, nor see the wonderful course of the river beyond the falls. the hippopotami had destroyed the trees which were then planted; and, though a strong stockaded hedge was made again, and living orange-trees, cashew- nuts, and coffee seeds put in afresh, we fear that the perseverance of the hippopotami will overcome the obstacle of the hedge. it would require a resident missionary to rear european fruit-trees. the period at which the peach and apricot come into blossom is about the end of the dry season, and artificial irrigation is necessary. the batoka, the only arboriculturists in the country, rear native fruit-trees alone--the mosibe, the motsikiri, the boma, and others. when a tribe takes an interest in trees, it becomes more attached to the spot on which they are planted, and they prove one of the civilizing influences. where one englishman goes, others are sure to follow. mr. baldwin, a gentleman from natal, succeeded in reaching the falls guided by his pocket-compass alone. on meeting the second subject of her majesty, who had ever beheld the greatest of african wonders, we found him a sort of prisoner at large. he had called on mashotlane to ferry him over to the north side of the river, and, when nearly over, he took a bath, by jumping in and swimming ashore. "if," said mashotlane, "he had been devoured by one of the crocodiles which abound there, the english would have blamed us for his death. he nearly inflicted a great injury upon us, therefore, we said, he must pay a fine." as mr. baldwin had nothing with him wherewith to pay, they were taking care of him till he should receive beads from his wagon, two days distant. mashotlane's education had been received in the camp of sebituane, where but little regard was paid to human life. he was not yet in his prime, and his fine open countenance presented to us no indication of the evil influences which unhappily, from infancy, had been at work on his mind. the native eye was more penetrating than ours; for the expression of our men was, "he has drunk the blood of men--you may see it in his eyes." he made no further difficulty about mr. baldwin; but the week after we left he inflicted a severe wound on the head of one of his wives with his rhinoceros-horn club. she, being of a good family, left him, and we subsequently met her and another of his wives proceeding up the country. the ground is strewn with agates for a number of miles above the falls; but the fires, which burn off the grass yearly, have injured most of those on the surface. our men were delighted to hear that they do as well as flints for muskets; and this with the new ideas of the value of gold (_dalama_) and malachite, that they had acquired at tette, made them conceive that we were not altogether silly in picking up and looking at stones. marching up the river, we crossed the lekone at its confluence, about eight miles above the island kalai, and went on to a village opposite the island chundu. nambowe, the headman, is one of the matebele or zulus, who have had to flee from the anger of moselekatse, to take refuge with the makololo. we spent sunday, the th, at the village of molele, a tall old batoka, who was proud of having formerly been a great favourite with sebituane. in coming hither we passed through patches of forest abounding in all sorts of game. the elephants' tusks, placed over graves, are now allowed to decay, and the skulls, which the former batoka stuck on poles to ornament their villages, not being renewed, now crumble into dust. here the famine, of which we had heard, became apparent, molele's people being employed in digging up the _tsitla_ root out of the marshes, and cutting out the soft core of the young palm-trees, for food. the village, situated on the side of a wooded ridge, commands an extensive view of a great expanse of meadow and marsh lying along the bank of the river. on these holmes herds of buffaloes and waterbucks daily graze in security, as they have in the reedy marshes a refuge into which they can run on the approach of danger. the pretty little tianyane or ourebi is abundant further on, and herds of blue weldebeests or brindled gnus (_katoblepas gorgon_) amused us by their fantastic capers. they present a much more ferocious aspect than the lion himself, but are quite timid. we never could, by waving a red handkerchief, according to the prescription, induce them to venture near to us. it may therefore be that the red colour excites their fury only when wounded or hotly pursued. herds of lechee or lechwe now enliven the meadows; and they and their younger brother, the graceful poku, smaller, and of a rounder contour, race together towards the grassy fens. we venture to call the poku after the late major vardon, a noble-hearted african traveller; but fully anticipate that some aspiring nimrod will prefer that his own name should go down to posterity on the back of this buck. midway between tabacheu and the great falls the streams begin to flow westward. on the other side they begin to flow east. large round masses of granite, somewhat like old castles, tower aloft about the kalomo. the country is an elevated plateau, and our men knew and named the different plains as we passed them by. on the th we met a party from sekeletu, who was now at sesheke. our approach had been reported, and they had been sent to ask the doctor what the price of a horse ought to be; and what he said, that they were to give and no more. in reply they were told that by their having given nine large tusks for one horse before the doctor came, the griquas would naturally imagine that the price was already settled. it was exceedingly amusing to witness the exact imitation they gave of the swagger of a certain white with whom they had been dealing, and who had, as they had perceived, evidently wished to assume an air of indifference. holding up the head and scratching the beard it was hinted might indicate not indifference, but vermin. it is well that we do not always know what they say about us. the remarks are often not quite complimentary, and resemble closely what certain white travellers say about the blacks. we made our camp in the afternoon abreast of the large island called mparira, opposite the mouth of the chobe. francolins, quails, and guinea- fowls, as well as larger game, were abundant. the makololo headman, mokompa, brought us a liberal present; and in the usual way, which is considered politeness, regretted he had no milk, as his cows were all dry. we got some honey here from the very small stingless bee, called, by the batoka, moandi, and by others, the kokomatsane. this honey is slightly acid, and has an aromatic flavour. the bees are easily known from their habit of buzzing about the eyes, and tickling the skin by sucking it as common flies do. the hive has a tube of wax like a quill, for its entrance, and is usually in the hollows of trees. mokompa feared that the tribe was breaking up, and lamented the condition into which they had fallen in consequence of sekeletu's leprosy; he did not know what was to become of them. he sent two canoes to take us up to sesheke; his best canoe had taken ivory up to the chief, to purchase goods of some native traders from benguela. above the falls the paddlers always stand in the canoes, using long paddles, ten feet in length, and changing from side to side without losing the stroke. mochokotsa, a messenger from sekeletu, met us on the th, with another request for the doctor to take ivory and purchase a horse. he again declined to interfere. none were to come up to sekeletu but the doctor; and all the men who had had smallpox at tette, three years ago, were to go back to moshobotwane, and he would sprinkle medicine over them, to drive away the infection, and prevent it spreading in the tribe. mochokotsa was told to say to sekeletu that the disease was known of old to white men, and we even knew the medicine to prevent it; and, were there any danger now, we should be the first to warn him of it. why did not he go himself to have moshobotwane sprinkle medicine to drive away his leprosy. we were not afraid of his disease, nor of the fever that had killed the teachers and many makololo at linyanti. as this attempt at quarantine was evidently the suggestion of native doctors to increase their own importance, we added that we had no food, and would hunt next day for game, and the day after; and, should we be still ordered purification by their medicine, we should then return to our own country. the message was not all of our dictation, our companions interlarded it with their own indignant protests, and said some strong things in the tette dialect about these "doctor things" keeping them back from seeing their father; when to their surprise mochokotsa told them he knew every word they were saying, as he was of the tribe bazizulu, and defied them to deceive him by any dialect, either of the mashona on the east, or of the mambari on the west. mochokotsa then repeated our message twice, to be sure that he had it every word, and went back again. these chiefs' messengers have most retentive memories; they carry messages of considerable length great distances, and deliver them almost word for word. two or three usually go together, and when on the way the message is rehearsed every night, in order that the exact words may be kept to. one of the native objections to learning to write is, that these men answer the purpose of transmitting intelligence to a distance as well as a letter would; and, if a person wishes to communicate with any one in the town, the best way to do so is either to go to or send for him. and as for corresponding with friends very far off, that is all very well for white people, but the blacks have no friends to whom to write. the only effective argument for the learning to read is, that it is their duty to know the revelation from their father in heaven, as it stands in the book. our messenger returned on the evening of the following day with "you speak truly," says sekeletu, "the disease is old, come on at once, do not sleep in the path; for i am greatly desirous (_tlologelecoe_) to see the doctor." after mochokotsa left us, we met some of mokompa's men bringing back the ivory, as horses were preferred to the west-coast goods. they were the bearers of instructions to mokompa, and as these instructions illustrate the government of people who have learned scarcely anything from europeans, they are inserted, though otherwise of no importance. mashotlane had not behaved so civilly to mr. baldwin as sekeletu had ordered him to do to all englishmen. he had been very uncivil to the messengers sent by moselekatse with letters from mr. moffat, treated them as spies, and would not land to take the bag until they moved off. on our speaking to him about this, he justified his conduct on the plea that he was set at the falls for the very purpose of watching these, their natural enemies; and how was he to know that they had been sent by mr. moffat? our men thereupon reported at head-quarters that mashotlane had cursed the doctor. the instructions to mokompa, from sekeletu, were to "go and tell mashotlane that he had offended greatly. he had not cursed monare (dr. livingstone) but sebituane, as monare was now in the place of sebituane, and he reverenced him as he had done his father. any fine taken from mr. baldwin was to be returned at once, as he was not a boer but an englishman. sekeletu was very angry, and mokompa must not conceal the message." on finding afterwards that mashotlane's conduct had been most outrageous to the batoka, sekeletu sent for him to come to sesheke, in order that he might have him more under his own eye; but mashotlane, fearing that this meant the punishment of death, sent a polite answer, alleging that he was ill and unable to travel. sekeletu tried again to remove mashotlane from the falls, but without success. in theory the chief is absolute and quite despotic; in practice his authority is limited, and he cannot, without occasionally putting refractory headmen to death, force his subordinates to do his will. except the small rapids by mparira island, near the mouth of the chobe, the rest of the way to sesheke by water is smooth. herds of cattle of two or three varieties graze on the islands in the river: the batoka possessed a very small breed of beautiful shape, and remarkably tame, and many may still be seen; a larger kind, many of which have horns pendent, and loose at the roots; and a still larger sort, with horns of extraordinary dimensions,--apparently a burden for the beast to carry. this breed was found in abundance at lake ngami. we stopped at noon at one of the cattle-posts of mokompa, and had a refreshing drink of milk. men of his standing have usually several herds placed at different spots, and the owner visits each in turn, while his head-quarters are at his village. his son, a boy of ten, had charge of the establishment during his father's absence. according to makololo ideas, the cattle-post is the proper school in which sons should be brought up. here they receive the right sort of education--the knowledge of pasture and how to manage cattle. strong easterly winds blow daily from noon till midnight, and continue till the october or november rains set in. whirlwinds, raising huge pillars of smoke from burning grass and weeds, are common in the forenoon. we were nearly caught in an immense one. it crossed about twenty yards in front of us, the wind apparently rushing into it from all points of the compass. whirling round and round in great eddies, it swept up hundreds of feet into the air a continuous dense dark cloud of the black pulverized soil, mixed with dried grass, off the plain. herds of the new antelopes, lechwe, and poku, with the kokong, or gnus, and zebras stood gazing at us as we passed. the mirage lifted them at times halfway to the clouds, and twisted them and the clumps of palms into strange unearthly forms. the extensive and rich level plains by the banks, along the sides of which we paddled, would support a vast population, and might be easily irrigated from the zambesi. if watered, they would yield crops all the year round, and never suffer loss by drought. the hippopotamus is killed here with long lance-like spears. we saw two men, in a light canoe, stealing noiselessly down on one of these animals thought to be asleep; but it was on the alert, and they had quickly to retreat. comparatively few of these animals now remain between sesheke and the falls, and they are uncommonly wary, as it is certain death for one to be caught napping in the daytime. on the th we entered sesheke. the old town, now in ruins, stands on the left bank of the river. the people have built another on the same side, a quarter of a mile higher up, since their headman moriantsiane was put to death for bewitching the chief with leprosy. sekeletu was on the right bank, near a number of temporary huts. a man hailed us from the chiefs quarters, and requested us to rest under the old kotla, or public meeting-place tree. a young makololo, with the large thighs which zulus and most of this tribe have, crossed over to receive orders from the chief, who had not shown himself to the people since he was affected with leprosy. on returning he ran for mokele, the headman of the new town, who, after going over to sekeletu, came back and conducted us to a small but good hut, and afterwards brought us a fine fat ox, as a present from the chief. "this is a time of hunger," he said, "and we have no meat, but we expect some soon from the barotse valley." we were entirely out of food when we reached sesheke. never was better meat than that of the ox sekeletu sent, and infinitely above the flesh of all kinds of game is beef! a constant stream of visitors rolled in on us the day after our arrival. several of them, who had suffered affliction during the doctor's absence, seemed to be much affected on seeing him again. all were in low spirits. a severe drought had cut off the crops, and destroyed the pasture of linyanti, and the people were scattered over the country in search of wild fruits, and the hospitality of those whose ground-nuts (_arachis hypogoea_) had not failed. sekeletu's leprosy brought troops of evils in its train. believing himself bewitched, he had suspected a number of his chief men, and had put some, with their families, to death; others had fled to distant tribes, and were living in exile. the chief had shut himself up, and allowed no one to come into his presence but his uncle mamire. ponwane, who had been as "head and eyes" to him, had just died; evidence, he thought, of the potent spells of those who hated all who loved the chief. the country was suffering grievously, and sebituane's grand empire was crumbling to pieces. a large body of young barotse had revolted and fled to the north; killing a man by the way, in order to put a blood-feud between masiko, the chief to whom they were going, and sekeletu. the batoka under sinamane, and muemba, were independent, and mashotlane at the falls was setting sekeletu's authority virtually at defiance. sebituane's wise policy in treating the conquered tribes on equal terms with his own makololo, as all children of the chief, and equally eligible to the highest honours, had been abandoned by his son, who married none but makololo women, and appointed to office none but makololo men. he had become unpopular among the black tribes, conquered by the spear but more effectually won by the subsequent wise and just government of his father. strange rumours were afloat respecting the unseen sekeletu; his fingers were said to have grown like eagle's claws, and his face so frightfully distorted that no one could recognize him. some had begun to hint that he might not really be the son of the great sebituane, the founder of the nation, strong in battle, and wise in the affairs of state. "in the days of the great lion" (sebituane), said his only sister, moriantsiane's widow, whose husband sekeletu had killed, "we had chiefs and little chiefs and elders to carry on the government, and the great chief, sebituane, knew them all, and everything they did, and the whole country was wisely ruled; but now sekeletu knows nothing of what his underlings do, and they care not for him, and the makololo power is fast passing away." { } the native doctors had given the case of sekeletu up. they could not cure him, and pronounced the disease incurable. an old doctress from the manyeti tribe had come to see what she could do for him, and on her skill he now hung his last hopes. she allowed no one to see him, except his mother and uncle, making entire seclusion from society an essential condition of the much longed-for cure. he sent, notwithstanding, for the doctor; and on the following day we all three were permitted to see him. he was sitting in a covered wagon, which was enclosed by a high wall of close-set reeds; his face was only slightly disfigured by the thickening of the skin in parts, where the leprosy had passed over it; and the only peculiarity about his hands was the extreme length of his finger-nails, which, however, was nothing very much out of the way, as all the makololo gentlemen wear them uncommonly long. he has the quiet, unassuming manners of his father, sebituane, speaks distinctly, in a low pleasant voice, and appears to be a sensible man, except perhaps on the subject of his having been bewitched; and in this, when alluded to, he exhibits as firm a belief as if it were his monomania. "moriantsiane, my aunt's husband, tried the bewitching medicine first on his wife, and she is leprous, and so is her head-servant; then, seeing that it succeeded, he gave me a stronger dose in the cooked flesh of a goat, and i have had the disease ever since. they have lately killed ponwane, and, as you see, are now killing me." ponwane had died of fever a short time previously. sekeletu asked us for medicine and medical attendance, but we did not like to take the case out of the hands of the female physician already employed, it being bad policy to appear to undervalue any of the profession; and she, being anxious to go on with her remedies, said "she had not given him up yet, but would try for another month; if he was not cured by that time, then she would hand him over to the white doctors." but we intended to leave the country before a month was up; so mamire, with others, induced the old lady to suspend her treatment for a little. she remained, as the doctors stipulated, in the chief's establishment, and on full pay. sekeletu was told plainly that the disease was unknown in our country, and was thought exceedingly obstinate of cure; that we did not believe in his being bewitched, and we were willing to do all we could to help him. this was a case for disinterested benevolence; no pay was expected, but considerable risk incurred; yet we could not decline it, as we had the trading in horses. having, however, none of the medicines usually employed in skin diseases with us, we tried the local application of lunar caustic, and hydriodate of potash internally; and with such gratifying results, that mamire wished the patient to be smeared all over with a solution of lunar caustic, which he believed to be of the same nature as the blistering fluid formerly applied to his own knee by mr. oswell. _its_ power he considered irresistible, and he would fain have had anything like it tried on sekeletu. it was a time of great scarcity and hunger, but sekeletu treated us hospitably, preparing tea for us at every visit we paid him. with the tea we had excellent american biscuit and preserved fruits, which had been brought to him all the way from benguela. the fruits he most relished were those preserved in their own juices; plums, apples, pears, strawberries, and peaches, which we have seen only among portuguese and spaniards. it made us anxious to plant the fruit-tree seeds we had brought, and all were pleased with the idea of having these same fruits in their own country. mokele, the headman of sesheke, and sebituane's sister, manchunyane, were ordered to provide us with food, as sekeletu's wives, to whom this duty properly belonged, were at linyanti. we found a black trader from the west coast, and some griqua traders from the south, both in search of ivory. ivory is dear at sesheke; but cheaper in the batoka country, from sinamane's to the kafue, than anywhere else. the trader from benguela took orders for goods for his next year's trip, and offered to bring tea, coffee, and sugar at cent. per cent. prices. as, in consequence of a hint formerly given, the makololo had secured all the ivory in the batoga country to the east, by purchasing it with hoes, the benguela traders found it unprofitable to go thither for slaves. they assured us that without ivory the trade in slaves did not pay. in this way, and by the orders of sekeletu, an extensive slave-mart was closed. these orders were never infringed except secretly. we discovered only two or three cases of their infraction. sekeletu was well pleased with the various articles we brought for him, and inquired if a ship could not bring his sugar-mill and the other goods we had been obliged to leave behind at tette. on hearing that there was a possibility of a powerful steamer ascending as far as sinamane's, but never above the grand victoria falls, he asked, with charming simplicity, if a cannon could not blow away the falls, so as to allow the vessel to come up to sesheke. to save the tribe from breaking up, by the continual loss of real makololo, it ought at once to remove to the healthy batoka highlands, near the kafue. fully aware of this, sekeletu remarked that all his people, save two, were convinced that, if they remained in the lowlands, a few years would suffice to cut off all the real makololo; they came originally from the healthy south, near the confluence of the likwa and namagari, where fever is almost unknown, and its ravages had been as frightful among them here, as amongst europeans on the coast. sebituane's sister described its first appearance among the tribe, after their settling in the barotse valley on the zambesi. many of them were seized with a shivering sickness, as if from excessive cold; they had never seen the like before. they made great fires, and laid the shivering wretches down before them; but, pile on wood as they might, they could not raise heat enough to drive the cold out of the bodies of the sufferers, and they shivered on till they died. but, though all preferred the highlands, they were afraid to go there, lest the matebele should come and rob them of their much-loved cattle. sebituane, with all his veterans, could not withstand that enemy; and how could they be resisted, now that most of the brave warriors were dead? the young men would break, and run away the moment they saw the terrible matebele, being as much afraid of them as the black conquered tribes are of the makololo. "but if the doctor and his wife," said the chiefs and counsellors, "would come and live with us, we would remove to the highlands at once, as moselekatse would not attack a place where the daughter of his friend, moffat, was living." the makololo are by far the most intelligent and enterprising of the tribes we have met. none but brave and daring men remained long with sebituane, his stern discipline soon eradicated cowardice from his army. death was the inevitable doom of the coward. if the chief saw a man running away from the fight, he rushed after him with amazing speed, and cut him down; or waited till he returned to the town, and then summoned the deserter into his presence. "you did not wish to die on the field, you wished to die at home, did you? you shall have your wish!" and he was instantly led off and executed. the present race of young men are inferior in most respects to their fathers. the old makololo had many manly virtues; they were truthful, and never stole, excepting in what they considered the honourable way of lifting cattle in fair fight. but this can hardly be said of their sons; who, having been brought up among the subjected tribes, have acquired some of the vices peculiar to a menial and degraded race. a few of the old makololo cautioned us not to leave any of our property exposed, as the blacks were great thieves; and some of our own men advised us to be on our guard, as the makololo also would steal. a very few trifling articles were stolen by a young makololo; and he, on being spoken to on the subject, showed great ingenuity in excusing himself, by a plausible and untruthful story. the makololo of old were hard workers, and did not consider labour as beneath them; but their sons never work, regarding it as fit only for the mashona and makalaka servants. sebituane, seeing that the rival tribes had the advantage over his, in knowing how to manage canoes, had his warriors taught to navigate; and his own son, with his companions, paddled the chief's canoe. all the dishes, baskets, stools, and canoes are made by the black tribes called manyeti and matlotlora. the houses are built by the women and servants. the makololo women are vastly superior to any we have yet seen. they are of a light warm brown complexion, have pleasant countenances, and are remarkably quick of apprehension. they dress neatly, wearing a kilt and mantle, and have many ornaments. sebituane's sister, the head lady of sesheke, wore eighteen solid brass rings, as thick as one's finger, on each leg, and three of copper under each knee; nineteen brass rings on her left arm, and eight of brass and copper on her right, also a large ivory ring above each elbow. she had a pretty bead necklace, and a bead sash encircled her waist. the weight of the bright brass rings round her legs impeded her walking, and chafed her ankles; but, as it was the fashion, she did not mind the inconvenience, and guarded against the pain by putting soft rag round the lower rings. justice appears upon the whole to be pretty fairly administered among the makololo. a headman took some beads and a blanket from one of his men who had been with us; the matter was brought before the chief, and he immediately ordered the goods to be restored, and decreed, moreover, that no headman should take the property of the men who had returned. in theory, all the goods brought back belonged to the chief; the men laid them at his feet, and made a formal offer of them all; he looked at the articles, and told the men to keep them. this is almost invariably the case. tuba mokoro, however, fearing lest sekeletu might take a fancy to some of his best goods, exhibited only a few of his old and least valuable acquisitions. masakasa had little to show; he had committed some breach of native law in one of the villages on the way, and paid a heavy fine rather than have the matter brought to the doctor's ears. each carrier is entitled to a portion of the goods in his bundle, though purchased by the chief's ivory, and they never hesitate to claim their rights; but no wages can be demanded from the chief, if he fails to respond to the first application. our men, accustomed to our ways, thought that the english system of paying a man for his labour was the only correct one, and some even said it would be better to live under a government where life and labour were more secure and valuable than here. while with us, they always conducted themselves with propriety during divine service, and not only maintained decorum themselves, but insisted on other natives who might be present doing the same. when moshobotwane, the batoka chief, came on one occasion with a number of his men, they listened in silence to the reading of the bible in the makololo tongue; but, as soon as we all knelt down to pray, they commenced a vigorous clapping of hands, their mode of asking a favour. our indignant makololo soon silenced their noisy accompaniment, and looked with great contempt on this display of ignorance. nearly all our men had learned to repeat the lord's prayer and the apostles' creed in their own language, and felt rather proud of being able to do so; and when they reached home, they liked to recite them to groups of admiring friends. their ideas of right and wrong differ in no respect from our own, except in their professed inability to see how it can be improper for a man to have more than one wife. a year or two ago several of the wives of those who had been absent with us petitioned the chief for leave to marry again. they thought that it was of no use waiting any longer, their husbands must be dead; but sekeletu refused permission; he himself had bet a number of oxen that the doctor would return with their husbands, and he had promised the absent men that their wives should be kept for them. the impatient spouses had therefore to wait a little longer. some of them, however, eloped with other men; the wife of mantlanyane, for instance, ran off and left his little boy among strangers. mantlanyane was very angry when he heard of it, not that he cared much about her deserting him, for he had two other wives at tette, but he was indignant at her abandoning his boy. chapter viii. life amongst the makololo--return journey--native hospitality--a canoe voyage on the zambesi. while we were at sesheke, an ox was killed by a crocodile; a man found the carcass floating in the river, and appropriated the meat. when the owner heard of this, he requested him to come before the chief, as he meant to complain of him; rather than go, the delinquent settled the matter by giving one of his own oxen in lieu of the lost one. a headman from near linyanti came with a complaint that all his people had run off, owing to the "hunger." sekeletu said, "you must not be left to grow lean alone, some of them must come back to you." he had thus an order to compel their return, if he chose to put it in force. families frequently leave their own headman and flee to another village, and sometimes a whole village decamps by night, leaving the headman by himself. sekeletu rarely interfered with the liberty of the subject to choose his own headman, and, as it is often the fault of the latter which causes the people to depart, it is punishment enough for him to be left alone. flagrant disobedience to the chief's orders is punished with death. a moshubia man was ordered to cut some reeds for sekeletu: he went off, and hid himself for two days instead. for this he was doomed to die, and was carried in a canoe to the middle of the river, choked, and tossed into the stream. the spectators hooted the executioners, calling out to them that they too would soon be carried out and strangled. occasionally when a man is sent to beat an offender, he tells him his object, returns, and assures the chief he has nearly killed him. the transgressor then keeps for a while out of sight, and the matter is forgotten. the river here teems with monstrous crocodiles, and women are frequently, while drawing water, carried off by these reptiles. we met a venerable warrior, sole survivor, probably, of the mantatee host which threatened to invade the colony in . he retained a vivid recollection of their encounter with the griquas: "as we looked at the men and horses, puffs of smoke arose, and some of us dropped down dead!" "never saw anything like it in my life, a man's brains lying in one place and his body in another!" they could not understand what was killing them; a ball struck a man's shield at an angle; knocked his arm out of joint at the shoulder; and leaving a mark, or burn, as he said, on the shield, killed another man close by. we saw the man with his shoulder still dislocated. sebetuane was present at the fight, and had an exalted opinion of the power of white people ever afterwards. the ancient costume of the makololo consisted of the skin of a lamb, kid, jackal, ocelot, or other small animal, worn round and below the loins: and in cold weather a kaross, or skin mantle, was thrown over the shoulders. the kaross is now laid aside, and the young men of fashion wear a monkey-jacket and a skin round the hips; but no trousers, waistcoat, or shirt. the river and lake tribes are in general very cleanly, bathing several times a day. the makololo women use water rather sparingly, rubbing themselves with melted butter instead: this keeps off parasites, but gives their clothes a rancid odour. one stage of civilization often leads of necessity to another--the possession of clothes creates a demand for soap; give a man a needle, and he is soon back to you for thread. this being a time of mourning, on account of the illness of the chief, the men were negligent of their persons, they did not cut their hair, or have merry dances, or carry spear and shield when they walked abroad. the wife of pitsane was busy making a large hut, while we were in the town: she informed us that the men left house-building entirely to the women and servants. a round tower of stakes and reeds, nine or ten feet high, is raised and plastered; a floor is next made of soft tufa, or ant-hill material and cowdung. this plaster prevents the poisonous insects, called tumpans, whose bite causes fever in some, and painful sores in all, from harbouring in the cracks or soil. the roof, which is much larger in diameter than the tower, is made on the ground, and then, many persons assisting, lifted up and placed on the tower, and thatched. a plastered reed fence is next built up to meet the outer part of the roof, which still projects a little over this fence, and a space of three feet remains between it and the tower. we slept in this space, instead of in the tower, as the inner door of the hut we occupied was uncomfortably small, being only nineteen inches high, and twenty-two inches wide at the floor. a foot from the bottom it measured seventeen inches in breadth, and close to the top only twelve inches, so it was a difficult matter to get through it. the tower has no light or ventilation, except through this small door. the reason a lady assigned for having the doors so very small was to keep out the mice! the children have merry times, especially in the cool of the evening. one of their games consists of a little girl being carried on the shoulders of two others. she sits with outstretched arms, as they walk about with her, and all the rest clap their hands, and stopping before each hut sing pretty airs, some beating time on their little kilts of cowskin, others making a curious humming sound between the songs. excepting this and the skipping-rope, the play of the girls consists in imitation of the serious work of their mothers, building little huts, making small pots, and cooking, pounding corn in miniature mortars, or hoeing tiny gardens. the boys play with spears of reeds pointed with wood, and small shields, or bows and arrows; or amuse themselves in making little cattle-pens, or in moulding cattle in clay; they show great ingenuity in the imitation of various-shaped horns. some too are said to use slings, but as soon as they can watch the goats, or calves, they are sent to the field. we saw many boys riding on the calves they had in charge, but this is an innovation since the arrival of the english with their horses. tselane, one of the ladies, on observing dr. livingstone noting observations on the wet and dry bulb thermometers, thought that he too was engaged in play; for on receiving no reply to her question, which was rather difficult to answer, as the native tongue has no scientific terms, she said with roguish glee, "poor thing, playing like a little child!" like other africans, the makololo have great faith in the power of medicine; they believe that there is an especial medicine for every ill that flesh is heir to. mamire is anxious to have children; he has six wives, and only one boy, and he begs earnestly for "child medicine." the mother of sekeletu came from the barotse valley to see her son. thinks she has lost flesh since dr. livingstone was here before, and asks for "the medicine of fatness." the makololo consider plumpness an essential part of beauty in women, but the extreme stoutness, mentioned by captain speke, in the north, would be considered hideous here, for the men have been overheard speaking of a lady whom we call "inclined to _embonpoint_," as "fat unto ugliness." two packages from the kuruman, containing letters and newspapers, reached linyanti previous to our arrival, and sekeletu, not knowing when we were coming, left them there; but now at once sent a messenger for them. this man returned on the seventh day, having travelled geographical miles. one of the packages was too heavy for him, and he left it behind. as the doctor wished to get some more medicine and papers out of the wagon left at linyanti in , he decided upon going thither himself. the chief gave him his own horse, now about twelve years old, and some men. he found everything in his wagon as safe as when he left it seven years before. the headmen, mosale and pekonyane, received him cordially, and lamented that they had so little to offer him. oh! had he only arrived the year previous, when there was abundance of milk and corn and beer. very early the next morning the old town-crier, ma-pulenyane, of his own accord made a public proclamation, which, in the perfect stillness of the town long before dawn, was striking: "i have dreamed! i have dreamed! i have dreamed! thou mosale and thou pekonyane, my lords, be not faint- hearted, nor let your hearts be sore, but believe all the words of monare (the doctor) for his heart is white as milk towards the makololo. i dreamed that he was coming, and that the tribe would live, if you prayed to god and give heed to the word of monare." ma-pulenyane showed dr. livingstone the burying-place where poor helmore and seven others were laid, distinguishing those whom he had put to rest, and those for whom mafale had performed that last office. nothing whatever marked the spot, and with the native idea of _hiding_ the dead, it was said, "it will soon be all overgrown with bushes, for no one will cultivate there." none but ma-pulenyane approached the place, the others stood at a respectful distance; they invariably avoid everything connected with the dead, and no such thing as taking portions of human bodies to make charms of, as is the custom further north, has ever been known among the makololo. sekeletu's health improved greatly during our visit, the melancholy foreboding left his spirits, and he became cheerful, but resolutely refused to leave his den, and appear in public till he was perfectly cured, and had regained what he considered his good looks. he also feared lest some of those who had bewitched him originally might still be among the people, and neutralize our remedies. { } as we expected another steamer to be at kongone in november, it was impossible for us to remain in sesheke more than one month. before our departure, the chief and his principal men expressed in a formal manner their great desire to have english people settled on the batoka highlands. at one time he proposed to go as far as phori, in order to select a place of residence; but as he afterwards saw reasons for remaining where he was, till his cure was completed, he gave orders to those sent with us, in the event of our getting, on our return, past the rapids near tette, not to bring us to sesheke, but to send forward a messenger, and he with the whole tribe would come to us. dr. kirk being of the same age, sekeletu was particularly anxious that he should come and live with him. he said that he would cut off a section of the country for the special use of the english; and on being told that in all probability their descendants would cause disturbance in his country, he replied, "these would be only domestic feuds, and of no importance." the great extent of uncultivated land on the cool and now unpeopled highlands has but to be seen to convince the spectator how much room there is, and to spare, for a vastly greater population than ever, in our day, can be congregated there. on the last occasion of our holding divine service at sesheke, the men were invited to converse on the subject on which they had been addressed. so many of them had died since we were here before, that not much probability existed of our all meeting again, and this had naturally led to the subject of a future state. they replied that they did not wish to offend the speaker, but they could not believe that all the dead would rise again: "can those who have been killed in the field and devoured by the vultures; or those who have been eaten by the hyenas or lions; or those who have been tossed into the river, and eaten by more than one crocodile,--can they all be raised again to life?" they were told that men could take a leaden bullet, change it into a salt (acetate of lead), which could be dissolved as completely in water as our bodies in the stomachs of animals, and then reconvert it into lead; or that the bullet could be transformed into the red and white paint of our wagons, and again be reconverted into the original lead; and that if men exactly like themselves could do so much, how much more could he do who has made the eye to see, and the ear to hear! we added, however, that we believed in a resurrection, not because we understood how it would be brought about, but because our heavenly father assured us of it in his book. the reference to the truth of the book and its author seems always to have more influence on the native mind than the cleverness of the illustration. the knowledge of the people is scanty, but their reasoning is generally clear as far as their information goes. we left sesheke on the th september, , convoyed by pitsane and leshore with their men. pitsane was ordered by sekeletu to make a hedge round the garden at the falls, to protect the seeds we had brought; and also to collect some of the tobacco tribute below the falls. leshore, besides acting as a sort of guard of honour to us, was sent on a diplomatic mission to sinamane. no tribute was exacted by sekeletu from sinamane; but, as he had sent in his adhesion, he was expected to act as a guard in case of the matebele wishing to cross and attack the makololo. as we intended to purchase canoes of sinamane in which to descend the river, leshore was to commend us to whatever help this batoka chief could render. it must be confessed that leshore's men, who were all of the black subject tribes, really needed to be viewed by us in the most charitable light; for leshore, on entering any village, called out to the inhabitants, "look out for your property, and see that my thieves don't steal it." two young makololo with their batoka servants accompanied us to see if kebrabasa could be surmounted, and to bring a supply of medicine for sekeletu's leprosy; and half a dozen able canoe-men, under mobito, who had previously gone with dr. livingstone to loanda, were sent to help us in our river navigation. some men on foot drove six oxen which sekeletu had given us as provisions for the journey. it was, as before remarked, a time of scarcity; and, considering the dearth of food, our treatment had been liberal. by day the canoe-men are accustomed to keep close under the river's bank from fear of the hippopotami; by night, however, they keep in the middle of the stream, as then those animals are usually close to the bank on their way to their grazing grounds. our progress was considerably impeded by the high winds, which at this season of the year begin about eight in the morning, and blow strongly up the river all day. the canoes were poor leaky affairs, and so low in parts of the gunwale, that the paddlers were afraid to follow the channel when it crossed the river, lest the waves might swamp us. a rough sea is dreaded by all these inland canoe-men; but though timid, they are by no means unskilful at their work. the ocean rather astonished them afterwards; and also the admirable way that the nyassa men managed their canoes on a rough lake, and even amongst the breakers, where no small boat could possibly live. on the night of the th we slept on the left bank of the majeele, after having had all the men ferried across. an ox was slaughtered, and not an ounce of it was left next morning. our two young makololo companions, maloka and ramakukane, having never travelled before, naturally clung to some of the luxuries they had been accustomed to at home. when they lay down to sleep, their servants were called to spread their blankets over their august persons, not forgetting their feet. this seems to be the duty of the makololo wife to her husband, and strangers sometimes receive the honour. one of our party, having wandered, slept at the village of nambowe. when he laid down, to his surprise two of nambowe's wives came at once, and carefully and kindly spread his kaross over him. a beautiful silvery fish with reddish fins, called ngwesi, is very abundant in the river; large ones weigh fifteen or twenty pounds each. its teeth are exposed, and so arranged that, when they meet, the edges cut a hook like nippers. the ngwesi seems to be a very ravenous fish. it often gulps down the konokono, a fish armed with serrated bones more than an inch in length in the pectoral and dorsal fins, which, fitting into a notch at the roots, can be put by the fish on full cock or straight out,--they cannot be folded down, without its will, and even break in resisting. the name "konokono," elbow-elbow, is given it from a resemblance its extended fins are supposed to bear to a man's elbows stuck out from his body. it often performs the little trick of cocking its fins in the stomach of the ngwesi, and, the elbows piercing its enemy's sides, he is frequently found floating dead. the fin bones seem to have an acrid secretion on them, for the wound they make is excessively painful. the konokono barks distinctly when landed with the hook. our canoe-men invariably picked up every dead fish they saw on the surface of the water, however far gone. an unfragrant odour was no objection; the fish was boiled and eaten, and the water drunk as soup. it is a curious fact that many of the africans keep fish as we do woodcocks, until they are extremely offensive, before they consider them fit to eat. our paddlers informed us on our way down that iguanas lay their eggs in july and august, and crocodiles in september. the eggs remain a month or two under the sand where they are laid, and the young come out when the rains have fairly commenced. the canoe-men were quite positive that crocodiles frequently stun men by striking them with their tails, and then squat on them till they are drowned. we once caught a young crocodile, which certainly did use its tail to inflict sharp blows, and led us to conclude that the native opinion is correct. they believed also that, if a person shuts the beast's eyes, it lets go its hold. crocodiles have been known to unite and kill a large one of their own species and eat it. some fishermen throw the bones of the fish into the river but in most of the fishing villages there are heaps of them in various places. the villagers can walk over them without getting them into their feet; but the makololo, from having softer soles, are unable to do so. the explanation offered was, that the fishermen have a medicine against fish-bones, but that they will not reveal it to the makololo. we spent a night on mparira island, which is four miles long and about one mile broad. mokompa, the headman, was away hunting elephants. his wife sent for him on our arrival, and he returned next morning before we left. taking advantage of the long-continued drought, he had set fire to the reeds between the chobe and zambesi, in such a manner as to drive the game out at one corner, where his men laid in wait with their spears. he had killed five elephants and three buffaloes, wounding several others which escaped. on our land party coming up, we were told that the oxen were bitten by the tsetse: they could see a great difference in their looks. one was already eaten, and they now wished to slaughter another. a third fell into a buffalo-pit next day, so our stock was soon reduced. the batoka chief, moshobotwane, again treated us with his usual hospitality, giving us an ox, some meal, and milk. we took another view of the grand mosi-oa-tunya, and planted a quantity of seeds in the garden on the island; but, as no one will renew the hedge, the hippopotami will, doubtless, soon destroy what we planted. mashotlane assisted us. so much power was allowed to this under-chief, that he appeared as if he had cast off the authority of sekeletu altogether. he did not show much courtesy to his messengers; instead of giving them food, as is customary, he took the meat out of a pot in their presence, and handed it to his own followers. this may have been because sekeletu's men bore an order to him to remove to linyanti. he had not only insulted baldwin, but had also driven away the griqua traders; but this may all end in nothing. some of the natives here, and at sesheke, know a few of the low tricks of more civilized traders. a pot of milk was brought to us one evening, which was more indebted to the zambesi than to any cow. baskets of fine- looking white meal, elsewhere, had occasionally the lower half filled with bran. eggs are always a perilous investment. the native idea of a good egg differs as widely from our own as is possible on such a trifling subject. an egg is eaten here with apparent relish, though an embryo chick be inside. we left mosi-oa-tunya on the th, and slept close to the village of bakwini. it is built on a ridge of loose red soil, which produces great crops of mapira and ground-nuts; many magnificent mosibe-trees stand near the village. machimisi, the headman of the village, possesses a herd of cattle and a large heart; he kept us company for a couple of days to guide us on our way. we had heard a good deal of a stronghold some miles below the falls, called kalunda. our return path was much nearer the zambesi than that of our ascent,--in fact, as near as the rough country would allow,--but we left it twice before we reached sinamane's, in order to see kalunda and a fall called moomba, or moamba. the makololo had once dispossessed the batoka of kalunda, but we could not see the fissure, or whatever it is, that rendered it a place of security, as it was on the southern bank. the crack of the great falls was here continued: the rocks are the same as further up, but perhaps less weather-worn--and now partially stratified in great thick masses. the country through which we were travelling was covered with a cindery-looking volcanic tufa, and might be called "katakaumena." the description we received of the moamba falls seemed to promise something grand. they were said to send up "smoke" in the wet season, like mosi-oa-tunya; but when we looked down into the cleft, in which the dark-green narrow river still rolls, we saw, about or feet below us, what, after mosi-oa-tunya, seemed two insignificant cataracts. it was evident that pitsane, observing our delight at the victoria falls, wished to increase our pleasure by a second wonder. one mosi-oa-tunya, however, is quite enough for a continent. we had now an opportunity of seeing more of the batoka, than we had on the highland route to our north. they did not wait till the evening before offering food to the strangers. the aged wife of the headman of a hamlet, where we rested at midday, at once kindled a fire, and put on the cooking-pot to make porridge. both men and women are to be distinguished by greater roundness of feature than the other natives, and the custom of knocking out the upper front teeth gives at once a distinctive character to the face. their colour attests the greater altitude of the country in which many of them formerly lived. some, however, are as dark as the bashubia and barotse of the great valley to their west, in which stands sesheke, formerly the capital of the balui, or bashubia. the assertion may seem strange, yet it is none the less true, that in all the tribes we have visited we never saw a really black person. different shades of brown prevail, and often with a bright bronze tint, which no painter, except mr. angus, seems able to catch. those who inhabit elevated, dry situations, and who are not obliged to work much in the sun, are frequently of a light warm brown, "dark but comely." darkness of colour is probably partly caused by the sun, and partly by something in the climate or soil which we do not yet know. we see something of the same sort in trout and other fish which take their colour from the ponds or streams in which they live. the members of our party were much less embrowned by free exposure to the sun for years than dr. livingstone and his family were by passing once from kuruman to cape town, a journey which occupied only a couple of months. we encamped on the kalomo, on the st of october, and found the weather very much warmer than when we crossed this stream in august. at p.m. the thermometer, four feet from the ground, was degrees in the shade; the wet bulb only degrees: a difference of degrees. yet, notwithstanding this extreme dryness of the atmosphere, without a drop of rain having fallen for months, and scarcely any dew, many of the shrubs and trees were putting forth fresh leaves of various hues, while others made a profuse display of lovely blossoms. two old and very savage buffaloes were shot for our companions on the rd october. our volunteers may feel an interest in knowing that balls sometimes have but little effect: one buffalo fell, on receiving a jacob's shell; it was hit again twice, and lost a large amount of blood; and yet it sprang up, and charged a native, who, by great agility, had just time to climb a tree, before the maddened beast struck it, battering- ram fashion, hard enough almost to have split both head and tree. it paused a few seconds--drew back several paces--glared up at the man--and then dashed at the tree again and again, as if determined to shake him out of it. it took two more jacob's shells, and five other large solid rifle-balls to finish the beast at last. these old surly buffaloes had been wandering about in a sort of miserable fellowship; their skins were diseased and scabby, as if leprous, and their horns atrophied or worn down to stumps--the first was killed outright, by one jacob's shell, the second died hard. there is so much difference in the tenacity of life in wounded animals of the same species, that the inquiry is suggested where the seat of life can be?--we have seen a buffalo live long enough, after a large bullet had passed right through the heart, to allow firm adherent clots to be formed in the two holes. one day's journey above sinamane's, a mass of mountain called gorongue, or golongwe, is said to cross the river, and the rent through which the river passes is, by native report, quite fearful to behold. the country round it is so rocky, that our companions dreaded the fatigue, and were not much to blame, if, as is probably the case, the way be worse than that over which we travelled. as we trudged along over the black slag- like rocks, the almost leafless trees affording no shade, the heat was quite as great as europeans could bear. it was degrees in the shade, and a thermometer placed under the tongue or armpit showed that our blood was . degrees, or . degrees hotter than that of the natives, which stood at degrees. our shoes, however, enable us to pass over the hot burning soil better than they can. many of those who wear sandals have corns on the sides of the feet, and on the heels, where the straps pass. we have seen instances, too, where neither sandals nor shoes were worn, of corns on the soles of the feet. it is, moreover, not at all uncommon to see toes cocked up, as if pressed out of their proper places; at home, we should have unhesitatingly ascribed this to the vicious fashions perversely followed by our shoemakers. on the th, after crossing some hills, we rested at the village of simariango. the bellows of the blacksmith here were somewhat different from the common goatskin bags, and more like those seen in madagascar. they consisted of two wooden vessels, like a lady's bandbox of small dimensions, the upper ends of which were covered with leather, and looked something like the heads of drums, except that the leather bagged in the centre. they were fitted with long nozzles, through which the air was driven by working the loose covering of the tops up and down by means of a small piece of wood attached to their centres. the blacksmith said that tin was obtained from a people in the north, called marendi, and that he had made it into bracelets; we had never heard before of tin being found in the country. our course then lay down the bed of a rivulet, called mapatizia, in which there was much calc spar, with calcareous schist, and then the tette grey sandstone, which usually overlies coal. on the th we arrived at the islet chilombe, belonging to sinamane, where the zambesi runs broad and smooth again, and were well received by sinamane himself. never was sunday more welcome to the weary than this, the last we were to spend with our convoy. we now saw many good-looking young men and women. the dresses of the ladies are identical with those of nubian women in upper egypt. to a belt on the waist a great number of strings are attached to hang all round the person. these fringes are about six or eight inches long. the matrons wear in addition a skin cut like the tails of the coatee formerly worn by our dragoons. the younger girls wear the waist-belt exhibited in the woodcut, ornamented with shells, and have the fringes only in front. marauding parties of batoka, calling themselves makololo, have for some time had a wholesome dread of sinamane's "long spears." before going to tette our batoka friend, masakasa, was one of a party that came to steal some of the young women; but sinamane, to their utter astonishment, attacked them so furiously that the survivors barely escaped with their lives. masakasa had to flee so fast that he threw away his shield, his spear, and his clothes, and returned home a wiser and a sadder man. sinamane's people cultivate large quantities of tobacco, which they manufacture into balls for the makololo market. twenty balls, weighing about three-quarters of a pound each, are sold for a hoe. the tobacco is planted on low moist spots on the banks of the zambesi; and was in flower at the time we were there, in october. sinamane's people appear to have abundance of food, and are all in good condition. he could sell us only two of his canoes; but lent us three more to carry us as far as moemba's, where he thought others might be purchased. they were manned by his own canoe-men, who were to bring them back. the river is about yards wide, and flows serenely between high banks towards the north-east. below sinamane's the banks are often worn down fifty feet, and composed of shingle and gravel of igneous rocks, sometimes set in a ferruginous matrix. the bottom is all gravel and shingle, how formed we cannot imagine, unless in pot-holes in the deep fissure above. the bottom above the falls, save a few rocks close by them, is generally sandy or of soft tufa. every damp spot is covered with maize, pumpkins, water-melons, tobacco, and hemp. there is a pretty numerous batoka population on both sides of the river. as we sailed slowly down, the people saluted us from the banks, by clapping their hands. a headman even hailed us, and brought a generous present of corn and pumpkins. moemba owns a rich island, called mosanga, a mile in length, on which his village stands. he has the reputation of being a brave warrior, and is certainly a great talker; but he gave us strangers something better than a stream of words. we received a handsome present of corn, and the fattest goat we had ever seen; it resembled mutton. his people were as liberal as their chief. they brought two large baskets of corn, and a lot of tobacco, as a sort of general contribution to the travellers. one of sinamane's canoe-men, after trying to get his pay, deserted here, and went back before the stipulated time, with the story, that the englishman had stolen the canoes. shortly after sunrise next morning, sinamane came into the village with fifty of his "long spears," evidently determined to retake his property by force; he saw at a glance that his man had deceived him. moemba rallied him for coming on a wildgoose chase. "here are your canoes left with me, your men have all been paid, and the englishmen are now asking me to sell my canoes." sinamane said little to us; only observing that he had been deceived by his follower. a single remark of his chief's caused the foolish fellow to leave suddenly, evidently much frightened and crestfallen. sinamane had been very kind to us, and, as he was looking on when we gave our present to moemba, we made him also an additional offering of some beads, and parted good friends. moemba, having heard that we had called the people of sinamane together to tell them about our saviour's mission to man, and to pray with them, associated the idea of sunday with the meeting, and, before anything of the sort was proposed, came and asked that he and his people might be "sundayed" as well as his neighbours; and be given a little seed wheat, and fruit-tree seeds; with which request of course we very willingly complied. the idea of praying direct to the supreme being, though not quite new to all, seems to strike their minds so forcibly that it will not be forgotten. sinamane said that he prayed to god, morungo, and made drink-offerings to him. though he had heard of us, he had never seen white men before. beautiful crowned cranes, named from their note "ma-wang," were seen daily, and were beginning to pair. large flocks of spur-winged geese, or machikwe, were common. this goose is said to lay her eggs in march. we saw also pairs of egyptian geese, as well as a few of the knob-nosed, or, as they are called in india, combed geese. when the egyptian geese, as at the present time, have young, the goslings keep so steadily in the wake of their mother, that they look as if they were a part of her tail; and both parents, when on land, simulate lameness quite as well as our plovers, to draw off pursuers. the ostrich also adopts the lapwing fashion, but no quadrupeds do: they show fight to defend their young instead. in some places the steep banks were dotted with the holes which lead into the nests of bee-eaters. these birds came out in hundreds as we passed. when the red-breasted species settle on the trees, they give them the appearance of being covered with red foliage. on the morning of the th october we passed through a wild, hilly country, with fine wooded scenery on both sides, but thinly inhabited. the largest trees were usually thorny acacias, of great size and beautiful forms. as we sailed by several villages without touching, the people became alarmed, and ran along the banks, spears in hand. we employed one to go forward and tell mpande of our coming. this allayed their fears, and we went ashore, and took breakfast near the large island with two villages on it, opposite the mouth of the zungwe, where we had left the zambesi on our way up. mpande was sorry that he had no canoes of his own to sell, but he would lend us two. he gave us cooked pumpkins and a water-melon. his servant had lateral curvature of the spine. we have often seen cases of humpback, but this was the only case of this kind of curvature we had met with. mpande accompanied us himself in his own vessel, till we had an opportunity of purchasing a fine large canoe elsewhere. we paid what was considered a large price for it: twelve strings of blue cut glass neck beads, an equal number of large blue ones of the size of marbles, and two yards of grey calico. had the beads been coarser, they would have been more valued, because such were in fashion. before concluding the bargain the owner said "his bowels yearned for his canoe, and we must give a little more to stop their yearning." this was irresistible. the trading party of sequasha, which we now met, had purchased ten large new canoes for six strings of cheap coarse white beads each, or their equivalent, four yards of calico, and had bought for the merest trifle ivory enough to load them all. they were driving a trade in slaves also, which was something new in this part of africa, and likely soon to change the character of the inhabitants. these men had been living in clover, and were uncommonly fat and plump. when sent to trade, slaves wisely never stint themselves of beer or anything else, which their master's goods can buy. the temperature of the zambesi had increased degrees since august, being now degrees. the air was as high as degrees after sunset; and, the vicinity of the water being the coolest part, we usually made our beds close by the river's brink, though there in danger of crocodiles. africa differs from india in the air always becoming cool and refreshing long before the sun returns, and there can be no doubt that we can in this country bear exposure to the sun, which would be fatal in india. it is probably owing to the greater dryness of the african atmosphere that sunstroke is so rarely met with. in twenty-two years dr. livingstone never met or heard of a single case, though the protective head-dresses of india are rarely seen. when the water is nearly at its lowest, we occasionally meet with small rapids which are probably not in existence during the rest of the year. having slept opposite the rivulet bume, which comes from the south, we passed the island of nakansalo, and went down the rapids of the same name on the th, and came on the morning of the th to the more serious ones of nakabele, at the entrance to kariba. the makololo guided the canoes admirably through the opening in the dyke. when we entered the gorge we came on upwards of thirty hippopotami: a bank near the entrance stretches two-thirds across the narrowed river, and in the still place behind it they were swimming about. several were in the channel, and our canoe-men were afraid to venture down among them, because, as they affirm, there is commonly an ill-natured one in a herd, which takes a malignant pleasure in upsetting canoes. two or three boys on the rocks opposite amused themselves by throwing stones at the frightened animals, and hit several on the head. it would have been no difficult matter to have shot the whole herd. we fired a few shots to drive them off; the balls often glance off the skull, and no more harm is done than when a schoolboy gets a bloody nose; we killed one, which floated away down the rapid current, followed by a number of men on the bank. a native called to us from the left bank, and said that a man on his side knew how to pray to the kariba gods, and advised us to hire him to pray for our safety, while we were going down the rapids, or we should certainly all be drowned. no one ever risked his life in kariba without first paying the river-doctor, or priest, for his prayers. our men asked if there was a cataract in front, but he declined giving any information; they were not on his side of the river; if they would come over, then he might be able to tell them. we crossed, but he went off to the village. we then landed and walked over the hills to have a look at karaba before trusting our canoes in it. the current was strong, and there was broken water in some places, but the channel was nearly straight, and had no cataract, so we determined to risk it. our men visited the village while we were gone, and were treated to beer and tobacco. the priest who knows how to pray to the god that rules the rapids followed us with several of his friends, and they were rather surprised to see us pass down in safety, without the aid of his intercession. the natives who followed the dead hippopotamus caught it a couple of miles below, and, having made it fast to a rock, were sitting waiting for us on the bank beside the dead animal. as there was a considerable current there, and the rocky banks were unfit for our beds, we took the hippopotamus in tow, telling the villagers to follow, and we would give them most of the meat. the crocodiles tugged so hard at the carcass, that we were soon obliged to cast it adrift, to float down in the current, to avoid upsetting the canoe. we had to go on so far before finding a suitable spot to spend the night in, that the natives concluded we did not intend to share the meat with them, and returned to the village. we slept two nights at the place where the hippopotamus was cut up. the crocodiles had a busy time of it in the dark, tearing away at what was left in the river, and thrashing the water furiously with their powerful tails. the hills on both sides of kariba are much like those of kebrabasa, the strata tilted and twisted in every direction, with no level ground. although the hills confine the zambesi within a narrow channel for a number of miles, there are no rapids beyond those near the entrance. the river is smooth and apparently very deep. only one single human being was seen in the gorge, the country being too rough for culture. some rocks in the water, near the outlet of kariba, at a distance look like a fort; and such large masses dislocated, bent, and even twisted to a remarkable degree, at once attest some tremendous upheaving and convulsive action of nature, which probably caused kebrabasa, kariba, and the victoria falls to assume their present forms; it took place after the formation of the coal, that mineral having then been tilted up. we have probably nothing equal to it in the present quiet operations of nature. on emerging we pitched our camp by a small stream, the pendele, a few miles below the gorge. the palabi mountain stands on the western side of the lower end of the kariba strait; the range to which it belongs crosses the river, and runs to the south-east. chikumbula, a hospitable old headman, under nchomokela, the paramount chief of a large district, whom we did not see, brought us next morning a great basket of meal, and four fowls, with some beer, and a cake of salt, "to make it taste good." chikumbula said that the elephants plagued them, by eating up the cotton- plants; but his people seem to be well off. a few days before we came, they caught three buffaloes in pitfalls in one night, and, unable to eat them all, left one to rot. during the night the wind changed and blew from the dead buffalo to our sleeping-place; and a hungry lion, not at all dainty in his food, stirred up the putrid mass, and growled and gloated over his feast, to the disturbance of our slumbers. game of all kinds is in most extraordinary abundance, especially from this point to below the kafue, and so it is on moselekatso's side, where there are no inhabitants. the drought drives all the game to the river to drink. an hour's walk on the right bank, morning or evening, reveals a country swarming with wild animals: vast herds of pallahs, many waterbucks, koodoos, buffaloes, wild pigs, elands, zebras, and monkeys appear; francolins, guinea-fowls, and myriads of turtledoves attract the eye in the covers, with the fresh spoor of elephants and rhinoceroses, which had been at the river during the night. every few miles we came upon a school of hippopotami, asleep on some shallow sandbank; their bodies, nearly all out of the water, appeared like masses of black rock in the river. when these animals are hunted much, they become proportionably wary, but here no hunter ever troubles them, and they repose in security, always however taking the precaution of sleeping just above the deep channel, into which they can plunge when alarmed. when a shot is fired into a sleeping herd, all start up on their feet, and stare with peculiar stolid looks of hippopotamic surprise, and wait for another shot before dashing into deep water. a few miles below chikumbula's we saw a white hippopotamus in a herd. our men had never seen one like it before. it was of a pinkish white, exactly like the colour of the albino. it seemed to be the father of a number of others, for there were many marked with large light patches. the so-called _white_ elephant is just such a pinkish albino as this hippopotamus. a few miles above kariba we observed that, in two small hamlets, many of the inhabitants had a similar affection of the skin. the same influence appeared to have affected man and beast. a dark coloured hippopotamus stood alone, as if expelled from the herd, and bit the water, shaking his head from side to side in a most frantic manner. when the female has twins, she is said to kill one of them. we touched at the beautiful tree-covered island of kalabi, opposite where tuba-mokoro lectured the lion in our way up. the ancestors of the people who now inhabit this island possessed cattle. the tsetse has taken possession of the country since "the beeves were lifted." no one knows where these insects breed; at a certain season all disappear, and as suddenly come back, no one knows whence. the natives are such close observers of nature, that their ignorance in this case surprised us. a solitary hippopotamus had selected the little bay in which we landed, and where the women drew water, for his dwelling-place. pretty little lizards, with light blue and red tails, run among the rocks, catching flies and other insects. these harmless--though to new-comers repulsive--creatures sometimes perform good service to man, by eating great numbers of the destructive white ants. at noon on the th october, we found sequasha in a village below the kafue, with the main body of his people. he said that elephants had been killed during his trip; many of his men being excellent hunters. the numbers of animals we saw renders this possible. he reported that, after reaching the kafue, he went northwards into the country of the zulus, whose ancestors formerly migrated from the south and set up a sort of republican form of government. sequasha is the greatest portuguese traveller we ever became acquainted with, and he boasts that he is able to speak a dozen different dialects; yet, unfortunately, he can give but a very meagre account of the countries and people he has seen, and his statements are not very much to be relied on. but considering the influence among which he has been reared, and the want of the means of education at tette, it is a wonder that he possesses the good traits that he sometimes exhibits. among his wares were several cheap american clocks; a useless investment rather, for a part of africa where no one cares for the artificial measurement of time. these clocks got him into trouble among the banyai: he set them all agoing in the presence of a chief, who became frightened at the strange sounds they made, and looked upon them as so many witchcraft agencies at work to bring all manner of evils upon himself and his people. sequasha, it was decided, had been guilty of a milando, or crime, and he had to pay a heavy fine of cloth and beads for his exhibition. he alluded to our having heard that he had killed mpangwe, and he denied having actually done so; but in his absence his name had got mixed up in the affair, in consequence of his slaves, while drinking beer one night with namakusuru, the man who succeeded mpangwe, saying that they would kill the chief for him. his partner had not thought of this when we saw him on the way up, for he tried to excuse the murder, by saying that now they had put the right man into the chieftainship. after three hours' sail, on the morning of the th, the river was narrowed again by the mountains of mburuma, called karivua, into one channel, and another rapid dimly appeared. it was formed by two currents guided by rocks to the centre. in going down it, the men sent by sekeletu behaved very nobly. the canoes entered without previous survey, and the huge jobbling waves of mid-current began at once to fill them. with great presence of mind, and without a moment's hesitation, two men lightened each by jumping overboard; they then ordered a botoka man to do the same, as "the white men must be saved." "i cannot swim," said the batoka. "jump out, then, and hold on to the canoe;" which he instantly did. swimming alongside, they guided the swamping canoes down the swift current to the foot of the rapid, and then ran them ashore to bale them out. a boat could have passed down safely, but our canoes were not a foot above the water at the gunwales. thanks to the bravery of these poor fellows, nothing was lost, although everything was well soaked. this rapid is nearly opposite the west end of the mburuma mountains or karivua. another soon begins below it. they are said to be all smoothed over when the river rises. the canoes had to be unloaded at this the worst rapid, and the goods carried about a hundred yards. by taking the time in which a piece of stick floated past feet, we found the current to be running six knots, by far the greatest velocity noted in the river. as the men were bringing the last canoe down close to the shore, the stern swung round into the current, and all except one man let go, rather than be dragged off. he clung to the bow, and was swept out into the middle of the stream. having held on when he ought to have let go, he next put his life in jeopardy by letting go when he ought to have held on; and was in a few seconds swallowed up by a fearful whirlpool. his comrades launched out a canoe below, and caught him as he rose the third time to the surface, and saved him, though much exhausted and very cold. the scenery of this pass reminded us of kebrabasa, although it is much inferior. a band of the same black shining glaze runs along the rocks about two feet from the water's edge. there was not a blade of grass on some of the hills, it being the end of the usual dry season succeeding a previous severe drought; yet the hill-sides were dotted over with beautiful green trees. a few antelopes were seen on the rugged slopes, where some people too appeared lying down, taking a cup of beer. the karivua narrows are about thirty miles in length. they end at the mountain roganora. two rocks, twelve or fifteen feet above the water at the time we were there, may in flood be covered and dangerous. our chief danger was the wind, a very slight ripple being sufficient to swamp canoes. chapter ix. the waterbuck--disaster in kebrabasa rapids--the "ma robert" founders--arrival of the "pioneer" and bishop mackenzie's party--portuguese slave-trade--interference and liberation. we arrived at zumbo, at the mouth of the loangwa, on the st of november. the water being scarcely up to the knee, our land party waded this river with ease. a buffalo was shot on an island opposite pangola's, the ball lodging in the spleen. it was found to have been wounded in the same organ previously, for an iron bullet was imbedded in it, and the wound entirely healed. a great deal of the plant _pistia stratiotes_ was seen floating in the river. many people inhabit the right bank about this part, yet the game is very abundant. as we were taking our breakfast on the morning of the nd, the mambo kazai, of whom we knew nothing, and his men came with their muskets and large powder-horns to levy a fine, and obtain payment for the wood we used in cooking. but on our replying to his demand that we were english, "oh! are you?" he said; "i thought you were bazungu (portuguese). they are the people i take payments from:" and he apologized for his mistake. bazungu, or azungu, is a term applied to all foreigners of a light colour, and to arabs; even to trading slaves if clothed; it probably means foreigners, or visitors,--from _zunga_, to visit or wander,--and the portuguese were the only foreigners these men had ever seen. as we had no desire to pass for people of that nation--quite the contrary--we usually made a broad line of demarcation by saying that we were english, and the english neither bought, sold, nor held black people as slaves, but wished to put a stop to the slave-trade altogether. we called upon our friend, mpende, in passing. he provided a hut for us, with new mats spread on the floor. having told him that we were hurrying on because the rains were near, "are they near?" eagerly inquired an old counsellor, "and are we to have plenty of rain this year?" we could only say that it was about the usual time for the rains to commence; and that there were the usual indications in great abundance of clouds floating westwards, but that we knew nothing more than they did themselves. the hippopotami are more wary here than higher up, as the natives hunt them with guns. having shot one on a shallow sandbank, our men undertook to bring it over to the left bank, in order to cut it up with greater ease. it was a fine fat one, and all rejoiced in the hope of eating the fat for butter, with our hard dry cakes of native meal. our cook was sent over to cut a choice piece for dinner, but returned with the astonishing intelligence that the carcass was gone. they had been hoodwinked, and were very much ashamed of themselves. a number of banyai came to assist in rolling it ashore, and asserted that it was all shallow water. they rolled it over and over towards the land, and, finding the rope we had made fast to it, as they said, an encumbrance, it was unloosed. all were shouting and talking as loud as they could bawl, when suddenly our expected feast plumped into a deep hole, as the banyai intended it should do. when sinking, all the makololo jumped in after it. one caught frantically at the tail; another grasped a foot; a third seized the hip; "but, by sebituane, it would go down in spite of all that we could do." instead of a fat hippopotamus we had only a lean fowl for dinner, and were glad enough to get even that. the hippopotamus, however, floated during the night, and was found about a mile below. the banyai then assembled on the bank, and disputed our right to the beast: "it might have been shot by somebody else." our men took a little of it and then left it, rather than come into collision with them. a fine waterbuck was shot in the kakolole narrows, at mount manyerere; it dropped beside the creek where it was feeding; an enormous crocodile, that had been watching it at the moment, seized and dragged it into the water, which was not very deep. the mortally wounded animal made a desperate plunge, and hauling the crocodile several yards tore itself out of the hideous jaws. to escape the hunter, the waterbuck jumped into the river, and was swimming across, when another crocodile gave chase, but a ball soon sent it to the bottom. the waterbuck swam a little longer, the fine head dropped, the body turned over, and one of the canoes dragged it ashore. below kakolole, and still at the base of manyerere mountain, several coal-seams, not noticed on our ascent, were now seen to crop out on the right bank of the zambesi. chitora, of chicova, treated us with his former hospitality. our men were all much pleased with his kindness, and certainly did not look upon it as a proof of weakness. they meant to return his friendliness when they came this way on a marauding expedition to eat the sheep of the banyai, for insulting them in the affair of the hippopotamus; they would then send word to chitora not to run away, for they, being his friends, would do such a good-hearted man no harm. we entered kebrabasa rapids, at the east end of chicova, in the canoes, and went down a number of miles, until the river narrowed into a groove of fifty or sixty yards wide, of which we have already spoken in describing the flood-bed and channel of low water. the navigation then became difficult and dangerous. a fifteen feet fall of the water in our absence had developed many cataracts. two of our canoes passed safely down a narrow channel, which, bifurcating, had an ugly whirlpool at the rocky partition between the two branches, the deep hole in the whirls at times opening and then shutting. the doctor's canoe came next, and seemed to be drifting broadside into the open vortex, in spite of the utmost exertions of the paddlers. the rest were expecting to have to pull to the rescue; the men saying, "look where these people are going!--look, look!"--when a loud crash burst on our ears. dr. kirk's canoe was dashed on a projection of the perpendicular rocks, by a sudden and mysterious boiling up of the river, which occurs at irregular intervals. dr. kirk was seen resisting the sucking-down action of the water, which must have been fifteen fathoms deep, and raising himself by his arms on to the ledge, while his steersman, holding on to the same rocks, saved the canoe; but nearly all its contents were swept away down the stream. dr. livingstone's canoe, meanwhile, which had distracted the men's attention, was saved by the cavity in the whirlpool filling up as the frightful eddy was reached. a few of the things in dr. kirk's canoe were left; but all that was valuable, including a chronometer, a barometer, and, to our great sorrow, his notes of the journey and botanical drawings of the fruit-trees of the interior, perished. we now left the river, and proceeded on foot, sorry that we had not done so the day before. the men were thoroughly frightened, they had never seen such perilous navigation. they would carry all the loads, rather than risk kebrabasa any longer; but the fatigue of a day's march over the hot rocks and burning sand changed their tune before night; and then they regretted having left the canoes; they thought they should have dragged them past the dangerous places, and then launched them again. one of the two donkeys died from exhaustion near the luia. though the men eat zebras and quaggas, blood relations of the donkey, they were shocked at the idea of eating the ass; "it would be like eating man himself, because the donkey lives with man, and is his bosom companion." we met two large trading parties of tette slaves on their way to zumbo, leading, to be sold for ivory, a number of manganja women, with ropes round their necks, and all made fast to one long rope. panzo, the headman of the village east of kebrabasa, received us with great kindness. after the usual salutation he went up the hill, and, in a loud voice, called across the valley to the women of several hamlets to cook supper for us. about eight in the evening he returned, followed by a procession of women, bringing the food. there were eight dishes of nsima, or porridge, six of different sorts of very good wild vegetables, with dishes of beans and fowls; all deliciously well cooked, and scrupulously clean. the wooden dishes were nearly as white as the meal itself: food also was brought for our men. ripe mangoes, which usually indicate the vicinity of the portuguese, were found on the st november; and we reached tette early on the rd, having been absent a little over six months. the two english sailors, left in charge of the steamer, were well, had behaved well, and had enjoyed excellent health all the time we were away. their farm had been a failure. we left a few sheep, to be slaughtered when they wished for fresh meat, and two dozen fowls. purchasing more, they soon had double the number of the latter, and anticipated a good supply of eggs; but they also bought two monkeys, and _they_ ate all the eggs. a hippopotamus came up one night, and laid waste their vegetable garden; the sheep broke into their cotton patch, when it was in flower, and ate it all, except the stems; then the crocodiles carried off the sheep, and the natives stole the fowls. nor were they more successful as gun-smiths: a portuguese trader, having an exalted opinion of the ingenuity of english sailors, showed them a double-barrelled rifle, and inquired if they could put on the _browning_, which had rusted off. "i think i knows how," said one, whose father was a blacksmith, "it's very easy; you have only to put the barrels in the fire." a great fire of wood was made on shore, and the unlucky barrels put over it, to secure the handsome rifle colour. to jack's utter amazement the barrels came asunder. to get out of the scrape, his companion and he stuck the pieces together with resin, and sent it to the owner, with the message, "it was all they could do for it, and they would not charge him anything for the job!" they had also invented an original mode of settling a bargain; having ascertained the market price of provisions, they paid that, but no more. if the traders refused to leave the ship till the price was increased, a chameleon, of which the natives have a mortal dread, was brought out of the cabin; and the moment the natives saw the creature, they at once sprang overboard. the chameleon settled every dispute in a twinkling. but besides their good-humoured intercourse, they showed humanity worthy of english sailors. a terrible scream roused them up one night, and they pushed off in a boat to the rescue. a crocodile had caught a woman, and was dragging her across a shallow sandbank. just as they came up to her, she gave a fearful shriek: the horrid reptile had snapped off her leg at the knee. they took her on board, bandaged the limb as well as they could, and, not thinking of any better way of showing their sympathy, gave her a glass of rum, and carried her to a hut in the village. next morning they found the bandages torn off, and the unfortunate creature left to die. "i believe," remarked rowe, one of the sailors, "her master was angry with us for saving her life, seeing as how she had lost her leg." the zambesi being unusually low, we remained at tette till it rose a little, and then left on the rd of december for the kongone. it was hard work to keep the vessel afloat; indeed, we never expected her to remain above water. new leaks broke out every day; the engine pump gave way; the bridge broke down; three compartments filled at night; except the cabin and front compartment all was flooded; and in a few days we were assured by rowe that "she can't be worse than she is, sir." he and hutchins had spent much of their time, while we were away, in patching her bottom, puddling it with clay, and shoring it, and it was chiefly to please them that we again attempted to make use of her. we had long been fully convinced that the steel plates were thoroughly unsuitable. on the morning of the st the uncomfortable "asthmatic" grounded on a sandbank and filled. she could neither be emptied nor got off. the river rose during the night, and all that was visible of the worn-out craft next day was about six feet of her two masts. most of the property we had on board was saved; and we spent the christmas of encamped on the island of chimba. canoes were sent for from senna; and we reached it on the th, to be again hospitably entertained by our friend, senhor ferrao. we reached the kongone on the th of january, . a flagstaff and a custom-house had been erected during our absence; a hut, also, for a black lance-corporal and three privates. by the kind permission of the lance-corporal, who came to see us as soon as he had got into his trousers and shirt, we took up our quarters in the custom-house, which, like the other buildings, is a small square floorless hut of mangrove stakes overlaid with reeds. the soldiers complained of hunger, they had nothing to eat but a little mapira, and were making palm wine to deaden their cravings. while waiting for a ship, we had leisure to read the newspapers and periodicals we found in the mail which was waiting our arrival at tette. several were a year and a half old. our provisions began to run short; and towards the end of the month there was nothing left but a little bad biscuit and a few ounces of sugar. coffee and tea were expended, but scarcely missed, as our sailors discovered a pretty good substitute in roasted mapira. fresh meat was obtained in abundance from our antelope preserves on the large island made by a creek between the kongone and east luabo. in this focus of decaying vegetation, nothing is so much to be dreaded as inactivity. we had, therefore, to find what exercise and amusement we could, when hunting was not required, in peering about in the fetid swamps; to have gone mooning about, in listless idleness, would have ensured fever in its worst form, and probably with fatal results. a curious little blenny-fish swarms in the numerous creeks which intersect the mangrove topes. when alarmed, it hurries across the surface of the water in a series of leaps. it may be considered amphibious, as it lives as much out of the water as in it, and its most busy time is during low water. then it appears on the sand or mud, near the little pools left by the retiring tide; it raises itself on its pectoral fins into something of a standing attitude, and with its large projecting eyes keeps a sharp look-out for the light-coloured fly, on which it feeds. should the fly alight at too great a distance for even a second leap, the blenny moves slowly towards it like a cat to its prey, or like a jumping spider; and, as soon as it gets within two or three inches of the insect, by a sudden spring contrives to pop its underset mouth directly over the unlucky victim. he is, moreover, a pugnacious little fellow; and rather prolonged fights may be observed between him and his brethren. one, in fleeing from an apparent danger, jumped into a pool a foot square, which the other evidently regarded as his by right of prior discovery; in a twinkling the owner, with eyes flashing fury, and with dorsal fin bristling up in rage, dashed at the intruding foe. the fight waxed furious, no tempest in a teapot ever equalled the storm of that miniature sea. the warriors were now in the water, and anon out of it, for the battle raged on sea and shore. they struck hard, they bit each other; until, becoming exhausted, they seized each other by the jaws like two bull-dogs, then paused for breath, and at it again as fiercely as before, until the combat ended by the precipitate retreat of the invader. the muddy ground under the mangrove-trees is covered with soldier-crabs, which quickly slink into their holes on any symptom of danger. when the ebbing tide retires, myriads of minute crabs emerge from their underground quarters, and begin to work like so many busy bees. soon many miles of the smooth sand become rough with the results of their labour. they are toiling for their daily bread: a round bit of moist sand appears at the little labourer's mouth, and is quickly brushed off by one of the claws; a second bit follows the first; and another, and still another come as fast as they can be laid aside. as these pellets accumulate, the crab moves sideways, and the work continues. the first impression one receives is, that the little creature has swallowed a great deal of sand, and is getting rid of it as speedily as possible: a habit he indulges in of darting into his hole at intervals, as if for fresh supplies, tends to strengthen this idea; but the size of the heaps formed in a few seconds shows that this cannot be the case, and leads to the impression that, although not readily seen, at the distance at which he chooses to keep the observer, yet that possibly he raises the sand to his mouth, where whatever animalcule it may contain is sifted out of it, and the remainder rejected in the manner described. at times the larger species of crabs perform a sort of concert; and from each subterranean abode strange sounds arise, as if, in imitation of the songsters of the groves, for very joy they sang! we found some natives pounding the woody stems of a poisonous climbing- plant (_dirca palustris_) called busungu, or poison, which grows abundantly in the swamps. when a good quantity was bruised, it was tied up in bundles. the stream above and below was obstructed with bushes, and with a sort of rinsing motion the poison was diffused through the water. many fish were soon affected, swain in shore, and died, others were only stupefied. the plant has pink, pea-shaped blossoms, and smooth, pointed, glossy leaves, and the brown bark is covered with minute white points. the knowledge of it might prove of use to a shipwrecked party by enabling them to catch the fish. the poison is said to be deleterious to man if the water is drunk; but not when the fish is cooked. the busungu is repulsive to some insects, and is smeared round the shoots of the palm-trees to prevent the ants from getting into the palm wine while it is dropping from the tops of the palm-trees into the little pots suspended to collect it. we were in the habit of walking from our beds into the salt water at sunrise, for a bath, till a large crocodile appeared at the bathing-place, and from that time forth we took our dip in the sea, away from the harbour, about midday. this is said to be unwholesome, but we did not find it so. it is certainly better not to bathe in the mornings, when the air is colder than the water--for then, on returning to the cooler air, one is apt to get a chill and fever. in the mouth of the river, many saw-fish are found. rowe saw one while bathing--caught it by the tail, and shoved it, "snout on," ashore. the saw is from a foot to eighteen inches long. we never heard of any one being wounded by this fish; nor, though it goes hundreds of miles up the river in fresh water, could we learn that it was eaten by the people. the hippopotami delighted to spend the day among the breakers, and seemed to enjoy the fun as much as we did. severe gales occurred during our stay on the coast, and many small sea- birds (_prion banksii_, smith) perished: the beach was strewn with their dead bodies, and some were found hundreds of yards inland; many were so emaciated as to dry up without putrefying. we were plagued with myriads of mosquitoes, and had some touches of fever; the men we brought from malarious regions of the interior suffered almost as much from it here as we did ourselves. this gives strength to the idea that the civilized withstand the evil influences of strange climates better than the uncivilized. when negroes return to their own country from healthy lands, they suffer as severely as foreigners ever do. on the st of january, , our new ship, the "pioneer," arrived from england, and anchored outside the bar; but the weather was stormy, and she did not venture in till the th of february. two of h.m. cruisers came at the same time, bringing bishop mackenzie, and the oxford and cambridge mission to the tribes of the shire and lake nyassa. the mission consisted of six englishmen, and five coloured men from the cape. it was a puzzle to know what to do with so many men. the estimable bishop, anxious to commence his work without delay, wished the "pioneer" to carry the mission up the shire, as far as chibisa's, and there leave them. but there were grave objections to this. the "pioneer" was under orders to explore the rovuma, as the portuguese government had refused to open the zambesi to the ships of other nations, and their officials were very effectually pursuing a system, which, by abstracting the labour, was rendering the country of no value either to foreigners or to themselves. she was already two months behind her time, and the rainy season was half over. then, if the party were taken to chibisa's, the mission would he left without a medical attendant, in an unhealthy region, at the beginning of the most sickly season of the year, and without means of reaching the healthy highlands, or of returning to the sea. we dreaded that, in the absence of medical aid and all knowledge of the treatment of fever, there might be a repetition of the sorrowful fate which befell the similar non-medical mission at linyanti. on the th of february the "pioneer" anchored in the mouth of the rovuma, which, unlike most african rivers, has a magnificent bay and no bar. we wooded, and then waited for the bishop till the th of march, when he came in the "lyra." on the th we proceeded up the river, and saw that it had fallen four or five feet during our detention. the scenery on the lower part of the rovuma is superior to that on the zambesi, for we can see the highlands from the sea. eight miles from the mouth the mangroves are left behind, and a beautiful range of well-wooded hills on each bank begins. on these ridges the tree resembling african blackwood, of finer grain than ebony, grows abundantly, and attains a large size. few people were seen, and those were of arab breed, and did not appear to be very well off. the current of the rovuma was now as strong as that of the zambesi, but the volume of water is very much less. several of the crossings had barely water enough for our ship, drawing five feet, to pass. when we were thirty miles up the river, the water fell suddenly seven inches in twenty-four hours. as the march flood is the last of the season, and it appeared to be expended, it was thought prudent to avoid the chance of a year's detention, by getting the ship back to the sea without delay. had the expedition been alone, we would have pushed up in boats, or afoot, and done what we could towards the exploration of the river and upper end of the lake; but, though the mission was a private one, and entirely distinct from our own, a public one, the objects of both being similar, we felt anxious to aid our countrymen in their noble enterprise; and, rather than follow our own inclination, decided to return to the shire, see the mission party settled safely, and afterwards explore lake nyassa and the rovuma, from the lake downwards. fever broke out on board the "pioneer," at the mouth of the rovuma, as we thought from our having anchored close to a creek coming out of the mangroves; and it remained in her until we completely isolated the engine-room from the rest of the ship. the coal-dust rotting sent out strong effluvia, and kept up the disease for more than a twelvemonth. soon after we started the fever put the "pioneer" almost entirely into the hands of the original zambesi expedition, and not long afterwards the leader had to navigate the ocean as well as the river. the habit of finding the geographical positions on land renders it an easy task to steer a steamer with only three or four sails at sea; where, if one does not run ashore, no one follows to find out an error, and where a current affords a ready excuse for every blunder. touching at mohilla, one of the comoro islands, on our return, we found a mixed race of arabs, africans, and their conquerors, the natives of madagascar. being mahometans, they have mosques and schools, in which we were pleased to see girls as well as boys taught to read the koran. the teacher said he was paid by the job, and received ten dollars for teaching each child to read. the clever ones learn in six months; but the dull ones take a couple of years. we next went over to johanna for our friends; and, after a sojourn of a few days at the beautiful comoro islands, we sailed for the kongone mouth of the zambesi with bishop mackenzie and his party. we reached the coast in seven days, and passed up the zambesi to the shire. the "pioneer," constructed under the skilful supervision of admiral sir baldwin walker and the late admiral washington, warm-hearted and highly esteemed friends of the expedition, was a very superior vessel, and well suited for our work in every respect, except in her draught of water. five feet were found to be too much for the navigation of the upper part of the shire. designed to draw three feet only, the weight necessary to impart extra strength, and fit her for the ocean, brought her down two feet more, and caused us a great deal of hard and vexatious work, in laying out anchors, and toiling at the capstan to get her off sandbanks. we should not have minded this much, but for the heavy loss of time which might have been more profitably, and infinitely more pleasantly, spent in intercourse with the people, exploring new regions, and otherwise carrying out the objects of the expedition. once we were a fortnight on a bank of soft yielding sand, having only two or three inches less water than the ship drew; this delay was occasioned by the anchors coming home, and the current swinging the ship broadside on the bank, which, immediately on our touching, always formed behind us. we did not like to leave the ship short of chibisa's, lest the crew should suffer from the malaria of the lowland around; and it would have been difficult to have got the mission goods carried up. we were daily visited by crowds of natives, who brought us abundance of provisions far beyond our ability to consume. in hauling the "pioneer" over the shallow places, the bishop, with horace waller and mr. scudamore, were ever ready and anxious to lend a hand, and worked as hard as any on board. had our fine little ship drawn but three feet, she could have run up and down the river at any time of the year with the greatest ease, but as it was, having once passed up over a few shallow banks, it was impossible to take her down again until the river rose in december. she could go up over a bank, but not come down over it, as a heap of sand always formed instantly astern, while the current washed it away from under her bows. on at last reaching chibisa's, we heard that there was war in the manganja country, and the slave-trade was going on briskly. a deputation from a chief near mount zomba had just passed on its way to chibisa, who was in a distant village, to implore him to come himself, or send medicine, to drive off the waiao, waiau, or ajawa, whose marauding parties were desolating the land. a large gang of recently enslaved manganja crossed the river, on their way to tette, a few days before we got the ship up. chibisa's deputy was civil, and readily gave us permission to hire as many men to carry the bishop's goods up to the hills as were willing to go. with a sufficient number, therefore, we started for the highlands on the th of july, to show the bishop the country, which, from its altitude and coolness, was most suitable for a station. our first day's march was a long and fatiguing one. the few hamlets we passed were poor, and had no food for our men, and we were obliged to go on till p.m., when we entered the small village of chipindu. the inhabitants complained of hunger, and said they had no food to sell, and no hut for us to sleep in; but, if we would only go on a little further, we should come to a village where they had plenty to eat; but we had travelled far enough, and determined to remain where we were. before sunset as much food was brought as we cared to purchase, and, as it threatened to rain, huts were provided for the whole party. next forenoon we halted at the village of our old friend mbame, to obtain new carriers, because chibisa's men, never before having been hired, and not having yet learned to trust us, did not choose to go further. after resting a little, mbame told us that a slave party on its way to tette would presently pass through his village. "shall we interfere?" we inquired of each other. we remembered that all our valuable private baggage was in tette, which, if we freed the slaves, might, together with some government property, be destroyed in retaliation; but this system of slave-hunters dogging us where previously they durst not venture, and, on pretence of being "our children," setting one tribe against another, to furnish themselves with slaves, would so inevitably thwart all the efforts, for which we had the sanction of the portuguese government, that we resolved to run all risks, and put a stop, if possible, to the slave- trade, which had now followed on the footsteps of our discoveries. a few minutes after mbame had spoken to us, the slave party, a long line of manacled men, women, and children, came wending their way round the hill and into the valley, on the side of which the village stood. the black drivers, armed with muskets, and bedecked with various articles of finery, marched jauntily in the front, middle, and rear of the line; some of them blowing exultant notes out of long tin horns. they seemed to feel that they were doing a very noble thing, and might proudly march with an air of triumph. but the instant the fellows caught a glimpse of the english, they darted off like mad into the forest; so fast, indeed, that we caught but a glimpse of their red caps and the soles of their feet. the chief of the party alone remained; and he, from being in front, had his hand tightly grasped by a makololo! he proved to be a well-known slave of the late commandant at tette, and for some time our own attendant while there. on asking him how he obtained these captives, he replied he had bought them; but on our inquiring of the people themselves, all, save four, said they had been captured in war. while this inquiry was going on, he bolted too. the captives knelt down, and, in their way of expressing thanks, clapped their hands with great energy. they were thus left entirely on our hands, and knives were soon busy at work cutting the women and children loose. it was more difficult to cut the men adrift, as each had his neck in the fork of a stout stick, six or seven feet long, and was kept in by an iron rod which was riveted at both ends across the throat. with a saw, luckily in the bishop's baggage, one by one the men were sawn out into freedom. the women, on being told to take the meal they were carrying and cook breakfast for themselves and the children, seemed to consider the news too good to be true; but after a little coaxing went at it with alacrity, and made a capital fire by which to boil their pots with the slave sticks and bonds, their old acquaintances through many a sad night and weary day. many were mere children about five years of age and under. one little boy, with the simplicity of childhood, said to our men, "the others tied and starved us, you cut the ropes and tell us to eat; what sort of people are you?--where did you come from?" two of the women had been shot the day before for attempting to untie the thongs. this, the rest were told, was to prevent them from attempting to escape. one woman had her infant's brains knocked out, because she could not carry her load and it. and a man was dispatched with an axe, because he had broken down with fatigue. self-interest would have set a watch over the whole rather than commit murder; but in this traffic we invariably find self-interest overcome by contempt of human life and by bloodthirstiness. the bishop was not present at this scene, having gone to bathe in a little stream below the village; but on his return he warmly approved of what had been done; he at first had doubts, but now felt that, had he been present, he would have joined us in the good work. logic is out of place when the question with a true-hearted man is, whether his brother man is to be saved or not. eighty-four, chiefly women and children, were liberated; and on being told that they were now free, and might go where they pleased, or remain with us, they all chose to stay; and the bishop wisely attached them to his mission, to be educated as members of a christian family. in this way a great difficulty in the commencement of a mission was overcome. years are usually required before confidence is so far instilled into the natives' mind as to induce them, young or old, to submit to the guidance of strangers professing to be actuated by motives the reverse of worldly wisdom, and inculcating customs strange and unknown to them and their fathers. we proceeded next morning to soche's with our liberated party, the men cheerfully carrying the bishop's goods. as we had begun, it was of no use to do things by halves, so eight others were freed in a hamlet on our path; but a party of traders, with nearly a hundred slaves, fled from soche's on hearing of our proceedings. dr. kirk and four makololo followed them with great energy, but they made clear off to tette. six more captives were liberated at mongazi's, and two slave-traders detained for the night, to prevent them from carrying information to a large party still in front. of their own accord they volunteered the information that the governor's servants had charge of the next party; but we did not choose to be led by them, though they offered to guide us to his excellency's own agents. two of the bishop's black men from the cape, having once been slaves, were now zealous emancipators, and volunteered to guard the prisoners during the night. so anxious were our heroes to keep them safe, that instead of relieving each other, by keeping watch and watch, both kept watch together, till towards four o'clock in the morning, when sleep stole gently over them both; and the wakeful prisoners, seizing the opportunity, escaped: one of the guards, perceiving the loss, rushed out of the hut, shouting, "they are gone, the prisoners are off, and they have taken my rifle with them, and the women too! fire! everybody fire!" the rifle and the women, however, were all safe enough, the slave-traders being only too glad to escape alone. fifty more slaves were freed next day in another village; and, the whole party being stark-naked, cloth enough was left to clothe them, better probably than they had ever been clothed before. the head of this gang, whom we knew as the agent of one of the principal merchants of tette, said that they had the license of the governor for all they did. this we were fully aware of without his stating it. it is quite impossible for any enterprise to be undertaken there without the governor's knowledge and connivance. the portion of the highlands which the bishop wished to look at before deciding on a settlement belonged to chiwawa, or chibaba, the most manly and generous manganja chief we had met with on our previous journey. on reaching nsambo's, near mount chiradzuru, we heard that chibaba was dead, and that chigunda was chief instead. chigunda, apparently of his own accord, though possibly he may have learnt that the bishop intended to settle somewhere in the country, asked him to come and live with him at magomero, adding that there was room enough for both. this hearty and spontaneous invitation had considerable influence on the bishop's mind, and seemed to decide the question. a place nearer the shire would have been chosen had he expected his supplies to come up that river; but the portuguese, claiming the river shire, though never occupying even its mouth, had closed it, as well as the zambesi. our hopes were turned to the rovuma, as a free highway into lake nyassa and the vast interior. a steamer was already ordered for the lake, and the bishop, seeing the advantageous nature of the highlands which stretch an immense way to the north, was more anxious to be near the lake and the rovuma, than the shire. when he decided to settle at magomero, it was thought desirable, to prevent the country from being depopulated, to visit the ajawa chief, and to try and persuade him to give up his slaving and kidnapping courses, and turn the energies of his people to peaceful pursuits. on the morning of the nd we were informed that the ajawa were near, and were burning a village a few miles off. leaving the rescued slaves, we moved off to seek an interview with these scourges of the country. on our way we met crowds of manganja fleeing from the war in front. these poor fugitives from the slave hunt had, as usual, to leave all the food they possessed, except the little they could carry on their heads. we passed field after field of indian corn or beans, standing ripe for harvesting, but the owners were away. the villages were all deserted: one where we breakfasted two years before, and saw a number of men peacefully weaving cloth, and, among ourselves, called it the "paisley of the hills," was burnt; the stores of corn were poured out in cartloads, and scattered all over the plain, and all along the paths, neither conquerors nor conquered having been able to convey it away. about two o'clock we saw the smoke of burning villages, and heard triumphant shouts, mingled with the wail of the manganja women, lamenting over their slain. the bishop then engaged us in fervent prayer; and, on rising from our knees, we saw a long line of ajawa warriors, with their captives, coming round the hill-side. the first of the returning conquerors were entering their own village below, and we heard women welcoming them back with "lillilooings." the ajawa headman left the path on seeing us, and stood on an anthill to obtain a complete view of our party. we called out that we had come to have an interview with them, but some of the manganja who followed us shouted "our chibisa is come:" chibisa being well known as a great conjurer and general. the ajawa ran off yelling and screaming, "nkondo! nkondo!" (war! war!) we heard the words of the manganja, but they did not strike us at the moment as neutralizing all our assertions of peace. the captives threw down their loads on the path, and fled to the hills: and a large body of armed men came running up from the village, and in a few seconds they were all around us, though mostly concealed by the projecting rocks and long grass. in vain we protested that we had not come to fight, but to talk with them. they would not listen, having, as we remembered afterwards, good reason, in the cry of "our chibisa." flushed with recent victory over three villages, and confident of an easy triumph over a mere handful of men, they began to shoot their poisoned arrows, sending them with great force upwards of a hundred yards, and wounding one of our followers through the arm. our retiring slowly up the ascent from the village only made them more eager to prevent our escape; and, in the belief that this retreat was evidence of fear, they closed upon us in bloodthirsty fury. some came within fifty yards, dancing hideously; others having quite surrounded us, and availing themselves of the rocks and long grass hard by, were intent on cutting us off, while others made off with their women and a large body of slaves. four were armed with muskets, and we were obliged in self-defence to return their fire and drive them off. when they saw the range of rifles, they very soon desisted, and ran away; but some shouted to us from the hills the consoling intimation, that they would follow, and kill us where we slept. only two of the captives escaped to us, but probably most of those made prisoners that day fled elsewhere in the confusion. we returned to the village which we had left in the morning, after a hungry, fatiguing, and most unpleasant day. though we could not blame ourselves for the course we had followed, we felt sorry for what had happened. it was the first time we had ever been attacked by the natives or come into collision with them; though we had always taken it for granted that we might be called upon to act in self- defence, we were on this occasion less prepared than usual, no game having been expected here. the men had only a single round of cartridge each; their leader had no revolver, and the rifle he usually fired with was left at the ship to save it from the damp of the season. had we known better the effect of slavery and murder on the temper of these bloodthirsty marauders, we should have tried messages and presents before going near them. the old chief, chinsunse, came on a visit to us next day, and pressed the bishop to come and live with him. "chigunda," he said, "is but a child, and the bishop ought to live with the father rather than with the child." but the old man's object was so evidently to have the mission as a shield against the ajawa, that his invitation was declined. while begging us to drive away the marauders, that he might live in peace, he adopted the stratagem of causing a number of his men to rush into the village, in breathless haste, with the news that the ajawa were close upon us. and having been reminded that we never fought, unless attacked, as we were the day before, and that we had come among them for the purpose of promoting peace, and of teaching them to worship the supreme, to give up selling his children, and to cultivate other objects for barter than each other, he replied, in a huff, "then i am dead already." the bishop, feeling, as most englishmen would, at the prospect of the people now in his charge being swept off into slavery by hordes of men- stealers, proposed to go at once to the rescue of the captive manganja, and drive the marauding ajawa out of the country. all were warmly in favour of this, save dr. livingstone, who opposed it on the ground that it would be better for the bishop to wait, and see the effect of the check the slave-hunters had just experienced. the ajawa were evidently goaded on by portuguese agents from tette, and there was no bond of union among the manganja on which to work. it was possible that the ajawa might be persuaded to something better, though, from having long been in the habit of slaving for the quillimane market, it was not very probable. but the manganja could easily be overcome piecemeal by any enemy; old feuds made them glad to see calamities befall their next neighbours. we counselled them to unite against the common enemies of their country, and added distinctly that we english would on no account enter into their quarrels. on the bishop inquiring whether, in the event of the manganja again asking aid against the ajawa, it would be his duty to accede to their request,--"no," replied dr. livingstone, "you will be oppressed by their importunities, but do not interfere in native quarrels." this advice the good man honourably mentions in his journal. we have been rather minute in relating what occurred during the few days of our connection with the mission of the english universities, on the hills, because, the recorded advice having been discarded, blame was thrown on dr. livingstone's shoulders, as if the missionaries had no individual responsibility for their subsequent conduct. this, unquestionably, good bishop mackenzie had too much manliness to have allowed. the connection of the members of the zambesi expedition, with the acts of the bishop's mission, now ceased, for we returned to the ship and prepared for our journey to lake nyassa. we cheerfully, if necessary, will bear all responsibility up to this point; and if the bishop afterwards made mistakes in certain collisions with the slavers, he had the votes of all his party with him, and those who best knew the peculiar circumstances, and the loving disposition of this good-hearted man, will blame him least. in this position, and in these circumstances, we left our friends at the mission station. as a temporary measure the bishop decided to place his mission station on a small promontory formed by the windings of the little, clear stream of magomero, which was so cold that the limbs were quite benumbed by washing in it in the july mornings. the site chosen was a pleasant spot to the eye, and completely surrounded by stately, shady trees. it was expected to serve for a residence, till the bishop had acquired an accurate knowledge of the adjacent country, and of the political relations of the people, and could select a healthy and commanding situation, as a permanent centre of christian civilization. everything promised fairly. the weather was delightful, resembling the pleasantest part of an english summer; provisions poured in very cheap and in great abundance. the bishop, with characteristic ardour, commenced learning the language, mr. waller began building, and mr. scudamore improvised a sort of infant school for the children, than which there is no better means for acquiring an unwritten tongue. on the th of august, , a few days after returning from magomero, drs. livingstone and kirk, and charles livingstone started for nyassa with a light four-oared gig, a white sailor, and a score of attendants. we hired people along the path to carry the boat past the forty miles of the murchison cataracts for a cubit of cotton cloth a day. this being deemed great wages, more than twice the men required eagerly offered their services. the chief difficulty was in limiting their numbers. crowds followed us; and, had we not taken down in the morning the names of the porters engaged, in the evening claims would have been made by those who only helped during the last ten minutes of the journey. the men of one village carried the boat to the next, and all we had to do was to tell the headman that we wanted fresh men in the morning. he saw us pay the first party, and had his men ready at the time appointed, so there was no delay in waiting for carriers. they often make a loud noise when carrying heavy loads, but talking and bawling does not put them out of breath. the country was rough and with little soil on it, but covered with grass and open forest. a few small trees were cut down to clear a path for our shouting assistants, who were good enough to consider the boat as a certificate of peaceful intentions at least to them. several small streams were passed, the largest of which were the mukuru-madse and lesungwe. the inhabitants on both banks were now civil and obliging. our possession of a boat, and consequent power of crossing independently of the canoes, helped to develop their good manners, which were not apparent on our previous visit. there is often a surprising contrast between neighbouring villages. one is well off and thriving, having good huts, plenty of food, and native cloth; and its people are frank, trusty, generous, and eager to sell provisions; while in the next the inhabitants may be ill-housed, disobliging, suspicious, ill-fed, and scantily clad, and with nothing for sale, though the land around is as fertile as that of their wealthier neighbours. we followed the river for the most part to avail ourselves of the still reaches for sailing; but a comparatively smooth country lies further inland, over which a good road could be made. some of the five main cataracts are very grand, the river falling feet in the miles. after passing the last of the cataracts, we launched our boat for good on the broad and deep waters of the upper shire, and were virtually on the lake, for the gentle current shows but little difference of level. the bed is broad and deep, but the course is rather tortuous at first, and makes a long bend to the east till it comes within five or six miles of the base of mount zomba. the natives regarded the upper shire as a prolongation of lake nyassa; for where what we called the river approaches lake shirwa, a little north of the mountains, they said that the hippopotami, "which are great night travellers," pass from _one lake into the other_. there the land is flat, and only a short land journey would be necessary. seldom does the current here exceed a knot an hour, while that of the lower shire is from two to two-and-a-half knots. our land party of makololo accompanied us along the right bank, and passed thousands of manganja fugitives living in temporary huts on that side, who had recently been driven from their villages on the opposite hills by the ajawa. the soil was dry and hard, and covered with mopane-trees; but some of the manganja were busy hoeing the ground and planting the little corn they had brought with them. the effects of hunger were already visible on those whose food had been seized or burned by the ajawa and portuguese slave-traders. the spokesman or prime minister of one of the chiefs, named kalonjere, was a humpbacked dwarf, a fluent speaker, who tried hard to make us go over and drive off the ajawa; but he could not deny that by selling people kalonjere had invited these slave-hunters to the country. this is the second humpbacked dwarf we have found occupying the like important post, the other was the prime minister of a batonga chief on the zambesi. as we sailed along, we disturbed many white-breasted cormorants; we had seen the same species fishing between the cataracts. here, with many other wild-fowls, they find subsistence on the smooth water by night, and sit sleepily on trees and in the reeds by day. many hippopotami were seen in the river, and one of them stretched its wide jaws, as if to swallow the whole stern of the boat, close to dr. kirk's back; the animal was so near that, in opening its mouth, it lashed a quantity of water on to the stern-sheets, but did no damage. to avoid large marauding parties of ajawa, on the left bank of the shire, we continued on the right, or western side, with our land party, along the shore of the small lake pamalombe. this lakelet is ten or twelve miles in length, and five or six broad. it is nearly surrounded by a broad belt of papyrus, so dense that we could scarcely find an opening to the shore. the plants, ten or twelve feet high, grew so closely together that air was excluded, and so much sulphuretted hydrogen gas evolved that by one night's exposure the bottom of the boat was blackened. myriads of mosquitoes showed, as probably they always do, the presence of malaria. we hastened from this sickly spot, trying to take the attentions of the mosquitoes as hints to seek more pleasant quarters on the healthy shores of lake nyassa; and when we sailed into it, on the nd september, we felt refreshed by the greater coolness of the air off this large body of water. the depth was the first point of interest. this is indicated by the colour of the water, which, on a belt along the shore, varying from a quarter to half a mile in breadth, is light green, and this is met by the deep blue or indigo tint of the indian ocean, which is the colour of the great body of nyassa. we found the upper shire from nine to fifteen feet in depth; but skirting the western side of the lake about a mile from the shore the water deepened from nine to fifteen fathoms; then, as we rounded the grand mountainous promontory, which we named cape maclear, after our excellent friend the astronomer royal at the cape of good hope, we could get no bottom with our lead-line of thirty-five fathoms. we pulled along the western shore, which was a succession of bays, and found that where the bottom was sandy near the beach, and to a mile out, the depth varied from six to fourteen fathoms. in a rocky bay about latitude degrees minutes we had soundings at fathoms, though outside the same bay we found none with a fishing-line of fathoms; but this cast was unsatisfactory, as the line broke in coming up. according to our present knowledge, a ship could anchor only near the shore. looking back to the southern end of lake nyassa, the arm from which the shire flows was found to be about thirty miles long and from ten to twelve broad. rounding cape maclear, and looking to the south-west, we have another arm, which stretches some eighteen miles southward, and is from six to twelve miles in breadth. these arms give the southern end a forked appearance, and with the help of a little imagination it may be likened to the "boot-shape" of italy. the narrowest part is about the ankle, eighteen or twenty miles. from this it widens to the north, and in the upper third or fourth it is fifty or sixty miles broad. the length is over miles. the direction in which it lies is as near as possible due north and south. nothing of the great bend to the west, shown in all the previous maps, could be detected by either compass or chronometer, and the watch we used was an excellent one. the season of the year was very unfavourable. the "smokes" filled the air with an impenetrable haze, and the equinoctial gales made it impossible for us to cross to the eastern side. when we caught a glimpse of the sun rising from behind the mountains to the east, we made sketches and bearings of them at different latitudes, which enabled us to secure approximate measurements of the width. these agreed with the times taken by the natives at the different crossing-places--as tsenga and molamba. about the beginning of the upper third the lake is crossed by taking advantage of the island chizumara, which name in the native tongue means the "ending;" further north they go round the end instead, though that takes several days. the lake appeared to be surrounded by mountains, but it was afterwards found that these beautiful tree-covered heights were, on the west, only the edges of high table-lands. like all narrow seas encircled by highlands, it is visited by sudden and tremendous storms. we were on it in september and october, perhaps the stormiest season of the year, and were repeatedly detained by gales. at times, while sailing pleasantly over the blue water with a gentle breeze, suddenly and without any warning was heard the sound of a coming storm, roaring on with crowds of angry waves in its wake. we were caught one morning with the sea breaking all around us, and, unable either to advance or recede, anchored a mile from shore, in seven fathoms. the furious surf on the beach would have shivered our boat to atoms, had we tried to land. the waves most dreaded came rolling on in threes, with their crests, driven into spray, streaming behind them. a short lull followed each triple charge. had one of these seas struck our boat, nothing could have saved us; for they came on with resistless force; seaward, in shore, and on either side of us, they broke in foam, but we escaped. for six weary hours we faced those terrible trios. a low, dark, detached, oddly shaped cloud came slowly from the mountains, and hung for hours directly over our heads. a flock of night-jars (_cometornis vexillarius_), which on no other occasion come out by day, soared above us in the gale, like birds of evil omen. our black crew became sea-sick and unable to sit up or keep the boat's head to the sea. the natives and our land party stood on the high cliffs looking at us and exclaiming, as the waves seemed to swallow up the boat, "they are lost! they are all dead!" when at last the gale moderated and we got safely ashore, they saluted us warmly, as after a long absence. from this time we trusted implicitly to the opinions of our seaman, john neil, who, having been a fisherman on the coast of ireland, understood boating on a stormy coast, and by his advice we often sat cowering on the land for days together waiting for the surf to go down. he had never seen such waves before. we had to beach the boat every night to save her from being swamped at anchor; and, did we not believe the gales to be peculiar to one season of the year, would call nyassa the "lake of storms." distinct white marks on the rocks showed that, for some time during the rainy season, the water of the lake is three feet above the point to which it falls towards the close of the dry period of the year. the rains begin here in november, and the permanent rise of the shire does not take place till january. the western side of lake nyassa, with the exception of the great harbour to the west of cape maclear, is, as has been said before, a succession of small bays of nearly similar form, each having an open sandy beach and pebbly shore, and being separated from its neighbour by a rocky headland, with detached rocks extending some distance out to sea. the great south-western bay referred to would form a magnificent harbour, the only really good one we saw to the west. the land immediately adjacent to the lake is low and fertile, though in some places marshy and tenanted by large flocks of ducks, geese, herons, crowned cranes, and other birds. in the southern parts we have sometimes ten or a dozen miles of rich plains, bordered by what seem high ranges of well-wooded hills, running nearly parallel with the lake. northwards the mountains become loftier and present some magnificent views, range towering beyond range, until the dim, lofty outlines projected against the sky bound the prospect. still further north the plain becomes more narrow, until, near where we turned, it disappears altogether, and the mountains rise abruptly out of the lake, forming the north-east boundary of what was described to us as an extensive table-land; well suited for pasturage and agriculture, and now only partially occupied by a tribe of zulus, who came from the south some years ago. these people own large herds of cattle, and are constantly increasing in numbers by annexing other tribes. chapter x. the lake tribes--the mazitu--quantities of elephants--distressing journey--detention on the shire. never before in africa have we seen anything like the dense population on the shores of lake nyassa. in the southern part there was an almost unbroken chain of villages. on the beach of wellnigh of every little sandy bay, dark crowds were standing, gazing at the novel sight of a boat under sail; and wherever we landed we were surrounded in a few seconds by hundreds of men, women, and children, who hastened to have a stare at the "chirombo" (wild animals). during a portion of the year, the northern dwellers on the lake have a harvest which furnishes a singular sort of food. as we approached our limit in that direction, clouds, as of smoke rising from miles of burning grass, were observed bending in a south-easterly direction, and we thought that the unseen land on the opposite side was closing in, and that we were near the end of the lake. but next morning we sailed through one of the clouds on our own side, and discovered that it was neither smoke nor haze, but countless millions of minute midges called "kungo" (a cloud or fog). they filled the air to an immense height, and swarmed upon the water, too light to sink in it. eyes and mouth had to be kept closed while passing through this living cloud: they struck upon the face like fine drifting snow. thousands lay in the boat when she emerged from the cloud of midges. the people gather these minute insects by night, and boil them into thick cakes, to be used as a relish--millions of midges in a cake. a kungo cake, an inch thick, and as large as the blue bonnet of a scotch ploughman, was offered to us; it was very dark in colour, and tasted not unlike caviare, or salted locusts. abundance of excellent fish is found in the lake, and nearly all were new to us. the mpasa, or sanjika, found by dr. kirk to be a kind of carp, was running up the rivers to spawn, like our salmon at home: the largest we saw was over two feet in length; it is a splendid fish, and the best we have ever eaten in africa. they were ascending the rivers in august and september, and furnished active and profitable employment to many fishermen, who did not mind their being out of season. weirs were constructed full of sluices, in each of which was set a large basket-trap, through whose single tortuous opening the fish once in has but small chance of escape. a short distance below the weir, nets are stretched across from bank to bank, so that it seemed a marvel how the most sagacious sanjika could get up at all without being taken. possibly a passage up the river is found at night; but this is not the country of sundays or "close times" for either men or fish. the lake fish are caught chiefly in nets, although men, and even women with babies on their backs, are occasionally seen fishing from the rocks with hooks. a net with small meshes is used for catching the young fry of a silvery kind like pickerel, when they are about two inches long; thousands are often taken in a single haul. we had a present of a large bucketful one day for dinner: they tasted as if they had been cooked with a little quinine, probably from their gall-bladders being left in. in deep water, some sorts are taken by lowering fish-baskets attached by a long cord to a float, around which is often tied a mass of grass or weeds, as an alluring shade for the deep-sea fish. fleets of fine canoes are engaged in the fisheries. the men have long paddles, and stand erect while using them. they sometimes venture out when a considerable sea is running. our makololo acknowledge that, in handling canoes, the lake men beat them; they were unwilling to cross the zambesi even, when the wind blew fresh. though there are many crocodiles in the lake, and some of an extraordinary size, the fishermen say that it is a rare thing for any one to be carried off by these reptiles. when crocodiles can easily obtain abundance of fish--their natural food--they seldom attack men; but when unable to see to catch their prey, from the muddiness of the water in floods, they are very dangerous. many men and boys are employed in gathering the buaze, in preparing the fibre, and in making it into long nets. the knot of the net is different from ours, for they invariably use what sailors call the reef knot, but they net with a needle like that we use. from the amount of native cotton cloth worn in many of the southern villages, it is evident that a great number of hands and heads must be employed in the cultivation of cotton, and in the various slow processes through which it has to pass, before the web is finished in the native loom. in addition to this branch of industry, an extensive manufacture of cloth, from the inner bark of an undescribed tree, of the botanical group, _caesalpineae_, is ever going on, from one end of the lake to the other; and both toil and time are required to procure the bark, and to prepare it by pounding and steeping it to render it soft and pliable. the prodigious amount of the bark clothing worn indicates the destruction of an immense number of trees every year; yet the adjacent heights seem still well covered with timber. the lake people are by no means handsome: the women are _very_ plain; and really make themselves hideous by the means they adopt to render themselves attractive. the _pelele_, or ornament for the upper lip, is universally worn by the ladies; the most valuable is of pure tin, hammered into the shape of a small dish; some are made of white quartz, and give the wearer the appearance of having an inch or more of one of price's patent candles thrust through the lip, and projecting beyond the tip of the nose. in character, the lake tribes are very much like other people; there are decent men among them, while a good many are no better than they should be. they are open-handed enough: if one of us, as was often the case, went to see a net drawn, a fish was always offered. sailing one day past a number of men, who had just dragged their nets ashore, at one of the fine fisheries at pamalombe, we were hailed and asked to stop, and received a liberal donation of beautiful fish. arriving late one afternoon at a small village on the lake, a number of the inhabitants manned two canoes, took out their seine, dragged it, and made us a present of the entire haul. the northern chief, marenga, a tall handsome man, with a fine aquiline nose, whom we found living in his stockade in a forest about twenty miles north of the mountain kowirwe, behaved like a gentleman to us. his land extended from dambo to the north of makuza hill. he was specially generous, and gave us bountiful presents of food and beer. "do they wear such things in your country?" he asked, pointing to his iron bracelet, which was studded with copper, and highly prized. the doctor said he had never seen such in his country, whereupon marenga instantly took it off, and presented it to him, and his wife also did the same with hers. on our return south from the mountains near the north end of the lake, we reached marenga's on the th october. when he could not prevail upon us to forego the advantage of a fair wind for his invitation to "spend the whole day drinking his beer, which was," he said, "quite ready," he loaded us with provisions, all of which he sent for before we gave him any present. in allusion to the boat's sail, his people said that they had no bazimo, or none worth having, seeing they had never invented the like for them. the chief, mankambira, likewise treated us with kindness; but wherever the slave-trade is carried on, the people are dishonest and uncivil; that invariably leaves a blight and a curse in its path. the first question put to us at the lake crossing- places, was, "have you come to buy slaves?" on hearing that we were english, and never purchased slaves, the questioners put on a supercilious air, and sometimes refused to sell us food. this want of respect to us may have been owing to the impressions conveyed to them by the arabs, whose dhows have sometimes been taken by english cruisers when engaged in lawful trade. much foreign cloth, beads, and brass-wire were worn by these ferrymen--and some had muskets. by chitanda, near one of the slave crossing-places, we were robbed for the first time in africa, and learned by experience that these people, like more civilized nations, have expert thieves among them. it might be only a coincidence; but we never suffered from impudence, loss of property, or were endangered, unless among people familiar with slaving. we had such a general sense of security, that never, save when we suspected treachery, did we set a watch at night. our native companions had, on this occasion, been carousing on beer, and had removed to a distance of some thirty yards, that we might not overhear their free and easy after-dinner remarks, and two of us had a slight touch of fever; between three and four o'clock in the morning some thieves came, while we slept ingloriously--rifles and revolvers all ready,--and relieved us of most of our goods. the boat's sail, under which we slept, was open all around, so the feat was easy. awaking as honest men do, at the usual hour, the loss of one was announced by "my bag is gone--with all my clothes; and my boots too!" "and mine!" responded a second. "and mine also!" chimed in the third, "with the bag of beads, and the rice!" "is the cloth taken?" was the eager inquiry, as that would have been equivalent to all our money. it had been used for a pillow that night, and thus saved. the rogues left on the beach, close to our beds, the aneroid barometer and a pair of boots, thinking possibly that they might be of use to us, or, at least, that they could be of none to them. they shoved back some dried plants and fishes into one bag, but carried off many other specimens we had collected; some of our notes also, and nearly all our clothing. we could not suspect the people of the village near which we lay. we had probably been followed for days by the thieves watching for an opportunity. and our suspicions fell on some persons who had come from the east coast; but having no evidence, and expecting to hear if our goods were exposed for sale in the vicinity, we made no fuss about it, and began to make new clothing. that our rifles and revolvers were left untouched was greatly to our advantage: yet we felt it was most humiliating for armed men to have been so thoroughly fleeced by a few black rascals. some of the best fisheries appear to be private property. we found shelter from a storm one morning in a spacious lagoon, which communicated with the lake by a narrow passage. across this strait stakes were driven in, leaving only spaces for the basket fish-traps. a score of men were busily engaged in taking out the fish. we tried to purchase some, but they refused to sell. the fish did not belong to them, they would send for the proprietor of the place. the proprietor arrived in a short time, and readily sold what we wanted. some of the burying-grounds are very well arranged, and well cared for; this was noticed at chitanda, and more particularly at a village on the southern shore of the fine harbour at cape maclear. wide and neat paths were made in the burying-ground on its eastern and southern sides. a grand old fig-tree stood at the north-east corner, and its wide-spreading branches threw their kindly shade over the last resting-place of the dead. several other magnificent trees grew around the hallowed spot. mounds were raised as they are at home, but all lay north and south, the heads apparently north. the graves of the sexes were distinguished by the various implements which the buried dead had used in their different employments during life; but they were all broken, as if to be employed no more. a piece of fishing-net and a broken paddle told where a fisherman lay. the graves of the women had the wooden mortar, and the heavy pestle used in pounding the corn, and the basket in which the meal is sifted, while all had numerous broken calabashes and pots arranged around them. the idea that the future life is like the present does not appear to prevail; yet a banana-tree had been carefully planted at the head of several of the graves; the fruit might be considered an offering to those who still possess human tastes. the people of the neighbouring villages were friendly and obliging, and willingly brought us food for sale. pursuing our exploration, we found that the northern part of the lake was the abode of lawlessness and bloodshed. the mazite, or mazitu, live on the highlands, and make sudden swoops on the villages of the plains. they are zulus who came originally from the south, inland of sofalla and inhambane; and are of the same family as those who levy annual tribute from the portuguese on the zambesi. all the villages north of mankambira's (lat. degrees minutes south) had been recently destroyed by these terrible marauders, but they were foiled in their attacks upon that chief and marenga. the thickets and stockades round their villages enabled the bowmen to pick off the mazitu in security, while they were afraid to venture near any place where they could not use their shields. beyond mankambira's we saw burned villages, and the putrid bodies of many who had fallen by mazitu spears only a few days before. our land party were afraid to go further. this reluctance to proceed without the presence of a white man was very natural, because bands of the enemy who had ravaged the country were supposed to be still roaming about; and if these marauders saw none but men of their own colour, our party might forthwith be attacked. compliance with their request led to an event which might have been attended by very serious consequences. dr. livingstone got separated from the party in the boat for four days. having taken the first morning's journey along with them, and directing the boat to call for him in a bay in sight, both parties proceeded north. in an hour dr. livingstone and his party struck inland, on approaching the foot of the mountains which rise abruptly from the lake. supposing that they had heard of a path behind the high range which there forms the shore, those in the boat held on their course; but it soon began to blow so fresh that they had to run ashore for safety. while delayed a couple of hours, two men were sent up the hills to look for the land party, but they could see nothing of them, and the boat party sailed as soon as it was safe to put to sea, with the conviction that the missing ones would regain the lake in front. in a short time a small island or mass of rocks was passed, on which were a number of armed mazitu with some young women, apparently their wives. the headman said that he had been wounded in the foot by mankambira, and that they were staying there till he could walk to his chief, who lived over the hills. they had several large canoes, and it was evident that this was a nest of lake pirates, who sallied out by night to kill and plunder. they reported a path behind the hills, and, the crew being reassured, the boat sailed on. a few miles further, another and still larger band of pirates were fallen in with, and hundreds of crows and kites hovered over and round the rocks on which they lived. dr. kirk and charles livingstone, though ordered in a voice of authority to come ashore, kept on their course. a number of canoes then shot out from the rocks and chased them. one with nine strong paddlers persevered for some time after all the others gave up the chase. a good breeze, however, enabled the gig to get away from them with ease. after sailing twelve or fifteen miles, north of the point where dr. livingstone had left them, it was decided that he must be behind; but no sooner had the boat's head been turned south, than another gale compelled her to seek shelter in a bay. here a number of wretched fugitives from the slave-trade on the opposite shore of the lake were found; the original inhabitants of the place had all been swept off the year before by the mazitu. in the deserted gardens beautiful cotton was seen growing, much of it had the staple an inch and a half long, and of very fine quality. some of the plants were uncommonly large, deserving to be ranked with trees. on their trying to purchase food, the natives had nothing to sell except a little dried cassava-root, and a few fish: and they demanded two yards of calico for the head only of a large fish. when the gale admitted of their return, their former pursuers tried to draw them ashore by asserting that they had quantities of ivory for sale. owing to a succession of gales, it was the fourth day from parting that the boat was found by dr. livingstone, who was coming on in search of it with only two of his companions. after proceeding a short distance up the path in which they had been lost sight of, they learned that it would take several days to go round the mountains, and rejoin the lake; and they therefore turned down to the bay, expecting to find the boat, but only saw it disappearing away to the north. they pushed on as briskly as possible after it, but the mountain flank which forms the coast proved excessively tedious and fatiguing; travelling all day, the distance made, in a straight line, was under five miles. as soon as day dawned, the march was resumed; and, after hearing at the first inhabited rock that their companions had passed it the day before, a goat was slaughtered out of the four which they had with them, when suddenly, to the evident consternation of the men, seven mazitu appeared armed with spears and shields, with their heads dressed fantastically with feathers. to hold a parley, dr. livingstone and moloka, a makololo man who spoke zulu, went unarmed to meet them. on dr. livingstone approaching them, they ordered him to stop, and sit down in the sun, while they sat in the shade. "no, no!" was the reply, "if you sit in the shade, so will we." they then rattled their shields with their clubs, a proceeding which usually inspires terror; but moloka remarked, "it is not the first time we have heard shields rattled." and all sat down together. they asked for a present, to show their chief that they had actually met strangers--something as evidence of having seen men who were not arabs. and they were requested in turn to take these strangers to the boat, or to their chief. all the goods were in the boat, and to show that no present such as they wanted was in his pockets, dr. livingstone emptied them, turning out, among other things, a note-book: thinking it was a pistol they started up, and said, "put that in again." the younger men then became boisterous, and demanded a goat. that could not be spared, as they were the sole provisions. when they insisted, they were asked how many of the party they had killed, that they thus began to divide the spoil; this evidently made them ashamed. the elders were more reasonable; they dreaded treachery, and were as much afraid of dr. livingstone and his party as his men were of them; for on leaving they sped away up the hills like frightened deer. one of them, and probably the leader, was married, as seen by portions of his hair sewn into a ring; all were observed by their teeth to be people of the country, who had been incorporated into the zulu tribe. the way still led over a succession of steep ridges with ravines of from to feet in depth; some of the sides had to be scaled on hands and knees, and no sooner was the top reached than the descent began again. each ravine had a running stream; and the whole country, though so very rugged, had all been cultivated, and densely peopled. many banana-trees, uncared for patches of corn, and congo-bean bushes attested former cultivation. the population had all been swept away; ruined villages, broken utensils, and human skeletons, met with at every turn, told a sad tale. so numerous were the slain, that it was thought the inhabitants had been slaughtered in consequence of having made raids on the zulus for cattle. continuing the journey that night as long as light served, they slept unconsciously on the edge of a deep precipice, without fire, lest the mazitu should see it. next morning most of the men were tired out, the dread of the apparition of the day before tending probably to increase the lameness of which they complained. when told, however, that all might return to mankambira's save two, moloka and charlie, they would not, till assured that the act would not be considered one of cowardice. giving them one of the goats as provision, another was slaughtered for the remainder of the party who, having found on the rocks a canoe which had belonged to one of the deserted villages, determined to put to sea again; but the craft was very small, and the remaining goat, spite of many a threat of having its throat cut, jumped and rolled about so, as nearly to capsize it; so dr. livingstone took to the shore again, and after another night spent without fire, except just for cooking, was delighted to see the boat coming back. we pulled that day to mankambira's, a distance that on shore, with the most heartbreaking toil, had taken three days to travel. this was the last latitude taken, degrees minutes s. the boat had gone about minutes further to the north, the land party probably half that distance, but fever prevented the instruments being used. dr. kirk and charles livingstone were therefore furthest up the lake, and they saw about minutes beyond their turning-point, say into the tenth degree of south latitude. from the heights of at least a thousand feet, over which the land party toiled, the dark mountain masses on both sides of the lake were seen closing in. at this elevation the view extended at least as far as that from the boats, and it is believed the end of the lake lies on the southern borders of degrees, or the northern limits of degrees south latitude. elephants are numerous on the borders of the lake, and surprisingly tame, being often found close to the villages. hippopotami swarm very much at their ease in the creeks and lagoons, and herds are sometimes seen in the lake itself. their tameness arises from the fact that poisoned arrows have no effect on either elephant or hippopotamus. five of each were shot for food during our journey. two of the elephants were females, and had only a single tusk apiece, and were each killed by the first shot. it is always a case of famine or satiety when depending on the rifle for food--a glut of meat or none at all. most frequently it is scanty fare, except when game is abundant, as it is far up the zambesi. we had one morning two hippopotami and an elephant, perhaps in all some eight tons of meat, and two days after the last of a few sardines only for dinner. one morning when sailing past a pretty thickly-inhabited part, we were surprised at seeing nine large bull-elephants standing near the beach quietly flapping their gigantic ears. glad of an opportunity of getting some fresh meat, we landed and fired into one. they all retreated into a marshy piece of ground between two villages. our men gave chase, and fired into the herd. standing on a sand hummock, we could see the bleeding animals throwing showers of water with their trunks over their backs. the herd was soon driven back upon us, and a wounded one turned to bay. yet neither this one, nor any of the others, ever attempted to charge. having broken his legs with a rifle-ball, we fired into him at forty yards as rapidly as we could load and discharge the rifles. he simply shook his head at each shot, and received at least sixty enfield balls before he fell. our excellent sailor from the north of ireland happened to fire the last, and, as soon as he saw the animal fall, he turned with an air of triumph to the doctor and exclaimed, "it was _my_ shot that done it, sir!" in a few minutes upwards of a thousand natives were round the prostrate king of beasts; and, after our men had taken all they wanted, an invitation was given to the villagers to take the remainder. they rushed at it like hungry hyenas, and in an incredibly short time every inch of it was carried off. it was only by knowing that the meat would all be used that we felt justified in the slaughter of this noble creature. the tusks weighed lbs. each. a large amount of ivory might be obtained from the people of nyassa, and we were frequently told of their having it in their huts. while detained by a storm on the th october at the mouth of the kaombe, we were visited by several men belonging to an arab who had been for fourteen years in the interior at katanga's, south of cazembe's. they had just brought down ivory, malachite, copper rings, and slaves to exchange for cloth at the lake. the malachite was said to be dug out of a large vein on the side of a hill near katanga's. they knew lake tanganyika well, but had not heard of the zambesi. they spoke quite positively, saying that the water of lake tanganyika flowed out by the opposite end to that of nyassa. as they had seen neither of the overflows, we took it simply as a piece of arab geography. we passed their establishment of long sheds next day, and were satisfied that the arabs must be driving a good trade. the lake slave-trade was going on at a terrible rate. two enterprising arabs had built a dhow, and were running her, crowded with slaves, regularly across the lake. we were told she sailed the day before we reached their head-quarters. this establishment is in the latitude of the portuguese slave-exporting town of iboe, and partly supplies that vile market; but the greater number of the slaves go to kilwa. we did not see much evidence of a wish to barter. some ivory was offered for sale; but the chief traffic was in human chattels. would that we could give a comprehensive account of the horrors of the slave-trade, with an approximation to the number of lives it yearly destroys! for we feel sure that were even half the truth told and recognized, the feelings of men would be so thoroughly roused, that this devilish traffic in human flesh would be put down at all risks; but neither we, nor any one else, have the statistics necessary for a work of this kind. let us state what we do know of one portion of africa, and then every reader who believes our tale can apply the ratio of the known misery to find out the unknown. we were informed by colonel rigby, late h.m. political agent, and consul at zanzibar, that , slaves from this nyassa country alone pass annually through the custom-house of that island. this is exclusive of course of those sent to portuguese slave-ports. let it not be supposed for an instant that this number, , , represents all the victims. those taken out of the country are but a very small section of the sufferers. we never realized the atrocious nature of the traffic, until we saw it at the fountain-head. there truly "satan has his seat." besides those actually captured, thousands are killed and die of their wounds and famine, driven from their villages by the slave raid proper. thousands perish in internecine war waged for slaves with their own clansmen and neighbours, slain by the lust of gain, which is stimulated, be it remembered always, by the slave purchasers of cuba and elsewhere. the many skeletons we have seen, amongst rocks and woods, by the little pools, and along the paths of the wilderness, attest the awful sacrifice of human life, which must be attributed, directly or indirectly, to this trade of hell. we would ask our countrymen to believe us when we say, as we conscientiously can, that it is our deliberate opinion, from what we know and have seen, that not one-fifth of the victims of the slave-trade ever become slaves. taking the shire valley as an average, we should say not even one-tenth arrive at their destination. as the system, therefore, involves such an awful waste of human life,--or shall we say of human labour?--and moreover tends directly to perpetuate the barbarism of those who remain in the country, the argument for the continuance of this wasteful course because, forsooth, a fraction of the enslaved may find good masters, seems of no great value. this reasoning, if not the result of ignorance, may be of maudlin philanthropy. a small armed steamer on lake nyassa could easily, by exercising a control, and furnishing goods in exchange for ivory and other products, break the neck of this infamous traffic in that quarter; for nearly all must cross the lake or the upper shire. our exploration of the lake extended from the nd september to the th october, ; and, having expended or lost most of the goods we had brought, it was necessary to go back to the ship. when near the southern end, on our return, we were told that a very large slave-party had just crossed to the eastern side. we heard the fire of three guns in the evening, and judged by the report that they must be at least six-pounders. they were said to belong to an ajawa chief named mukata. in descending the shire, we found concealed in the broad belt of papyrus round the lakelet pamalombe, into which the river expands, a number of manganja families who had been driven from their homes by the ajawa raids. so thickly did the papyrus grow, that when beat down it supported their small temporary huts, though when they walked from one hut to another, it heaved and bent beneath their feet as thin ice does at home. a dense and impenetrable forest of the papyrus was left standing between them and the land, and no one passing by on the same side would ever have suspected that human beings lived there. they came to this spot from the south by means of their canoes, which enabled them to obtain a living from the fine fish which abound in the lakelet. they had a large quantity of excellent salt sewed up in bark, some of which we bought, our own having run out. we anchored for the night off their floating camp, and were visited by myriads of mosquitoes. some of the natives show a love of country quite surprising. we saw fugitives on the mountains, in the north of the lake, who were persisting in clinging to the haunts of their boyhood and youth, in spite of starvation and the continual danger of being put to death by the mazitu. a few miles below the lakelet is the last of the great slave-crossings. since the ajawa invasion the villages on the left bank had been abandoned, and the people, as we saw in our ascent, were living on the right or western bank. as we were resting for a few minutes opposite the valuable fishery at movunguti, a young effeminate-looking man from some sea-coast tribe came in great state to have a look at us. he walked under a large umbrella, and was followed by five handsome damsels gaily dressed and adorned with a view to attract purchasers. one was carrying his pipe for smoking bang, here called "chamba;" another his bow and arrows; a third his battle-axe; a fourth one of his robes; while the last was ready to take his umbrella when he felt tired. this show of his merchandise was to excite the cupidity of any chief who had ivory, and may be called the lawful way of carrying on the slave-trade. what proportion it bears to the other ways in which we have seen this traffic pursued, we never found means of forming a judgment. he sat and looked at us for a few minutes, the young ladies kneeling behind him; and having satisfied himself that we were not likely to be customers, he departed. on our first trip we met, at the landing opposite this place, a middle- aged woman of considerable intelligence, and possessing more knowledge of the country than any of the men. our first definite information about lake nyassa was obtained from her. seeing us taking notes, she remarked that she had been to the sea, and had there seen white men writing. she had seen camels also, probably among the arabs. she was the only manganja woman we ever met who was ashamed of wearing the "pelele," or lip-ring. she retired to her hut, took it out, and kept her hand before her mouth to hide the hideous hole in the lip while conversing with us. all the villagers respected her, and even the headmen took a secondary place in her presence. on inquiring for her now, we found that she was dead. we never obtained sufficient materials to estimate the relative mortality of the highlands and lowlands; but, from many very old white- headed blacks having been seen on the highlands, we think it probable that even native races are longer lived the higher their dwelling-places are. we landed below at mikena's and took observations for longitude, to verify those taken two years before. the village was deserted, mikena and his people having fled to the other side of the river. a few had come across this morning to work in their old gardens. after completing the observations we had breakfast; and, as the last of the things were being carried into the boat, a manganja man came running down to his canoe, crying out, "the ajawa have just killed my comrade!" we shoved off, and in two minutes the advanced guard of a large marauding party were standing with their muskets on the spot where we had taken breakfast. they were evidently surprised at seeing us there, and halted; as did also the main body of perhaps a thousand men. "kill them," cried the manganja; "they are going up to the hills to kill the english," meaning the missionaries we had left at magomero. but having no prospect of friendly communication with them, nor confidence in manganja's testimony, we proceeded down the river; leaving the ajawa sitting under a large baobab, and the manganja cursing them most energetically across the river. on our way up, we had seen that the people of zimika had taken refuge on a long island in the shire, where they had placed stores of grain to prevent it falling into the hands of the ajawa; supposing afterwards that the invasion and war were past, they had removed back again to the mainland on the east, and were living in fancied security. on approaching the chief's village, which was built in the midst of a beautiful grove of lofty wild-fig and palm trees, sounds of revelry fell upon our ears. the people were having a merry time--drumming, dancing, and drinking beer--while a powerful enemy was close at hand, bringing death or slavery to every one in the village. one of our men called out to several who came to the bank to look at us, that the ajawa were coming and were even now at mikena's village; but they were dazed with drinking, and took no notice of the warning. crowds of carriers offered their services after we left the river. several sets of them placed so much confidence in us, as to decline receiving payment at the end of the first day; they wished to work another day, and so receive both days' wages in one piece. the young headman of a new village himself came on with his men. the march was a pretty long one, and one of the men proposed to lay the burdens down beside a hut a mile or more from the next village. the headman scolded the fellow for his meanness in wishing to get rid of our goods where we could not procure carriers, and made him carry them on. the village, at the foot of the cataracts, had increased very much in size and wealth since we passed it on our way up. a number of large new huts had been built; and the people had a good stock of cloth and beads. we could not account for this sudden prosperity, until we saw some fine large canoes, instead of the two old, leaky things which lay there before. this had become a crossing-place for the slaves that the portuguese agents were carrying to tette, because they were afraid to take them across nearer to where the ship lay, about seven miles off. nothing was more disheartening than this conduct of the manganja, in profiting by the entire breaking up of their nation. we reached the ship on the th of november, , in a very weak condition, having suffered more from hunger than on any previous trip. heavy rains commenced on the th, and continued several days; the river rose rapidly, and became highly discoloured. bishop mackenzie came down to the ship on the th, with some of the "pioneer's" men, who had been at magomero for the benefit of their health, and also for the purpose of assisting the mission. the bishop appeared to be in excellent spirits, and thought that the future promised fair for peace and usefulness. the ajawa having been defeated and driven off while we were on the lake, had sent word that they desired to live at peace with the english. many of the manganja had settled round magomero, in order to be under the protection of the bishop; and it was hoped that the slave-trade would soon cease in the highlands, and the people be left in the secure enjoyment of their industry. the mission, it was also anticipated, might soon become, to a considerable degree, self-supporting, and raise certain kinds of food, like the portuguese of senna and quillimane. mr. burrup, an energetic young man, had arrived at chibisa's the day before the bishop, having come up the shire in a canoe. a surgeon and a lay brother followed behind in another canoe. the "pioneer's" draught being too much for the upper part of the shire, it was not deemed advisable to bring her up, on the next trip, further than the ruo; the bishop, therefore, resolved to explore the country from magomero to the mouth of that river, and to meet the ship with his sisters and mrs. burrup, in january. this was arranged before parting, and then the good bishop and burrup, whom we were never to meet again, left us; they gave and received three hearty english cheers as they went to the shore, and we steamed off. the rains ceased on the th, and the waters of the shire fell, even more rapidly than they had risen. a shoal, twenty miles below chibisa's, checked our further progress, and we lay there five weary weeks, till the permanent rise of the river took place. during this detention, with a large marsh on each side, the first death occurred in the expedition which had now been three-and-a-half years in the country. the carpenter's mate, a fine healthy young man, was seized with fever. the usual remedies had no effect; he died suddenly while we were at evening prayers, and was buried on shore. he came out in the "pioneer," and, with the exception of a slight touch of fever at the mouth of the rovuma, had enjoyed perfect health all the time he had been with us. the portuguese are of opinion that the european who has immunity from this disease for any length of time after he enters the country is more likely to be cut off by it when it does come, than the man who has it frequently at first. the rains became pretty general towards the close of december, and the shire was in flood in the beginning of january, . at our wooding- place, a mile above the ruo, the water was three feet higher than it was when we were here in june; and on the night of the th it rose eighteen inches more, and swept down an immense amount of brushwood and logs which swarmed with beetles and the two kinds of shells which are common all over the african continent. natives in canoes were busy spearing fish in the meadows and creeks, and appeared to be taking them in great numbers. spur-winged geese, and others of the knob-nosed species, took advantage of the low gardens being flooded, and came to pilfer the beans. as we passed the ruo, on the th, and saw nothing of the bishop, we concluded that he had heard from his surgeon of our detention, and had deferred his journey. he arrived there five days after, on the th. after paying our senna men, as they wished to go home, we landed them here. all were keen traders, and had invested largely in native iron- hoes, axes, and ornaments. many of the hoes and spears had been taken from the slaving parties whose captives we liberated; for on these occasions our senna friends were always uncommonly zealous and active. the remainder had been purchased with the old clothes we had given them and their store of hippopotamus meat: they had no fear of losing them, or of being punished for aiding us. the system, in which they had been trained, had eradicated the idea of personal responsibility from their minds. the portuguese slaveholders would blame the english alone, they said; they were our servants at the time. no white man on board could purchase so cheaply as these men could. many a time had their eloquence persuaded a native trader to sell for a bit of dirty worn cloth things for which he had, but a little before, refused twice the amount of clean new calico. "scissors" being troubled with a cough at night, received a present of a quilted coverlet, which had seen a good deal of service. a few days afterwards, a good chance of investing in hoes offering itself, he ripped off both sides, tore them into a dozen pieces, and purchased about a dozen hoes with them. we entered the zambesi on the th of january, and steamed down towards the coast, taking the side on which we had come up; but the channel had changed to the other side during the summer, as it sometimes does, and we soon grounded. a portuguese gentleman, formerly a lieutenant in the army, and now living on sangwisa, one of the islands of the zambesi, came over with his slaves, to aid us in getting the ship off. he said frankly, that his people were all great thieves, and we must be on our guard not to leave anything about. he next made a short speech to his men, told them he knew what thieves they were, but implored them not to steal from us, as we would give them a present of cloth when the work was done. "the natives of this country," he remarked to us, "think only of three things, what they shall eat and drink, how many wives they can have, and what they may steal from their master, if not how they may murder him." he always slept with a loaded musket by his side. this opinion may apply to slaves, but decidedly does not in our experience apply to freemen. we paid his men for helping us, and believe that even they, being paid, stole nothing from us. our friend farms pretty extensively the large island called sangwisa,--lent him for nothing by senhor ferrao,--and raises large quantities of mapira and beans, and also beautiful white rice, grown from seed brought a few years ago from south carolina. he furnished us with some, which was very acceptable; for though not in absolute want, we were living on beans, salt pork, and fowls, all the biscuit and flour on board having been expended. we fully expected that the owners of the captives we had liberated would show their displeasure, at least by their tongues; but they seemed ashamed; only one ventured a remark, and he, in the course of common conversation, said, with a smile, "you took the governor's slaves, didn't you?" "yes, we did free several gangs that we met in the manganja country." the portuguese of tette, from the governor downwards, were extensively engaged in slaving. the trade is partly internal and partly external: they send some of the captives, and those bought, into the interior, up the zambesi: some of these we actually met on their way up the river. the young women were sold there for ivory: an ordinary-looking one brought two arrobas, sixty-four pounds weight, and an extra beauty brought twice that amount. the men and boys were kept as carriers, to take the ivory down from the interior to tette, or were retained on farms on the zambesi, ready for export if a slaver should call: of this last mode of slaving we were witnesses also. the slaves were sent down the river chained, and in large canoes. this went on openly at tette, and more especially so while the french "free emigration" system was in full operation. this double mode of disposing of the captives pays better than the single system of sending them down to the coast for exportation. one merchant at tette, with whom we were well acquainted, sent into the interior three hundred manganja women to be sold for ivory, and another sent a hundred and fifty. chapter xi. arrival of h.m.s. "gorgon"--dr. livingstone's new steamer and mrs. livingstone--death of mrs. livingstone--voyage to johanna and the rovuma--an attack upon the "pioneer's" boats. we anchored on the great luabo mouth of the zambesi, because wood was much more easily obtained there than at the kongone. on the th, h.m.s. "gorgon" arrived, towing the brig which brought mrs. livingstone, some ladies about to join their relatives in the universities' mission, and the twenty-four sections of a new iron steamer intended for the navigation of lake nyassa. the "pioneer" steamed out, and towed the brig into the kongone harbour. the new steamer was called the "lady of the lake," or the "lady nyassa," and as much as could be carried of her in one trip was placed, by the help of the officers and men of the "gorgon," on board the "pioneer," and the two large paddle-box boats of h.m.'s ship. we steamed off for ruo on the th of february, having on board captain wilson, with a number of his officers and men to help us to discharge the cargo. our progress up was distressingly slow. the river was in flood, and we had a three-knot current against us in many places. these delays kept us six months in the delta, instead of, as we anticipated, only six days; for, finding it impossible to carry the sections up to the ruo without great loss of time, it was thought best to land them at shupanga, and, putting the hull of the "lady nyassa" together there, to tow her up to the foot of the murchison cataracts. a few days before the "pioneer" reached shupanga, captain wilson, seeing the hopeless state of affairs, generously resolved to hasten with the mission ladies up to those who, we thought, were anxiously awaiting their arrival, and therefore started in his gig for the ruo, taking miss mackenzie, mrs. burrup, and his surgeon, dr. ramsay. they were accompanied by dr. kirk and mr. sewell, paymaster of the "gorgon," in the whale-boat of the "lady nyassa." as our slow-paced-launch, "ma robert," had formerly gone up to the foot of the cataracts in nine days' steaming, it was supposed that the boats might easily reach the expected meeting- place at the ruo in a week; but the shire was now in flood, and in its most rapid state; and they were longer in getting up about half the distance, than it was hoped they would be in the whole navigable part of the river. they could hear nothing of the bishop from the chief of the island, malo, at the mouth of the ruo. "no white man had ever come to his village," he said. they proceeded on to chibisa's, suffering terribly from mosquitoes at night. their toil in stemming the rapid current made them estimate the distance, by the windings, as nearer than miles. the makololo who had remained at chibisa's told them the sad news of the death of the good bishop and of mr. burrup. other information received there awakened fresh anxiety on behalf of the survivors; so, leaving the ladies with dr. ramsay and the makololo, captain wilson and dr. kirk went up the hills, in hopes of being able to render assistance, and on the way they met some of the mission party at soche's. the excessive fatigue that our friends had undergone in the voyage up to chibisa's in no wise deterred them from this further attempt for the benefit of their countrymen, but the fresh labour, with diminished rations, was too much for their strength. they were reduced to a diet of native beans and an occasional fowl. both became very ill of fever, captain wilson so dangerously that his fellow-sufferer lost all hopes of his recovery. his strong able-bodied cockswain did good service in cheerfully carrying his much-loved commander, and they managed to return to the boat, and brought the two bereaved and sorrow-stricken ladies back to the "pioneer." we learnt that the bishop, wishing to find a shorter route down to the shire, had sent two men to explore the country between magomero and the junction of the ruo; and in december messrs. proctor and scudamore, with a number of manganja carriers, left magomero for the same purpose. they were to go close to mount choro, and then skirt the elephant marsh, with mount clarendon on their left. their guides seem to have led them away to the east, instead of south; to the upper waters of the ruo in the shirwa valley, instead of to its mouth. entering an anguru slave-trading village, they soon began to suspect that the people meant mischief, and just before sunset a woman told some of their men that if they slept there they would all be killed. on their preparing to leave, the anguru followed them and shot their arrows at the retreating party. two of the carriers were captured, and all the goods were taken by these robbers. an arrow-head struck deep into the stock of proctor's gun; and the two missionaries, barely escaping with their lives, swam a deep river at night, and returned to magomero famished and exhausted. the wives of the captive carriers came to the bishop day after day weeping and imploring him to rescue their husbands from slavery. the men had been caught while in his service, no one else could be entreated; there was no public law nor any power superior to his own, to which an appeal could be made; for in him church and state were, in the disorganized state of the country, virtually united. it seemed to him to be clearly his duty to try and rescue these kidnapped members of the mission family. he accordingly invited the veteran makololo to go with him on this somewhat hazardous errand. nothing could have been proposed to them which they would have liked better, and they went with alacrity to eat the sheep of the anguru, only regretting that the enemy did not keep cattle as well. had the matter been left entirely in their hands, they would have made a clean sweep of that part of the country; but the bishop restrained them, and went in an open manner, thus commending the measure to all the natives, as one of justice. this deliberation, however, gave the delinquents a chance of escape. the missionaries were successful; the offending village was burned, and a few sheep and goats were secured which could not be considered other than a very mild punishment for the offence committed; the headman, muana-somba, afraid to retain the prisoners any longer, forthwith liberated them, and they returned to their homes. this incident took place at the time we were at the ruo and during the rains, and proved very trying to the health of the missionaries; they were frequently wetted, and had hardly any food but roasted maize. mr. scudamore was never well afterwards. directly on their return to magomero, the bishop and mr. burrup, both suffering from diarrhoea in consequence of wet, hunger, and exposure, started for chibisa's to go down to the ruo by the shire. so fully did the bishop expect a renewal of the soaking wet from which he had just returned, that on leaving magomero he walked through the stream. the rivulets were so swollen that it took five days to do a journey that would otherwise have occupied only two days and a half. none of the manganja being willing to take them down the river during the flood, three makololo canoe-men agreed to go with them. after paddling till near sunset, they decided to stop and sleep on shore; but the mosquitoes were so numerous that they insisted on going on again; the bishop, being a week behind the time he had engaged to be at the ruo, reluctantly consented, and in the darkness the canoe was upset in one of the strong eddies or whirlpools, which suddenly boil up in flood time near the outgoing branches of the river; clothing, medicines, tea, coffee, and sugar were all lost. wet and weary, and tormented by mosquitoes, they lay in the canoe till morning dawned, and then proceeded to malo, an island at the mouth of the ruo, where the bishop was at once seized with fever. had they been in their usual health, they would doubtless have pushed on to shupanga, or to the ship; but fever rapidly prostrates the energies, and induces a drowsy stupor, from which, if not roused by medicine, the patient gradually sinks into the sleep of death. still mindful, however, of his office, the bishop consoled himself by thinking that he might gain the friendship of the chief, which would be of essential service to him in his future labours. that heartless man, however, probably suspicious of all foreigners from the knowledge he had acquired of white slave-traders, wanted to turn the dying bishop out of the hut, as he required it for his corn, but yielded to the expostulations of the makololo. day after day for three weeks did these faithful fellows remain beside his mat on the floor; till, without medicine or even proper food, he died. they dug his grave on the edge of the deep dark forest where the natives buried their dead. mr. burrup, himself far gone with dysentery, staggered from the hut, and, as in the dusk of evening they committed the bishop's body to the grave, repeated from memory portions of our beautiful service for the burial of the dead--"earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the dead through our lord jesus christ." and in this sad way ended the earthly career of one, of whom it can safely be said that for unselfish goodness of heart, and earnest devotion to the noble work he had undertaken, none of the commendations of his friends can exceed the reality. the grave in which his body rests is about a hundred yards from the confluence of the ruo, on the left bank of the shire, and opposite the island of malo. the makololo then took mr. burrup up in the canoe as far as they could, and, making a litter of branches, carried him themselves, or got others to carry him, all the way back to his countrymen at magomero. they hurried him on lest he should die in their hands, and blame be attached to them. soon after his return he expired, from the disease which was on him when he started to meet his wife. captain wilson arrived at shupanga on the th of march, having been three weeks on the shire. on the th the "pioneer" steamed down to the kongone. the "gorgon" had been driven out to sea in a gale, and had gone to johanna for provisions, and it was the nd of april before she returned. it was fortunate for us that she had obtained a supply, as our provisions were exhausted, and we had to buy some from the master of the brig. the "gorgon" left for the cape on the th, taking all, except one, of the mission party who had come in january. we take this opportunity of expressing our heartfelt gratitude to the gallant captain i. c. wilson and his officers for innumerable acts of kindness and hearty co-operation. our warmest thanks are also due to captain r. b. oldfield and the other officers from the admiral downwards, and we beg to assure them that nothing could be more encouraging to us in our difficulties and trials, than the knowledge that we possessed their friendship and sympathy in our labours. the rev. james stewart, of the free church of scotland, arrived in the "gorgon." he had wisely come out to inspect the country, before deciding on the formation of a mission in the interior. to this object he devoted many months of earnest labour. this mission was intended to embrace both the industrial and the religious element; and as the route by the zambesi and shire forms the only one at present known, with but a couple of days' land journey to the highlands, which stretch to an unknown distance into the continent, and as no jealousy was likely to be excited in the mind of a man of bishop mackenzie's enlarged views--there being moreover room for hundreds of missions--we gladly extended the little aid in our power to an envoy from the energetic body above mentioned, but recommended him to examine the field with his own eyes. during our subsequent detention at shupanga, he proceeded as far up the shire as the upper cataracts, and saw the mere remnants of that dense population, which we at first had found living in peace and plenty, but which was now scattered and destroyed by famine and slave-hunting. the land, which both before and after we found so fair and fruitful, was burned up by a severe drought; in fact, it was at its very worst. with most praiseworthy energy, and in spite of occasional attacks of fever, he then ascended the zambesi as far as kebrabasa; and, what may be of interest to some, compared it, in parts, to the danube. his estimate of the highlands would naturally be lower than ours. the main drawbacks in his opinion, however, were the slave-trade, and the power allowed the effete portuguese of shutting up the country from all except a few convicts of their own nation. the time of his coming was inopportune; the disasters which, from inexperience, had befallen the mission of the universities, had a depressing effect on the minds of many at home, and rendered a new attempt unadvisable; though, had the scotch perseverance and energy been introduced, it is highly probable that they would have reacted, most beneficially, on the zeal of our english brethren, and desertion would never have been heard of. after examining the country, mr. stewart descended the zambesi in the beginning of the following year, and proceeded homewards with his report, by mosambique and the cape. on the th of april we had only one man fit for duty; all the rest were down with fever, or with the vile spirit secretly sold to them by the portuguese officer of customs, in spite of our earnest request to him to refrain from the pernicious traffic. we started on the th for shupanga with another load of the "lady nyassa." as we steamed up the delta, we observed many of the natives wearing strips of palm-leaf, the signs of sickness and mourning; for they too suffer from fever. this is the unhealthy season; the rains are over, and the hot sun draws up malaria from the decayed vegetation; disease seemed peculiarly severe this year. on our way up we met mr. waller, who had come from magomero for provisions; the missionaries were suffering severely from want of food; the liberated people were starving, and dying of diarrhoea, and loathsome sores. the ajawa, stimulated in their slave raids by supplies of ammunition and cloth from the portuguese, had destroyed the large crops of the past year; a drought had followed, and little or no food could be bought. with his usual energy, mr. waller hired canoes, loaded them with stores, and took them up the long weary way to chibisa's. before he arrived he was informed that the mission of the universities, now deprived of its brave leader, had retired from the highlands down to the low shire valley. this appeared to us, who knew the danger of leading a sedentary life, the greatest mistake they could have made, and was the result of no other counsel or responsibility than their own. waller would have reascended at once to the higher altitude, but various objections stood in the way. the loss of poor scudamore and dickinson, in this low-lying situation, but added to the regret that the highlands had not received a fair trial. when the news of the bishop's unfortunate collisions with the natives, and of his untimely end, reached england, much blame was imputed to him. the policy, which with the formal sanction of all his companions he had adopted, being directly contrary to the advice which dr. livingstone tendered, and to the assurances of the peaceable nature of the mission which the doctor had given to the natives, a friendly disapproval of a bishop's engaging in war was ventured on, when we met him at chibisa's in november. but when we found his conduct regarded with so much bitterness in england, whether from a disposition to "stand by the down man," or from having an intimate knowledge of the peculiar circumstances of the country in which he was placed, or from the thorough confidence which intimacy caused us to repose in his genuine piety, and devout service of god, we came to think much more leniently of his proceedings, than his assailants did. he never seemed to doubt but that he had done his duty; and throughout he had always been supported by his associates. the question whether a bishop, in the event of his flock being torn from his bosom, may make war to rescue them, requires serious consideration. it seems to narrow itself into whether a christian man may lawfully use the civil power or the sword at all in defensive war, as police or otherwise. we would do almost anything to avoid a collision with degraded natives; but in case of an invasion--our blood boils at the very thought of our wives, daughters, or sisters being touched--we, as men with human feelings, would unhesitatingly fight to the death, with all the fury in our power. the good bishop was as intensely averse to using arms, before he met the slave-hunters, as any man in england. in the course he pursued he may have made a mistake, but it is a mistake which very few englishmen on meeting bands of helpless captives, or members of his family in bonds, would have failed to commit likewise. during unhealthy april, the fever was more severe in shupanga and mazaro than usual. we had several cases on board--they were quickly cured, but, from our being in the delta, as quickly returned. about the middle of the month mrs. livingstone was prostrated by this disease; and it was accompanied by obstinate vomiting. nothing is yet known that can allay this distressing symptom, which of course renders medicine of no avail, as it is instantly rejected. she received whatever medical aid could be rendered from dr. kirk, but became unconscious, and her eyes were closed in the sleep of death as the sunset on the evening of the christian sabbath, the th april, . a coffin was made during the night, a grave was dug next day under the branches of the great baobab-tree, and with sympathizing hearts the little band of his countrymen assisted the bereaved husband in burying his dead. at his request, the rev. james stewart read the burial-service; and the seamen kindly volunteered to mount guard for some nights at the spot where her body rests in hope. those who are not aware how this brave, good, english wife made a delightful home at kolobeng, a thousand miles inland from the cape, and as the daughter of moffat and a christian lady exercised most beneficial influence over the rude tribes of the interior, may wonder that she should have braved the dangers and toils of this down-trodden land. she knew them all, and, in the disinterested and dutiful attempt to renew her labours, was called to her rest instead. "_fiat, domine, voluntas tua_!" on the th of may dr. kirk and charles livingstone started in the boat for tette, in order to see the property of the expedition brought down in canoes. they took four mazaro canoe-men to manage the boat, and a white sailor to cook for them; but, unfortunately, he caught fever the very day after leaving the ship, and was ill most of the trip; so they had to cook for themselves, and to take care of him besides. we now proceeded with preparations for the launch of the "lady nyassa." ground was levelled on the bank at shupanga, for the purpose of arranging the compartments in order: she was placed on palm-trees which were brought from a place lower down the river for ways, and the engineer and his assistants were soon busily engaged; about a fortnight after they were all brought from kongone, the sections were screwed together. the blacks are more addicted to stealing where slavery exists than elsewhere. we were annoyed by thieves who carried off the iron screw-bolts, but were gratified to find that strychnine saved us from the man-thief as well as the hyena-thief. a hyena was killed by it, and after the natives saw the dead animal and knew how we had destroyed it, they concluded that it was not safe to steal from men who possessed a medicine so powerful. the half-caste, who kept shupanga-house, said he wished to have some to give to the zulus, of whom he was mortally afraid, and to whom he had to pay an unwilling tribute. the "pioneer" made several trips to the kongone, and returned with the last load on the th of june. on the rd the "lady nyassa" was safely launched, the work of putting her together having been interrupted by fever and dysentery, and many other causes which it would only weary the reader to narrate in detail. natives from all parts of the country came to see the launch, most of them quite certain that, being made of iron, she must go to the bottom as soon as she entered the water. earnest discussions had taken place among them with regard to the propriety of using iron for ship-building. the majority affirmed that it would never answer. they said, "if we put a hoe into the water, or the smallest bit of iron, it sinks immediately. how then can such a mass of iron float? it must go to the bottom." the minority answered that this might be true with them, but white men had medicine for everything. "they could even make a woman, all except the speaking; look at that one on the figure- head of the vessel." the unbelievers were astonished, and could hardly believe their eyes, when they saw the ship float lightly and gracefully on the river, instead of going to the bottom, as they so confidently predicted. "truly," they said, "these men have powerful medicine." birds are numerous on the shupanga estate. some kinds remain all the year round, while many others are there only for a few months. flocks of green pigeons come in april to feed on the young fruit of the wild fig- trees, which is also eaten by a large species of bat in the evenings. the pretty little black weaver, with yellow shoulders, appears to enjoy life intensely after assuming his wooing dress. a hearty breakfast is eaten in the mornings and then come the hours for making merry. a select party of three or four perch on the bushes which skirt a small grassy plain, and cheer themselves with the music of their own quiet and self-complacent song. a playful performance on the wind succeeds. expanding his soft velvet-like plumage, one glides with quivering pinions to the centre of the open space, singing as he flies, then turns with a rapid whirring sound from his wings--somewhat like a child's rattle--and returns to his place again. one by one the others perform the same feat, and continue the sport for hours, striving which can produce the loudest brattle while turning. these games are only played during the season of courting and of the gay feathers; the merriment seems never to be thought of while the bird wears his winter suit of sober brown. we received two mules from the cape to aid us in transporting the pieces of the "lady nyassa" past the cataracts and landed them at shupanga, but they soon perished. a portuguese gentleman kindly informed us, _after_ both the mules were dead, that he knew they would die; for the land there had been often tried, and nothing would live on it--not even a pig. he said he had not told us so before, because he did not like to appear officious! by the time everything had been placed on board the "lady nyassa," the waters of the zambesi and the shire had fallen so low that it was useless to attempt taking her up to the cataracts before the rains in december. draught oxen and provisions also were required, and could not be obtained nearer than the island of johanna. the portuguese, without refusing positively to let trade enter the zambesi, threw impediments in the way; they only wanted a small duty! they were about to establish a river police, and rearrange the crown lands, which have long since become zulu lands; meanwhile they were making the zambesi, by slaving, of no value to any one. the rovuma, which was reported to come from lake nyassa, being out of their claims and a free river, we determined to explore it in our boats immediately on our return from johanna, for which place, after some delay at the kongone, in repairing engines, paddle-wheel, and rudder, we sailed on the th of august. a store of naval provisions had been formed on a hulk in pomone bay of that island for the supply of the cruisers, and was in charge of mr. sunley, the consul, from whom we always received the kindest attentions and assistance. he now obliged us by parting with six oxen, trained for his own use in sugar-making. though sadly hampered in his undertaking by being obliged to employ slave labour, he has by indomitable energy overcome obstacles under which most persons would have sunk. he has done all that under the circumstances could be done to infuse a desire for freedom, by paying regular wages; and has established a large factory, and brought acres of rich soil under cultivation with sugar-cane. we trust he will realize the fortune which he so well deserves to earn. had mr. sunley performed the same experiment on the mainland, where people would have flocked to him for the wages he now gives, he would certainly have inaugurated a new era on the east coast of africa. on a small island where the slaveholders have complete power over the slaves, and where there is no free soil such as is everywhere met with in africa, the experiment ought not to be repeated. were mr. sunley commencing again, it should neither be in zanzibar nor johanna, but on african soil, where, if even a slave is ill-treated, he can easily by flight become free. on an island under native rule a joint manufacture by arabs and englishmen might only mean that the latter were to escape the odium of flogging the slaves. on leaving johanna and our oxen for a time, h.m.s. "orestes" towed us thence to the mouth of the rovuma at the beginning of september. captain gardner, her commander, and several of his officers, accompanied us up the river for two days in the gig and cutter. the water was unusually low, and it was rather dull work for a few hours in the morning; but the scene became livelier and more animated when the breeze began to blow. our four boats they swept on under full sail, the men on the look out in the gig and cutter calling, "port, sir!" "starboard, sir!" "as you go, sir!" while the black men in the bows of the others shouted the practical equivalents, "pagombe! pagombe!" "enda quete!" "berane! berane!" presently the leading-boat touches on a sandbank; down comes the fluttering sail; the men jump out to shove her off, and the other boats, shunning the obstruction, shoot on ahead to be brought up each in its turn by mistaking a sandbank for the channel, which had often but a very little depth of water. a drowsy herd of hippopotami were suddenly startled by a score of rifle- shots, and stared in amazement at the strange objects which had invaded their peaceful domains, until a few more bullets compelled them to seek refuge at the bottom of the deep pool, near which they had been quietly reposing. on our return, one of the herd retaliated. he followed the boat, came up under it, and twice tried to tear the bottom out of it; but fortunately it was too flat for his jaws to get a good grip, so he merely damaged one of the planks with his tusks, though he lifted the boat right up, with ten men and a ton of ebony in it. we slept, one of the two nights captain gardner was with us, opposite the lakelet chidia, which is connected with the river in flood time, and is nearly surrounded by hills some or feet high, dotted over with trees. a few small groups of huts stood on the hill-sides, with gardens off which the usual native produce had been reaped. the people did not seem much alarmed by the presence of the large party which had drawn up on the sandbanks below their dwellings. there is abundance of large ebony in the neighbourhood. the pretty little antelope (_cephalophus caeruleus_), about the size of a hare, seemed to abound, as many of their skins were offered for sale. neat figured date-leaf mats of various colours are woven here, the different dyes being obtained from the barks of trees. cattle could not live on the banks of the rovuma on account of the tsetse, which are found from near the mouth, up as far as we could take the boats. the navigation did not improve as we ascended; snags, brought down by the floods, were common, and left in the channel on the sudden subsidence of the water. in many places, where the river divided into two or three channels, there was not water enough in any of them for a boat drawing three feet, so we had to drag ours over the shoals; but we saw the river at its very lowest, and it may be years before it is so dried up again. the valley of the rovuma, bounded on each side by a range of highlands, is from two to four miles in width, and comes in a pretty straight course from the w.s.w.; but the channel of the river is winding, and now at its lowest zigzagged so perversely, that frequently the boats had to pass over three miles to make one in a straight line. with a full stream it must of course be much easier work. few natives were seen during the first week. their villages are concealed in the thick jungle on the hill- sides, for protection from marauding slave-parties. not much of interest was observed on this part of the silent and shallow river. though feeling convinced that it was unfit for navigation, except for eight months of the year, we pushed on, resolved to see if, further inland, the accounts we had received from different naval officers of its great capabilities would prove correct; or if, by communication with lake nyassa, even the upper part could be turned to account. our exploration showed us that the greatest precaution is required in those who visit new countries. the reports we received from gentlemen, who had entered the river and were well qualified to judge, were that the rovuma was infinitely superior to the zambesi, in the absence of any bar at its mouth, in its greater volume of water, and in the beauty of the adjacent lands. we probably came at a different season from that in which they visited it, and our account ought to be taken with theirs to arrive at the truth. it might be available as a highway for commerce during three quarters of each year; but casual visitors, like ourselves and others, are all ill able to decide. the absence of animal life was remarkable. occasionally we saw pairs of the stately jabirus, or adjutant-looking marabouts, wading among the shoals, and spur-winged geese, and other water-fowl, but there was scarcely a crocodile or a hippopotamus to be seen. at the end of the first week, an old man called at our camp, and said he would send a present from his village, which was up among the hills. he appeared next morning with a number of his people, bringing meal, cassava- root, and yams. the language differs considerably from that on the zambesi, but it is of the same family. the people are makonde, and are on friendly terms with the mabiha, and the makoa, who live south of the rovuma. when taking a walk up the slopes of the north bank, we found a great variety of trees we had seen nowhere else. those usually met with far inland seem here to approach the coast. african ebony, generally named _mpingu_, is abundant within eight miles of the sea; it attains a larger size, and has more of the interior black wood than usual. a good timber tree called _mosoko_ is also found; and we saw half-caste arabs near the coast cutting up a large log of it into planks. before reaching the top of the rise we were in a forest of bamboos. on the plateau above, large patches were cleared and cultivated. a man invited us to take a cup of beer; on our complying with his request, the fear previously shown by the bystanders vanished. our mazaro men could hardly understand what they said. some of them waded in the river and caught a curious fish in holes in the claybank. its ventral fin is peculiar, being unusually large, and of a circular shape, like boys' playthings called "suckers." we were told that this fish is found also in the zambesi, and is called chirire. though all its fins are large, it is asserted that it rarely ventures out into the stream, but remains near its hole, where it is readily caught by the hand. the zambesi men thoroughly understood the characteristic marks of deep or shallow water, and showed great skill in finding out the proper channel. the molimo is the steersman at the helm, the mokadamo is the head canoe- man, and he stands erect on the bows with a long pole in his hands, and directs the steersman where to go, aiding the rudder, if necessary, with his pole. the others preferred to stand and punt our boat, rather than row with our long oars, being able to shove her ahead faster than they could pull her. they are accustomed to short paddles. our mokadamo was affected with moon-blindness, and could not see at all at night. his comrades then led him about, and handed him his food. they thought that it was only because his eyes rested all night, that he could see the channel so well by day. at difficult places the mokadamo sometimes, however, made mistakes, and ran us aground; and the others, evidently imbued with the spirit of resistance to constituted authority, and led by joao an aspirant for the office, jeered him for his stupidity. "was he asleep? why did he allow the boat to come there? could he not see the channel was somewhere else?" at last the mokadamo threw down the pole in disgust, and told joao he might be a mokadamo himself. the office was accepted with alacrity; but in a few minutes he too ran us into a worse difficulty than his predecessor ever did, and was at once disrated amidst the derision of his comrades. on the th september, we arrived at the inhabited island of kichokomane. the usual way of approaching an unknown people is to call out in a cheerful tone "malonda!" things for sale, or do you want to sell anything? if we can obtain a man from the last village, he is employed, though only useful in explaining to the next that we come in a friendly way. the people here were shy of us at first, and could not be induced to sell any food; until a woman, more adventurous than the rest, sold us a fowl. this opened the market, and crowds came with fowls and meal, far beyond our wants. the women are as ugly as those on lake nyassa, for who can be handsome wearing the pelele, or upper-lip ring, of large dimensions? we were once surprised to see young men wearing the pelele, and were told that in the tribe of the mabiha, on the south bank, men as well as women wore them. along the left bank, above kichokomane, is an exceedingly fertile plain, nearly two miles broad, and studded with a number of deserted villages. the inhabitants were living in temporary huts on low naked sandbanks; and we found this to be the case as far as we went. they leave most of their property and food behind, because they are not afraid of these being stolen, but only fear being stolen themselves. the great slave-route from nyassa to kilwa passes to n.e. from s.w., just beyond them; and it is dangerous to remain in their villages at this time of year, when the kidnappers are abroad. in one of the temporary villages, we saw, in passing, two human heads lying on the ground. we slept a couple of miles above this village. before sunrise next morning, a large party armed with bows and arrows and muskets came to the camp, two or three of them having a fowl each, which we refused to purchase, having bought enough the day before. they followed us all the morning, and after breakfast those on the left bank swam across and joined the main party on the other side. it was evidently their intention to attack us at a chosen spot, where we had to pass close to a high bank, but their plan was frustrated by a stiff breeze sweeping the boat past, before the majority could get to the place. they disappeared then, but came out again ahead of us, on a high wooded bank, walking rapidly to the bend, near which we were obliged to sail. an arrow was shot at the foremost boat; and seeing the force at the bend, we pushed out from the side, as far as the shoal water would permit, and tried to bring them to a parley, by declaring that we had not come to fight, but to see the river. "why did you fire a gun, a little while ago?" they asked. "we shot a large puff-adder, to prevent it from killing men; you may see it lying dead on the beach." with great courage, our mokadamo waded to within thirty yards of the bank, and spoke with much earnestness, assuring them that we were a peaceable party, and had not come for war, but to see the river. we were friends, and our countrymen bought cotton and ivory, and wished to come and trade with them. all we wanted was to go up quietly to look at the river, and then return to the sea. while he was talking with those on the shore, the old rogue, who appeared to be the ringleader, stole up the bank, and with a dozen others, waded across to the island, near which the boats lay, and came down behind us. wild with excitement, they rushed into the water, and danced in our rear, with drawn bows, taking aim, and making various savage gesticulations. their leader urged them to get behind some snags, and then shoot at us. the party on the bank in front had many muskets--and those of them, who had bows, held them with arrows ready set in the bowstrings. they had a mass of thick bush and trees behind them, into which they could in a moment dart, after discharging their muskets and arrows, and be completely hidden from our sight; a circumstance that always gives people who use bows and arrows the greatest confidence. notwithstanding these demonstrations, we were exceedingly loath to come to blows. we spent a full half-hour exposed at any moment to be struck by a bullet or poisoned arrow. we explained that we were better armed than they were, and had plenty of ammunition, the suspected want of which often inspires them with courage, but that we did not wish to shed the blood of the children of the same great father with ourselves; that if we must fight, the guilt would be all theirs. this being a common mode of expostulation among themselves, we so far succeeded, that with great persuasion the leader and others laid down their arms, and waded over from the bank to the boats to talk the matter over. "this was their river; they did not allow white men to use it. we must pay toll for leave to pass." it was somewhat humiliating to do so, but it was pay or fight; and, rather than fight, we submitted to the humiliation of paying for their friendship, and gave them thirty yards of cloth. they pledged themselves to be our friends ever afterwards, and said they would have food cooked for us on our return. we then hoisted sail, and proceeded, glad that the affair had been amicably settled. those on shore walked up to the bend above to look at the boat, as we supposed; but the moment she was abreast of them, they gave us a volley of musket-balls and poisoned arrows, without a word of warning. fortunately we were so near, that all the arrows passed clear over us, but four musket-balls went through the sail just above our heads. all our assailants bolted into the bushes and long grass the instant after firing, save two, one of whom was about to discharge a musket and the other an arrow, when arrested by the fire of the second boat. not one of them showed their faces again, till we were a thousand yards away. a few shots were then fired over their heads, to give them an idea of the range of our rifles, and they all fled into the woods. those on the sandbank rushed off too, with the utmost speed; but as they had not shot at us, we did not molest them, and they went off safely with their cloth. they probably expected to kill one of our number, and in the confusion rob the boats. it is only where the people are slavers that the natives of this part of africa are bloodthirsty. these people have a bad name in the country in front, even among their own tribe. a slave-trading arab we met above, thinking we were then on our way down the river, advised us not to land at the villages, but to stay in the boats, as the inhabitants were treacherous, and attacked at once, without any warning or provocation. our experience of their conduct fully confirmed the truth of what he said. there was no trade on the river where they lived, but beyond that part there was a brisk canoe- trade in rice and salt; those further in the interior cultivating rice, and sending it down the river to be exchanged for salt, which is extracted from the earth in certain places on the banks. our assailants hardly anticipated resistance, and told a neighbouring chief that, if they had known who we were, they would not have attacked english, who can "bite hard." they offered no molestations on our way down, though we were an hour in passing their village. our canoe-men plucked up courage on finding that we had come off unhurt. one of them, named chiku, acknowledging that he had been terribly frightened, said. "his fear was not the kind which makes a man jump overboard and run away; but that which brings the heart up to the mouth, and renders the man powerless, and no more able to fight than a woman." in the country of chonga michi, about or miles up the river, we found decent people, though of the same tribe, who treated strangers with civility. a body of makoa had come from their own country in the south, and settled here. the makoa are known by a cicatrice in the forehead shaped like the new moon with the horns turned downwards. the tribe possesses all the country west of mosambique; and they will not allow any of the portuguese to pass into their country more than two hours' distance from the fort. a hill some ten or twelve miles distant, called pau, has been visited during the present generation only by one portuguese and one english officer, and this visit was accomplished only by the influence of the private friendship of a chief for this portuguese gentleman. our allies have occupied the fort of mosambique for three hundred years, but in this, as in all other cases, have no power further than they can see from a gun-carriage. the makoa chief, matingula, was hospitable and communicative, telling us all he knew of the river and country beyond. he had been once to iboe and once at mosambique with slaves. our men understood his language easily. a useless musket he had bought at one of the above places was offered us for a little cloth. having received a present of food from him, a railway rug was handed to him: he looked at it--had never seen cloth like that before--did not approve of it, and would rather have cotton cloth. "but this will keep you warm at night."--"oh, i do not wish to be kept warm at night."--we gave him a bit of cotton cloth, not one-third the value of the rug, but it was more highly prized. his people refused to sell their fowls for our splendid prints and drab cloths. they had probably been taken in with gaudy-patterned sham prints before. they preferred a very cheap, plain, blue stuff of which they had experience. a great quantity of excellent honey is collected all along the river, by bark hives being placed for the bees on the high trees on both banks. large pots of it, very good and clear, were offered in exchange for a very little cloth. no wax was brought for sale; there being no market for this commodity, it is probably thrown away as useless. at michi we lose the tableland which, up to this point, bounds the view on both sides of the river, as it were, with ranges of flat-topped hills, or feet high; and to this plateau a level fertile plain succeeds, on which stand detached granite hills. that portion of the tableland on the right bank seems to bend away to the south, still preserving the appearance of a hill range. the height opposite extends a few miles further west, and then branches off in a northerly direction. a few small pieces of coal were picked up on the sandbanks, showing that this useful mineral exists on the rovuma, or on some of its tributaries: the natives know that it will burn. at the lakelet chidia, we noticed the same sandstone rock, with fossil wood on it, which we have on the zambesi, and knew to be a sure evidence of coal beneath. we mentioned this at the time to captain gardner, and our finding coal now seemed a verification of what we then said; the coal-field probably extends from the zambesi to the rovuma, if not beyond it. some of the rocks lower down have the permanent water-line three feet above the present height of the water. a few miles west of the makoa of matingula, we came again among the makonde, but now of good repute. war and slavery have driven them to seek refuge on the sand-banks. a venerable-looking old man hailed us as we passed, and asked us if we were going by without speaking. we landed, and he laid down his gun and came to us; he was accompanied by his brother, who shook hands with every one in the boat, as he had seen people do at kilwa. "then you have seen white men before?" we said. "yes," replied the polite african, "but never people of your quality." these men were very black, and wore but little clothing. a young woman, dressed in the highest style of makonde fashion, punting as dexterously as a man could, brought a canoe full of girls to see us. she wore an ornamental head-dress of red beads tied to her hair on one side of her head, a necklace of fine beads of various colours, two bright figured brass bracelets on her left arm, and scarcely a farthing's worth of cloth, though it was at its cheapest. as we pushed on westwards, we found that the river makes a little southing, and some reaches were deeper than any near the sea; but when we had ascended about miles by the river's course from the sea, soft tufa rocks began to appear; ten miles beyond, the river became more narrow and rocky, and when, according to our measurement, we had ascended miles, our further progress was arrested. we were rather less than two degrees in a straight line from the coast. the incidents worth noticing were but few: seven canoes with loads of salt and rice kept company with us for some days, and the further we went inland, the more civil the people became. when we came to a stand, just below the island of nyamatolo, long. degrees minutes e., and lat. degrees minutes, the river was narrow, and full of rocks. near the island there is a rocky rapid with narrow passages fit only for native canoes; the fall is small, and the banks quite low; but these rocks were an effectual barrier to all further progress in boats. previous reports represented the navigable part of this river as extending to the distance of a month's sail from its mouth; we found that, at the ordinary heights of the water, a boat might reach the obstructions which seem peculiar to all african rivers in six or eight days. the rovuma is remarkable for the high lands that flank it for some eighty miles from the ocean. the cataracts of other rivers occur in mountains, those of the rovuma are found in a level part, with hills only in the distance. far away in the west and north we could see high blue heights, probably of igneous origin from their forms, rising out of a plain. the distance from ngomano, a spot thirty miles further up, to the arab crossing-places of lake nyassa tsenga or kotakota was said to be twelve days. the way we had discovered to lake nyassa by murchison's cataracts had so much less land carriage, that we considered it best to take our steamer thither, by the route in which we were well known, instead of working where we were strangers; and accordingly we made up our minds to return. the natives reported a worse place above our turning-point--the passage being still narrower than this. an arab, they said, once built a boat above the rapids, and sent it down full of slaves; but it was broken to pieces in these upper narrows. many still maintained that the rovuma came from nyassa, and that it is very narrow as it issues out of the lake. one man declared that he had seen it with his own eyes as it left the lake, and seemed displeased at being cross-questioned, as if we doubted his veracity. more satisfactory information, as it appeared to us, was obtained from others. two days, or thirty miles, beyond where we turned back, the rovuma is joined by the liende, which, coming from the south-west, rises in the mountains on the east side of nyassa. the great slave route to kilwa runs up the banks of this river, which is only ankle-deep at the dry season of the year. the rovuma itself comes from the w.n.w., and after the traveller passes the confluence of the liende at ngomano or "meeting-place," the chief of which part is named ndonde, he finds the river narrow, and the people ajawa. crocodiles in the rovuma have a sorry time of it. never before were reptiles so persecuted and snubbed. they are hunted with spears, and spring traps are set for them. if one of them enters an inviting pool after fish, he soon finds a fence thrown round it, and a spring trap set in the only path out of the enclosure. their flesh is eaten, and relished. the banks, on which the female lays her eggs by night, are carefully searched by day, and all the eggs dug out and devoured. the fish-hawk makes havoc among the few young ones that escape their other enemies. our men were constantly on the look-out for crocodiles' nests. one was found containing thirty-five newly-laid eggs, and they declared that the crocodile would lay as many more the second night in another place. the eggs were a foot deep in the sand on the top of a bank ten feet high. the animal digs a hole with its foot, covers the eggs, and leaves them till the river rises over the nest in about three months afterwards, when she comes back, and assists the young ones out. we once saw opposite tette young crocodiles in december, swimming beside an island in company with an old one. the yolk of the egg is nearly as white as the real white. in taste they resemble hen's eggs with perhaps a smack of custard, and would be as highly relished by whites as by blacks, were it not for their unsavoury origin in men-eaters. hunting the senze (_aulacodus swindernianus_), an animal the size of a large cat, but in shape more like a pig, was the chief business of men and boys as we passed the reedy banks and low islands. they set fire to a mass of reeds, and, armed with sticks, spears, bows and arrows, stand in groups guarding the outlets through which the seared senze may run from the approaching flames. dark dense volumes of impenetrable smoke now roll over on the lee side of the islet, and shroud the hunters. at times vast sheets of lurid flames bursting forth, roaring, crackling and exploding, leap wildly far above the tall reeds. out rush the terrified animals, and amid the smoke are seen the excited hunters dancing about with frantic gesticulations, and hurling stick, spear, and arrow at their burned out victims. kites hover over the smoke, ready to pounce on the mantis and locusts as they spring from the fire. small crows and hundreds of swallows are on eager wing, darting into the smoke and out again, seizing fugitive flies. scores of insects, in their haste to escape from the fire, jump into the river, and the active fish enjoy a rare feast. we returned to the "pioneer" on the th of october, having been away one month. the ship's company had used distilled water, a condenser having been sent out from england; and there had not been a single case of sickness on board since we left, though there were so many cases of fever the few days she lay in the same spot last year. our boat party drank the water of the river, and the three white sailors, who had never been in an african river before, had some slight attacks of fever. chapter xii. return to the zambesi--bishop mackenzie's grave--frightful scenes with crocodiles--death of mr. thornton--african poisons--recall of the expedition. we put to sea on the th of october, and, again touching at johanna, obtained a crew of johanna men and some oxen, and sailed for the zambesi; but our fuel failing before we reached it, and the wind being contrary, we ran into quillimane for wood. quillimane must have been built solely for the sake of carrying on the slave-trade, for no man in his senses would ever have dreamed of placing a village on such a low, muddy, fever-haunted, and mosquito-swarming site, had it not been for the facilities it afforded for slaving. the bar may at springs and floods be easily crossed by sailing-vessels, but, being far from the land, it is always dangerous for boats. slaves, under the name of "free emigrants," have gone by thousands from quillimane, during the last six years, to the ports a little to the south, particularly to massangano. some excellent brick-houses still stand in the place, and the owners are generous and hospitable: among them our good friend, colonel nunez. his disinterested kindness to us and to all our countrymen can never be forgotten. he is a noble example of what energy and uprightness may accomplish even here. he came out as a cabin- boy, and, without a single friend to help him, he has persevered in an honourable course until he is the richest man on the east coast. when dr. livingstone came down the zambesi in , colonel nunez was the chief of the only four honourable, trustworthy men in the country. but while he has risen a whole herd has sunk, making loud lamentations, through puffs of cigar-smoke, over negro laziness; they might add, their own. all agricultural enterprise is virtually discouraged by quillimane government. a man must purchase a permit from the governor, when he wishes to visit his country farm; and this tax, in a country where labour is unpopular, causes the farms to be almost entirely left in the hands of a head slave, who makes returns to his master as interest or honesty prompts him. a passport must also be bought whenever a man wishes to go up the river to mazaro, senna, or tette, or even to reside for a month at quillimane. with a soil and a climate well suited for the growth of the cane, abundance of slave labour, and water communication to any market in the world, they have never made their own sugar. all they use is imported from bombay. "the people of quillimane have no enterprise," said a young european portuguese, "they do nothing, and are always wasting their time in suffering, or in recovering from fever." we entered the zambesi about the end of november and found it unusually low, so we did not get up to shupanga till the th of december. the friends of our mazaro men, who had now become good sailors and very attentive servants, turned out and gave them a hearty welcome back from the perils of the sea: they had begun to fear that they would never return. we hired them at a sixteen-yard piece of cloth a month--about ten shillings' worth, the portuguese market-price of the cloth being then sevenpence halfpenny a yard,--and paid them five pieces each, for four- and-a-half months' work. a merchant at the same time paid other mazaro men three pieces for seven months, and they were with him in the interior. if the merchants do not prosper, it is not because labour is dear, but because it is scarce, and because they are so eager on every occasion to sell the workmen out of the country. our men had also received quantities of good clothes from the sailors of the "pioneer" and of the "orestes," and were now regarded by their neighbours and by themselves as men of importance. never before had they possessed so much wealth: they believed that they might settle in life, being now of sufficient standing to warrant their entering the married state; and a wife and a hut were among their first investments. sixteen yards were paid to the wife's parents, and a hut cost four yards. we should have liked to have kept them in the ship, for they were well-behaved and had learned a great deal of the work required. though they would not themselves go again, they engaged others for us; and brought twice as many as we could take, of their brothers and cousins, who were eager to join the ship and go with us up the shire, or anywhere else. they all agreed to take half-pay until they too had learned to work; and we found no scarcity of labour, though all that could be exported is now out of the country. there had been a drought of unusual severity during the past season in the country between lupata and kebrabasa, and it had extended north-east to the manganja highlands. all the tette slaves, except a very few household ones, had been driven away by hunger, and were now far off in the woods, and wherever wild fruit, or the prospect of obtaining anything whatever to keep the breath of life in them, was to be found. their masters were said never to expect to see them again. there have been two years of great hunger at tette since we have been in the country, and a famine like the present prevailed in , when thousands died of starvation. if men like the cape farmers owned this country, their energy and enterprise would soon render the crops independent of rain. there being plenty of slope or fall, the land could be easily irrigated from the zambesi and its tributary streams. a portuguese colony can never prosper: it is used as a penal settlement, and everything must be done military fashion. "what do i care for this country?" said the most enterprising of the tette merchants, "all i want is to make money as soon possible, and then go to bombay and enjoy it." all business at tette was now suspended. carriers could not be found to take the goods into the interior, and the merchants could barely obtain food for their own families. at mazaro more rain had fallen, and a tolerable crop followed. the people of shupanga were collecting and drying different wild fruits, nearly all of which are far from palatable to a european taste. the root of a small creeper called "bise" is dug up and eaten. in appearance it is not unlike the small white sweet potato, and has a little of the flavour of our potato. it would be very good, if it were only a little larger. from another tuber, called "ulanga," very good starch can be made. a few miles from shupanga there is an abundance of large game, but the people here, though fond enough of meat, are not a hunting race, and seldom kill any. the shire having risen, we steamed off on the th of january, , with the "lady nyassa" in tow. it was not long before we came upon the ravages of the notorious mariano. the survivors of a small hamlet, at the foot of morambala, were in a state of starvation, having lost their food by one of his marauding parties. the women were in the fields collecting insects, roots, wild fruits, and whatever could be eaten, in order to drag on their lives, if possible, till the next crop should be ripe. two canoes passed us, that had been robbed by mariano's band of everything they had in them; the owners were gathering palm-nuts for their subsistence. they wore palm-leaf aprons, as the robbers had stripped them of their clothing and ornaments. dead bodies floated past us daily, and in the mornings the paddles had to be cleared of corpses, caught by the floats during the night. for scores of miles the entire population of the valley was swept away by this scourge mariano, who is again, as he was before, the great portuguese slave-agent. it made the heart ache to see the widespread desolation; the river-banks, once so populous, all silent; the villages burned down, and an oppressive stillness reigning where formerly crowds of eager sellers appeared with the various products of their industry. here and there might be seen on the bank a small dreary deserted shed, where had sat, day after day, a starving fisherman, until the rising waters drove the fish from their wonted haunts, and left him to die. tingane had been defeated; his people had been killed, kidnapped, and forced to flee from their villages. there were a few wretched survivors in a village above the ruo; but the majority of the population was dead. the sight and smell of dead bodies was everywhere. many skeletons lay beside the path, where in their weakness they had fallen and expired. ghastly living forms of boys and girls, with dull dead eyes, were crouching beside some of the huts. a few more miserable days of their terrible hunger, and they would be with the dead. oppressed with the shocking scenes around, we visited the bishop's grave; and though it matters little where a good christian's ashes rest, yet it was with sadness that we thought over the hopes which had clustered around him, as he left the classic grounds of cambridge, all now buried in this wild place. how it would have torn his kindly heart to witness the sights we now were forced to see! in giving vent to the natural feelings of regret, that a man so eminently endowed and learned, as was bishop mackenzie, should have been so soon cut off, some have expressed an opinion that it was wrong to use an instrument so valuable _merely_ to convert the heathen. if the attempt is to be made at all, it is "penny wise and pound foolish" to employ any but the very best men, and those who are specially educated for the work. an ordinary clergyman, however well suited for a parish, will not, without special training, make a missionary; and as to their comparative usefulness, it is like that of the man who builds an hospital, as compared with that of the surgeon who in after years only administers for a time the remedies which the founder had provided in perpetuity. had the bishop succeeded in introducing christianity, his converts might have been few, but they would have formed a continuous roll for all time to come. the shire fell two feet, before we reached the shallow crossing where we had formerly such difficulty, and we had now two ships to take up. a hippopotamus was shot two miles above a bank on which the ship lay a fortnight: it floated in three hours. as the boat was towing it down, the crocodiles were attracted by the dead beast, and several shots had to be fired to keep them off. the bullet had not entered the brain of the animal, but driven a splinter of bone into it. a little moisture with some gas issued from the wound, and this was all that could tell the crocodiles down the stream of a dead hippopotamus; and yet they came up from miles below. their sense of smell must be as acute as their hearing; both are quite extraordinary. dozens fed on the meat we left. our krooman, jumbo, used to assert that the crocodile never eats fresh meat, but always keeps it till it is high and tender--and the stronger it smells the better he likes it. there seems to be some truth in this. they can swallow but small pieces at a time, and find it difficult to tear fresh meat. in the act of swallowing, which is like that of a dog, the head is raised out of the water. we tried to catch some, and one was soon hooked; it required half-a-dozen hands to haul him up the river, and the shark-hook straightened, and he got away. a large iron hook was next made, but, as the creatures could not swallow it, their jaws soon pressed it straight--and our crocodile-fishing was a failure. as one might expect,--from the power even of a salmon--the tug of a crocodile was terribly strong. the corpse of a boy floated past the ship; a monstrous crocodile rushed at it with the speed of a greyhound, caught it and shook it, as a terrier dog does a rat. others dashed at the prey, each with his powerful tail causing the water to churn and froth, as he furiously tore off a piece. in a few seconds it was all gone. the sight was frightful to behold. the shire swarmed with crocodiles; we counted sixty-seven of these repulsive reptiles on a single bank, but they are not as fierce as they are in some rivers. "crocodiles," says captain tuckey, "are so plentiful in the congo, near the rapids, and so frequently carry off the women, who at daylight go down to the river for water, that, while they are filling their calabashes, one of the party is usually employed in throwing large stones into the water outside." here, either a calabash on a long pole is used in drawing water, or a fence is planted. the natives eat the crocodile, but to us the idea of tasting the musky-scented, fishy-looking flesh carried the idea of cannibalism. humboldt remarks, that in south america the alligators of some rivers are more dangerous than in others. alligators differ from crocodiles in the fourth or canine tooth going into a hole or socket in the upper jaw, while in the crocodile it fits into a notch. the forefoot of the crocodile has five toes not webbed, the hindfoot has four toes which are webbed; in the alligator the web is altogether wanting. they are so much alike that they would no doubt breed together. one of the crocodiles which was shot had a piece snapped off the end of his tail, another had lost a forefoot in fighting; we saw actual leeches between the teeth, such as are mentioned by herodotus, but we never witnessed the plover picking them out. their greater fierceness in one part of the country than another is doubtless owing to a scarcity of fish; in fact, captain tuckey says, of that part of the congo, mentioned above, "there are no fish here but catfish," and we found that the lake crocodiles, living in clear water, and with plenty of fish, scarcely ever attacked man. the shire teems with fish of many different kinds. the only time, as already remarked, when its crocodiles are particularly to be dreaded, is when the river is in flood. then the fish are driven from their usual haunts, and no game comes down to the river to drink, water being abundant in pools inland. hunger now impels the crocodile to lie in wait for the women who come to draw water, and on the zambesi numbers are carried off every year. the danger is not so great at other seasons; though it is never safe to bathe, or to stoop to drink, where one cannot see the bottom, especially in the evening. one of the makololo ran down in the dusk of the river; and, as he was busy tossing the water to his mouth with his hand, in the manner peculiar to the natives, a crocodile rose suddenly from the bottom, and caught him by the hand. the limb of a tree was fortunately within reach, and he had presence of mind to lay hold of it. both tugged and pulled; the crocodile for his dinner, and the man for dear life. for a time it appeared doubtful whether a dinner or a life was to be sacrificed; but the man held on, and the monster let the hand go, leaving the deep marks of his ugly teeth in it. during our detention, in expectation of the permanent rise of the river in march, dr. kirk and mr. c. livingstone collected numbers of the wading- birds of the marshes--and made pleasant additions to our salted provisions, in geese, ducks, and hippopotamus flesh. one of the comb or knob-nosed geese, on being strangled in order to have its skin preserved without injury, continued to breathe audibly by the broken humerus, or wing-bone, and other means had to be adopted to put it out of pain. this was as if a man on the gallows were to continue to breathe by a broken armbone, and afforded us an illustration of the fact, that in birds, the vital air penetrates every part of the interior of their bodies. the breath passes through and round about the lungs--bathes the surfaces of the viscera, and enters the cavities of the bones; it even penetrates into some spaces between the muscles of the neck--and thus not only is the most perfect oxygenation of the blood secured, but, the temperature of the blood being very high, the air in every part is rarefied, and the great lightness and vigour provided for, that the habits of birds require. several birds were found by dr. kirk to have marrow in the tibiae, though these bones are generally described as hollow. during the period of our detention on the shallow part of the river in march, mr. thornton came up to us from shupanga: he had, as before narrated, left the expedition in , and joined baron van der decken, in the journey to kilimanjaro, when, by an ascent of the mountain to the height of feet, it was first proved to be covered with perpetual snow, and the previous information respecting it, given by the church of england missionaries, krapf and rebman, confirmed. it is now well known that the baron subsequently ascended the kilimanjaro to , feet, and ascertained its highest peak to be at least , feet above the sea. mr. thornton made the map of the first journey, at shupanga, from materials collected when with the baron; and when that work was accomplished, followed us. he was then directed to examine geologically the cataract district, but not to expose himself to contact with the ajawa until the feelings of that tribe should be ascertained. the members of bishop mackenzie's party, on the loss of their head, fell back from magomero on the highlands, to chibisa's, in the low-lying shire valley; and thornton, finding them suffering from want of animal food, kindly volunteered to go across thence to tette, and bring a supply of goats and sheep. we were not aware of this step, to which the generosity of his nature prompted him, till two days after he had started. in addition to securing supplies for the universities' mission, he brought some for the expedition, and took bearings, by which he hoped to connect his former work at tette with the mountains in the shire district. the toil of this journey was too much for his strength, as with the addition of great scarcity of water, it had been for that of dr. kirk and rae, and he returned in a sadly haggard and exhausted condition; diarrhoea supervened, and that ended in dysentery and fever, which terminated fatally on the st of april, . he received the unremitting attentions of dr. kirk, and dr. meller, surgeon of the "pioneer," during the fortnight of his illness; and as he had suffered very little from fever, or any other disease, in africa, we had entertained strong hopes that his youth and unimpaired constitution would have carried him through. during the night of the th his mind wandered so much, that we could not ascertain his last wishes; and on the morning of the st, to our great sorrow, he died. he was buried on the nd, near a large tree on the right bank of the shire, about five hundred yards from the lowest of the murchison cataracts--and close to a rivulet, at which the "lady nyassa" and "pioneer" lay. no words can convey an adequate idea of the scene of widespread desolation which the once pleasant shire valley now presented. instead of smiling villages and crowds of people coming with things for sale, scarcely a soul was to be seen; and, when by chance one lighted on a native, his frame bore the impress of hunger, and his countenance the look of a cringing broken-spiritedness. a drought had visited the land after the slave-hunting panic swept over it. had it been possible to conceive the thorough depopulation which had ensued, we should have avoided coming up the river. large masses of the people had fled down to the shire, only anxious to get the river between them and their enemies. most of the food had been left behind; and famine and starvation had cut off so many, that the remainder were too few to bury the dead. the corpses we saw floating down the river were only a remnant of those that had perished, whom their friends, from weakness, could not bury, nor over- gorged crocodiles devour. it is true that famine caused a great portion of this waste of human life: but the slave-trade must be deemed the chief agent in the ruin, because, as we were informed, in former droughts all the people flocked from the hills down to the marshes, which are capable of yielding crops of maize in less than three months, at any time of the year, and now they were afraid to do so. a few, encouraged by the mission in the attempt to cultivate, had their little patches robbed as successive swarms of fugitives came from the hills. who can blame these outcasts from house and home for stealing to save their wretched lives, or wonder that the owners protected the little all, on which their own lives depended, with club and spear? we were informed by mr. waller of the dreadful blight which had befallen the once smiling shire valley. his words, though strong, failed to impress us with the reality. in fact, they were received, as some may accept our own, as tinged with exaggeration; but when our eyes beheld the last mere driblets of this cup of woe, we for the first time felt that the enormous wrongs inflicted on our fellow-men by slaving are beyond exaggeration. wherever we took a walk, human skeletons were seen in every direction, and it was painfully interesting to observe the different postures in which the poor wretches had breathed their last. a whole heap had been thrown down a slope behind a village, where the fugitives often crossed the river from the east; and in one hut of the same village no fewer than twenty drums had been collected, probably the ferryman's fees. many had ended their misery under shady trees--others under projecting crags in the hills--while others lay in their huts, with closed doors, which when opened disclosed the mouldering corpse with the poor rags round the loins--the skull fallen off the pillow--the little skeleton of the child, that had perished first, rolled up in a mat between two large skeletons. the sight of this desert, but eighteen months ago a well peopled valley, now literally strewn with human bones, forced the conviction upon us, that the destruction of human life in the middle passage, however great, constitutes but a small portion of the waste, and made us feel that unless the slave-trade--that monster iniquity, which has so long brooded over africa--is put down, lawful commerce cannot be established. we believed that, if it were possible to get a steamer upon the lake, we could by her means put a check on the slavers from the east coast; and aid more effectually still in the suppression of the slave-trade, by introducing, by way of the rovuma, a lawful traffic in ivory. we therefore unscrewed the "lady nyassa" at a rivulet about five hundred yards below the first cataract, and began to make a road over the thirty- five or forty miles of land portage, by which to carry her up piecemeal. after mature consideration, we could not imagine a more noble work of benevolence, than thus to introduce light and liberty into a quarter of this fair earth, which human lust has converted into the nearest possible resemblance of what we conceive the infernal regions to be--and we sacrificed much of our private resources as an offering for the promotion of so good a cause. the chief part of the labour of road-making consisted in cutting down trees and removing stones. the country being covered with open forest, a small tree had to be cut about every fifty or sixty yards. the land near the river was so very much intersected by ravines, that search had to be made, a mile from its banks, for more level ground. experienced hottentot drivers would have taken cape wagons without any other trouble than that of occasionally cutting down a tree. no tsetse infested this district, and the cattle brought from johanna flourished on the abundant pasture. the first half-mile of road led up, by a gradual slope, to an altitude of two hundred feet above the ship, and a sensible difference of climate was felt even there. for the remainder of the distance the height increased,--till, at the uppermost cataract, we were more than feet above the sea. the country here, having recovered from the effects of the drought, was bright with young green woodland, and mountains of the same refreshing hue. but the absence of the crowds, which had attended us as we carried up the boat, when the women followed us for miles with fine meal, vegetables, and fat fowls for sale, and the boys were ever ready for a little job--and the oppressive stillness bore heavily on our spirits. the portuguese of tette had very effectually removed our labourers. not an ounce of fresh provisions could be obtained, except what could be shot, and even the food for our native crew had to be brought one hundred and fifty miles from the zambesi. the diet of salt provisions and preserved meats without vegetables, with the depression of spirits caused by seeing how effectually a few wretched convicts, aided by the connivance of officials, of whom better might have been hoped, could counteract our best efforts, and turn intended good to certain evil, brought on attacks of dysentery, which went the round of the expedition--and, dr. kirk and charles livingstone having suffered most severely, it was deemed advisable that they should go home. this measure was necessary, though much to the regret of all--for having done so much, they were naturally anxious to be present, when, by the establishing ourselves on the lake, all our efforts should be crowned with success. after it had been decided that these two officers, and all the whites who could be spared, should be sent down to the sea for a passage to england, dr. livingstone was seized in may with a severe attack of dysentery, which continued for a month, and reduced him to a shadow. dr. kirk kindly remained in attendance till the worst was passed. the parting took place on the th of may. after a few miles of road were completed, and the oxen broken in, we resolved to try and render ourselves independent of the south for fresh provisions, by going in a boat up the shire, above the cataracts, to the tribes at the foot of lake nyassa, who were still untouched by the ajawa invasion. in furtherance of this plan dr. livingstone and mr. rae determined to walk up to examine, and, if need be, mend the boat which had been left two seasons previously hung up to the limb of a large shady tree, before attempting to carry another past the cataracts. the "pioneer," which was to be left in charge of our active and most trustworthy gunner, mr. edward d. young, r.n., was thoroughly roofed over with euphorbia branches and grass, so as completely to protect her decks from the sun: she also received daily a due amount of man-of-war scrubbing and washing; and, besides having everything put in shipshape fashion, was every evening swung out into the middle of the river, for the sake of the greater amount of air which circulated there. in addition to their daily routine work of the ship, the three stokers, one sailor, and one carpenter--now our complement--were encouraged to hunt for guinea-fowl, which in june, when the water inland is dried up, come in large flocks to the river's banks, and roost on the trees at night. everything that can be done to keep mind and body employed tends to prevent fever. while we were employed in these operations, some of the poor starved people about had been in the habit of crossing the river, and reaping the self-sown mapira, in the old gardens of their countrymen. in the afternoon of the th, a canoe came floating down empty, and shortly after a woman was seen swimming near the other side, which was about two hundred yards distant from us. our native crew manned the boat, and rescued her; when brought on board, she was found to have an arrow-head, eight or ten inches long, in her back, below the ribs, and slanting up through the diaphragm and left lung, towards the heart--she had been shot from behind when stooping. air was coming out of the wound, and, there being but an inch of the barbed arrow-head visible, it was thought better not to run the risk of her dying under the operation necessary for its removal; so we carried her up to her own hut. one of her relatives was less scrupulous, for he cut out the arrow and part of the lung. mr. young sent her occasionally portions of native corn, and strange to say found that she not only became well, but stout. the constitution of these people seems to have a wonderful power of self-repair--and it could be no slight privation which had cut off the many thousands that we saw dead around us. we regretted that, in consequence of dr. meller having now sole medical charge, we could not have his company in our projected trip; but he found employment in botany and natural history, after the annual sickly season of march, april, and may was over; and his constant presence was not so much required at the ship. later in the year, when he could be well spared, he went down the river to take up an appointment he had been offered in madagascar; but unfortunately was so severely tried by illness while detained at the coast, that for nearly two years he was not able to turn his abilities as a naturalist to account by proceeding to that island. we have no doubt but he will yet distinguish himself in that untrodden field. on the th of june we started for the upper cataracts, with a mule-cart, our road lying a distance of a mile west from the river. we saw many of the deserted dwellings of the people who formerly came to us; and were very much struck by the extent of land under cultivation, though that, compared with the whole country, is very small. large patches of mapira continued to grow,--as it is said it does from the roots for three years. the mapira was mixed with tall bushes of the congo-bean, castor-oil plants, and cotton. the largest patch of this kind we paced, and found it to be six hundred and thirty paces on one side--the rest were from one acre to three, and many not more than one-third of an acre. the cotton--of very superior quality--was now dropping off the bushes, to be left to rot--there was no one to gather what would have been of so much value in lancashire. the huts, in the different villages we entered, were standing quite perfect. the mortars for pounding corn--the stones for grinding it--the water and beer pots--the empty corn-safes and kitchen utensils, were all untouched; and most of the doors were shut, as if the starving owners had gone out to wander in search of roots or fruits in the forest, and had never returned. when opened, several huts revealed a ghastly sight of human skeletons. some were seen in such unnatural positions, as to give the idea that they had expired in a faint, when trying to reach something to allay the gnawings of hunger. we took several of the men as far as the mukuru-madse for the sake of the change of air and for occupation, and also to secure for the ships a supply of buffalo meat--as those animals were reported to be in abundance on that stream. but though it was evident from the tracks that the report was true, it was impossible to get a glimpse of them. the grass being taller than we were, and pretty thickly planted, they always knew of our approach before we saw them. and the first intimation we had of their being near was the sound they made in rushing over the stones, breaking the branches, and knocking their horns against each other. once, when seeking a ford for the cart, at sunrise, we saw a herd slowly wending up the hill-side from the water. sending for a rifle, and stalking with intense eagerness for a fat beefsteak, instead of our usual fare of salted provisions, we got so near that we could hear the bulls uttering their hoarse deep low, but could see nothing except the mass of yellow grass in front; suddenly the buffalo-birds sounded their alarm- whistle, and away dashed the troop, and we got sight of neither birds nor beasts. this would be no country for a sportsman except when the grass is short. the animals are wary, from the dread they have of the poisoned arrows. those of the natives who do hunt are deeply imbued with the hunting spirit, and follow the game with a stealthy perseverance and cunning, quite extraordinary. the arrow making no noise, the herd is followed up until the poison takes effect, and the wounded animal falls out. it is then patiently watched till it drops--a portion of meat round the wound is cut away, and all the rest eaten. poisoned arrows are made in two pieces. an iron barb is firmly fastened to one end of a small wand of wood, ten inches or a foot long, the other end of which, fined down to a long point, is nicely fitted, though not otherwise secured, in the hollow of the reed, which forms the arrow shaft. the wood immediately below the iron head is smeared with the poison. when the arrow is shot into an animal, the reed either falls to the ground at once, or is very soon brushed off by the bushes; but the iron barb and poisoned upper part of the wood remain in the wound. if made in one piece, the arrow would often be torn out, head and all, by the long shaft catching in the underwood, or striking against trees. the poison used here, and called _kombi_, is obtained from a species of _strophanthus_, and is very virulent. dr. kirk found by an accidental experiment on himself that it acts by lowering the pulse. in using his tooth-brush, which had been in a pocket containing a little of the poison, he noticed a bitter taste, but attributed it to his having sometimes used, the handle in taking quinine. though the quantity was small, it immediately showed its power by lowering his pulse which at the time had been raised by a cold, and next day he was perfectly restored. not much can be inferred from a single case of this kind, but it is possible that the kombi may turn out a valuable remedy; and as professor sharpey has conducted a series of experiments with this substance, we look with interest for the results. an alkaloid has been obtained from it similar to strychnine. there is no doubt that all kinds of wild animals die from the effects of poisoned arrows, except the elephant and hippopotamus. the amount of poison that this little weapon can convey into their systems being too small to kill those huge beasts, the hunters resort to the beam trap instead. another kind of poison was met with on lake nyassa, which was said to be used exclusively for killing men. it was put on small wooden arrow-heads, and carefully protected by a piece of maize-leaf tied round it. it caused numbness of the tongue when the smallest particle was tasted. the bushmen of the northern part of the kalahari were seen applying the entrails of a small caterpillar which they termed 'nga to their arrows. this venom was declared to be so powerful in producing delirium, that a man in dying returned in imagination to a state of infancy, and would call for his mother's breast. lions when shot with it are said to perish in agonies. the poisonous ingredient in this case may be derived from the plant on which the caterpillar feeds. it is difficult to conceive by what sort of experiments the properties of these poisons, known for generations, were proved. probably the animal instincts, which have become so obtuse by civilization, that children in england eat the berries of the deadly nightshade (_atropa belladonna_) without suspicion, were in the early uncivilized state much more keen. in some points instinct is still retained among savages. it is related that in the celebrated voyage of the french navigator, bougainville, a young lady, who had assumed the male attire, performed all the hard duties incident to the calling of a common sailor; and, even as servant to the geologist, carried a bag of stones and specimens over hills and dales without a complaint, and without having her sex suspected by her associates; but on landing among the savages of one of the south sea islands, she was instantly recognized as a female. they began to show their impressions in a way that compelled her to confess her sex, and throw herself on the protection of the commander, which of course was granted. in like manner, the earlier portions of the human family may have had their instincts as to plants more highly developed than any of their descendants--if indeed much more knowledge than we usually suppose be not the effect of direct revelation from above. the mukuru-madse has a deep rocky bed. the water is generally about four feet deep, and fifteen or twenty yards broad. before reaching it, we passed five or six gullies; but beyond it the country, for two or three miles from the river, was comparatively smooth. the long grass was overrunning all the native paths, and one species (_sanu_), which has a sharp barbed seed a quarter of an inch in length, enters every pore of woollen clothing and highly irritates the skin. from its hard, sharp point a series of minute barbs are laid back, and give the seed a hold wherever it enters: the slightest touch gives it an entering motion, and the little hooks prevent its working out. these seeds are so abundant in some spots, that the inside of the stocking becomes worse than the roughest hair shirt. it is, however, an excellent self-sower, and fine fodder; it rises to the height of common meadow-grass in england, and would be a capital plant for spreading over a new country not so abundantly supplied with grasses as this is. we have sometimes noticed two or three leaves together pierced through by these seeds, and thus made, as it were, into wings to carry them to any soil suited to their growth. we always follow the native paths, though they are generally not more than fifteen inches broad, and so often have deep little holes in them, made for the purpose of setting traps for small animals, and are so much obscured by the long grass, that one has to keep one's eyes on the ground more than is pleasant. in spite, however, of all drawbacks, it is vastly more easy to travel on these tracks than to go straight over uncultivated ground, or virgin forest. a path usually leads to some village, though sometimes it turns out to be a mere game track leading nowhere. in going north, we came into a part called mpemba where chibisa was owned as chief, but the people did not know that he had been assassinated by the portuguese terera. a great deal of grain was lying round the hut, where we spent the night. very large numbers of turtledoves feasted undisturbed on the tall stalked mapira ears, and we easily secured plenty of fine fat guinea-fowls--now allowed to feed leisurely in the deserted gardens. the reason assigned for all this listless improvidence was "there are no women to grind the corn--all are dead." the cotton patches in all cases seemed to have been so well cared for, and kept so free of weeds formerly, that, though now untended, but few weeds had sprung up; and the bushes were thus preserved in the annual grass burnings. many baobab-trees grow in different spots, and the few people seen were using the white pulp found between the seeds to make a pleasant subacid drink. on passing malango, near the uppermost cataract, not a soul was to be seen; but, as we rested opposite a beautiful tree-covered island, the merry voices of children at play fell on our ears--the parents had fled thither for protection from the slave-hunting ajawa, still urged on by the occasional visits of the portuguese agents from tette. the ajawa, instead of passing below the cataracts, now avoided us, and crossed over to the east side near to the tree on which we had hung the boat. those of the manganja, to whom we could make ourselves known, readily came to us; but the majority had lost all confidence in themselves, in each other, and in every one else. the boat had been burned about three months previously, and the manganja were very anxious that we should believe that this had been the act of the ajawa; but on scanning the spot we saw that it was more likely to have caught fire in the grass-burning of the country. had we intended to be so long in returning to it, we should have hoisted it bottom upwards; for, as it was, it is probable that a quantity of dried leaves lay inside, and a spark ignited the whole. all the trees within fifty yards were scorched and killed, and the nails, iron, and copper sheathing, all lay undisturbed beneath. had the ajawa done the deed, they would have taken away the copper and iron. our hopes of rendering ourselves independent of the south for provisions, by means of this boat, being thus disappointed, we turned back with the intention of carrying another up to the same spot; and, in order to find level ground for this, we passed across from the shire at malango to the upper part of the stream lesungwe. a fine, active, intelligent fellow, called pekila, guided us, and was remarkable as almost the only one of the population left with any spirit in him. the depressing effect which the slave-hunting scourge has upon the native mind, though little to be wondered at, is sad, very sad to witness. musical instruments, mats, pillows, mortars for pounding meal, were lying about unused, and becoming the prey of the white ants. with all their little comforts destroyed, the survivors were thrown still further back into barbarism. it is of little importance perhaps to any but travellers to notice that in occupying one night a well-built hut, which had been shut up for some time, the air inside at once gave us a chill, and an attack of fever; both of which vanished when the place was well-ventilated by means of a fire. we have frequently observed that lighting a fire early in the mornings, even in the hottest time of the year, gives freshness to the whole house, and removes that feeling of closeness and langour, which a hot climate induces. on the night of the st july, , several loud peals of thunder awoke us; the moon was shining brightly, and not a cloud to be seen. all the natives remarked on the clearness of the sky at the time, and next morning said, "we thought it was god" (morungo). on arriving at the ship on the nd july, we found a despatch from earl russell, containing instructions for the withdrawal of the expedition. the devastation caused by slave-hunting and famine lay all around. the labour had been as completely swept away from the great shire valley, as it had been from the zambesi, wherever portuguese intrigue or power extended. the continual forays of mariano had spread ruin and desolation on our south-east as far as mount clarendon. while this was going on in our rear, the tette slave-hunters from the west had stimulated the ajawa to sweep all the manganja off the hills on our east; and slaving parties for this purpose were still passing the shire above the cataracts. in addition to the confession of the governor of tette, of an intention to go on with this slaving in accordance with the counsel of his elder brother at mosambique, we had reason to believe that slavery went on under the eye of his excellency, the governor-general himself; and this was subsequently corroborated by our recognizing two women at mosambique who had lived within a hundred yards of the mission-station at magomero. they were well known to our attendants, and had formed a part of a gang of several hundreds taken to mosambique by the ajawa at the very time when his excellency was entertaining english officers with anti-slavery palavers. to any one who understands how minute the information is, which portuguese governors possess by means of their own slaves, and through gossiping traders who seek to curry their favour, it is idle to assert that all this slaving goes on without their approval and connivance. if more had been wanted to prove the hopelessness of producing any change in the system which has prevailed ever since our allies, the portuguese, entered the country, we had it in the impunity with which the freebooter, terera, who had murdered chibisa, was allowed to carry on his forays. belchoir, another marauder, had been checked, but was still allowed to make war, as they term slave-hunting. mr. horace waller was living for some five months on mount morambala, a position from which the whole process of the slave-trade, and depopulation of the country around could be well noted. the mountain overlooks the shire, the beautiful meanderings of which are distinctly seen, on clear days, for thirty miles. this river was for some time supposed to be closed against mariano, who, as a mere matter of form, was declared a rebel against the portuguese flag. when, however, it became no longer possible to keep up the sham, the river was thrown open to him; and mr. waller has seen in a single day from fifteen to twenty canoes of different sizes going down, laden with slaves, to the portuguese settlements from the so-called rebel camp. these cargoes were composed entirely of women and children. for three months this traffic was incessant, and at last, so completely was the mask thrown off, that one of the officials came to pay a visit to bishop tozer on another part of the same mountain, and, combining business with pleasure, collected payment for some canoe work done for the missionary party, and with this purchased slaves from the rebels, who had only to be hailed from the bank of the river. when he had concluded the bargain he trotted the slaves out for inspection in mr. waller's presence. this official, senhor mesquita, was the only officer who could be forced to live at the kongone. from certain circumstances in his life, he had fallen under the power of the local government; all the other custom-house officers refused to go to kongone, so here poor mesquita must live on a miserable pittance--must live, and perhaps slave, sorely against his will. his name is not brought forward with a view of throwing any odium on his character. the disinterested kindness which he showed to dr. meller, and others, forbids that he should be mentioned by us with anything like unkindness. under all these considerations, with the fact that we had not found the rovuma so favourable for navigation at the time of our visit as we expected, it was impossible not to coincide in the wisdom of our withdrawal; but we deeply regretted that we had ever given credit to the portuguese government for any desire to ameliorate the condition of the african race; for, with half the labour and expense anywhere else, we should have made an indelible mark of improvement on a section of the continent. viewing portuguese statesmen in the light of the laws they have passed for the suppression of slavery and the slave-trade, and by the standard of the high character of our own public men, it cannot be considered weakness to have believed in the sincerity of the anxiety to aid our enterprise, professed by the lisbon ministry. we hoped to benefit both portuguese and africans by introducing free-trade and christianity. our allies, unfortunately, cannot see the slightest benefit in any measure that does not imply raising themselves up by thrusting others down. the official paper of the lisbon government has since let us know "that their policy was directed to frustrating the grasping designs of the british government to the dominion of eastern africa." we, who were on the spot, and behind the scenes, knew that feelings of private benevolence had the chief share in the operations undertaken for introducing the reign of peace and good will on the lakes and central regions, which for ages have been the abodes of violence and bloodshed. but that great change was not to be accomplished. the narrow- minded would ascribe all that was attempted to the grasping propensity of the english. but the motives that actuate many in england, both in public and private life, are much more noble than the world gives them credit for. seeing, then, that we were not yet arrived at "the good time coming," and that it was quite impossible to take the "pioneer" down to the sea till the floods of december, we made arrangements to screw the "lady nyassa" together; and, in order to improve the time intervening, we resolved to carry a boat past the cataracts a second time, sail along the eastern shore of the lake, and round the northern end, and also collect data by which to verify the information collected by colonel rigby, that the , slaves, who go through the custom-house of zanzibar annually, are chiefly drawn from lake nyassa and the valley of the shire. our party consisted of twenty natives, some of whom were johanna men, and were supposed to be capable of managing the six oxen which drew the small wagon with a boat on it. a team of twelve cape oxen, with a hottentot driver and leader, would have taken the wagon over the country we had to pass through with the greatest ease; but no sooner did we get beyond the part of the road already made, than our drivers encountered obstructions in the way of trees and gullies, which it would have been a waste of time to have overcome by felling timber and hauling out the wagon by block and tackle purchases. the ajawa and manganja settled at chibisa's were therefore sent for, and they took the boat on their shoulders and carried it briskly, in a few days, past all the cataracts except one; then coming to a comparatively still reach of the river, they took advantage of it to haul her up a couple of miles. the makololo had her then entirely in charge; for, being accustomed to rapids in their own country, no better boatmen could be desired. the river here is very narrow, and even in what are called still places, the current is very strong, and often obliged them to haul the boat along by the reeds on the banks, or to hand a tow-rope ashore. the reeds are full of cowitch (_dolichos pruriens_), the pods of which are covered with what looks a fine velvety down, but is in reality a multitude of fine prickles, which go in by the million, and caused an itching and stinging in the naked bodies of those who were pulling the tow-rope, that made them wriggle as if stung by a whole bed of nettles. those on board required to be men of ready resource with oars and punting-poles, and such they were. but, nevertheless, they found, after attempting to pass by a rock, round which the water rushed in whirls, that the wiser plan would be to take the boat ashore, and carry her past the last cataract. when this was reported, the carriers were called from the various shady trees under which they had taken refuge from the sun. this was midwinter, but the sun is always hot by day here, though the nights are cold. five zambesi men, who had been all their lives accustomed to great heavy canoes,--the chief recommendation of which is said to be, that they can be run against a rock with the full force of the current without injury--were very desirous to show how much better they could manage our boat than the makololo; three jumped into her when our backs were turned, and two hauled her up a little way; the tide caught her bow, we heard a shout of distress, the rope was out of their hands in a moment, and there she was, bottom upwards; a turn or two in an eddy, and away she went, like an arrow, down the cataracts. one of the men in swimming ashore saved a rifle. the whole party ran with all their might along the bank, but never more did we see our boat. the five performers in this catastrophe approached with penitential looks. they had nothing to say, nor had we. they bent down slowly, and touched our feet with both hands. "ku kuata moendo"--"to catch the foot"--is their way of asking forgiveness. it was so like what we have seen a little child do--try to bring a dish unbidden to its papa, and letting it fall, burst into a cry of distress--that they were only sentenced to go back to the ship, get provisions, and, in the ensuing journey on foot, carry as much as they could, and thus make up for the loss of the boat. it was excessively annoying to lose all this property, and be deprived of the means of doing the work proposed, on the east and north of the lake; but it would have been like crying over spilt milk to do otherwise now than make the best use we could of our legs. the men were sent back to the ship for provisions, cloth, and beads; and while they are gone, we may say a little of the cataracts which proved so fatal to our boating plan. chapter xiii. dr. livingstone's further explorations--effects of slave-trade--kirk's range--ajawa migration--native fishermen--arab slave-crossing--splendid highlands. the murchison cataracts of the shire river begin in degrees minutes s., and end in lat. degrees minutes s., the difference of latitude is therefore minutes. the river runs in this space nearly north and south, till we pass malango; so the entire distance is under miles. the principal cataracts are five in number, and are called pamofunda or pamozima, morewa, panoreba or tedzane, pampatamanga, and papekira. besides these, three or four smaller ones might be mentioned; as, for instance, mamvira, where in our ascent we first met the broken water, and heard that gushing sound which, from the interminable windings of some miles of river below, we had come to believe the tranquil shire could never make. while these lesser cataracts descend at an angle of scarcely degrees, the greater fall feet in yards, at an angle of about degrees, and one at an angle of degrees. one part of pamozima is perpendicular, and, when the river is in flood, causes a cloud of vapour to ascend, which, in our journey to lake shirwa, we saw at a distance of at least eight miles. the entire descent from the upper to the lower shire is feet. only on one spot in all that distance is the current moderate--namely, above tedzane. the rest is all rapid, and much of it being only fifty or eighty yards wide, and rushing like a mill-race, it gives the impression of water-power, sufficient to drive all the mills in manchester, running to waste. pamofunda, or pamozima, has a deep shady grove on its right bank. when we were walking alone through its dark shade, we were startled by a shocking smell like that of a dissecting- room; and on looking up saw dead bodies in mats suspended from the branches of the trees, a mode of burial somewhat similar to that which we subsequently saw practised by the parsees in their "towers of silence" at poonah, near bombay. the name pamozima means, "the departed spirits or gods"--a fit name for a place over which, according to the popular belief, the disembodied souls continually hover. the rock lowest down in the series is dark reddish-grey syenite. this seems to have been an upheaving agent, for the mica schists above it are much disturbed. dark trappean rocks full of hornblende have in many places burst through these schists, and appear in nodules on the surface. the highest rock seen is a fine sandstone of closer grain than that at tette, and quite metamorphosed where it comes into contact with the igneous rocks below it. it sometimes gives place to quartz and reddish clay schists, much baked by heat. this is the usual geological condition on the right bank of the cataracts. on the other side we pass over masses of porphyritic trap, in contact with the same mica schists, and these probably give to the soil the great fertility we observed. the great body of the mountains is syenite. so much mica is washed into the river, that on looking attentively on the stream one sees myriads of particles floating and glancing in the sun; and this, too, even at low water. it was the th of august before the men returned from the ship, accompanied by mr. rae and the steward of the "pioneer." they brought two oxen, one of which was instantly slaughtered to put courage into all hearts, and some bottles of wine, a present from waller and alington. we never carried wine before, but this was precious as an expression of kindheartedness on the part of the donors. if one attempted to carry either wine or spirits, as a beverage, he would require a whole troop of followers for nothing else. our greatest luxury in travelling was tea or coffee. we never once carried sugar enough to last a journey, but coffee is always good, while the sugarless tea is only bearable, because of the unbearable gnawing feeling of want and sinking which ensues if we begin to travel in the mornings without something warm in the stomach. our drink generally was water, and if cool, nothing can equal it in a hot climate. we usually carried a bottle of brandy rolled up in our blankets, but that was used only as a medicine; a spoonful in hot water before going to bed, to fend off a chill and fever. spirits always do harm, if the fever has fairly begun; and it is probable that brandy-and- water has to answer for a good many of the deaths in africa. mr. rae had made gratifying progress in screwing together the "lady nyassa." he had the zealous co-operation of three as fine steady workmen as ever handled tools; and, as they were noble specimens of english sailors, we would fain mention the names of men who are an honour to the british navy--john reid, john pennell, and richard wilson. the reader will excuse our doing so, but we desire to record how much they were esteemed, and how thankful we felt for their good behaviour. the weather was delightfully cool; and, with full confidence in those left behind, it was with light hearts we turned our faces north. mr. rae accompanied us a day in front; and, as all our party had earnestly advised that at least two europeans should be associated together on the journey, the steward was at the last moment taken. mr. rae returned to get the "lady nyassa" ready for sea; and, as she drew less water than the "pioneer," take her down to the ocean in october. one reason for taking the steward is worth recording. both he and a man named king, { } who, though only a leading stoker in the navy, had been a promising student in the university of aberdeen, had got into that weak bloodless-looking state which residence in the lowlands without much to do or think about often induces. the best thing for this is change and an active life. a couple of days' march only as far as the mukuru-madse, infused so much vigour into king that he was able to walk briskly back. consideration for the steward's health led to his being selected for this northern journey, and the measure was so completely successful that it was often, in the hard march, a subject of regret that king had not been taken too. a removal of only a hundred yards is sometimes so beneficial that it ought in severe cases never to be omitted. our object now was to get away to the n.n.w., proceed parallel with lake nyassa, but at a considerable distance west of it, and thus pass by the mazitu or zulus near its northern end without contact--ascertain whether any large river flowed into the lake from the west--visit lake moelo, if time permitted, and collect information about the trade on the great slave route, which crosses the lake at its southern end, and at tsenga and kota-kota. the makololo were eager to travel fast, because they wanted to be back in time to hoe their fields before the rains, and also because their wives needed looking after. in going in the first instance n.e. from the uppermost cataract, we followed in a measure the great bend of the river towards the foot of mount zomba. here we had a view of its most imposing side, the west, with the plateau some feet high, stretching away to its south, and mounts chiradzuru and mochiru towering aloft to the sky. from that goodly highland station, it was once hoped by the noble mackenzie, who, for largeness of heart and loving disposition, really deserved to be called the "bishop of central africa," that light and liberty would spread to all the interior. we still think it may be a centre for civilizing influences; for any one descending from these cool heights, and stepping into a boat on the upper shire, can sail three hundred miles without a check into the heart of africa. we passed through a tract of country covered with mopane trees, where the hard baked soil refused to let the usual thick crops of grass grow; and here we came upon very many tracks of buffaloes, elephants, antelopes, and the spoor of one lion. an ox we drove along with us, as provision for the way, was sorely bitten by the tsetse. the effect of the bite was, as usual, quite apparent two days afterwards, in the general flaccidity of the muscles, the drooping ears, and looks of illness. it always excited our wonder that we, who were frequently much bitten too by the same insects, felt no harm from their attacks. man shares the immunity of the wild animals. finding a few people on the evening of the th of august, who were supporting a wretched existence on tamarinds and mice, we ascertained that there was no hope of our being able to buy food anywhere nearer than the lakelet pamalombe, where the ajawa chief, kainka, was now living; but that plenty could be found with the maravi female chief, nyango. we turned away north-westwards, and struck the stream ribve-ribve, or rivi- rivi, which rises in the maravi range, and flows into the shire. as the rivi-rivi came from the n.w. we continued to travel along its banks, until we came to people who had successfully defended themselves against the hordes of the ajawa. by employing the men of one village to go forward and explain who we were to the next, we managed to prevent the frightened inhabitants from considering us a fresh party of ajawa, or of portuguese slaving agents. here they had cultivated maize, and were willing to sell, but no persuasion could induce them to give us guides to the chieftainess, nyango. they evidently felt that we were not to be trusted; though, as we had to certify to our own character, our companions did not fail "to blow our own trumpet," with blasts in which modesty was quite out of the question. to allay suspicion, we had at last to refrain from mentioning the lady's name. it would be wearisome to repeat the names of the villages we passed on our way to the north-west. one was the largest we ever saw in africa, and quite deserted, with the usual sad sight of many skeletons lying about. another was called tette. we know three places of this name, which fact shows it to be a native word; it seems to mean a place where the water rushes over rocks. a third village was called chipanga (a great work), a name identical with the shupanga of the portuguese. this repetition of names may indicate that the same people first took these epithets in their traditional passage from north to south. at this season of the year the nights are still cold, and the people, having no crops to occupy their attention, do not stir out till long after the sun is up. at other times they are off to their fields before the day dawns, and the first sound one hears is the loud talking of men and women, in which they usually indulge in the dark to scare off beasts by the sound of the human voice. when no work is to be done, the first warning of approaching day is the hemp-smoker's loud ringing cough. having been delayed one morning by some negotiation about guides, who were used chiefly to introduce us to other villages, we two whites walked a little way ahead, taking the direction of the stream. the men having been always able to find out our route by the prints of our shoes, we went on for a number of miles. this time, however, they lost our track, and failed to follow us. the path was well marked by elephants, hyenas, pallahs, and zebras, but for many a day no human foot had trod it. when the sun went down a deserted hamlet was reached, where we made comfortable beds for ourselves of grass. firing muskets to attract the attention of those who have strayed is the usual resource in these cases. on this occasion the sound of firearms tended to mislead us; for, hearing shots next morning, a long weary march led us only to some native hunters, who had been shooting buffaloes. returning to a small village, we met with some people who remembered our passing up to the lake in the boat; they were as kind as they could be. the only food they possessed was tamarinds, prepared with ashes, and a little cowitch meal. the cowitch, as mentioned before, has a velvety brown covering of minute prickles, which, if touched, enter the pores of the skin and cause a painful tingling. the women in times of scarcity collect the pods, kindle a fire of grass over them to destroy the prickles, then steep the beans till they begin to sprout, wash them in pure water, and either boil them or pound them into meal, which resembles our bean-meal. this plant climbs up the long grass, and abounds in all reedy parts, and, though a plague to the traveller who touches its pods, it performs good service in times of famine by saving many a life from starvation. its name here is kitedzi. having travelled at least twenty miles in search of our party that day, our rest on a mat in the best hut of the village was very sweet. we had dined the evening before on a pigeon each, and had eaten only a handful of kitedzi porridge this afternoon. the good wife of the village took a little corn which she had kept for seed, ground it after dark, and made it into porridge. this, and a cup of wild vegetables of a sweetish taste for a relish, a little boy brought in and put down, with several vigorous claps of his hands, in the manner which is esteemed polite, and which is strictly enjoined on all children. on the third day of separation, akosanjere, the headman of this village, conducted us forward to our party who had gone on to nseze, a district to the westward. this incident is mentioned, not for any interest it possesses, apart from the idea of the people it conveys. we were completely separated from our men for nearly three days, and had nothing wherewith to purchase food. the people were sorely pressed by famine and war, and their hospitality, poor as it was, did them great credit, and was most grateful to us. our own men had become confused and wandered, but had done their utmost to find us; on our rejoining them, the ox was slain, and all, having been on short commons, rejoiced in this "day of slaughter." akosanjere was, of course, rewarded to his heart's content. as we pursued our way, we came close up to a range of mountains, the most prominent peak of which is called mvai. this is a great, bare, rounded block of granite shooting up from the rest of the chain. it and several other masses of rock are of a light grey colour, with white patches, as if of lichens; the sides and summits are generally thinly covered with rather scraggy trees. there are several other prominent peaks--one, for instance, still further north, called chirobve. each has a name, but we could never ascertain that there was an appellation which applied to the whole. this fact, and our wish to commemorate the name of dr. kirk, induced us afterwards, when we could not discover a particular peak mentioned to us formerly as molomo-ao-koku, or cock's-bill, to call the whole chain from the west of the cataracts up to the north end of the lake, "kirk's range." the part we slept at opposite mvai was named paudio, and was evidently a continuation of the district of one of our stations on the shire, at which observations for latitude were formerly taken. leaving paudio, we had kirk's range close on our left and at least feet above us, and probably not less than feet above the sea. far to our right extended a long green wooded country rising gradually up to a ridge, ornamented with several detached mountains, which bounded the shire valley. in front, northwards, lay a valley as rich and lovely as we ever saw anywhere, terminating at the mountains, which, stretched away some thirty miles beyond our range of vision and ended at cape maclear. the groups of trees had never been subjected to the landscape gardener's art; but had been cut down mercilessly, just as suited the convenience of the cultivator; yet the various combinations of open forest, sloping woodland, grassy lawns, and massive clumps of dark green foliage along the running streams, formed as beautiful a landscape as could be seen on the thames. this valley is named goa or gova, and as we moved through it we found that what was smooth to the eye was very much furrowed by running streams winding round innumerable knolls. these little brooklets came down from the range on our left, and the water was deliciously cool. when we came abreast of the peak chirobve, the people would no longer give us guides. they were afraid of their enemies, whose dwellings we now had on our east; and, proceeding without any one to lead us, or to introduce us to the inhabitants, we were perplexed by all the paths running zigzag across instead of along the valley. they had been made by the villagers going from the hamlets on the slopes to their gardens in the meadows below. to add to our difficulties, the rivulets and mountain- torrents had worn gullies some thirty or forty feet deep, with steep sides that could not be climbed except at certain points. the remaining inhabitants on the flank of the range when they saw strangers winding from side to side, and often attempting to cross these torrent beds at impossible places, screamed out their shrill war-alarm, and made the valley ring with their wild outcries. it was war, and war alone, and we were too deep down in the valley to make our voices heard in explanation. fortunately, they had burned off the long grass to a great extent. it only here and there hid them from us. selecting an open spot, we spent a night regarded by all around us as slave-hunters, but were undisturbed, though the usual way of treating an enemy in this part of the country is by night attack. the nights at the altitude of the valley were cool, the lowest temperature shown being degrees; at a.m. and p.m. it was degrees, about the average temperature of the day; at mid-day degrees, and sunset degrees. our march was very much hindered by the imperfectly burned corn and grass stalks having fallen across the paths. to a reader in england this will seem a very small obstacle. but he must fancy the grass stems as thick as his little finger, and the corn-stalks like so many walkingsticks lying in one direction, and so supporting each other that one has to lift his feet up as when wading through deep high heather. the stems of grass showed the causes of certain explosions as loud as pistols, which are heard when the annual fires come roaring over the land. the heated air inside expanding bursts the stalk with a loud report, and strews the fragments on the ground. a very great deal of native corn had been cultivated here, and we saw buffaloes feeding in the deserted gardens, and some women, who ran away very much faster than the beasts did. on the th, seeing some people standing under a tree by a village, we sat down, and sent masego, one of our party, to communicate. the headman, matunda, came back with him, bearing a calabash with water for us. he said that all the people had fled from the ajawa, who had only just desisted from their career of pillage on being paid five persons as a fine for some offence for which they had commenced the invasion. matunda had plenty of grain to sell, and all the women were soon at work grinding it into meal. we secured an abundant supply, and four milk goats. the manganja goat is of a very superior breed to the general african animal, being short in the legs and having a finely-shaped broad body. by promising the makololo that, when we no longer needed the milk, they should have the goats to improve the breed of their own at home, they were induced to take the greatest possible care of both goats and kids in driving and pasturing. after leaving matunda, we came to the end of the highland valley; and, before descending a steep declivity of a thousand feet towards the part which may be called the heel of the lake, we had the bold mountains of cape maclear on our right, with the blue water at their base, the hills of tsenga in the distance in front, and kirk's range on our left, stretching away northwards, and apparently becoming lower. as we came down into a fine rich undulating valley, many perennial streams running to the east from the hills on our left were crossed, while all those behind us on the higher ground seemed to unite in one named lekue, which flowed into the lake. after a long day's march in the valley of the lake, where the temperature was very much higher than in that we had just left, we entered the village of katosa, which is situated on the bank of a stream among gigantic timber trees, and found there a large party of ajawa--waiau, they called themselves--all armed with muskets. we sat down among them, and were soon called to the chiefs court, and presented with an ample mess of porridge, buffalo meat, and beer. katosa was more frank than any manganja chief we had met, and complimented us by saying that "we must be his 'bazimo' (good spirits of his ancestors); for when he lived at pamalombe, we lighted upon him from above--men the like of whom he had never seen before, and coming he knew not whence." he gave us one of his own large and clean huts to sleep in; and we may take this opportunity of saying that the impression we received, from our first journey on the hills among the villages of chisunse, of the excessive dirtiness of the manganja, was erroneous. this trait was confined to the cool highlands. here crowds of men and women were observed to perform their ablutions daily in the stream that ran past their villages; and this we have observed elsewhere to be a common custom with both manganja and ajawa. before we started on the morning of the st september, katosa sent an enormous calabash of beer, containing at least three gallons, and then came and wished us to "stop a day and eat with him." on explaining to him the reasons for our haste, he said that he was in the way by which travellers usually passed, he never stopped them in their journeys, but would like to look at us for a day. on our promising to rest a little with him on our return, he gave us about two pecks of rice, and three guides to conduct us to a subordinate female chief, nkwinda, living on the borders of the lake in front. the ajawa, from having taken slaves down to quillimane and mosambique, knew more of us than katosa did. their muskets were carefully polished, and never out of these slaver's hands for a moment, though in the chiefs presence. we naturally felt apprehensive that we should never see katosa again. a migratory afflatus seems to have come over the ajawa tribes. wars among themselves, for the supply of the coast slave-trade, are said to have first set them in motion. the usual way in which they have advanced among the manganja has been by slave-trading in a friendly way. then, professing to wish to live as subjects, they have been welcomed as guests, and the manganja, being great agriculturists, have been able to support considerable bodies of these visitors for a time. when the provisions became scarce, the guests began to steal from the fields; quarrels arose in consequence, and, the ajawa having firearms, their hosts got the worst of it, and were expelled from village after village, and out of their own country. the manganja were quite as bad in regard to slave-trading as the ajawa, but had less enterprise, and were much more fond of the home pursuits of spinning, weaving, smelting iron, and cultivating the soil, than of foreign travel. the ajawa had little of a mechanical turn, and not much love for agriculture, but were very keen traders and travellers. this party seemed to us to be in the first or friendly stage of intercourse with katosa; and, as we afterwards found, he was fully alive to the danger. our course was shaped towards the n.w., and we traversed a large fertile tract of rich soil extensively cultivated, but dotted with many gigantic thorny acacias which had proved too large for the little axes of the cultivators. after leaving nkwinda, the first village we spent a night at in the district ngabi was that of chembi, and it had a stockade around it. the azitu or mazitu were said to be ravaging the country to the west of us, and no one was safe except in a stockade. we have so often, in travelling, heard of war in front, that we paid little attention to the assertion of chembi, that the whole country to the n.w. was in flight before these mazitu, under a chief with the rather formidable name of mowhiriwhiri; we therefore resolved to go on to chinsamba's, still further in the same direction, and hear what he said about it. the only instrument of husbandry here is the short-handled hoe; and about tette the labour of tilling the soil, as represented in the woodcut, is performed entirely by female slaves. on the west coast a double-handled hoe is employed. here the small hoe is seen in the hands of both men and women. in other parts of africa a hoe with a handle four feet long is used, but the plough is quite unknown. in illustration of the manner in which the native knowledge of agriculture strikes an honest intelligent observer, it may be mentioned that the first time good bishop mackenzie beheld how well the fields of the manganja were cultivated on the hills, he remarked to dr. livingstone, then his fellow-traveller--"when telling the people in england what were my objects in going out to africa, i stated that, among other things, i meant to teach these people agriculture; but i now see that they know far more about it than i do." this, we take it, was an honest straightforward testimony, and we believe that every unprejudiced witness, who has an opportunity of forming an opinion of africans who have never been debased by slavery, will rank them very much higher in the scale of intelligence, industry, and manhood, than others who know them only in a state of degradation. on coming near chinsamba's two stockades, on the banks of the lintipe, we were told that the mazitu had been repulsed there the day before, and we had evidence of the truth of the report of the attack in the sad sight of the bodies of the slain. the zulus had taken off large numbers of women laden with corn; and, when driven back, had cut off the ears of a male prisoner, as a sort of credential that he had been with the mazitu, and with grim humour sent him to tell chinsamba "to take good care of the corn in the stockades, for they meant to return for it in a month or two." chinsamba's people were drumming with might and main on our arrival, to express their joy at their deliverance from the mazitu. the drum is the chief instrument of music among the manganja, and with it they express both their joy and grief. they excel in beating time. chinsamba called us into a very large hut, and presented us with a huge basket of beer. the glare of sunlight from which we had come enabled him, in diplomatic fashion, to have a good view of us before our eyes became enough accustomed to the dark inside to see him. he has a jewish cast of countenance, or rather the ancient assyrian face, as seen in the monuments brought to the british museum by mr. layard. this form of face is very common in this country, and leads to the belief that the true type of the negro is not that met on the west coast, from which most people have derived their ideas of the african. chinsamba had many abisa or babisa in his stockade, and it was chiefly by the help of their muskets that he had repulsed the mazitu: these babisa are great travellers and traders. we liked chinsamba very well, and found that he was decidedly opposed to our risking our lives by going further to the n.w. the mazitu were believed to occupy all the hills in that direction, so we spent the th of september with him. it is rather a minute thing to mention, and it will only be understood by those who have children of their own, but the cries of the little ones, in their infant sorrows, are the same in tone, at different ages, here as all over the world. we have been perpetually reminded of home and family by the wailings which were once familiar to parental ears and heart, and felt thankful that to the sorrows of childhood our children would never have superadded the heartrending woes of the slave-trade. taking chinsamba's advice to avoid the mazitu in their marauding, we started on the th september away to the n.e., and passed mile after mile of native cornfields, with an occasional cotton-patch. after a long march, we passed over a waterless plain about n.n.w. of the hills of tsenga to a village on the lake, and thence up its shores to chitanda. the banks of the lake were now crowded with fugitives, who had collected there for the poor protection which the reeds afforded. for miles along the water's edge was one continuous village of temporary huts. the people had brought a little corn with them; but they said, "what shall we eat when that is done? when we plant corn, the wild beasts (zinyama, as they call the mazitu) come and take it. when we plant cassava, they do the same. how are we to live?" a poor blind woman, thinking we were mazitu, rushed off in front of us with outspread arms, lifting the feet high, in the manner peculiar to those who have lost their sight, and jumped into the reeds of a stream for safety. in our way along the shores we crossed several running rivulets of clear cold water, which, from having reeds at their confluences, had not been noticed in our previous exploration in the boat. one of these was called mokola, and another had a strong odour of sulphuretted hydrogen. we reached molamba on the th september, and found our old acquaintance, nkomo, there still. one of the advantages of travelling along the shores of the lake was, that we could bathe anywhere in its clear fresh water. to us, who had been obliged so often to restrain our inclination in the zambesi and shire for fear of crocodiles, this was pleasant beyond measure. the water now was of the same temperature as it was on our former visit, or degrees fahr. the immense depth of the lake prevents the rays of the sun from raising the temperature as high as that of the shire and zambesi; and the crocodiles, having always clear water in the lake, and abundance of fish, rarely attack man; many of these reptiles could be seen basking on the rocks. a day's march beyond molamba brought us to the lakelet chia, which lies parallel with the lake. it is three or four miles long, by from one to one and a half broad, and communicates with the lake by an arm of good depth, but with some rocks in it. as we passed up between the lake and the eastern shore of this lakelet, we did not see any streams flowing into it. it is quite remarkable for the abundance of fish; and we saw upwards of fifty large canoes engaged in the fishery, which is carried on by means of hand-nets with side-frame poles about seven feet long. these nets are nearly identical with those now in use in normandy--the difference being that the african net has a piece of stick lashed across the handle-ends of the side poles to keep them steady, which is a great improvement. the fish must be very abundant to be scooped out of the water in such quantities as we saw, and by so many canoes. there is quite a trade here in dried fish. the country around is elevated, undulating, and very extensively planted with cassava. the hoe in use has a handle of four feet in length, and the iron part is exactly of the same form as that in the country of the bechuanas. the baskets here, which are so closely woven together as to hold beer, are the same with those employed to hold milk in kaffirland--a thousand miles distant. marching on foot is peculiarly conducive to meditation--one is glad of any subject to occupy the mind, and relieve the monotony of the weary treadmill-like trudge-trudging. this chia net brought to our mind that the smith's bellows made here of a goatskin bag, with sticks along the open ends, are the same as those in use in the bechuana country far to the south-west. these, with the long-handled hoe, may only show that each successive horde from north to south took inventions with it from the same original source. where that source may have been is probably indicated by another pair of bellows, which we observed below the victoria falls, being found in central india and among the gipsies of europe. men in remote times may have had more highly-developed instincts, which enabled them to avoid or use poisons; but the late archbishop whately has proved, that wholly untaught savages never could invent anything, or even subsist at all. abundant corroboration of his arguments is met with in this country, where the natives require but little in the way of clothing, and have remarkably hardy stomachs. although possessing a knowledge of all the edible roots and fruits in the country, having hoes to dig with, and spears, bows, and arrows to kill the game,--we have seen that, notwithstanding all these appliances and means to boot, they have perished of absolute starvation. the art of making fire is the same in india as in africa. the smelting furnaces, for reducing iron and copper from the ores, are also similar. yellow haematite, which bears not the smallest resemblance either in colour or weight to the metal, is employed near kolobeng for the production of iron. malachite, the precious green stone used in civilized life for vases, would never be suspected by the uninstructed to be a rich ore of copper, and yet it is extensively smelted for rings and other ornaments in the heart of africa. a copper bar of native manufacture four feet long was offered to us for sale at chinsamba's. these arts are monuments attesting the fact, that some instruction from above must at some time or other have been supplied to mankind; and, as archbishop whately says, "the most probable conclusion is, that man when first created, or very shortly afterwards, was advanced, by the creator himself, to a state above that of a mere savage." the argument for an original revelation to man, though quite independent of the bible history, tends to confirm that history. it is of the same nature with this, that man could not have _made_ himself, and therefore must have had a divine _creator_. mankind could not, in the first instance, have _civilized_ themselves, and therefore must have had a superhuman _instructor_. in connection with this subject, it is remarkable that throughout successive generations no change has taken place in the form of the various inventions. hammers, tongs, hoes, axes, adzes, handles to them; needles, bows and arrows, with the mode of feathering the latter; spears, for killing game, with spear-heads having what is termed "dish" on both sides to give them, when thrown, the rotatory motion of rifle-balls; the arts of spinning and weaving, with that of pounding and steeping the inner bark of a tree till it serves as clothing; millstones for grinding corn into meal; the manufacture of the same kind of pots or _chatties_ as in india; the art of cooking, of brewing beer and straining it as was done in ancient egypt; fish-hooks, fishing and hunting nets, fish-baskets, and weirs, the same as in the highlands of scotland; traps for catching animals, etc., etc.,--have all been so very permanent from age to age, and some of them of identical patterns are so widely spread over the globe, as to render it probable that they were all, at least in some degree, derived from one source. the african traditions, which seem possessed of the same unchangeability as the arts to which they relate, like those of all other nations refer their origin to a superior being. and it is much more reasonable to receive the hints given in genesis, concerning direct instruction from god to our first parents or their children in religious or moral duty, and probably in the knowledge of the arts of life, { } than to give credence to the theory that untaught savage man subsisted in a state which would prove fatal to all his descendants, and that in such helpless state he made many inventions which most of his progeny retained, but never improved upon during some thirty centuries. we crossed in canoes the arm of the lake, which joins chia to nyassa, and spent the night on its northern bank. the whole country adjacent to the lake, from this point up to kota-kota bay, is densely peopled by thousands who have fled from the forays of the mazitu in hopes of protection from the arabs who live there. in three running rivulets we saw the _shuare_ palm, and an oil palm which is much inferior to that on the west coast. though somewhat similar in appearance, the fruit is not much larger than hazel-nuts, and the people do not use them, on account of the small quantity of oil which they afford. the idea of using oil for light never seems to have entered the african mind. here a bundle of split and dried bamboo, tied together with creeping plants, as thick as a man's body, and about twenty feet in length, is employed in the canoes as a torch to attract the fish at night. it would be considered a piece of the most wasteful extravagance to burn the oil they obtain from the castor-oil bean and other seeds, and also from certain fish, or in fact to do anything with it but anoint their heads and bodies. we arrived at kota-kota bay in the afternoon of the th september, ; and sat down under a magnificent wild fig-tree with leaves ten inches long, by five broad, about a quarter of a mile from the village of juma ben saidi, and yakobe ben arame, whom we had met on the river kaombe, a little north of this, in our first exploration of the lake. we had rested but a short time when juma, who is evidently the chief person here, followed by about fifty people, came to salute us and to invite us to take up our quarters in his village. the hut which, by mistake, was offered, was so small and dirty, that we preferred sleeping in an open space a few hundred yards off. juma afterwards apologized for the mistake, and presented us with rice, meal, sugar-cane, and a piece of malachite. we returned his visit on the following day, and found him engaged in building a dhow or arab vessel, to replace one which he said had been wrecked. this new one was fifty feet long, twelve feet broad, and five feet deep. the planks were of a wood like teak, here called timbati, and the timbers of a closer grained wood called msoro. the sight of this dhow gave us a hint which, had we previously received it, would have prevented our attempting to carry a vessel of iron past the cataracts. the trees around katosa's village were timbati, and they would have yielded planks fifty feet long and thirty inches broad. with a few native carpenters a good vessel could be built on the lake nearly as quickly as one could be carried past the cataracts, and at a vastly less cost. juma said that no money would induce him to part with this dhow. he was very busy in transporting slaves across the lake by means of two boats, which we saw returning from a trip in the afternoon. as he did not know of our intention to visit him, we came upon several gangs of stout young men slaves, each secured by the neck to one common chain, waiting for exportation, and several more in slave-sticks. these were all civilly removed before our interview was over, because juma knew that we did not relish the sight. when we met the same arabs in , they had but few attendants: according to their own account, they had now, in the village and adjacent country, souls. it is certain that tens of thousands had flocked to them for protection, and all their power and influence must be attributed to the possession of guns and gunpowder. this crowding of refugees to any point where there is a hope for security for life and property is very common in this region, and the knowledge of it made our hopes beat high for the success of a peaceful mission on the shores of the lake. the rate, however, in which the people here will perish by the next famine, or be exported by juma and others, will, we fear, depopulate those parts which we have just described as crowded with people. hunger will ere long compel them to sell each other. an intelligent man complained to us of the arabs often seizing slaves, to whom they took a fancy, without the formality of purchase; but the price is so low--from two to four yards of calico--that one can scarcely think this seizure and exportation without payment worth their while. the boats were in constant employment, and, curiously enough, ben habib, whom we met at linyanti in , had been taken across the lake, the day before our arrival at this bay, on his way from sesheke to kilwa, and we became acquainted with a native servant of the arabs, called selele saidallah, who could speak the makololo language pretty fairly from having once spent some months in the barotse valley. from boyhood upwards we have been accustomed, from time to time, to read in books of travels about the great advances annually made by mohammedanism in africa. the rate at which this religion spreads was said to be so rapid, that in after days, in our own pretty extensive travels, we have constantly been on the look out for the advancing wave from north to south, which, it was prophesied, would soon reduce the entire continent to the faith of the false prophet. the only foundation that we can discover for the assertions referred to, and for others of more recent date, is the fact that in a remote corner of north-western africa the fulahs, and mandingoes, and some others in northern africa, as mentioned by dr. barth, have made conquests of territory; but even they care so very little for the extension of their faith, that after the conquest no pains whatever are taken to indoctrinate the adults of the tribe. this is in exact accordance with the impression we have received from our intercourse with mohammedans and christians. the followers of christ alone are anxious to propagate their faith. a _quasi_ philanthropist would certainly never need to recommend the followers of islam, whom we have met, to restrain their benevolence by preaching that "charity should begin at home." though selele and his companions were bound to their masters by domestic ties, the only new idea they had imbibed from mohammedanism was, that it would be wrong to eat meat killed by other people. they thought it would be "unlucky." just as the inhabitants of kolobeng, before being taught the requirements of christianity, refrained from hoeing their gardens on sundays, lest they should reap an unlucky crop. so far as we could learn, no efforts had been made to convert the natives, though these two arabs, and about a dozen half-castes, had been in the country for many years; and judging from our experience with a dozen mohammedans in our employ at high wages for sixteen months, the africans would be the better men in proportion as they retained their native faith. this may appear only a harsh judgment from a mind imbued with christian prejudices; but without any pretention to that impartiality, which leaves it doubtful to which side the affections lean, the truth may be fairly stated by one who viewed all mohammedans and africans with the sincerest good will. our twelve mohammedans from johanna were the least open of any of our party to impression from kindness. a marked difference in general conduct was apparent. the makololo, and other natives of the country, whom we had with us, invariably shared with each other the food they had cooked, but the johanna men partook of their meals at a distance. this, at first, we attributed to their moslem prejudices; but when they saw the cooking process of the others nearly complete, they came, sat beside them, and ate the portion offered without ever remembering to return the compliment when their own turn came to be generous. the makololo and the others grumbled at their greediness, yet always followed the common custom of africans of sharing their food with all who sit around them. what vexed us most in the johanna men was their indifference to the welfare of each other. once, when they were all coming to the ship after sleeping ashore, one of them walked into the water with the intention of swimming off to the boat, and while yet hardly up to his knees was seized by a horrid crocodile and dragged under; the poor fellow gave a shriek, and held up his hand for aid, but none of his countrymen stirred to his assistance, and he was never seen again. on asking his brother-in-law why he did not help him, he replied, "well, no one told him to go into the water. it was his own fault that he was killed." the makololo on the other hand rescued a woman at senna by entering the water, and taking her out of the crocodile's mouth. it is not assumed that their religion had much to do in the matter. many mohammedans might contrast favourably with indifferent christians; but, so far as our experience in east africa goes, the moral tone of the follower of mahomed is pitched at a lower key than that of the untutored african. the ancient zeal for propagating the tenets of the koran has evaporated, and been replaced by the most intense selfishness and grossest sensuality. the only known efforts made by mohammedans, namely, those in the north-west and north of the continent, are so linked with the acquisition of power and plunder, as not to deserve the name of religious propagandism; and the only religion that now makes proselytes is that of jesus christ. to those who are capable of taking a comprehensive view of this subject, nothing can be adduced of more telling significance than the well-attested fact, that while the mohammedans, fulahs, and others towards central africa, make a few proselytes by a process which gratifies their own covetousness, three small sections of the christian converts, the africans in the south, in the west indies, and on the west coast of africa actually contribute for the support and spread of their religion upwards of , pounds annually. { } that religion which so far overcomes the selfishness of the human heart must be divine. leaving kota-kota bay, we turned away due west on the great slave route to katanga's and cazembe's country in londa. juma lent us his servant, selele, to lead us the first day's march. he said that the traders from kilwa and iboe cross the lake either at this bay, or at tsenga, or at the southern end of the lake; and that wherever they may cross they all go by this path to the interior. they have slaves with them to carry their goods, and when they reach a spot where they can easily buy others, they settle down and begin the traffic, and at once cultivate grain. so much of the land lies waste, that no objection is ever made to any one taking possession of as much as he needs; they can purchase a field of cassava for their present wants for very little, and they continue trading in the country for two or three years, and giving what weight their muskets possess to the chief who is most liberal to them. the first day's march led us over a rich, well-cultivated plain. this was succeeded by highlands, undulating, stony, and covered with scraggy trees. many banks of well rounded shingle appear. the disintegration of the rocks, now going on, does not round off the angles; they are split up by the heat and cold into angular fragments. on these high downs we crossed the river kaombe. beyond it we came among the upland vegetation--rhododendrons, proteas, the masuko, and molompi. at the foot of the hill, kasuko-suko, we found the river bua running north to join the kaombe. we had to go a mile out of our way for a ford; the stream is deep enough in parts for hippopotami. the various streams not previously noticed, crossed in this journey, had before this led us to the conclusion, independently of the testimony of the natives, that no large river ran into the north end of the lake. no such affluent was needed to account for the shire's perennial flow. on september th we reached the top of the ascent which, from its many ups and downs, had often made us puff and blow as if broken-winded. the water of the streams we crossed was deliciously cold, and now that we had gained the summit at ndonda, where the boiling-point of water showed an altitude of feet above the sea, the air was delightful. looking back we had a magnificent view of the lake, but the haze prevented our seeing beyond the sea horizon. the scene was beautiful, but it was impossible to dissociate the lovely landscape whose hills and dales had so sorely tried our legs and lungs, from the sad fact that this was part of the great slave route now actually in use. by this road many "ten thousands" have here seen "the sea," "the sea," but with sinking hearts; for the universal idea among the captive gangs is, that they are going to be fattened and eaten by the whites. they cannot of course be so much shocked as we should be--their sensibilities are far from fine, their feelings are more obtuse than ours--in fact, "the live eels are used to being skinned," perhaps they rather like it. we who are not philosophic, blessed the providence which at thermopylae in ancient days rolled back the tide of eastern conquest from the west, and so guided the course of events that light and liberty and gospel truth spread to our distant isle, and emancipating our race freed them from the fear of ever again having to climb fatiguing heights and descend wearisome hollows in a slave-gang, as we suppose they did when the fair english youths were exposed for sale at rome. looking westwards we perceived that, what from below had the appearance of mountains, was only the edge of a table-land which, though at first undulating, soon became smooth, and sloped towards the centre of the country. to the south a prominent mountain called chipata, and to the south-west another named ngalla, by which the bua is said to rise, gave character to the landscape. in the north, masses of hills prevented our seeing more than eight or ten miles. the air which was so exhilarating to europeans had an opposite effect on five men who had been born and reared in the malaria of the delta of the zambesi. no sooner did they reach the edge of the plateau at ndonda, than they lay down prostrate, and complained of pains all over them. the temperature was not much lower than that on the shores of the lake below, degrees being the mean temperature of the day, degrees the lowest, and degrees the highest during the twenty-four hours; at the lake it was about l degrees higher. of the symptoms they complained of--pains everywhere--nothing could be made. and yet it was evident that they had good reason for saying that they were ill. they scarified almost every part of their bodies as a remedial measure; medicines, administered on the supposition that their malady was the effect of a sudden chill, had no effect, and in two days one of them actually died in consequence of, as far as we could judge, a change from a malarious to a purer and more rarefied atmosphere. as we were on the slave route, we found the people more churlish than usual. on being expostulated with about it, they replied, "we have been made wary by those who come to buy slaves." the calamity of death having befallen our party, seemed, however, to awaken their sympathies. they pointed out their usual burying-place, lent us hoes, and helped to make the grave. when we offered to pay all expenses, they showed that they had not done these friendly offices without fully appreciating their value; for they enumerated the use of the hut, the mat on which the deceased had lain, the hoes, the labour, and the medicine which they had scattered over the place to make him rest in peace. the primitive african faith seems to be that there is one almighty maker of heaven and earth; that he has given the various plants of earth to man to be employed as mediators between him and the spirit world, where all who have ever been born and died continue to live; that sin consists in offences against their fellow-men, either here or among the departed, and that death is often a punishment of guilt, such as witchcraft. their idea of moral evil differs in no respect from ours, but they consider themselves amenable only to inferior beings, not to the supreme. evil- speaking--lying--hatred--disobedience to parents--neglect of them--are said by the intelligent to have been all known to be sin, as well as theft, murder, or adultery, before they knew aught of europeans or their teaching. the only new addition to their moral code is, that it is wrong to have more wives than one. this, until the arrival of europeans, never entered into their minds even as a doubt. everything not to be accounted for by common causes, whether of good or evil, is ascribed to the deity. men are inseparably connected with the spirits of the departed, and when one dies he is believed to have joined the hosts of his ancestors. all the africans we have met with are as firmly persuaded of their future existence as of their present life. and we have found none in whom the belief in the supreme being was not rooted. he is so invariably referred to as the author of everything supernatural, that, unless one is ignorant of their language, he cannot fail to notice this prominent feature of their faith. when they pass into the unseen world, they do not seem to be possessed with the fear of punishment. the utensils placed upon the grave are all broken as if to indicate that they will never be used by the departed again. the body is put into the grave in a sitting posture, and the hands are folded in front. in some parts of the country there are tales which we could translate into faint glimmerings of a resurrection; but whether these fables, handed down from age to age, convey that meaning to the natives themselves we cannot tell. the true tradition of faith is asserted to be "though a man die he will live again;" the false that when he dies he is dead for ever. chapter xiv. important geographical discoveries in the wabisa countries--cruelty of the slave-trade--the mazitu--serious illness of dr. livingstone--return to the ship. in our course westwards, we at first passed over a gently undulating country, with a reddish clayey soil, which, from the heavy crops, appeared to be very fertile. many rivulets were crossed, some running southwards into the bua, and others northwards into the loangwa, a river which we formerly saw flowing into the lake. further on, the water was chiefly found in pools and wells. then still further, in the same direction, some watercourses were said to flow into that same "loangwa of the lake," and others into the loangwa, which flows to the south-west, and enters the zambesi at zumbo, and is here called the "loangwa of the maravi." the trees were in general scraggy, and covered, exactly as they are in the damp climate of the coast, with lichens, resembling orchilla- weed. the maize, which loves rather a damp soil, had been planted on ridges to allow the superfluous moisture to run off. everything indicated a very humid climate, and the people warned us that, as the rains were near, we were likely to be prevented from returning by the country becoming flooded and impassable. villages, as usual encircled by euphorbia hedges, were numerous, and a great deal of grain had been cultivated around them. domestic fowls, in plenty, and pigeons with dovecots like those in egypt were seen. the people call themselves matumboka, but the only difference between them and the rest of the manganja is in the mode of tattooing the face. their language is the same. their distinctive mark consists of four tattooed lines diverging from the point between the eyebrows, which, in frowning, the muscles form into a furrow. the other lines of tattooing, as in all manganja, run in long seams, which crossing each other at certain angles form a great number of triangular spaces on the breast, back, arms, and thighs. the cuticle is divided by a knife, and the edges of the incision are drawn apart till the true skin appears. by a repetition of this process, lines of raised cicatrices are formed, which are thought to give beauty, no matter how much pain the fashion gives. it would not be worth while to advert for a moment to the routine of travelling, or the little difficulties that beset every one who attempts to penetrate into a new country, were it not to show the great source of the power here possessed by slave-traders. we needed help in carrying our goods, while our men were ill, though still able to march. when we had settled with others for hire, we were often told, that the dealers in men had taken possession of some, and had taken them away altogether. other things led us to believe that the slave-traders carry matters with a high hand; and no wonder, for the possession of gunpowder gives them almost absolute power. the mode by which tribes armed with bows and arrows carry on warfare, or defend themselves, is by ambuscade. they never come out in open fight, but wait for the enemy ensconced behind trees, or in the long grass of the country, and shoot at him unawares. consequently, if men come against them with firearms, when, as is usually the case, the long grass is all burned off, the tribe attacked are as helpless as a wooden ship, possessing only signal guns, would be before an iron-clad steamer. the time of year selected for this kind of warfare is nearly always that in which the grass is actually burnt off, or is so dry as readily to take fire. the dry grass in africa looks more like ripe english wheat late in the autumn, than anything else we can compare it to. let us imagine an english village standing in a field of this sort, bounded only by the horizon, and enemies setting fire to a line of a mile or two, by running along with bunches of burning straw in their hands, touching here and there the inflammable material,--the wind blowing towards the doomed village--the inhabitants with only one or two old muskets, but ten to one no powder,--the long line of flames, leaping thirty feet into the air with dense masses of black smoke--and pieces of charred grass falling down in showers. would not the stoutest english villager, armed only with the bow and arrow against the enemy's musket, quail at the idea of breaking through that wall of fire? when at a distance, we once saw a scene like this, and had the charred grass, literally as thick as flakes of black snow, falling around us, there was no difficulty in understanding the secret of the slave-trader's power. on the st of september, we arrived at the village of the chief muasi, or muazi; it is surrounded by a stockade, and embowered in very tall euphorbia-trees; their height, thirty or forty feet, shows that it has been inhabited for at least one generation. a visitation of disease or death causes the headmen to change the site of their villages, and plant new hedges; but, though muazi has suffered from the attacks of the mazitu, he has evidently clung to his birthplace. the village is situated about two miles south-west of a high hill called kasungu, which gives the name to a district extending to the loangwa of the maravi. several other detached granite hills have been shot up on the plain, and many stockaded villages, all owing allegiance to muazi, are scattered over it. on our arrival, the chief was sitting in the smooth shady place, called boalo, where all public business is transacted, with about two hundred men and boys around him. we paid our guides with due ostentation. masiko, the tallest of our party, measured off the fathom of cloth agreed upon, and made it appear as long as possible, by facing round to the crowd, and cutting a few inches beyond what his outstretched arms could reach, to show that there was no deception. this was by way of advertisement. the people are mightily gratified at having a tall fellow to measure the cloth for them. it pleases them even better than cutting it by a tape-line--though very few men of six feet high can measure off their own length with their outstretched arms. here, where arab traders have been, the cubit called _mokono_, or elbow, begins to take the place of the fathom in use further south. the measure is taken from the point of the bent elbow to the end of the middle finger. we found, on visiting muazi on the following day, that he was as frank and straightforward as could reasonably be expected. he did not wish us to go to the n.n.w., because he carries on a considerable trade in ivory there. we were anxious to get off the slave route, to people not visited before by traders; but muazi naturally feared, that if we went to what is said to be a well-watered country, abounding in elephants, we might relieve him of the ivory which he now obtains at a cheap rate, and sells to the slave-traders as they pass kasungu to the east; but at last he consented, warning us that "great difficulty would be experienced in obtaining food--a district had been depopulated by slave wars--and a night or two must be spent in it; but he would give us good guides, who would go three days with us, before turning, and then further progress must depend on ourselves." some of our men having been ill ever since we mounted this highland plain, we remained two days with muazi. a herd of fine cattle showed that no tsetse existed in the district. they had the indian hump, and were very fat, and very tame. the boys rode on both cows and bulls without fear, and the animals were so fat and lazy, that the old ones only made a feeble attempt to kick their young tormentors. muazi never milks the cows; he complained that, but for the mazitu having formerly captured some, he should now have had very many. they wander over the country at large, and certainly thrive. after leaving muazi's, we passed over a flat country sparsely covered with the scraggy upland trees, but brightened with many fine flowers. the grass was short, reaching no higher than the knee, and growing in tufts with bare spaces between, though the trees were draped with many various lichens, and showed a moist climate. a high and very sharp wind blew over the flats; its piercing keenness was not caused by low temperature, for the thermometer stood at degrees. we were now on the sources of the loangwa of the maravi, which enters the zambesi at zumbo, and were struck by the great resemblance which the boggy and sedgy streams here presented to the sources of the leeba, an affluent of the zambesi formerly observed in londa, and of the kasai, which some believe to be the principal branch of the congo or zaire. we had taken pains to ascertain from the travelled babisa and arabs as much as possible about the country in front, which, from the lessening time we had at our disposal, we feared we could scarcely reach, and had heard a good deal of a small lake called bemba. as we proceeded west, we passed over the sources not only of the loangwa, but of another stream, called moitawa or moitala, which was represented to be the main feeder of lake bemba. this would be of little importance, but for the fact that the considerable river luapula, or loapula is said to flow out of bemba to the westward, and then to spread out into another and much larger lake, named moero, or moelo. flowing still further in the same direction, the loapula forms lake mofue, or mofu, and after this it is said to pass the town of cazembe, bend to the north, and enter lake tanganyika. whither the water went after it entered the last lake, no one would venture an assertion. but that the course indicated is the true watershed of that part of the country, we believe from the unvarying opinion of native travellers. there could be no doubt that our informants had been in the country beyond cazembe's, for they knew and described chiefs whom we afterwards met about thirty-five or forty miles west of his town. the lualaba is said to flow into the loapula--and when, for the sake of testing the accuracy of the travelled, it was asserted that all the water of the region round the town of cazembe flowed into the luambadzi, or luambezi (zambesi), they remarked with a smile, "he says, that the loapula flows into the zambesi--did you ever hear such nonsense?" or words to that effect. we were forced to admit, that according to native accounts, our previous impression of the zambesi's draining the country about cazembe's had been a mistake. their geographical opinions are now only stated, without any further comment than that the itinerary given by the arabs and others shows that the loapula is twice crossed on the way to cazembe's; and we may add that we have never found any difficulty from the alleged incapacity of the negro to tell which way a river flows. the boiling-point of water showed a descent, from the edge of the plateau to our furthest point west, of feet; but this can only be considered as an approximation, and no dependence could have been placed on it, had we not had the courses of the streams to confirm this rather rough mode of ascertaining altitudes. the slope, as shown by the watershed, was to the "loangwa of the maravi," and towards the moitala, or south-west, west, and north-west. after we leave the feeders of lake nyassa, the water drains towards the centre of the continent. the course of the kasai, a river seen during dr. livingstone's journey to the west coast, and its feeders was to the north-east, or somewhat in the same direction. whether the water thus drained off finds its way out by the congo, or by the nile, has not yet been ascertained. some parts of the continent have been said to resemble an inverted dinner-plate. this portion seems more of the shape, if shape it has, of a wide-awake hat, with the crown a little depressed. the altitude of the brim in some parts is considerable; in others, as at tette and the bottom of murchison's cataracts, it is so small that it could be ascertained only by eliminating the daily variations of the barometer, by simultaneous observations on the coast, and at points some two or three hundred miles inland. so long as african rivers remain in what we may call the brim, they present no obstructions; but no sooner do they emerge from the higher lands than their utility is impaired by cataracts. the low lying belt is very irregular. at times sloping up in the manner of the rim of an inverted dinner-plate--while in other cases, a high ridge rises near the sea, to be succeeded by a lower district inland before we reach the central plateau. the breadth of the low lands is sometimes as much as three hundred miles, and that breadth determines the limits of navigation from the seaward. we made three long marches beyond muazi's in a north-westerly direction; the people were civil enough, but refused to sell us any food. we were travelling too fast, they said; in fact, they were startled, and before they recovered their surprise, we were obliged to depart. we suspected that muazi had sent them orders to refuse us food, that we might thus be prevented from going into the depopulated district; but this may have been mere suspicion, the result of our own uncharitable feelings. we spent one night at machambwe's village, and another at chimbuzi's. it is seldom that we can find the headman on first entering a village. he gets out of the way till he has heard all about the strangers, or he is actually out in the fields looking after his farms. we once thought that when the headman came in from a visit of inspection, with his spear, bow and arrows, they had been all taken up for the occasion, and that he had all the while been hidden in some hut slily watching till he heard that the strangers might be trusted; but on listening to the details given by these men of the appearances of the crops at different parts, and the astonishing minuteness of the speakers' topography, we were persuaded that in some cases we were wrong, and felt rather humiliated. every knoll, hill, mountain, and every peak on a range has a name; and so has every watercourse, dell, and plain. in fact, every feature and portion of the country is so minutely distinguished by appropriate names, that it would take a lifetime to decipher their meaning. it is not the want, but the superabundance of names that misleads travellers, and the terms used are so multifarious that good scholars will at times scarcely know more than the subject of conversation. though it is a little apart from the topic of the attention which the headmen pay to agriculture, yet it may be here mentioned, while speaking of the fulness of the language, that we have heard about a score of words to indicate different varieties of gait--one walks leaning forward, or backward, swaying from side to side, loungingly, or smartly, swaggeringly, swinging the arms, or only one arm, head down or up, or otherwise; each of these modes of walking was expressed by a particular verb; and more words were used to designate the different varieties of fools than we ever tried to count. mr. moffat has translated the whole bible into the language of the bechuana, and has diligently studied this tongue for the last forty-four- years; and, though knowing far more of the language than any of the natives who have been reared on the mission-station of kuruman, he does not pretend to have mastered it fully even yet. however copious it may be in terms of which we do not feel the necessity, it is poor in others, as in abstract terms, and words used to describe mental operations. our third day's march ended in the afternoon of the th september, , at the village of chinanga on the banks of a branch of the loangwa. a large, rounded mass of granite, a thousand feet high, called _nombe rume_, stand on the plain a few miles off. it is quite remarkable, because it has so little vegetation on it. several other granitic hills stand near it, ornamented with trees, like most heights of this country, and a heap of blue mountains appears away in the north. the effect of the piercing winds upon the men had never been got rid of. several had been unable to carry a load ever since we ascended to the highlands; we had lost one, and another poor lad was so ill as to cause us great anxiety. by waiting in this village, which was so old that it was full of vermin, all became worse. our european food was entirely expended, and native meal, though finely ground, has so many sharp angular particles in it, that it brought back dysentery, from which we had suffered so much in may. we could scarcely obtain food for the men. the headman of this village of chinanga was off in a foray against some people further north to supply slaves to the traders expected along the slave route we had just left; and was said, after having expelled the inhabitants, to be living in their stockade, and devouring their corn. the conquered tribe had purchased what was called a peace by presenting the conqueror with three women. this state of matters afforded us but a poor prospect of finding more provisions in that direction than we could with great difficulty and at enormous prices obtain here. but neither want of food, dysentery, nor slave wars would have prevented our working our way round the lake in some other direction, had we had time; but we had received orders from the foreign office to take the "pioneer" down to the sea in the previous april. the salaries of all the men in her were positively "in any case to cease by the st of december." we were said to be only ten days' distant from lake bemba. we might speculate on a late rise of the river. a month or six weeks would secure a geographical feat, but the rains were near. we had been warned by different people that the rains were close at hand, and that we should then be bogged and unable to travel. the flood in the river might be an early one, or so small in volume as to give but one chance of the "pioneer" descending to the ocean. the makololo too were becoming dispirited by sickness and want of food, and were naturally anxious to be back to their fields in time for sowing. but in addition to all this and more, it was felt that it would not be dealing honestly with the government, were we, for the sake of a little eclat, to risk the detention of the "pioneer" up the river during another year; so we decided to return; and though we had afterwards the mortification to find that we were detained two full months at the ship waiting for the flood which we expected immediately after our arrival there, the chagrin was lessened by a consciousness of having acted in a fair, honest, above-board manner throughout. on the night of the th of september a thief came to the sleeping-place of our men and stole a leg of a goat. on complaining to the deputy headman, he said that the thief had fled, but would be caught. he suggested a fine, and offered a fowl and her eggs; but wishing that the thief alone should be punished, it was advised that _he_ should be found and fined. the makololo thought it best to take the fowl as a means of making the punishment certain. after settling this matter on the last day of september, we commenced our return journey. we had just the same time to go back to the ship, that we had spent in coming to this point, and there is not much to interest one in marching over the same ground a second time. while on our journey north-west, a cheery old woman, who had once been beautiful, but whose white hair now contrasted strongly with her dark complexion, was working briskly in her garden as we passed. she seemed to enjoy a hale, hearty old age. she saluted us with what elsewhere would be called a good address; and, evidently conscious that she deserved the epithet, "dark but comely," answered each of us with a frank "yes, my child." another motherly-looking woman, sitting by a well, began the conversation by "you are going to visit muazi, and you have come from afar, have you not?" but in general women never speak to strangers unless spoken to, so anything said by them attracts attention. muazi once presented us with a basket of corn. on hinting that we had no wife to grind our corn, his buxom spouse struck in with roguish glee, and said, "i will grind it for you; and leave muazi, to accompany and cook for you in the land of the setting sun." as a rule the women are modest and retiring in their demeanour, and, without being oppressed with toil, show a great deal of industry. the crops need about eight months' attention. then when the harvest is home, much labour is required to convert it into food as porridge, or beer. the corn is pounded in a large wooden mortar, like the ancient egyptian one, with a pestle six feet long and about four inches thick. the pounding is performed by two or even three women at one mortar. each, before delivering a blow with her pestle, gives an upward jerk of the body, so as to put strength into the stroke, and they keep exact time, so that two pestles are never in the mortar at the same moment. the measured thud, thud, thud, and the women standing at their vigorous work, are associations inseparable from a prosperous african village. by the operation of pounding, with the aid of a little water, the hard outside scale or husk of the grain is removed, and the corn is made fit for the millstone. the meal irritates the stomach unless cleared from the husk; without considerable energy in the operator, the husk sticks fast to the corn. solomon thought that still more vigour than is required to separate the hard husk or bran from wheat would fail to separate "a fool from his folly." "though thou shouldst bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, _yet_ will not his foolishness depart from him." the rainbow, in some parts, is called the "pestle of the barimo," or gods. boys and girls, by constant practice with the pestle, are able to plant stakes in the ground by a somewhat similar action, in erecting a hut, so deftly that they never miss the first hole made. let any one try by repeatedly jobbing a pole with all his force to make a deep hole in the ground, and he will understand how difficult it is always to strike it into the same spot. as we were sleeping one night outside a hut, but near enough to hear what was going on within, an anxious mother began to grind her corn about two o'clock in the morning. "ma," inquired a little girl, "why grind in the dark?" mamma advised sleep, and administered material for a sweet dream to her darling, by saying, "i grind meal to buy a cloth from the strangers, which will make you look a little lady." an observer of these primitive races is struck continually with such little trivial touches of genuine human nature. the mill consists of a block of granite, syenite, or even mica schist, fifteen or eighteen inches square and five or six thick, with a piece of quartz or other hard rock about the size of a half brick, one side of which has a convex surface, and fits into a concave hollow in the larger and stationary stone. the workwoman kneeling, grasps this upper millstone with both hands, and works it backwards and forwards in the hollow of the lower millstone, in the same way that a baker works his dough, when pressing it and pushing from him. the weight of the person is brought to bear on the movable stone, and while it is pressed and pushed forwards and backwards, one hand supplies every now and then a little grain to be thus at first bruised and then ground on the lower stone, which is placed on the slope so that the meal when ground falls on to a skin or mat spread for the purpose. this is perhaps the most primitive form of mill, and anterior to that in oriental countries, where two women grind at one mill, and may have been that used by sarah of old when she entertained the angels. on nd october we applied to muazi for guides to take us straight down to chinsamba's at mosapo, and thus cut off an angle, which we should otherwise make, by going back to kota-kota bay. he replied that his people knew the short way to chinsamba's that we desired to go, but that they all were afraid to venture there, on account of the zulus, or mazitu. we therefore started back on our old route, and, after three hours' march, found some babisa in a village who promised to lead us to chinsamba. we meet with these keen traders everywhere. they are easily known by a line of horizontal cicatrices, each half an inch long, down the middle of the forehead and chin. they often wear the hair collected in a mass on the upper and back part of the head, while it is all shaven off the forehead and temples. the babisa and waiau or ajawa heads have more of the round bullet-shape than those of the manganja, indicating a marked difference in character; the former people being great traders and travellers, the latter being attached to home and agriculture. the manganja usually intrust their ivory to the babisa to be sold at the coast, and complain that the returns made never come up to the high prices which they hear so much about before it is sent. in fact, by the time the babisa return, the expenses of the journey, in which they often spend a month or two at a place where food abounds, usually eat up all the profits. our new companions were trading in tobacco, and had collected quantities of the round balls, about the size of nine pounder shot, into which it is formed. one of them owned a woman, whose child had been sold that morning for tobacco. the mother followed him, weeping silently, for hours along the way we went; she seemed to be well known, for at several hamlets, the women spoke to her with evident sympathy; we could do nothing to alleviate her sorrow--the child would be kept until some slave- trader passed, and then sold for calico. the different cases of slave- trading observed by us are mentioned, in order to give a fair idea of its details. we spent the first night, after leaving the slave route, at the village of nkoma, among a section of manganja, called machewa, or macheba, whose district extends to the bua. the next village at which we slept was also that of a manganja smith. it was a beautiful spot, shaded with tall euphorbia-trees. the people at first fled, but after a short time returned, and ordered us off to a stockade of babisa, about a mile distant. we preferred to remain in the smooth shady spot outside the hamlet, to being pent up in a treeless stockade. twenty or thirty men came dropping in, all fully armed with bows and arrows, some of them were at least six feet four in height, yet these giants were not ashamed to say, "we thought that you were mazitu, and, being afraid, ran away." their orders to us were evidently inspired by terror, and so must the refusal of the headman to receive a cloth, or lend us a hut have been; but as we never had the opportunity of realizing what feelings a successful invasion would produce, we did not know whether to blame them or not. the headman, a tall old smith, with an enormous, well-made knife of his own workmanship, came quietly round, and, inspecting the shelter, which, from there being abundance of long grass and bushes near, our men put up for us in half an hour, gradually changed his tactics, and, in the evening, presented us with a huge pot of porridge and a deliciously well-cooked fowl, and made an apology for having been so rude to strangers, and a lamentation that he had been so foolish as to refuse the fine cloth we had offered. another cloth was of course presented, and we had the pleasure of parting good friends next day. our guide, who belonged to the stockade near to which we had slept, declined to risk himself further than his home. while waiting to hire another, masiko attempted to purchase a goat, and had nearly concluded the bargain, when the wife of the would-be seller came forward, and said to her husband, "you appear as if you were unmarried; selling a goat without consulting your wife; what an insult to a woman! what sort of man are you?" masiko urged the man, saying, "let us conclude the bargain, and never mind her;" but he being better instructed, replied, "no, i have raised a host against myself already," and refused. we now pushed on to the east, so as to get down to the shores of the lake, and into the parts where we were known. the country was beautiful, well wooded, and undulating, but the villages were all deserted; and the flight of the people seemed to have been quite recent, for the grain was standing in the corn-safes untouched. the tobacco, though ripe, remained uncut in the gardens, and the whole country was painfully quiet: the oppressive stillness quite unbroken by the singing of birds, or the shrill calls of women watching their corn. on passing a beautiful village, called bangwe, surrounded by shady trees, and placed in a valley among mountains, we were admiring the beauty of the situation, when some of the much dreaded mazitu, with their shields, ran out of the hamlet, from which we were a mile distant. they began to scream to their companions to give us chase. without quickening our pace we walked on, and soon were in a wood, through which the footpath we were following led. the first intimation we had of the approaching mazitu was given by the johanna man, zachariah, who always lagged behind, running up, screaming as if for his life. the bundles were all put in one place to be defended; and masiko and dr. livingstone walked a few paces back to meet the coming foe. masiko knelt down anxious to fire, but was ordered not to do so. for a second or two dusky forms appeared among the trees, and the mazitu were asked, in their own tongue, "what do you want?" masiko adding, "what do you say?" no answer was given, but the dark shade in the forest vanished. they had evidently taken us for natives, and the sight of a white man was sufficient to put them to flight. had we been nearer the coast, where the people are accustomed to the slave- trade, we should have found this affair a more difficult one to deal with; but, as a rule, the people of the interior are much more mild in character than those on the confines of civilization. the above very small adventure was all the danger we were aware of in this journey; but a report was spread from the portuguese villages on the zambesi, similar to several rumours that had been raised before, that dr. livingstone had been murdered by the makololo; and very unfortunately the report reached england before it could be contradicted. one benefit arose from the mazitu adventure. zachariah, and others who had too often to be reproved for lagging behind, now took their places in the front rank; and we had no difficulty in making very long marches for several days, for all believed that the mazitu would follow our footsteps, and attack us while we slept. a party of babisa tobacco-traders came from the n.w. to molamba, while we were there; and one of them asserted several times that the loapula, after emerging from moelo, received the lulua, and then flowed into lake mofu, and thence into tanganyika; and from the last-named lake into the sea. this is the native idea of the geography of the interior; and, to test the general knowledge of our informant, we asked him about our acquaintances in londa; as moene, katema, shinde or shinte, who live south-west of the rivers mentioned, and found that our friends there were perfectly well-known to him and to others of these travelled natives. in the evening two of the babisa came in, and reported that the mazitu had followed us to the village called chigaragara, at which we slept at the bottom of the descent. the whole party of traders set off at once, though the sun had set. we ourselves had given rise to the report, for the women of chigaragara, supposing us in the distance to be mazitu, fled, with all their household utensils on their heads, and had no opportunity afterwards of finding out their mistake. we spent the night where we were, and next morning, declining nkomo's entreaty to go and kill elephants, took our course along the shores of the lake southwards. we have only been at the lake at one season of the year: then the wind blows strongly from the east, and indeed this is its prevailing direction hence to the orange river; a north or a south wind is rare, and seldom lasts more than three days. as the breeze now blew over a large body of water, towards us, it was delightful; but when facing it on the table- land it was so strong as materially to impede our progress, and added considerably to the labour of travelling. here it brought large quantities of the plant (_vallisneriae_), from which the natives extract salt by burning, and which, if chewed, at once shows its saline properties by the taste. clouds of the kungo, or edible midges, floated on the lake, and many rested on the bushes on land. the reeds along the shores of the lake were still crowded with fugitives, and a great loss of life must since have taken place; for, after the corn they had brought with them was expended, famine would ensue. even now we passed many women and children digging up the roots, about the size of peas, of an aromatic grass; and their wasted forms showed that this poor hard fare was to allay, if possible, the pangs of hunger. the babies at the breast crowed to us as we passed, their mothers kneeling and grubbing for the roots; the poor little things still drawing nourishment from the natural fountain were unconscious of that sinking of heart which their parents must have felt in knowing that the supply for the little ones must soon fail. no one would sell a bit of food to us: fishermen, even, would not part with the produce of their nets, except in exchange for some other kind of food. numbers of newly-made graves showed that many had already perished, and hundreds were so emaciated that they had the appearance of human skeletons swathed in brown and wrinkled leather. in passing mile after mile, marked with these sad proofs that "man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn," one experiences an overpowering sense of helplessness to alleviate human woe, and breathes a silent prayer to the almighty to hasten the good time coming when "man and man the world o'er, shall brothers be for all that." one small redeeming consideration in all this misery could not but be felt; these ills were inflicted by heathen mazitu, and not by, or for, those who say to him who is higher than the highest, "we believe that thou shalt come to be our judge." we crossed the mokole, rested at chitanda, and then left the lake, and struck away n.w. to chinsamba's. our companions, who were so much oppressed by the rarefied air of the plateau, still showed signs of exhaustion, though now only feet above the sea, and did not recover flesh and spirits till we again entered the lower shire valley, which is of so small an altitude, that, without simultaneous observations with the barometer there and on the sea-coast, the difference would not be appreciable. on a large plain on which we spent one night, we had the company of eighty tobacco traders on their way from kasungu to chinsamba's. the mazitu had attacked and killed two of them, near the spot where the zulus fled from us without answering our questions. the traders were now so frightened that, instead of making a straight course with us, they set off by night to follow the shores of the lake to tsenga, and then turn west. it is the sight of shields, or guns that inspires terror. the bowmen feel perfectly helpless when the enemy comes with even the small protection the skin shield affords, or attacks them in the open field with guns. they may shoot a few arrows, but they are such poor shots that ten to one if they hit. the only thing that makes the arrow formidable is the poison; for if the poisoned barb goes in nothing can save the wounded. a bow is in use in the lower end of lake nyassa, but is more common in the maravi country, from six to eight inches broad, which is intended to be used as a shield as well as a bow; but we never saw one with the mark on it of an enemy's arrow. it certainly is no match for the zulu shield, which is between four and five feet long, of an oval shape, and about two feet broad. so great is the terror this shield inspires that we sometimes doubted whether the mazitu here were zulus at all, and suspected that the people of the country took advantage of that fear, and, assuming shields, pretended to belong to that nation. on the th october we arrived at the stockade of chinsamba in mosapo, and had reason to be very well satisfied with his kindness. a paraffin candle was in his eyes the height of luxury, and the ability to make a light instantaneously by a lucifer match, a marvel that struck him with wonder. he brought all his relatives in different groups to see the strange sights,--instantaneous fire-making, and a light, without the annoyance of having fire and smoke in the middle of the floor. when they wish to look for anything in the dark, a wisp of dried grass is lighted. chinsamba gave us a great deal of his company during our visits. as we have often remarked in other cases, a chief has a great deal to attend to in guiding the affairs of his people. he is consulted on all occasions, and gives his advice in a stream of words, which show a very intimate acquaintance with the topography of his district; he knows every rood cultivated, every weir put in the river, every hunting-net, loom, gorge, and every child of his tribe. any addition made to the number of these latter is notified to him; and he sends thanks and compliments to the parents. the presents which, following the custom of the country, we gave to every headman, where we either spent a night or a longer period, varied from four to eight yards of calico. we had some manchester cloths made in imitation of the native manufactured robes of the west coast, each worth five or six shillings. to the more important of the chiefs, for calico we substituted one of these strong gaudy dresses, iron spoons, a knife, needles, a tin dish, or pannikin, and found these presents to be valued more than three times their value in cloth would have been. eight or ten shillings' worth gave abundant satisfaction to the greediest; but this is to be understood as the prime cost of the articles, and a trader would sometimes have estimated similar generosity as equal to from to pounds. in some cases the presents we gave exceeded the value of what was received in return; in others the excess of generosity was on the native side. we never asked for leave to pass through the country; we simply told where we were going, and asked for guides; if they were refused, or if they demanded payment beforehand, we requested to be put into the beginning of the path, and said that we were sorry we could not agree about the guides, and usually they and we started together. greater care would be required on entering the mazitu or zulu country, for there the government extends over very large districts, while among the manganja each little district is independent of every other. the people here have not adopted the exacting system of the banyai, or of the people whose country was traversed by speke and grant. in our way back from chinsamba's to chembi's and from his village to nkwinda's, and thence to katosa's, we only saw the people working in their gardens, near to the stockades. these strongholds were strengthened with branches of acacias, covered with strong hooked thorns; and were all crowded with people. the air was now clearer than when we went north, and we could see the hills of kirk's range five or six miles to the west of our path. the sun struck very hot, and the men felt it most in their feet. every one who could get a bit of goatskin made it into a pair of sandals. while sitting at nkwinda's, a man behind the court hedge-wall said, with great apparent glee, that an arab slaving party on the other side of the confluence of the shire and lake were "giving readily two fathoms of calico for a boy, and two and a half for a girl; never saw trade so brisk, no haggling at all." this party was purchasing for the supply of the ocean slave-trade. one of the evils of this traffic is that it profits by every calamity that happens in a country. the slave-trader naturally reaps advantage from every disorder, and though in the present case some lives may have been saved that otherwise would have perished, as a rule he intensifies hatreds, and aggravates wars between the tribes, because the more they fight and vanquish each other the richer his harvest becomes. where slaving and cattle are unknown the people live in peace. as we sat leaning against that hedge, and listened to the harangue of the slave-trader's agent, it glanced across our mind that this was a terrible world; the best in it unable, from conscious imperfections, to say to the worst "stand by! for i am holier than thou." the slave-trader, imbued no doubt with certain kindly feelings, yet pursuing a calling which makes him a fair specimen of a human fiend, stands grouped with those by whom the slave-traders are employed, and with all the workers of sin and misery in more highly-favoured lands, an awful picture to the all-seing eye. we arrived at katosa's village on the th october, and found about thirty young men and boys in slave-sticks. they had been bought by other agents of the arab slavers, still on the east side of the shire. they were resting in the village, and their owners soon removed them. the weight of the goree seemed very annoying when they tried to sleep. this taming instrument is kept on, until the party has crossed several rivers and all hope of escape has vanished from the captive's mind. on explaining to katosa the injury he was doing in selling his people as slaves, he assured us that those whom we had seen belonged to the arabs, and added that he had far too few people already. he said he had been living in peace at the lakelet pamalombe; that the ajawa, or machinga, under kainka and karamba, and a body of babisa, under maonga, had induced him to ferry them over the shire; that they had lived for a considerable time at his expense, and at last stole his sheep, which induced him to make his escape to the place where he now dwelt, and in this flight he had lost many of his people. his account of the usual conduct of the ajawa quite agrees with what these people have narrated themselves, and gives but a low idea of their moral tone. they have repeatedly broken all the laws of hospitality by living for months on the bounty of the manganja, and then, by a sudden uprising, overcoming their hosts, and killing or chasing them out of their inheritances. the secret of their success is the possession of firearms. there were several of these ajawa here again, and on our arrival they proposed to katosa that they should leave; but he replied that they need not be afraid of us. they had red beads strung so thickly on their hair that at a little distance they appeared to have on red caps. it is curious that the taste for red hair should be so general among the africans here and further north; in the south black mica, called _sebilo_, and even soot are used to deepen the colour of the hair; here many smear the head with red-ochre, others plait the inner bark of a tree stained red into it; and a red powder called _mukuru_ is employed, which some say is obtained from the ground, and others from the roots of a tree. it having been doubted whether sugar-cane is indigenous to this country or not, we employed katosa to procure the two varieties commonly cultivated, with the intention of conveying them to johanna. one is yellow, and the other, like what we observed in the barotse valley, is variegated with dark red and yellow patches, or all red. we have seen it "arrow," or blossom. bamboos also run to seed, and the people are said to use the seed as food. the sugar-cane has native names, which would lead us to believe it to be indigenous. here it is called _zimbi_, further south _mesari_, and in the centre of the country _meshuati_. anything introduced in recent times, as maize, superior cotton, or cassava, has a name implying its foreign origin. katosa's village was embowered among gigantic trees of fine timber: several caffiaceous bushes, with berries closely resembling those of the common coffee, grew near, but no use had ever been made of them. there are several cinchonaceous trees also in the country; and some of the wild fruits are so good as to cause a feeling of regret that they have not been improved by cultivation, or whatever else brought ours to their present perfection. katosa lamented that this locality was so inferior to his former place at pamalombe; there he had maize at the different stages of growth throughout the year. to us, however, he seemed, by digging holes, and taking advantage of the moisture beneath, to have succeeded pretty well in raising crops at this the driest time. the makololo remarked that "here the maize had no season,"--meaning that the whole year was proper for its growth and ripening. by irrigation a succession of crops of grain might be raised anywhere within the south intertropical region of africa. when we were with motunda, on the th october, he told us frankly that all the native provisions were hidden in kirk's range, and his village being the last place where a supply of grain could be purchased before we reached the ship, we waited till he had sent to his hidden stores. the upland country, beyond the mountains now on our right, is called deza, and is inhabited by maravi, who are only another tribe of manganja. the paramount chief is called kabambe, and he, having never been visited by war, lives in peace and plenty. goats and sheep thrive; and nyango, the chieftainess further to the south, has herds of horned cattle. the country being elevated is said to be cold, and there are large grassy plains on it which are destitute of trees. the maravi are reported to be brave, and good marksmen with the bow; but, throughout all the country we have traversed, guns are enabling the trading tribes to overcome the agricultural and manufacturing classes. on the ascent at the end of the valley just opposite mount mvai, we looked back for a moment to impress the beauties of the grand vale on our memory. the heat of the sun was now excessive, and masiko, thinking that it was overpowering, proposed to send forward to the ship and get a hammock, in which to carry any one who might knock up. he was truly kind and considerate. dr. livingstone having fallen asleep after a fatiguing march, a hole in the roof of the hut he was in allowed the sun to beat on his head, and caused a splitting headache and deafness: while he was nearly insensible, he felt masiko repeatedly lift him back to the bed off which he had rolled, and cover him up. on the th we were again in banda, at the village of chasundu, and could now see clearly the hot valley in which the shire flows, and the mountains of the manganja beyond to our south-east. instead of following the road by which we had come, we resolved to go south along the lesungwe, which rises at zunje, a peak on the same ridge as mvai, and a part of kirk's range, which bounds the country of the maravi on our west. this is about the limit of the beat of the portuguese native traders, and it is but recently that, following our footsteps, they have come so far. it is not likely that their enterprise will lead them further north, for chasundu informed us that the babisa under-sell the agents from tette. he had tried to deal with the latter when they first came; but they offered only ten fathoms of calico for a tusk, for which the babisa gave him twenty fathoms and a little powder. ivory was brought to us for sale again and again, and, as far as we could judge, the price expected would be about one yard of calico per pound, or possibly more, for there is no scale of prices known. the rule seems to be that buyer and seller shall spend a good deal of time in trying to cheat each other before coming to any conclusion over a bargain. we found the lesungwe a fine stream near its source, and about forty feet wide and knee-deep, when joined by the lekudzi, which comes down from the maravi country. guinea-fowl abounded, but no grain could be purchased, for the people had cultivated only the holmes along the banks with maize and pumpkins. time enough had not elapsed since the slave-trader's invasion, and destruction of their stores, for them to raise crops of grain on the adjacent lands. to deal with them for a few heads of maize was the hungry bargaining with the famished, so we hastened on southwards as fast as the excessive heat would allow us. it was impossible to march in the middle of the day, the heat was so intolerable; and we could not go on at night, because, if we had chanced to meet any of the inhabitants, we should have been taken for marauders. we had now thunder every afternoon; but while occasional showers seemed to fall at different parts, none fell on us. the air was deliciously clear, and revealed all the landscape covered everywhere with forest, and bounded by beautiful mountains. on the st october we reached the mukuru-madse, after having travelled geographical miles, or english miles in a straight line. this was accomplished in fifty-five travelling days, twelve miles per diem on an average. if the numerous bendings and windings, and ups and downs of the paths could have been measured too, the distance would have been found at least fifteen miles a day. the night we slept at the mukuru-madse it thundered heavily, but, as this had been the case every afternoon, and no rain had followed, we erected no shelter, but during this night a pouring rain came on. when very tired a man feels determined to sleep in spite of everything, and the sound of dropping water is said to be conducive to slumber, but that does not refer to an african storm. if, when half asleep in spite of a heavy shower on the back of the head, he unconsciously turns on his side, the drops from the branches make such capital shots into his ear, that the brain rings again. we were off next morning, the st of november, as soon as the day dawned. in walking about seven miles to the ship, our clothes were thoroughly dried by the hot sun, and an attack of fever followed. we relate this little incident to point out the almost certain consequence of getting wet in this climate, and allowing the clothes to dry on the person. even if we walk in the mornings when the dew is on the grass, and only get our feet and legs wet, a very uneasy feeling and partial fever with pains in the limbs ensue, and continue till the march onwards bathes them in perspiration. had bishop mackenzie been aware of this, which, before experience alone had taught us, entailed many a severe lesson, we know no earthly reason why his valuable life might not have been spared. the difference between getting the clothes soaked in england and in africa is this: in the cold climate the patient is compelled, or, at any rate, warned, by discomfort to resort at once to a change of raiment; while in africa it is cooling and rather pleasant to allow the clothes to dry on the person. a missionary in proportion as he possesses an athletic frame, hardened by manly exercises, in addition to his other qualifications, will excel him who is not favoured with such bodily endowments; but in a hot climate efficiency mainly depends on husbanding the resources. he must never forget that, in the tropics, he is an exotic plant. chapter xv. confidence of natives--bishop tozer--withdrawal of the mission party--the english leave--hazardous voyage to mosambique--dr. livingstone's voyage to bombay--return to england. we were delighted and thankful to find all those left at the ship in good health, and that from the employments in which they had been occupied they had suffered less from fever than usual during our absence. my companion, thomas ward, the steward, after having performed his part in the march right bravely, rejoined his comrades stronger than he had ever been before. an ajawa chief, named kapeni, had so much confidence in the english name that he, with most of his people, visited the ship; and asserted that nothing would give his countrymen greater pleasure than to receive the associates of bishop mackenzie as their teachers. this declaration, coupled with the subsequent conduct of the ajawa, was very gratifying, inasmuch as it was clear that no umbrage had been taken at the check which the bishop had given to their slaving; their consciences had told them that the course he had pursued was right. when we returned, the contrast between the vegetation about muazi's and that near the ship was very striking. we had come so quickly down, that while on the plateau in latitude degrees s., the young leaves had in many cases passed from the pink or other colour they have on first coming out to the light fresh green which succeeds it, here, on the borders of degrees s., or from to miles distant, the trees were still bare, the grey colour of the bark predominating over every other hue. the trees in the tropics here have a very well-marked annual rest. on the rovuma even, which is only about ten degrees from the equator, in september the slopes up from the river some sixty miles inland were of a light ashy-grey colour; and on ascending them, we found that the majority of the trees were without leaves; those of the bamboo even lay crisp and crumpled on the ground. as the sun is usually hot by day, even in the winter, this withering process may be owing to the cool nights; africa differing so much from central india in the fact that, in africa, however hot the day may be, the air generally cools down sufficiently by the early morning watches to render a covering or even a blanket agreeable. the first fortnight after our return to the ship was employed in the delightful process of resting, to appreciate which a man must have gone through great exertions. in our case the muscles of the limbs were as hard as boards, and not an ounce of fat existed on any part of the body. we now had frequent showers; but, these being only the earlier rains, the result on the rise of the river was but a few inches. the effect of these rains on the surrounding scenery was beautiful in the extreme. all trace of the dry season was soon obliterated, and hills and mountains from base to summit were covered with a mantle of living green. the sun passed us on his way south without causing a flood, so all our hopes of a release were centred on his return towards the equator, when, as a rule, the waters of inundation are made to flow. up to this time the rains descended simply to water the earth, fill the pools, and make ready for the grand overflow for which we had still to wait six weeks. it is of no use to conceal that we waited with much chagrin; for had we not been forced to return from the highlands west of nyassa we might have visited lake bemba; but unavailing regrets are poor employment for the mind; so we banished them to the best of our power. about the middle of december, , we were informed that bishop mackenzie's successor, after spending a few months on the top of a mountain about as high as ben nevis in scotland, at the mouth of the shire, where there were few or no people to be taught, had determined to leave the country. this unfortunate decision was communicated to us at the same time that six of the boys reared by bishop mackenzie were sent back into heathenism. the boys were taken to a place about seven miles from the ship, but immediately found their way up to us. we told them that if they wished to remain in the country they had better so arrange at once, for we were soon to leave. the sequel will show their choice. as soon as the death of bishop mackenzie was known at the cape, dr. gray, the excellent bishop there, proceeded at once to england, with a view of securing an early appointment of another head to the mission, which in its origin owed so much to his zeal for the spread of the gospel among the heathen, and whose interests he had continually at heart. about the middle of we heard that dr. gray's efforts had been successful, and that another clergyman would soon take the place of our departed friend. this pleasing intelligence was exceedingly cheering to the missionaries, and gratifying also to the members of the expedition. about the beginning of the new bishop arrived at the mouth of the river in a man-of-war, and after some delay proceeded inland. the bishop of the cape had taken a voyage home at considerable inconvenience to himself, for the sole object of promoting this mission to the heathen; and it was somehow expected that the man he would secure would be an image of himself; and we must say, that whatever others, from the representations that have gone abroad, may think of his character, we invariably found dr. gray to be a true, warm-hearted promoter of the welfare of his fellow- men; a man whose courage and zeal have provoked very many to good works. it was hoped that the presence of a new head to the mission would infuse new energy and life into the small band of missionaries, whose ranks had been thinned by death; and who, though discouraged by the disasters which the slave war and famine had induced, and also dispirited by the depressing influences of a low and unhealthy position in the swampy shire valley, were yet bravely holding out till the much-needed moral and material aid should arrive. we believe that we are uttering the sentiments of many devout members of different sections of christians, when we say, it was a pity that the mission of the universities was abandoned. the ground had been consecrated in the truest sense by the lives of those brave men who first occupied it. in bare justice to bishop mackenzie, who was the first to fall, it must be said, that the repudiation of all he had done, and the sudden abandonment of all that had cost so much life and money to secure, was a serious line of conduct for one so unversed in missionary operations as his successor, to inaugurate. it would have been no more than fair that bishop tozer, before winding up the affairs of the mission, should actually have examined the highlands of the upper shire; he would thus have gratified the associates of his predecessor, who believed that the highlands had never had a fair trial, and he would have gained from personal observation a more accurate knowledge of the country and the people than he could possibly have become possessed of by information gathered chiefly on the coast. with this examination, rather than with a stay of a few months on the humid, dripping top of misty morambala, we should have felt much more satisfied. in january, , the natives all confidently asserted that at next full moon the river would have its great and permanent flood. it had several times risen as much as a foot, but fell again as suddenly. it was curious that their observation coincided exactly with ours, that the flood of inundation happens when the sun comes overhead on his way back to the equator. we mention this more minutely because, from the observation of several years, we believe that in this way the inundation of the nile is to be explained. on the th the shire suddenly rose several feet, and we started at once; and stopping only for a short time at chibisa's to bid adieu to the ajawa and makololo, who had been extremely useful to us of late in supplying maize and fresh provisions, we hastened on our way to the ocean. in order to keep a steerage way on the "pioneer," we had to go quicker than the stream, and unfortunately carried away her rudder in passing suddenly round a bank. the delay required for the repairs prevented our reaching morambala till the nd of february. the flood-water ran into a marsh some miles above the mountain, and became as black as ink; and when it returned again to the river emitted so strong an effluvium of sulphuretted hydrogen, that one could not forget for an instant that the air was most offensive. the natives said this stench did not produce disease. we spent one night in it, and suffered no ill effects, though we fully expected an attack of fever. next morning every particle of white paint on both ships was so deeply blackened, that it could not be cleaned by scrubbing with soap and water. the brass was all turned to a bronze colour, and even the iron and ropes had taken a new tint. this is an additional proof that malaria and offensive effluvia are not always companions. we did not suffer more from fever in the mangrove swamps, where we inhaled so much of the heavy mousey smell that it was distinguishable in the odour of our shirts and flannels, than we did elsewhere. we tarried in the foul and blackening emanations from the marsh because we had agreed to receive on board about thirty poor orphan boys and girls, and a few helpless widows whom bishop mackenzie had attached to his mission. all who were able to support themselves had been encouraged by the missionaries to do so by cultivating the ground, and they now formed a little free community. but the boys and girls who were only from seven to twelve years of age, and orphans without any one to help them, could not be abandoned without bringing odium on the english name. the effect of an outcry by some persons in england, who knew nothing of the circumstances in which bishop mackenzie was placed, and who certainly had not given up their own right of appeal to the sword of the magistrate, was, that the new head of the mission had gone to extremes in the opposite direction from his predecessor; not even protesting against the one monstrous evil of the country, the slave-trade. we believed that we ought to leave the english name in the same good repute among the natives that we had found it; and in removing the poor creatures, who had lived with mackenzie as children with a father, to a land where the education he began would be completed, we had the aid and sympathy of the best of the portuguese, and of the whole population. the difference between shipping slaves and receiving these free orphans struck us as they came on board. as soon as permission to embark was given, the rush into the boat nearly swamped her--their eagerness to be safe on the "pioneer's" deck had to be repressed. bishop tozer had already left for quillimane when we took these people and the last of the universities' missionaries on board and proceeded to the zambesi. it was in high flood. we have always spoken of this river as if at its lowest, for fear lest we should convey an exaggerated impression of its capabilities for navigation. instead of from five to fifteen feet, it was now from fifteen to thirty feet, or more, deep. all the sandbanks and many of the islands had disappeared, and before us rolled a river capable, as one of our naval friends thought, of carrying a gunboat. some of the sandy islands are annually swept away, and the quantities of sand carried down are prodigious. the process by which a delta, extending eighty or one hundred miles from the sea, has been formed may be seen going on at the present day--the coarser particles of sand are driven out into the ocean, just in the same way as we see they are over banks in the beds of torrents. the finer portions are caught by the returning tide, and, accumulating by successive ebbs and flows, become, with the decaying vegetation, arrested by the mangrove roots. the influence of the tide in bringing back the finer particles gives the sea near the mouth of the zambesi a clean and sandy bottom. this process has been going on for ages, and as the delta has enlarged eastwards, the river has always kept a channel for itself behind. wherever we see an island all sand, or with only one layer of mud in it, we know it is one of recent formation, and that it may be swept away at any time by a flood; while those islands which are all of mud are the more ancient, having in fact existed ever since the time when the ebbing and flowing tides originally formed them as parts of the delta. this mud resists the action of the river wonderfully. it is a kind of clay on which the eroding power of water has little effect. were maps made, showing which banks and which islands are liable to erosion, it would go far to settle where the annual change of the channel would take place; and, were a few stakes driven in year by year to guide the water in its course, the river might be made of considerable commercial value in the hands of any energetic european nation. no canal or railway would ever be thought of for this part of africa. a few improvements would make the zambesi a ready means of transit for all the trade that, with a population thinned by portuguese slaving, will ever be developed in our day. here there is no instance on record of the natives flocking in thousands to the colony, as they did at natal, and even to the arabs on lake nyassa. this keeping aloof renders it unlikely that in portuguese hands the zambesi will ever be of any more value to the world than it has been. after a hurried visit to senna, in order to settle with major sicard and senhor ferrao for supplies we had drawn thence after the depopulation of the shire, we proceeded down to the zambesi's mouth, and were fortunate in meeting, on the th february, with h.m.s. "orestes." she was joined next day by h.m.s. "ariel." the "orestes" took the "pioneer," and the "ariel" the "lady nyassa" in tow, for mosambique. on the th a circular storm proved the sea-going qualities of the "lady of the lake;" for on this day a hurricane struck the "ariel," and drove her nearly backwards at a rate of six knots. the towing hawser wound round her screw and stopped her engines. no sooner had she recovered from this shock than she was again taken aback on the other tack, and driven stem on towards the "lady nyassa's" broadside. we who were on board the little vessel saw no chance of escape unless the crew of the "ariel" should think of heaving ropes when the big ship went over us; but she glided past our bow, and we breathed freely again. we had now an opportunity of witnessing man-of-war seamanship. captain chapman, though his engines were disabled, did not think of abandoning us in the heavy gale, but crossed the bows of the "lady nyassa" again and again, dropping a cask with a line by which to give us another hawser. we might never have picked it up, had not a krooman jumped overboard and fastened a second line to the cask; and then we drew the hawser on board, and were again in tow. during the whole time of the hurricane the little vessel behaved admirably, and never shipped a single green sea. when the "ariel" pitched forwards we could see a large part of her bottom, and when her stern went down we could see all her deck. a boat, hung at her stern davits, was stove in by the waves. the officers on board the "ariel" thought that it was all over with us: we imagined that they were suffering more than we were. nautical men may suppose that this was a serious storm only to landsmen; but the "orestes," which was once in sight, and at another time forty miles off during the same gale, split eighteen sails; and the "pioneer" had to be lightened of parts of a sugar- mill she was carrying; her round-house was washed away, and the cabin was frequently knee-deep in water. when the "orestes" came into mosambique harbour nine days after our arrival there, our vessel, not being anchored close to the "ariel," for we had run in under the lee of the fort, led to the surmise on board the "orestes" that we had gone to the bottom. captain chapman and his officers pronounced the "lady nyassa" to be the finest little sea-boat they had ever seen. she certainly was a contrast to the "ma-robert," and did great credit to her builders, ted and macgregor of glasgow. we can but regret that she was not employed on the lake after which she was named, and for which she was intended and was so well adapted. what struck us most, during the trip from the zambesi to mosambique, was the admirable way in which captain chapman handled the "ariel" in the heavy sea of the hurricane; the promptitude and skill with which, when we had broken three hawsers, others were passed to us by the rapid evolutions of a big ship round a little one; and the ready appliance of means shown in cutting the hawser off the screw nine feet under water with long chisels made for the occasion; a task which it took three days to accomplish. captain chapman very kindly invited us on board the "ariel," and we accepted his hospitality after the weather had moderated. the little vessel was hauled through and against the huge seas with such force that two hawsers measuring eleven inches each in circumference parted. many of the blows we received from the billows made every plate quiver from stem to stern, and the motion was so quick that we had to hold on continually to avoid being tossed from one side to the other or into the sea. ten of the late bishop's flock whom we had on board became so sick and helpless that do what we could to aid them they were so very much in the way that the idea broke in upon us, that the close packing resorted to by slavers is one of the necessities of the traffic. if this is so, it would account for the fact that even when the trade was legal the same injurious custom was common, if not universal. if, instead of ten such passengers, we had been carrying two hundred, with the wind driving the rain and spray, as by night it did, nearly as hard as hail against our faces, and nothing whatever to be seen to windward but the occasional gleam of the crest of a wave, and no sound heard save the whistling of the storm through the rigging, it would have been absolutely necessary for the working of the ship and safety of the whole that the live cargo should all have been stowed down below, whatever might have been the consequences. having delivered the "pioneer" over to the navy, she was towed down to the cape by captain forsyth of the "valorous," and after examination it was declared that with repairs to the amount of pounds she would be as serviceable as ever. those of the bishop's flock whom we had on board were kindly allowed a passage to the cape. the boys went in the "orestes," and we are glad of the opportunity to record our heartfelt thanks to captains forsyth, gardner, and chapman for rendering us, at various times, every aid in their power. mr. waller went in the "pioneer," and continued his generous services to all connected with the mission, whether white or black, till they were no longer needed; and we must say that his conduct to them throughout was truly noble, and worthy of the highest praise. after beaching the "lady nyassa" at caboceira, opposite the house of a portuguese gentleman well known to all englishmen, joao da costa soares, we put in brine cocks, and cleaned and painted her bottom. mr. soares appeared to us to have been very much vilified in a publication in england a few years ago; our experience proved him to be extremely kind and obliging. all the members of the expedition who passed mosambique were unanimous in extolling his generosity and, from the general testimony of english visitors in his favour, we very much regret that his character was so grievously misrepresented. to the authorities at mosambique our thanks are also due for obliging accommodation; and though we differ entirely from the portuguese officials as to the light in which we regard the slave-trade, we trust our exposure of the system, in which unfortunately they are engaged, will not be understood as indicating any want of kindly feeling and good will to them personally. senhor canto e castro, who arrived at mosambique two days after our departure to take the office of governor-general, was well known to us in angola. we lived two months in his house when he was commandant of golungo alto; and, knowing him thoroughly, believe that no better man could have been selected for the office. we trust that his good principles may enable him to withstand the temptations of his position; but we should be sorry to have ours tried in a den of slave-traders with the miserable pittance he receives for his support. while at mosambique, a species of pedalia called by mr. soares dadeleira, and by the natives--from its resemblance to gerzilin, or sesamum--"wild sesamum," was shown to us, and is said to be well known among native nurses as a very gentle and tasteless aperient for children. a few leaves of it are stirred in a cup of cold water for eight or nine seconds, and a couple of teaspoonfuls of the liquid given as a dose. the leaves form a sort of mucilage in the water by longer stirring, which is said to have diuretic properties besides. on the th april we steamed out from mosambique; and, the currents being in our favour, in a week reached zanzibar. here we experienced much hospitality from our countrymen, and especially from dr. seward, then acting consul and political agent for colonel playfair. dr. seward was very doubtful if we could reach bombay before what is called the break of the monsoon took place. this break occurs usually between the end of may and the th of june. the wind still blows from africa to india, but with so much violence, and with such a murky atmosphere, that few or no observations for position can be taken. we were, however, at the time very anxious to dispose of the "lady nyassa," and, the only market we could reach being bombay, we resolved to run the risk of getting there before the stormy period commenced; and, after taking fourteen tons of coal on board, we started on the th april from zanzibar. our complement consisted of seven native zambesians, two boys, and four europeans; namely, one stoker, one sailor, one carpenter, whose names have been already mentioned, and dr. livingstone, as navigator. the "lady nyassa" had shown herself to be a good sea-boat. the natives had proved themselves capital sailors, though before volunteering not one of them had ever seen the sea. they were not picked men, but, on paying a dozen whom we had in our employment for fifteen months, they were taken at random from several hundreds who offered to accompany us. their wages were ten shillings per mensem, and it was curious to observe, that so eager were they to do their duty, that only one of them lay down from sea- sickness during the whole voyage. they took in and set sail very cleverly in a short time, and would climb out along a boom, reeve a rope through the block, and come back with the rope in their teeth, though at each lurch the performer was dipped in the sea. the sailor and carpenter, though anxious to do their utmost, had a week's severe illness each, and were unfit for duty. it is pleasant enough to take the wheel for an hour or two, or even for a watch, but when it comes to be for every alternate four hours, it is utterly wearisome. we set our black men to steer, showing them which arm of the compass needle was to be kept towards the vessel's head, and soon three of them could manage very well, and they only needed watching. in going up the east coast to take advantage of the current of one hundred miles a day, we would fain have gone into the juba or webbe river, the mouth of which is only minutes south of the line, but we were too shorthanded. we passed up to about ten degrees north of the equator, and then steamed out from the coast. here maury's wind chart showed that the calm-belt had long been passed, but we were in it still; and, instead of a current carrying us north, we had a contrary current which bore us every day four miles to the south. we steamed as long as we dared, knowing as we did that we must use the engines on the coast of india. after losing many days tossing on the silent sea, with innumerable dolphins, flying-fish, and sharks around us, we had six days of strong breezes, then calms again tried our patience; and the near approach of that period, "the break of the monsoon," in which it was believed no boat could live, made us sometimes think our epitaph would be "left zanzibar on th april, , and never more heard of." at last, in the beginning of june, the chronometers showed that we were near the indian coast. the black men believed it was true because we told them it was so, but only began to dance with joy when they saw sea-weed and serpents floating past. these serpents are peculiar to these parts, and are mentioned as poisonous in the sailing directions. we ventured to predict that we should see land next morning, and at midday the high coast hove in sight, wonderfully like africa before the rains begin. then a haze covered all the land, and a heavy swell beat towards it. a rock was seen, and a latitude showed it to be the choule rock. making that a fresh starting- point, we soon found the light-ship, and then the forest of masts loomed through the haze in bombay harbour. we had sailed over miles. footnotes { } a remedy composed of from six to eight grains of resin of jalap, the same of rhubarb, and three each of calomel and quinine, made up into four pills, with tincture of cardamoms, usually relieved all the symptoms in five or six hours. four pills are a full dose for a man--one will suffice for a woman. they received from our men the name of "rousers," from their efficacy in rousing up even those most prostrated. when their operation is delayed, a dessert-spoonful of epsom salts should be given. quinine after or during the operation of the pills, in large doses every two or three hours, until deafness or cinchonism ensued, completed the cure. the only cases in which, we found ourselves completely helpless, were those in which obstinate vomiting ensued. { } the late mr. robson. { } in , four years after these forebodings were penned, we received intelligence that they had all come to pass. sekeletu died in the beginning of --a civil war broke out about the succession to the chieftainship; a large body of those opposed to the late chief's uncle, impololo, being regent, departed with their cattle to lake ngami; an insurrection by the black tribes followed; impololo was slain, and the kingdom, of which, under an able sagacious mission, a vast deal might have been made, has suffered the usual fate of african conquests. that fate we deeply deplore; for, whatever other faults the makololo might justly be charged with, they did not belong to the class who buy and sell each other, and the tribes who have succeeded them do. { } it was with sorrow that we learned by a letter from mr. moffat, in , that poor sekeletu was dead. as will be mentioned further on, men were sent with us to bring up more medicine. they preferred to remain on the shire, and, as they were free men, we could do no more than try and persuade them to hasten back to their chief with iodine and other remedies. they took the parcel, but there being only two real makololo among them, these could neither return themselves alone or force their attendants to leave a part of the country where they were independent, and could support themselves with ease. sekeletu, however, lived long enough to receive and acknowledge goods to the value of pounds, sent, in lieu of those which remained in tette, by robert moffat, jun., since dead. { } a brother, we believe, of one who accompanied burke and willis in the famous but unfortunate australian expedition. { } genesis, chap. iii., verses and , "make coats of skins, and clothed them"--"sent him forth from the garden of eden to till the ground" imply teaching. vide archbishop whately's "history of religious worship." john w. parker, west strand, london, . { } "in the native church at sierra-leone undertook to pay for their primary schools, and thereby effected a saving to the church missionary society of pounds per annum. in the contributions of this one section of native christians had amounted to upwards of , pounds."--"manual of church missionary society's african missions."