CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER V.

Magnificent scenery—Method of marching—Hippopotamus killed—Lions and buffalo—Sequasha the ivory-trader.

Sandia gave us two guides; and on the 4th of June we left the Elephant valley, taking a westerly course; and, after crossing a few ridges, entered the Chingereré or Paguruguru valley, through which, in the rainy season, runs the streamlet Pajodzé.  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 Pajodzé 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 Pajodzé, 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 l80 degrees from the spot to which we had climbed, and 700 or 800 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 José Pedra,—by the natives called Nyamatimbira,—chief, or capitão 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 7th of June, 1860, 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 Sininyané’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 Sinjéré, 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 Kafué, is covered with the large stumps and trunks of a petrified forest.  We halted a couple of days by the fine stream Sinjéré, 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 Kakololé, crosses the river near the mouth of the Sinjéré; 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 “ifé” 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 Sinjéré 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 Sinjéré on the 12th of June, our men carrying with them bundles of hippopotamus meat for sale, and for future use.  We rested for breakfast opposite the Kakololé dyke, which confines the channel, west of the Manyeréré 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 13th, 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.  Pinkwé, or Mbingwé, otherwise Moeu, forms the south-eastern angle of the range.  On the 16th June we were at the flourishing village of Senga, under the headman Manyamé, 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 2000 and 3000 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 Bungwé, and the long, level, wooded ridge Nyangombé, the first of a series bending from the S.E. to the N.W. past the Zambesi.  We shot an old pallah on the 16th, 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 20th 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 Mpendé.  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.  Mpendé’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 Mpendé 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 Mpendé excepted, could be more peaceful than our passage through this tract of country in 1856.  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 Mpendé’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 23rd 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 Mpendé.  Sandia and Mpendé 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 Shiré, 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 26th 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 Mantlanyané 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.  Sininyané 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 8 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, Mpangwé, in order that Namakusuru might seize upon the chieftainship; and for the murder of Mpangwé the trader agreed to receive ten large tusks of ivory.  Sequasha, with a picked party of armed slaves, went to visit Mpangwé 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.  Mpangwé 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, Mpangwé 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 1856 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 Mpangwé, 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 28th 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 30th of June the thermometer was as low as 39 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, Mpangwé.  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 buazé-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 Maçããs, 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, Podébodé, 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 25 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 Podébodé, 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, duìker 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. 1 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 Mantlanyané, 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 Kakoné, 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, Mpangwé, 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 Selolé, 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 3rd 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 6th of July on the left bank of the Chongwé, 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, Kwanyakarombé, 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 Babimpé 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 9th, 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 Nyangalulé, at the confluence of the Kafué.  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 Kafué, or Kafujé, 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, Semalembué, gained all our hearts in 1856.

On the 9th of July we tried to send Semalembué 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 Kafué, 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 Nyangalulé, 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 Kafué reminds us a little of the Shiré, 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 11th before our party was ferried over the Kafué.  After crossing, we were in the Bawé 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 Kafué 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 12th July, opposite the narrow island of Sikakoa, which has a village on its lower end.  We were here told that Moselekatsé’s chief town is a month’s distance from this place.  They had heard, moreover, that the English had come to Moselekatsé, 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 300 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 14th 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 Moselekatsé’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 Moselekatsé a few months before our arrival, and saw the English missionaries, living in their wagons.  “They told Moselekatsé,” 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 Bawé.  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 Makondé.  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 Rimbé, the Chibué, 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 Mpandé island, at the mouth of the Zungwé 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 Bawé, 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 Bawé 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 Zungwé or Mozama or Dela rivulet, up which we proceeded, first in a westerly and then in a north-westerly direction.  The Zungwé 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 Sinamané 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 Zungwé 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 3000 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 28th 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 Moselekatsé and Sebetuané.  Several tribes of Bechuana and Basutu, fleeing from the Zulu or Matebelé chief Moselekatsé 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.

Sebetuané, 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 Sebetuané’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 Lekoné, near to which they were encamped, where Sebetuané, 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 Sebetuané 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 Matebelé, who coming afterwards, drove even their conquerors, the Makololo, out of the country.  Sebetuané, 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 “Moselekatsé’s own” followed with canoes, but were now baffled by Sebetuané’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 Basimilongwé, and some of our men found relations among them.  Sininyané 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 Mosibé, 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 Mosibé 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 Maçãã 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 muavé 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 Kafué 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 muavé.  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 muavé, 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 Moshobotwané and the Makololo under-chiefs making forays into their country: they had already suffered severely, and their remonstrances with their countryman, Moshobotwané, 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 Kafué 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 Kafué to the Zungwé 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 Bawé 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, Mpangwé, 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 Bawé, 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 Matebelé.  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 4th 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 20 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 Sesheké 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 Mashotlané, 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 7th beside the village of the old Batoka chief, Moshobotwané, 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 8th, and marched three hours; then on the 9th 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 Moshobotwané 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 Lekoné.  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, Mashotlané: 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 Cæsar in his “Commentaries.”  Few admit, like old Moshobotwané, that they fought because they had the power, and a fair prospect of conquering.  We found here Pitsané, 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, 9th August, 1860, to see the Victoria Falls.  Mosi-oa-tunya is the Makololo name and means smoke sounding; Seongo or Chongwé, 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 Hyphæne 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 1860 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 310 feet, the weight rested on a sloping projection, probably 50 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 1170 yards from the western end of the chasm, and some 600 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 130 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 1170 yards long, and 416 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 400 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 Moselekatsé’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 310 feet in depth.  Then Boaruka, a small island, intervenes, and next comes a great fall, with a breadth of 573 yards; a projecting rock separates this from a second grand fall of 325 yards broad; in all, upwards of 900 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 200, or at most 300 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 Sebituané of Mr. Oswell and Dr. Livingstone, in 1851, 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 200 miles off, and it was approached within two days; but it was seen by no European till 1855, when Dr. Livingstone visited it on his way to the East Coast.  Being then accompanied as far as this Fall by Sekeletu and 200 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 Mashotlané 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 Mashotlané, “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.

Mashotlané’s education had been received in the camp of Sebituané, 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 Lekoné at its confluence, about eight miles above the island Kalai, and went on to a village opposite the Island Chundu.  Nambowé, the headman, is one of the Matebelé or Zulus, who have had to flee from the anger of Moselekatsé, to take refuge with the Makololo.

We spent Sunday, the 12th, at the village of Molelé, a tall old Batoka, who was proud of having formerly been a great favourite with Sebituané.  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, Molelé’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 lechwé 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 13th we met a party from Sekeletu, who was now at Sesheké.  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 Chobé.  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 kokomatsané.  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 Sesheké; 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 17th, 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 Moshobotwané, 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 Moshobotwané 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.  Mashotlané 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 Moselekatsé 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 Mashotlané had cursed the Doctor.  The instructions to Mokompa, from Sekeletu, were to “go and tell Mashotlané that he had offended greatly.  He had not cursed Monaré (Dr. Livingstone) but Sebituané, as Monaré was now in the place of Sebituané, 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 Mashotlané’s conduct had been most outrageous to the Batoka, Sekeletu sent for him to come to Sesheké, in order that he might have him more under his own eye; but Mashotlané, 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 Mashotlané 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 Chobé, the rest of the way to Sesheké 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, lechwé, 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 Sesheké and the Falls, and they are uncommonly wary, as it is certain death for one to be caught napping in the daytime.

On the 18th we entered Sesheké.  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 Moriantsiané 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 Mokelé, 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 Barotsé Valley.”  We were entirely out of food when we reached Sesheké.  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 hypogœa) 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 Mamiré.  Ponwané, 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 Sebituané’s grand empire was crumbling to pieces.  A large body of young Barotsé 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 Sinamané, and Muemba, were independent, and Mashotlané at the Falls was setting Sekeletu’s authority virtually at defiance.  Sebituané’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 Sebituané, the founder of the nation, strong in battle, and wise in the affairs of state.  “In the days of the Great Lion” (Sebituané), said his only sister, Moriantsiané’s widow, whose husband Sekeletu had killed, “we had chiefs and little chiefs and elders to carry on the government, and the great chief, Sebituané, 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, Sebituané, 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.  “Moriantsiané, 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 Ponwané, and, as you see, are now killing me.”  Ponwané 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 Mamiré, 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 Mamiré 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.

Mokelé, the headman of Sesheké, and Sebituané’s sister, Manchunyané, 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 Sesheké; but cheaper in the Batoka country, from Sinamané’s to the Kafué, 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 Sinamané’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 Sesheké.

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 Kafué.  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.  Sebituané’s sister described its first appearance among the tribe, after their settling in the Barotsé 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 Matebelé should come and rob them of their much-loved cattle.  Sebituané, 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 Matebelé, 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 Moselekatsé 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 Sebituané, 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.  Sebituané, 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.  Sebituané’s sister, the head lady of Sesheké, 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 Moshobotwané, 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 Mantlanyané, for instance, ran off and left his little boy among strangers.  Mantlanyané 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 Sesheké, 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 1824.  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.  Sebetuané 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 Pitsané 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.  Tselané, 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.  Mamiré 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 Barotsé 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 240 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 1853, 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, Mosalé and Pekonyané, 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-Pulenyané, 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 Mosalé and thou Pekonyané, my lords, be not faint-hearted, nor let your hearts be sore, but believe all the words of Monaré (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 Monaré.”  Ma-Pulenyané 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 Mafalé 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-Pulenyané 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 Kongoné in November, it was impossible for us to remain in Sesheké 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 Sesheké, 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 Sesheké, 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 Sesheké on the 17th September, 1860, convoyed by Pitsané and Leshoré with their men.  Pitsané 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.  Leshoré, besides acting as a sort of guard of honour to us, was sent on a diplomatic mission to Sinamané.  No tribute was exacted by Sekeletu from Sinamané; but, as he had sent in his adhesion, he was expected to act as a guard in case of the Matebelé wishing to cross and attack the Makololo.  As we intended to purchase canoes of Sinamané in which to descend the river, Leshoré was to commend us to whatever help this Batoka chief could render.  It must be confessed that Leshoré’s men, who were all of the black subject tribes, really needed to be viewed by us in the most charitable light; for Leshoré, 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 17th we slept on the left bank of the Majeelé, 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 Ramakukané, 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 Nambowé.  When he laid down, to his surprise two of Nambowé’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 Chobé 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, Moshobotwané, 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.  Mashotlané 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 Sesheké, 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 27th, 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 Sinamané’s, in order to see Kalunda and a Fall called Moömba, 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 800 or 1000 feet below us, what, after Mosi-oa-tunya, seemed two insignificant cataracts.  It was evident that Pitsané, 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 Barotsé of the great valley to their west, in which stands Sesheké, 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 1st of October, and found the weather very much warmer than when we crossed this stream in August.  At 3 p.m. the thermometer, four feet from the ground, was 101 degrees in the shade; the wet bulb only 61 degrees: a difference of 40 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 3rd 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 Sinamané’s, a mass of mountain called Gorongué, or Golongwé, 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 102 degrees in the shade, and a thermometer placed under the tongue or armpit showed that our blood was 99.5 degrees, or 1.5 degrees hotter than that of the natives, which stood at 98 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 5th, 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 6th we arrived at the islet Chilombé, belonging to Sinamané, where the Zambesi runs broad and smooth again, and were well received by Sinamané 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 Sinamané’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 Sinamané, 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.

Sinamané’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 250 yards wide, and flows serenely between high banks towards the North-east.  Below Sinamané’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 Sinamané’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, Sinamané 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.”  Sinamané 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.  Sinamané 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 Sinamané 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.  Sinamané 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 12th 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 Mpandé 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 Zungwé, where we had left the Zambesi on our way up.  Mpandé 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.  Mpandé 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 10 degrees since August, being now 80 degrees.  The air was as high as 96 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 17th, and came on the morning of the 19th to the more serious ones of Nakabelé, 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 Pendelé, 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 Kafué, and so it is on Moselekatsó’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 24th October, we found Sequasha in a village below the Kafué, with the main body of his people.  He said that 210 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 Kafué, 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 Mpangwé, 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 Mpangwé, 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 29th, 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 100 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 1st 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 2nd, 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, Mpendé, 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 Sebituanè, 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 Kakololé narrows, at Mount Manyereré; 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 Kakololé, and still at the base of Manyereré 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 21st November; and we reached Tette early on the 23rd, 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 3rd of December for the Kongoné.  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 21st 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 1860 encamped on the island of Chimba.  Canoes were sent for from Senna; and we reached it on the 27th, to be again hospitably entertained by our friend, Senhor Ferrão.

We reached the Kongoné on the 4th of January, 1861.  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 Kongoné 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 31st of January, 1861, 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 4th 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 Shiré 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 Shiré, 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 25th 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 9th of March, when he came in the “Lyra.”  On the 11th 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 Shiré, 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 Kongoné mouth of the Zambesi with Bishop Mackenzie and his party.  We reached the coast in seven days, and passed up the Zambesi to the Shiré.

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 Shiré.  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 15th 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 4 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 Mbamé, 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, Mbamé 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 Mbamé 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.

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