THE LAST JOURNALS

OF

DAVID LIVINGSTONE,

IN CENTRAL AFRICA,

FROM 1865 TO HIS DEATH.

CONTINUED BY A NARRATIVE OF

HIS LAST MOMENTS AND SUFFERINGS,

OBTAINED FROM

HIS FAITHFUL SERVANTS CHUMA AND SUSI,

BY HORACE WALLER, F.R.G.S.,
RECTOR OF TWYWELL,
NORTHAMPTON.

IN TWO VOLUMES.—VOL. I.
[1866–1868]

WITH PORTRAIT, MAPS, AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1874.

DAVID
LIVINGSTONE

INTRODUCTION.

In the midst of the universal sorrow caused by the
intelligence that Dr. Livingstone had lost his life at the
furthest point to which he had penetrated in his search for the
true sources of the Nile, a faint hope was indulged that some of
his journals might survive the disaster: this hope, I rejoice to
say, has been realized beyond the most sanguine expectations.

It is due, in the first place, to his native attendants, whose
faithfulness has placed his last writings at our disposal, and
also to the reader, before he launches forth upon a series of
travels and scientific geographical records of the most
extraordinary character, to say that in the following narrative
of seven years’ continuous work and new discovery no break
whatever occurs.

We have not to deplore the loss, by accident or carelessness,
of a single entry, from the time of Livingstone’s departure from
Zanzibar in the beginning of 1866 to the day when his note-book
dropped from his hand in the village of Ilala at the end of
April, 1873.

I trust it will not be uninteresting if I preface the history
with a few words on the nature of these journals and writings as
they have come to hand from Central Africa.

It will be remembered that when Mr. Stanley returned to
England in 1872, Dr. Livingstone entrusted to his care a very
large Letts’ diary, sealed up and consigned to the safe keeping
of his daughter, Miss Agnes Livingstone. Upon the confirmation of
the worst news, this book was examined and found to contain a
considerable portion of the notes which her father made during
his travels previous to the time of Mr. Stanley’s meeting him.

The Doctor’s custom was always to have metallic note-books in
use, in which the day’s jottings were recorded. When time and
opportunity served, the larger volume was posted up with
scrupulous care.

It seems, however, that in the last three or four years of his
life this excellent rule had to give way to the toils of travel
and the exhaustion of most distressing illnesses. Whilst in the
Manyuema country he ran out of note-books, ink, and pencils, and
had to resort to shifts which at first made it a very debateable
point whether the most diligent attempt at deciphering would
suceeed after all. Such pocket-books as remained at this period
of his travels were utilized to the last inch of paper. In some
of them we find lunar observations, the names of rivers, and the
heights of hills advancing towards the middle from one end,
whilst from the other the itinerary grows day by day,
interspersed with map routes of the march, botanical notes, and
carefully made drawings. But in the mean time the middle portion
of the book was filling up with calculations, private memoranda,
words intended for vocabularies, and extracts from books, whilst
here and there the stain of a pressed flower causes
indistinctness; yet the thread of the narrative runs throughout.
Noting but his invariable habit of constantly repeating the month
and year obviates hopeless confusion. Nor is this all; for
pocket-books gave out at last, and old newspapers, yellow with
African damp, were sewn together, and his notes were written
across the type with a substitute for ink made from the juice of
a tree. To Miss Livingstone and to the Rev. C.A. Alington I am
very much indebted for help in the laborious task of deciphering
this portion of the Doctor’s journals. Their knowledge of his
handwriting, their perseverance, coupled with good eyes and a
strong magnifying-glass, at last made their task a complete
success.

In comparing this great mass of material with the journal
brought home by Mr. Stanley,
one finds that a great deal of most interesting matter can be
added. It would seem that in the hurry of writing and copying
despatches previous to his companion’s departure, the Doctor
rapidly entered up as much from his note-books as time and space
permitted.

Most fortunately, he still carried the greater part of these
original notes till the time of his death, so that they were
forthcoming when his effects were subsequently saved.

This brings us to the second instalment of the journals, for
we have thus acknowledged the first to have reached us on Mr.
Stanley’s return.

When the battered tin travelling-case, which was with
Livingstone to the last, was opened at the Foreign Office in the
spring of this year, not only were these valuable papers
disclosed which I have mentioned, but it was found also that
Livingstone had kept a copious journal during his stay at
Unyanyembé in some copy-books, and that when his stock of
note-books was replenished a daily record of his subsequent
travels had been made.

It was with fear and trembling that one looked to see whether
all had been saved or only part, but with satisfaction and
thankfulness I have subsequently discovered that his men
preserved every single line, besides his maps, which now come to
light for the first time.

Thus much on the material of the diaries: it remains to say a
few words on the Map which accompanies these journals. It has
been compiled from Dr. Livingstone’s original drawings and
note-books, with the corrections and additions he made from time
to time as the work of exploration progressed, and the details of
physical geography became clearer to him. The compiler, Mr. John
Bolton[1], implicitly following the original outline of the
drawing as far as possible, has honestly endeavoured to give such
a rendering of the entire work, as the Doctor would have done had
he lived to return home, and superintend the construction; and I
take this opportunity of expressing my sincere gratification that
Mr. Bolton’s rare technical skill, scientific knowledge, and
unwearying labour have been available for the purpose.

Amongst almost the last words that Livingstone wrote, I find
an unfinished letter to myself, in which he gives me very clear
and explicit directions concerning the geographical notes he had
previously sent home, and I am but carrying out the sacred duty
which is attached to a last wish when I call attention to the
fact, that he particularly desired in this letter that no
positions gathered from his observations for latitude and
longitude, nor for the levels of the Lakes, &c., should be
considered correct till Sir Thomas Maclear had examined them.
The position of Casembe’s town, and of a point near
Pambetté at the S.E., and of Lake Liemba (Tanganyika),
have been computed and corrected by Sir T. Maclear and Dr. Mann.
The observations for latitude were taken at short intervals, and
where it has been possible to test them they have been found very
correct, but I repeat that until the imprimatur of his old friend
at the Cape of Good Hope stands over the whole of Livingstone’s
work, the map must be accepted as open to further
corrections.

The journey from Kabwabwata to Mparru has been inserted
entirely from notes, as the traveller was too ill to mark
the route: this is the only instance in all his wanderings where
he failed to give some indication on his map of the nature of the
ground over which he passed. The journey front Mikindany Bay to
Lake Nyassa has also been laid down from his journal and
latitudes in consequence of the section of this part of his route
(which he left at Ujiji) not having arrived in England at this date.[2] It will be observed that the outline of
Lake Nyassa differs from that on any published map: it has been
drawn from the original exploratory survey of its southern shores
made by Dr. Livingstone in 1861-3. For some reason this original
plan was not adhered to by a former draughtsman, but the Lake has
here been restored to a more accurate bearing and position.

How often shall we see in the pages of this concluding chapter
of his life, that unwavering determination which was
pre-eminently the great characteristic of David Livingstone!

Naturally endowed with unusual endurance, able to concentrate
faculties of no ordinary kind upon whatever he took in hand, and
with a dread of exaggeration which at times almost militated
against the importance of some of his greatest discoveries, it
may be doubted if ever Geographer went forth strengthened with so
much true power. Let us add to these a sincere trust that
slavery, the “great open sore of the world,” as he called it,
might under God’s good guidance receive healing at his hands; a
fervent hope that others would follow him after he had removed
those difficulties which are comprised in a profound ignorance of
the physical features of a new country, and we have the marching
orders of him who left us in August 1865 never to return
alive.

Privileged to enjoy his near personal friendship for a
considerable period in Africa, and also at home, it has been easy
to trace—more especially from correspondence with him of
late years—that Livingstone wanted just some such gigantic problem as that which he
attacked at the last to measure his strength against: that he
finally overrated and overtaxed it I think all must admit.

He had not sufficiently allowed for an old wound which his
constitution received whilst battling with dysentery and fever,
on his celebrated journey across Africa, and this finally sapped
his vital powers, and, through the irritation of exhaustion,
insidiously clouded much of his happiness.

Many of his old friends were filled with anxiety when they
found that he intended to continue the investigation of the Nile
sources, for the letters sent home by Mr. Stanley raised the
liveliest apprehensions, which, alas! soon proved themselves well
grounded.

The reader must be warned that, however versed in books of
African travel he may be, the very novelty of his situation
amongst these pages will render him liable perhaps to a danger
which a timely word may avert. Truly it may be said he has an
embarras de richesses! To follow an explorer who by his
individual exertions has filled up a great space in the map of
Africa, who has not only been the first to set foot on the shores
of vast inland seas, but who, with the simple appliances of his
bodily stature for a sounding pole and his stalwart stride for a
measuring tape, lays down new rivers by the hundreds, is a task
calculated to stagger him. It may be provoking to find
Livingstone busily engaged in bargaining for a canoe upon the
shores of Bangweolo, much as he would have secured a boat on his
own native Clyde; but it was not in his nature to be subject to
those paroxysms in which travellers too often indite their
discoveries and descriptions.

At the same time these journals will be found to contain
innumerable notes on the habits of animals, birds, and fishes,
many of them probably new species, and on phenomena in every
direction which the keen eye searched out as the great traveller
moved amongst some of the grandest scenes of this beautiful
world: it may be doubted if ever eye so keen was backed by so much perseverance to
shield it from a mere superficial habit of noticing. Let his
adventures speak for themselves.

Amongst the greatest facts recorded here the Geographer will
perceive that the Doctor has placed it beyond doubt that Lake
Nyassa belongs to a totally distinct system of waters to that
which holds Lake Tanganyika, and the rivers running north and
west. He was too sagacious to venture the surmise that Tanganyika
has a subterranean outlet without having duly weighed the
probabilities in the scale with his elaborate observations: the
idea gathers force when we remember that in the case of limestone
cliffs, water so often succeeds in breaking bounds by boring
through the solid rock. No more interesting problem is left to
solve, and we shall yet learn whether, through the caverns of
Western Kabogo, this Lake adds its waters to the vast northerly
flow of rivers we now read of for the first time, and which are
undoubtedly amongst the largest in the world.

I cannot close these remarks without stating how much obliged
I am to Mr. James Young, F.R.S., of Kelly, for having ensured the
presence of the Doctor’s men, Chuma and Susi. Ever ready to serve
his old friend Livingstone, he took care that they should be at
my elbow so long as I required them to help me amidst the pile of
MSS. and maps. Their knowledge of the countries they travelled in
is most remarkable, and from constantly aiding their master by
putting questions to the natives respecting the course of rivers,
&c., I found them actual geographers of no mean attainments.
In one instance, when in doubt concerning a particular watershed,
to my surprise Susi returned a few hours afterwards with a plan
of the whole system of rivers in the region under examination,
and I found his sketch tally well with the Doctor’s map. Known to
me previously for years on the Zambesi and Shiré it was a
pleasure to have them with me for four months. Amongst other good
services they have aided the
artist by reproducing the exact facsimile of the hut in which Dr.
Livingstone expired, besides making models of the “kitanda” on
which he was carried, and of the village in which his body lay
for fourteen days.

I need not add what ready and valuable assistance I have
derived from the Doctor’s old companion Dr. Kirk wherever I have
found it necessary to apply to him; some of the illustrations are
more particularly owing to his kindness.

It only remains to say that it has been thought advisable to
retain all the strictly scientific matter found in Dr.
Livingstone’s journals for future publication. When one sees that
a register of the daily rainfall was kept throughout, that the
temperature was continually recorded, and that barometrical and
hypsometrical observations were made with unflagging thoroughness
of purpose year in and year out, it is obvious that an
accumulated mass of information remains for the meteorologist to
deal with separately, which alone must engross many months of
labour.

A constant sense of great responsibility has been mine
throughout this task, for one cannot doubt that much of the
future welfare of distant tribes and races depends upon
Livingstone obtaining through these records a distinct hearing
for their woes, their misery, and above all for their willingness
to welcome men drawn towards them by motives like his.

At the same time memory and affection have not failed to bring
back vividly the man, the traveller, and the friend. May that
which he has said in his journals suffer neither loss of interest
nor depth of meaning at the compiler’s hands.

HORACE WALLER.

TWYWELL RECTORY,
THRAPSTON,
NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.
Nov. 2,
1874.

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XI.

CHAPTER XII.

CHAPTER XIII.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

Full-page Illustrations.

1. PORTRAIT OF DR. LIVINGSTONE.
(From a Photograph by ANNAN)

2. SLAVERS REVENGING THEIR LOSSES

3. SLAVES ABANDONED

4. CHITAPANGWA RECEIVING DR.
LIVINGSTONE

5. THE VILLAGE ON LAKE
LIEMBA—TANGANYIKA

6. THE ARRIVAL OF HAMEES’ BRIDE

7. DISCOVERY OF LAKE BANGWEOLO

Smaller Illustrations.

1. DR. LIVINGSTONE’S HOUSE, ZANZIBAR

2. DHOW USED FOR TRANSPORT OF DR.
LIVINGSTONE’S CAMELS

3. A THORN-CLIMBER

4. TOMAHAWK AND AXE

5. CARVED DOOR, ZANZIBAR

6. TATTOO OF MATAMBWÉ

7. IMITATION OF BASKET-WORK IN POTTERY

8. DIGGING-STICK WEIGHTED WITH ROUND
STONE

9. MANGANJA AND MACHINGA WOMEN

10. TATOO ON
WOMEN

11. CARVED STOOL MADE OF A SINGLE WOODEN
BLOCK

12. WOMEN’S TEETH HOLLOWED OUT

13. MODE OF FORGING HOES

14. MALLET FOR SEPARATING FIBRES OF
BARK

15. THE CHIEF CHITAPANGWA

16. CHITAPANGWA’S WIVES

17. FILED TEETH OF QUEEN MOÄH

18. A FOREST GRAVE

CHAPTER I.

ZANZIBAR, 28th January, 1866.—After a passage of
twenty-three days from Bombay we arrived at this island in the
Thule, which was one of Captain Sherard Osborne’s late
Chinese fleet, and now a present from the Bombay Government to
the Sultan of Zanzibar. I was honoured with the commission to
make the formal presentation, and this was intended by H.E. the
Governor-in-Council to show in how much estimation I was held,
and thereby induce the Sultan to forward my enterprise. The
letter to his Highness was a commendatory epistle in my favour,
for which consideration on the part of Sir Bartle Frere I feel
deeply grateful. It runs as follows:—

When we arrived Dr. Seward, the Acting Consul, was absent at
the Seychelles on account of serious failure of health: Mr.
Schultz, however, was representing him, but he too was at the
time away. Dr. Seward was expected back daily, and he did arrive
on the 31st. I requested a private interview with the Sultan, and
on the following day (29th) called and told him the nature of my
commission to his Highness. He was very gracious, and seemed
pleased with the gift, as well he might, for the Thule is
fitted up in the most gorgeous manner. We asked a few days to put
her in perfect order, and this being the Ramadân, or
fasting month, he was all the more willing to defer a visit to
the vessel.

Dr. Seward arranged to have
an audience with the Sultan, to carry out his instructions, which
were to present me in a formal manner; Captain Bradshaw of the
Wasp, with Captain Leatham of the Vigilant, and
Bishop Tozer, were to accompany us in full dress, but the Sultan
had a toothache and gumboil, and could not receive us; he,
however, placed one of his houses at my disposal, and appointed a
man who speaks English to furnish board for my men and me, and
also for Captain Brebner, of the Thule, and his men.

Livingstone’s House,
Zanzibar.

6th February, 1866.—The Sultan being still unable
to come, partly on account of toothache and partly on account of
Ramadân, he sent his commodore, Captain Abdullah, to
receive the Thule. When the English flag was hauled down
in the Thule, it went up to the mainmast of the
Iskander Shah, and was saluted by twenty-one guns; then
the Wasp saluted the Arab flag with an equal number, which
honour being duly acknowledged by a second royal salute from the
Iskander Shah, Captain Abdullah’s frigate, the ceremony
ended.

Next day, the 7th, we were
received by the Sultan, and through his interpreter, I told him
that his friend, the Governor of Bombay, had lately visited the
South Mahratta Princes, and had pressed on them the necessity of
education; the world was moving on, and those who neglected to
acquire knowledge would soon find that power slipped through
their fingers, and that the Bombay Government, in presenting his
Highness with a portion of steam power, showed its desire to
impart one of the greatest improvements of modern times, not
desiring to monopolize power, but hoping to lift up others with
themselves, and I wished him to live a hundred years and enjoy
all happiness. The idea was borrowed partly from Sir Bartle
Frere’s addresses, because I thought it would have more weight if
he heard a little from that source than if it emanated from
myself. He was very anxious that Captain Brebner and his men, in
returning to India, should take a passage from him in the
Nadir Shah, one of his men-of-war, and though he had
already placed his things aboard the Vigilant, to proceed
to Seychelles, and thence to Bombay, we persuaded Captain Brebner
to accept his Highness’s hospitality. He had evidently set his
heart on sending them back with suitable honours, and an hour
after consent was given to go by the Nadir Shah, he signed
an order for the money to fit her out.

11th February, 1866.—One of the foremost subjects
that naturally occupied my mind here was the sad loss of the
Baron van der Decken, on the River Juba, or Aljib. The first
intimation of the unfortunate termination of his explorations was
the appearance of Lieutenant von Schich at this place, who had
left without knowing whether his leader were dead or alive, but
an attack had been made on the encampment which had been planned
after the steamer struck the rocks and filled, and two of the
Europeans were killed. The attacking party came from the
direction in which the Baron and Dr. Link went, and three men of
note in it were slain. Von
Schich went back from Zanzibar to Brava to ascertain the fate of
the Baron, and meanwhile several native sailors from Zanzibar had
been allowed to escape from the scene of confusion to Brava.

18th February, 1866.—All the Europeans went to
pay visits of congratulation to his Highness the Sultan upon the
conclusion of the Ramadân, when sweetmeats were placed
before us. He desired me to thank the Governor of Bombay for his
magnificent gift, and to state that although he would like to
have me always with him, yet he would show me the same favour in
Africa which he had done here: he added that the Thule was
at my service to take me to the Rovuma whenever I wished to
leave. I replied that nothing had been wanting on his part; he
had done more than I expected, and I was sure that his Excellency
the Governor would be delighted to hear that the vessel promoted
his health and prosperity; nothing would delight him more than
this. He said that he meant to go out in her on Wednesday next
(20th): Bishop Tozer, Captain Fraser, Dr. Steere, and all the
English were present. The sepoys came in and did obeisance; and I
pointed out the Nassick lads as those who had been rescued from
slavery, educated, and sent back to their own country by the
Governor. Surely he must see that some people in the world act
from other than selfish motives.

In the afternoon Sheikh Sulieman, his secretary, came with a
letter for the Governor, to be conveyed by Lieutenant Brebner,
I.N., in the Nadir Shah, which is to sail to-morrow. He
offered money to the lieutenant, but this could not be heard of
for a moment.

The translation of the letter is as follows, and is an answer
to that which I brought.

2nd March, 1866.—A northern dhow came in with
slaves; when this was reported to the Sultan he ordered it to be
burned, and we saw this done from the window of the Consulate;
but he has very little power over Northern Arabs. He has shown a
little vigour of late. He wished to raise a revenue by a charge
of 10 per cent. on all articles brought into town for sale, but
this is clearly contrary to treaty, which provides that no
monopoly shall be permitted, and no dues save that of 5 per cent.
import duty. The French Consul bullies him: indeed the French
system of dealing with the natives is well expressed by that
word; no wonder they cannot gain influence among them: the
greatest power they exercise is by lending their flag to slaving
dhows, so that it covers that nefarious traffic.

The stench arising from a mile and a half or two square miles
of exposed sea beach, which is the general depository of the
filth of the town, is quite horrible. At night it is so gross or crass one might cut out a
slice and manure a garden with it: it might be called Stinkibar
rather than Zanzibar. No one can long enjoy good health here.

On visiting the slave-market I found about 300 slaves exposed
for sale, the greater part of whom came from Lake Nyassa and the
Shiré River; I am so familiar with the peculiar faces and
markings or tattooings, that I expect them to recognize me.
Indeed one woman said that she had heard of our passing up Lake
Nyassa in a boat, but she did not see me: others came from
Chipéta, S.W. of the Lake. All who have grown up seem
ashamed at being hawked about for sale. The teeth are examined,
the cloth lifted up to examine the lower limbs, and a stick is
thrown for the slave to bring, and thus exhibit his paces. Some
are dragged through the crowd by the hand, and the price called
out incessantly: most of the purchasers were Northern Arabs and
Persians. This is the period when the Sultan’s people may not
carry slaves coastwise; but they simply cannot, for the wind is
against them. Many of the dhows leave for Madagascar, and thence
come back to complete their cargoes.

The Arabs are said to treat their slaves kindly, and this also
may be said of native masters; the reason is, master and slave
partake of the general indolence, but the lot of the slave does
not improve with the general progress in civilization. While no
great disparity of rank exists, his energies are little tasked,
but when society advances, wants multiply; and to supply these
the slave’s lot grows harder. The distance between master and man
increases as the lust of gain is developed, hence we can hope for
no improvement in the slave’s condition, unless the master
returns to or remains in barbarism.

6th March, 1866.—Rains have begun now that the
sun is overhead. We expect the Penguin daily to come from
Johanna, and take us to the Rovuma. It is an unwholesome place;
six of my men have fever; few
retain health long, and considering the lowness of the island,
and the absence of sanitary regulations in the town, it is not to
be wondered at. The Sultan has little power, being only the
successor to the captain of the horde of Arabs who came down and
overran the island and maritime coasts of the adjacent continent.
He is called only Said or Syed, never Sultan; and they can boast
of choosing a new one if he does not suit them. Some coins were
found in digging here which have Cufic inscriptions, and are
about 900 years old. The island is low; the highest parts may not
be more than 150 feet above the sea; it is of a coral formation,
with sandstone conglomerate. Most of the plants are African, but
clove-trees, mangoes, and cocoa-nut groves give a luxuriant South
Sea Island look to the whole scenery.

We visited an old man to-day, the richest in Zanzibar, who is
to give me letters to his friends at Tanganyika, and I am trying
to get a depôt of goods for provisions formed there, so
that when I reach it I may not be destitute.

18th March, 1866.—I have arranged with Koorje, a
Banian, who farms the custom-house revenue here, to send a supply
of beads, cloth, flour, tea, coffee, and sugar, to Ujiji, on Lake
Tanganyika. The Arab there, with whom one of Koorje’s people will
remain in charge of the goods, is called Thani bin Suelim.

Yesterday we went to take leave of the Sultan, and to thank
him for all his kindness to me and my men, which has indeed been
very great. He offered me men to go with me, and another letter
if I wished it. He looks very ill.

I have received very great kindness during my stay from Dr.
and Mrs. Seward. They have done everything for me in their power:
may God Almighty return it all abundantly into their bosoms, in
the way that He best can. Dr. Seward’s views of the policy
pursued here I have no doubt are
the right ones; in fact, the only ones which can be looked back
to with satisfaction, or that have probability of success among a
race of Pariah Arabs.

The Penguin came a few days ago, and Lieutenant
Garforth in command agrees to take me down to the Rovuma River,
and land me there. I have a dhow to take my animals: six camels,
three buffaloes, and a calf, two mules, and four donkeys. I have
thirteen Sepoys, ten Johanna men, nine Nassick boys, two Shupanga
men, and two Wayaus, Wekatani and Chuma.[3]

[It may be well to point out that several of these men had
previously been employed by Dr. Livingstone on the Zambesi and
Shiré; thus Musa, the Johanna man, was a sailor on the
Lady Nyassa, whilst Susi and Amoda were engaged at
Shupanga to cut wood for the Pioneer. The two Waiyau lads,
Wakatani and Chuma, were liberated from the slavers by the Doctor
and Bishop Mackenzie in 1861, and lived for three years with the
Mission party at Chibisa’s before they were engaged by
Livingstone. The Nassick lads were entire strangers, and were
trained in India.]

19th March, 1866.—We start this morning at 10
A.M. I trust that the Most High may prosper me in this work,
granting me influence in the eyes of the heathen, and helping me
to make my intercourse beneficial to them.

22nd March, 1866.—We reached Rovuma Bay to-day,
and anchored about two miles from the mouth of the river, in five
fathoms. I went up the left bank to see if the gullies which
formerly ran into the bay had altered, so as to allow camels to
cross them: they seemed to have become shallower. There was no wind for the dhow, and as
for the man-of-war towing her, it was out of the question. On the
23rd the cutter did try to tow the dhow, but without success, as
a strong tide runs constantly out of the river at this season. A
squall came up from the S.E., which would have taken the dhow in,
but the master was on board the Penguin, and said he had
no large sail. I got him off to his vessel, but the wind died
away before we could reach the mouth of the river.

24th March, 1866.—I went to the dhow, and there
being no wind I left orders with the captain to go up the right
bank should a breeze arise. Mr. Fane, midshipman, accompanied me
up the left bank above, to see if we could lead the camels along
in the water. Near the point where the river first makes a little
bend to the north, we landed and found three formidable gullies,
and jungle so thick with bush, date-palms, twining bamboo, and
hooked thorns, that one could scarcely get along. Further inland
it was sticky mud, thickly planted over with mangrove roots and
gullies in whose soft banks one sank over the ankles. No camels
could have moved, and men with extreme difficulty might struggle
through; but we never could have made an available road. We came
to a she-hippopotamus lying in a ditch, which did not cover her;
Mr. Fane fired into her head, and she was so upset that she
nearly fell backward in plunging up the opposite bank: her calf
was killed, and was like sucking-pig, though in appearance as
large as a full-grown sow.

We now saw that the dhow had a good breeze, and she came up
along the right bank and grounded at least a mile from the spot
where the mangroves ceased. The hills, about two hundred feet
high, begin about two or three miles above that, and they looked
invitingly green and cool. My companion and I went from the dhow
inland, to see if the mangroves gave way, to a more walkable
country, but the swamp covered over thickly with mangroves only
became worse the farther we
receded from the river. The whole is flooded at high tides, and
had we landed all the men we should have been laid up with fever
ere we could have attained the higher land, which on the right
bank bounds the line of vision, and the first part of which lies
so near. I thought I had better land on the sand belt on the left
of Rovuma Bay, and then explore and get information from the
natives, none of whom had as yet come near us, so I ordered the
dhow to come down to the spot next day, and went on board the
Penguin. Lieutenant Garforth was excessively kind, and
though this is his best time for cruising in the North, he most
patiently agreed to wait and help me to land.

24th March, 1866.—During the night it occurred to
me that we should be in a mess if after exploration and
information from the natives we could find no path, and when I
mentioned this, Lieutenant Garforth suggested that we should
proceed to Kilwa, so at 5 A.M. I went up to the dhow with Mr.
Fane, and told the captain that we were going there. He was loud
in his protestations against this, and strongly recommended the
port of Mikindany, as quite near to Rovuma, Nyassa, and the
country I wished to visit, besides being a good landing-place,
and the finest port on the coast. Thither we went, and on the
same evening landed all our animals in Mikindany bay, which lies
only twenty-five miles N. of Rovuma. The Penguin then
left.

The Rovuma is quite altered from what it was when first we
visited it. It is probable that the freshets form banks inside
the mouth, which are washed out into the deep bay, and this
periodical formation probably has prevented the Arabs from using
the Rovuma as a port of shipment. It is not likely that Mr.
May[4] would have made a
mistake if the middle were as shoal as now: he found soundings of
three fathoms or more.

Dhow used for Transport of Dr. Livingstone’s Camels.

25th March,
1866.—I hired a house for four dollars a month and
landed all our goods from the dhow. The bay gives off a narrow
channel, about 500 yards wide and 200 yards long, the middle is
deep, but the sides are coral reefs and shoal: the deep part
seems about 100 yards wide. Outside in the Bay of Mikindany there
is no anchorage except on the edge of the reef where the
Penguin got seven fathoms, but further in it was only two
fathoms. The inner bay is called Pemba, not Pimlea, as
erroneously printed in the charts of Owen. It is deep and quite sheltered; another of a
similar round form lies somewhat to the south: this bay may be
two miles square.

The cattle are all very much the worse for being knocked about
in the dhow. We began to prepare saddles of a very strong tree
called Ntibwé, which is also used for making the hooked
spear with which hippopotami are killed—the hook is very
strong and tough; I applied also for twenty carriers and a Banian
engaged to get them as soon as possible. The people have no
cattle here, they are half-caste Arabs mostly, and quite civil to
us.

26th March, 1866.—A few of the Nassick boys have
the slave spirit pretty strongly; it goes deepest in those who
have the darkest skins. Two Gallah men are the most intelligent
and hardworking among them; some look on work with indifference
when others are the actors.

Now that I am on the point of starting on another trip into
Africa I feel quite exhilarated: when one travels with the
specific object in view of ameliorating the condition of the
natives every act becomes ennobled.

Whether exchanging the customary civilities, or arriving at a
village, accepting a night’s lodging, purchasing food for the
party, asking for information, or answering polite African
enquiries as to our objects in travelling, we begin to spread a
knowledge of that people by whose agency their land will yet
become enlightened and freed from the slave-trade.

The mere animal pleasure of travelling in a wild unexplored
country is very great. When on lands of a couple of thousand feet
elevation, brisk exercise imparts elasticity to the muscles,
fresh and healthy blood circulates through the brain, the mind
works well, the eye is clear, the step is firm, and a day’s
exertion always makes the evening’s repose thoroughly
enjoyable.

We have usually the stimulus of remote chances of danger either from beasts or men. Our
sympathies are drawn out towards our humble hardy companions by a
community of interests, and, it may be, of perils, which make us
all friends. Nothing but the most pitiable puerility would lead
any manly heart to make their inferiority a theme for
self-exaltation; however, that is often done, as if with the
vague idea that we can, by magnifying their deficiencies,
demonstrate our immaculate perfections.

The effect of travel on a man whose heart is in the right
place is that the mind is made more self-reliant: it becomes more
confident of its own resources—there is greater presence of
mind. The body is soon well-knit; the muscles of the limbs grow
as hard as a board, and seem to have no fat; the countenance is
bronzed, and there is no dyspepsia. Africa is a most wonderful
country for appetite, and it is only when one gloats over marrow
bones or elephant’s feet that indigestion is possible. No doubt
much toil is involved, and fatigue of which travellers in the
more temperate climes can form but a faint conception; but the
sweat of one’s brow is no longer a curse when one works for God:
it proves a tonic to the system, and is actually a blessing. No
one can truly appreciate the charm of repose unless he has
undergone severe exertion.

27th March, 1866.—The point of land which on the
north side of the entrance to the harbour narrows it to about 300
yards is alone called Pemba; the other parts have different
names. Looking northwards from the point, the first hundred yards
has ninety square houses of wattled daub; a ruin (a mosque) has
been built of lime and coral. The whole point is coral, and the
soil is red, and covered over with dense tropical vegetation, in
which the baobab is conspicuous. Dhows at present come in with
ease by the easterly wind which blows in the evening, and leave
next morning, the land wind taking them out.

While the camels and other animals are getting over their fatigues and bad bruises, we are
making camels’ saddles, and repairing those of the mules and
buffaloes. Oysters abound on all the rocks and on the trees over
which the tide flows: they are small, but much relished by the
people.

The Arabs here are a wretched lot physically—thin,
washed-out creatures—many with bleared eyes.

29-30th March, 1866.—- This harbour has somewhat
the shape of a bent bow or the spade on a playing-card, the shaft
of the arrow being the entrance in; the passage is very deep, but
not more than 100 yards wide, and it goes in nearly S.W.; inside
it is deep and quite secure, and protected from all winds. The
lands westward rise at once to about 200 feet, and John, a hill,
is the landmark by which it is best known in coming along the
coast—so say the Arabs. The people have no cattle, but say
there are no tsetse flies: they have not been long here,
i.e. under the present system; but a ruin on the northern
peninsula or face of the entrance, built of stone and
lime—Arab-fashion, and others on the north-west, show that
the place has been known and used of old. The adjacent country
has large game at different water pools, and as the whole country
is somewhat elevated it probably is healthy. There is very little
mangrove, but another enclosed piece of water to the south of
this probably has more. The language of the people here is
Swaheli; they trade a little in gum-copal and Orchilla weed. An
agent of the Zanzibar custom-house presides over the customs,
which are very small, and a jemidar acknowledging the Sultan is
the chief authority; but the people are little superior to the
natives whom they have displaced. The jemidar has been very civil
to me, and gives me two guides to go on to Adondé, but no
carriers can be hired. Water is found in wells in the coral rock
which underlies the whole place.

4th April, 1866.—When about to start from Pemba,
at the entrance to the other side of the bay one of our buffaloes
gored a donkey so badly that
he had to be shot: we cut off the tips of the offender’s horns,
on the principle of “locking the stable-door when the steed is
stolen,” and marched. We came to level spots devoid of
vegetation, and hard on the surface, but a deposit of water below
allowed the camels to sink up to their bodies through the crust.
Hauling them out, we got along to the jemidar’s house, which is
built of coral and lime. Hamesh was profuse in his professions of
desire to serve, but gave a shabby hut which let in rain and
wind. I slept one night in it, and it was unbearable, so I asked
the jemidar to allow me to sleep in his court-room, where many of
the sepoys were: he consented, but when I went refused; then,
being an excitable, nervous Arab, he took fright, mustered all
his men, amounting to about fifteen, with matchlocks; ran off,
saying he was going to kill a lion; came back, shook hands
nervously with me, vowing it was a man who would not obey him,
“it was not you.”

Our goods were all out in the street, bound on the
pack-saddles, so at night we took the ordinary precaution of
setting a guard. This excited our dignitary, and after dark all
his men were again mustered with matches lighted. I took no
notice of him, and after he had spent a good deal of talk, which
we could hear, he called Musa and asked what I meant. The
explanations of Musa had the effect of sending him to bed, and in
the morning, when I learned how much I had most unintentionally
disturbed him, I told him that I was sorry, but it did not occur
to me to tell him about an ordinary precaution against thieves.
He thought he had given me a crushing reply when he said with
vehemence, “But there are no thieves here.” I did not know till
afterwards that he and others had done me an ill turn in saying
that no carriers could be hired from the independent tribes
adjacent. They are low-coast Arabs, three-quarters African, and,
as usual, possess the bad without the good qualities of both
parents. Many of them came and begged brandy, and laughed when they remarked that they could
drink it in secret but not openly; they have not, however,
introduced it as an article of trade, as we Christians have done
on the West Coast.

6th April, 1866.—We made a short march round to
the south-west side of the Lake, and spent the night at a village
in that direction. There are six villages dotted round the inner
harbour, and the population may amount to 250 or 300
souls—coast Arabs and their slaves; the southern portion of
the harbour is deep, from ten to fourteen fathoms, but the
north-western part is shoal and rocky. Very little is done in the
way of trade; some sorghum, sem-sem seed, gum-copal, and orchilla
weed, constitute the commerce of the port: I saw two Banian
traders settled here.

7th April, 1866.—Went about south from Kindany
with a Somalie guide, named Ben Ali or Bon Ali, a good-looking
obliging man, who was to get twenty dollars to take us up to
Ngomano. Our path lay in a valley, with well-wooded heights on
each side, but the grass towered over our heads, and gave the
sensation of smothering, whilst the sun beat down on our heads
very fiercely, and there was not a breath of air stirring. Not
understanding camels, I had to trust to the sepoys who overloaded
them, and before we had accomplished our march of about seven
miles they were knocked up.

8th April, 1866.—We spent the Sunday at a village
called Nyañgedi. Here on the evening of the 7th April our
buffaloes and camels were first bitten by the tsetse fly.[5] We had passed through some pieces of
dense jungle which, though they offered no obstruction to
foot-passengers, but rather an agreeable shade, had to be cut for
the tall camels, and
fortunately we found the Makondé of this village glad to
engage themselves by the day either as woodcutters or carriers.
We had left many things with the jemidar from an idea that no
carriers could be procured. I lightened the camels, and had a
party of woodcutters to heighten and widen the path in the dense
jungle into which we now penetrated. Every now and then we
emerged on open spaces, where the Makondé have cleared
gardens for sorghum, maize, and cassava. The people were very
much more taken up with the camels and buffaloes than with me.
They are all independent of each other, and no paramount chief
exists. Their foreheads may be called compact, narrow, and rather
low; the alae nasi expanded laterally; lips full, not
excessively thick; limbs and body well formed; hands and feet
small; colour dark and light-brown; height middle size, and
bearing independent.

10th April, 1866.—We reached a village called
Narri, lat. 10° 23′ 14″ S. Many of the men had touches of
fever. I gave medicine to eleven of them, and next morning all
were better. Food is abundant and cheap. Our course is nearly
south, and in “wadys,” from which, following the trade-road, we
often ascend the heights, and then from the villages, which are
on the higher land, we descend to another on the same wady. No
running water is seen; the people depend on wells for a
supply.

11th April, 1866.—At Tandahara we were still
ascending as we went south; the soil is very fertile, with a good
admixture of sand in it, but no rocks are visible. Very heavy
crops of maize and sorghum are raised, and the cassava bushes are
seven feet in height. The bamboos are cleared off them, spread
over the space to be cultivated and burned to serve as manure.
Iron is very scarce, for many of the men appear with wooden
spears; they find none here, but in some spots where an ooze
issued from the soil iron rust appeared. At each of the villages
where we spent a night we presented a fathom of calico, and the headman always gave a
fowl or two, and a basket of rice or maize. The Makondé
dialect is quite different from Swaheli, but from their
intercourse with the coast Arabs many of the people here have
acquired a knowledge of Swaheli.

A Thorn-climber.

12th April, 1866.—On starting we found the jungle
so dense that the people thought “there was no cutting it:” it
continued upwards of three miles. The trees are not large, but so
closely planted together that a great deal of labour was required
to widen and heighten the path: where bamboos prevail they have
starved out the woody trees. The reason why the trees are not
large is because all the spaces we passed over were formerly
garden ground before the Makondé had been thinned by the
slave-trade. As soon as a garden is deserted, a thick crop of
trees of the same sorts as those formerly cut down springs up,
and here the process of woody trees starving out their fellows,
and occupying the land without dense scrub below, has not had
time to work itself out. Many are mere poles, and so intertwined
with climbers as to present the appearance of a ship’s ropes and
cables shaken in among them, and many have woody stems as thick
as an eleven-inch hawser. One species may be likened to the
scabbard of a dragoon’s sword, but along the middle of the flat
side runs a ridge, from which springs up every few inches a bunch
of inch-long straight sharp thorns. It hangs straight for a
couple of yards, but as if it could not give its thorns a fair
chance of mischief, it suddenly bends on itself, and all its
cruel points are now at right angles to what they were before.
Darwin’s observation shows a great deal of what looks like
instinct in these climbers.
This species seems to be eager for mischief; its tangled limbs
hang out ready to inflict injury on all passers-by. Another
climber is so tough it is not to be broken by the fingers;
another appears at its root as a young tree, but it has the
straggling habits of its class, as may be seen by its cords
stretched some fifty or sixty feet off; it is often two inches in
diameter; you cut it through at one part and find it reappear
forty yards off.

Tomahawk and Axe.

Another climber is like the leaf of an aloe, but convoluted as
strangely as shavings from the plane of a carpenter. It is dark
green in colour, and when its bark is taken off it is beautifully
striated beneath, lighter and darker green, like the rings of
growth on wood; still another is a thin string with a succession
of large knobs, and another has its bark pinched up all round at
intervals so as to present a great many cutting edges. One sort
need scarcely be mentioned, in which all along its length are
strong bent hooks, placed in a way that will hold one if it can
but grapple with him, for that is very common and not like those
mentioned, which the rather seem to be stragglers from the
carboniferous period of geologists, when Pachydermata wriggled
unscathed among tangled masses worse than these. We employed
about ten jolly young Makondé to deal with these
prehistoric plants in their own way, for they are accustomed to
clearing spaces for gardens, and went at the work with a will,
using tomahawks well adapted for the work. They whittled away
right manfully, taking an axe when any trees had to be cut. Their
pay, arranged beforehand, was to be one yard of calico per day:
this is not much, seeing we are still so near the sea-coast.
Climbers and young trees melted before them like a cloud before
the sun! Many more would have worked than we employed, but we
used the precaution of taking the names of those engaged. The tall men became
exhausted soonest, while the shorter men worked vigorously
still—but a couple of days’ hard work seemed to tell on the
best of them. It is doubtful if any but meat-eating people can
stand long-continued labour without exhaustion: the Chinese may
be an exception. When French navvies were first employed they
could not do a tithe of the work of our English ones; but when
the French were fed in the same style as the English, they
performed equally well. Here the Makondé have rarely the
chance of a good feed of meat: it is only when one of them is
fortunate enough to spear a wild hog or an antelope that they
know this luxury; if a fowl is eaten they get but a taste of it
with their porridge.

13th April, 1866.—We now began to descend the
northern slope down to the Rovuma, and a glimpse could
occasionally be had of the country; it seemed covered with great
masses of dark green forest, but the undulations occasionally
looked like hills, and here and there a Sterculia had put on
yellow foliage in anticipation of the coming winter. More
frequently our vision was circumscribed to a few yards till our
merry woodcutters made for us the pleasant scene of a long vista
fit for camels to pass: as a whole, the jungle would have made
the authors of the natty little hints to travellers smile at
their own productions, good enough, perhaps, where one has an
open country with trees and hills; by which to take bearings,
estimate distances, see that one point is on the same latitude,
another on the same longitude with such another, and all to be
laid down fair and square with protractor and compass, but so
long as we remained within the vegetation, that is fed by the
moisture from the Indian Ocean, the steamy, smothering air, and
dank, rank, luxuriant vegetation made me feel, like it,
struggling for existence,—and no more capable of taking
bearings than if I had been in a hogshead and observing through
the bunghole!

An old Monyiñko
headman presented a goat and asked if the sepoys wished to cut
its throat: the Johannees, being of a different sect of
Mahometans, wanted to cut it in some other way than their Indian
co-religionists: then ensued a fierce dispute as to who was of
the right sort of Moslem! It was interesting to see that not
Christians alone, but other nations feel keenly on religious
subjects.

I saw rocks of grey sandstone (like that which overlies coal)
and the Rovuma in the distance. Didi is the name of a village
whose headsman, Chombokëa, is said to be a doctor; all the
headmen pretend or are really doctors; however one, Fundindomba,
came after me for medicine for himself.

14th April, 1866.—To-day we succeeded in reaching
the Rovuma, where some very red cliffs appear on the opposite
heights, and close by where it is marked on the map that the
Pioneer turned back in 1861. Here we rested on Sunday
15th.

16th April, 1866.—Our course now lay westwards,
along the side of that ragged outline of table-land, which we had
formerly seen from the river as flanking both sides. There it
appeared a range of hills shutting in Rovuma, here we had spurs
jutting out towards the river, and valleys retiring from a mile
to three miles inland. Sometimes we wended our way round them,
sometimes rose over and descended their western sides, and then a
great deal of wood-cutting was required. The path is not
straight, but from one village to another. We came perpetually on
gardens, and remarked that rice was sown among the other grain;
there must be a good deal of moisture at other times to admit of
this succeeding: at present the crops were suffering for want of
rain. We could purchase plenty of rice for the sepoys, and well
it was so, for the supply which was to last till we arrived at
Ngomano was finished on the 13th. An old doctor, with our food
awaiting, presented me with two large bags of rice and his wife
husked it for us.

17th April,
1866.—I had to leave the camels in the hands of the
sepoys: I ordered them to bring as little luggage as possible,
and the Havildar assured me that two buffaloes were amply
sufficient to carry all they would bring. I now find that they
have more than full loads for two buffaloes, two mules, and two
donkeys; but when these animals fall down under them, they assure
me with so much positiveness that they are not overloaded, that I
have to be silent, or only, as I have several times done before,
express the opinion that they will kill these animals. This
observation on my part leads them to hide their things in the
packs of the camels, which also are over-burdened. I fear that my
experiment with the tsetse will be vitiated, but no symptoms yet
occur in any of the camels except weariness.[6] The sun is very sharp; it scorches.
Nearly all the sepoys had fever, but it is easily cured; they
never required to stop marching, and we cannot make over four or
five miles a day, which movement aids in the cure. In all cases
of fever removal from the spot of attack should be made: after
the fever among the sepoys, the Nassick boys took their turn
along with the Johannees.

18th April, 1866.—Ben Ali misled us away up to
the north in spite of my protest, when we turned in that
direction; he declared that was the proper path. We had much
wood-cutting, and found that our course that day and next was to
enable him to visit and return from one of his wives—a
comely Makondé woman! He brought her to call on me, and I
had to be polite to the lady, though we lost a day by the zigzag.
This is one way by which the Arabs gain influence; a great many
very light-coloured people are strewed among the Makondé,
but only one of these had the Arab hair. On asking Ali whether any attempts had been
made by Arabs to convert those with whom they enter into such
intimate relationships, he replied that the Makondé had no
idea of a Deity—no one could teach them, though
Makondé slaves when taken to the coast and elsewhere were
made Mahometans. Since the slave-trade was introduced this tribe
has much diminished in numbers, and one village makes war upon
another and kidnaps, but no religious teaching has been
attempted. The Arabs come down to the native ways, and make no
efforts to raise the natives to theirs; it is better that it is
so, for the coast Arab’s manners and morals would be no
improvement on the pagan African!

19th April, 1866.—We were led up over a hill
again, and on to the level of the plateau (where the evaporation
is greater than in the valley), and tasted water of an agreeable
coldness for the first time this journey. The people, especially
the women, are very rude, and the men very eager to be employed
as woodcutters. Very merry they are at it, and every now and then
one raises a cheerful shout, in which all join. I suppose they
are urged on by a desire to please their wives with a little
clothing. The higher up the Rovuma we ascend the people are more
and more tattooed on the face, and on all parts of the body. The
teeth are filed to points, and huge lip-rings are worn by the
women; some few Mabeha men from the south side of the river have
lip-rings too.

20th April, 1866.—A Johanna man allowed the
camels to trespass and destroy a man’s tobacco patch: the owner
would not allow us after this to pass through his rice-field, in
which the route lay. I examined the damage, and made the Johanna
man pay a yard of calico for it, which set matters all right.

Tsetse are biting the buffaloes again. Elephants, hippopotami,
and pigs are the only game here, but we see none: the tsetse feed on them. In the low
meadow land, from one to three miles broad, which lies along both
banks, we have brackish pools, and one, a large one, which we
passed, called Wrongwé, had much fish, and salt is got
from it.

21st April, 1866.—After a great deal of cutting
we reached the valley of Mehambwé to spend Sunday, all
glad that it had come round again. Here some men came to our camp
from Ndondé, who report that an invasion of Mazitu had
three months ago swept away all the food out of the country, and
they are now obliged to send in every direction for provisions.
When saluting, they catch each other’s hands and say, “Ai! Ai!”
but the general mode (introduced, probably by the Arabs) is to
take hold of the right hand, and say, “Marhaba” (welcome).

A wall-eyed ill-looking fellow, who helped to urge on the
attack on our first visit in 1861, and the man to whom I gave
cloth to prevent a collision, came about us disguised in a
jacket. I knew him well, but said nothing to him.[7]

23rd April, 1866.—When we marched this morning we
passed the spot where an animal had been burned in the fire, and
on enquiry I found that it is the custom when a leopard is killed
to take off the skin and consume the carcase thus, because the
Makondé do not eat it. The reason they gave for not eating
flesh which is freely eaten by other tribes, is that the leopard
devours men; this shows the opposite of an inclination to
cannibalism.

All the rocks we had seen showed that the plateau consists of
grey sandstone, capped by a ferruginous sandy conglomerate. We
now came to blocks of silicified wood lying on the surface; it is
so like recent wood, that no one who has not handled it would conceive it to be stone
and not wood: the outer surface preserves the grain or woody
fibre, the inner is generally silica.

Buffaloes bitten by tsetse again show no bad effects from it:
one mule is, however, dull and out of health; I thought that this
might be the effect of the bite till I found that his back was so
strained that he could not stoop to drink, and could only eat the
tops of the grasses. An ox would have been ill in two days after
the biting on the 7th.

A carrier stole a shirt, and went off unsuspected; when the
loss was ascertained, the man’s companions tracked him with Ben
Ali by night, got him in his hut, and then collected the headmen
of the village, who fined him about four times the value of what
had been stolen. They came back in the morning without seeming to
think that they had done aught to be commended; this was the only
case of theft we had noticed, and the treatment showed a natural
sense of justice.

24th April, 1866.—We had showers occasionally,
but at night all the men were under cover of screens. The fevers
were speedily cured; no day was lost by sickness, but we could
not march more than a few miles, owing to the slowness of the
sepoys; they are a heavy drag on us, and of no possible use,
except when acting as sentries at night.

When in the way between Kendany and Rovuma, I observed a plant
here, called Mandaré, the root of which is in taste
and appearance like a waxy potato; I saw it once before at the
falls below the Barotsé Valley, in the middle of the
continent; it had been brought there by an emigrant, who led out
the water for irrigation, and it still maintained its place in
the soil. Would this not prove valuable in the soil of India? I
find that it is not cultivated further up the country of the
Makondé, but I shall get Ali to secure some for
Bombay.

25th April,
1866.—A serpent bit Jack, our dog, above the eye, the
upper eyelid swelled very much, but no other symptoms appeared,
and next day all swelling was gone; the serpent was either
harmless, or the quantity of poison injected very small. The pace
of the camels is distressingly slow, and it suits the sepoys to
make it still slower than natural by sitting down to smoke and
eat. The grass is high and ground under it damp and steamy.

26th April, 1866.—On the 25th we reached Narri,
and resolved to wait the next day and buy food, as it is not so
plentiful in front; the people are eager traders in meal, fowls,
eggs, and honey; the women are very rude. Yesterday I caught a
sepoy, Pando, belabouring a camel with a big stick as thick as
any part of his arm, the path being narrow, it could not get out
of his way; I shouted to him to desist; he did not know I was in
sight, to-day the effect of the bad usage is seen in the animal
being quite unable to move its leg: inflammation has set up in
the hip-joint. I am afraid that several bruises which have
festered on the camels, and were to me unaccountable, have been
wilfully bestowed. This same Pando and another left Zanzibar
drunk: he then stole a pair of socks from me, and has otherwise
been perfectly useless, even a pimple on his leg was an excuse
for doing nothing for many days. We had to leave this camel at
Narri under charge of the headman.

28th April, 1866.—The hills on the north now
retire out of our sight. A gap in the southern plateau gives
passage to a small river, which arises in a lakelet of some size,
eight or ten miles inland: the river and lakelet are both called
Nangadi; the latter is so broad that men cannot be distinguished,
even by the keen eyes of the natives on the other side: it is
very deep, and abounds in large fish; the people who live there
are Mabiha. A few miles above this gap the southern highland
falls away, and there are lakelets on marshes, also abounding in fish, an uninhabited
space next succeeds, and then we have the Matambwé
country, which extends up to Ngomano. The Matambwé seem to
be a branch of the Makondé, and a very large one: their
country extends a long way south, and is well stocked with
elephants and gum-copal trees.

They speak a language slightly different from that of the
Makondé, but they understand them. The Matambwé
women are, according to Ali, very dark, but very comely, though
they do wear the lip-ring. They carry their ivory, gum-copal, and
slaves to Ibo or Wibo.

29th April, 1866.—We spend Sunday, the 29th, on
the banks of the Rovuma, at a village called Nachuchu, nearly
opposite Konayumba, the first of the Matambwé, whose chief
is called Kimbembé. Ali draws a very dark picture of the
Makondé. He says they know nothing of a Deity, they pray
to their mothers when in distress or dying; know nothing of a
future state, nor have they any religion except a belief in
medicine; and every headsman is a doctor. No Arab has ever tried
to convert them, but occasionally a slave taken to the coast has
been circumcised in order to be clean; some of them pray, and say
they know not the ordeal or muavi. The Nassick boys failed me
when I tried to communicate some knowledge through them. They say
they do not understand the Makondé language, though some
told me that they came from Ndondé’s, which is the
head-quarters of the Makondé. Ali says that the
Makondé blame witches for disease and death; when one of a
village dies, the whole population departs, saying “that is a bad
spot.” They are said to have been notorious for fines, but an awe
has come over them, and no complaints have been made, though our
animals in passing the gardens have broken a good deal of corn.
Ali says they fear the English. This is an answer to my prayer
for influence on the minds of the heathen. I regret that I cannot speak to them that good of
His name which I ought.

I went with the Makondé to see a specimen of the
gum-copal tree in the vicinity of this village. The leaves are in
pairs, glossy green, with the veins a little raised on both face
and back; the smaller branches diverge from the same point: the
fruit, of which we saw the shells, seems to be a nut; some animal
had in eating them cut them through. The bark of the tree is of a
light ash colour; the gum was oozing from the bark at wounded
places, and it drops on the ground from branches; it is thus that
insects are probably imbedded in the gum-copal. The people dig in
the vicinity of modern trees in the belief that the more ancient
trees which dropped their gum before it became an article of
commerce must have stood there. “In digging, none may be found on
one day but God (Mungu) may give it to us on the next.” To this
all the Makondé present assented, and showed me the
consciousness of His existence was present in their minds. The
Makondé get the gum in large quantities, and this attracts
the coast Arabs, who remain a long time in the country purchasing
it. Hernia humoralis abounds; it is ascribed to
beer-drinking.

30th April, 1866.—Many ulcers burst forth on the
camels; some seem old dhow bruises. They come back from pasture,
bleeding in a way that no rubbing against a tree would account
for. I am sorry to suspect foul play: the buffaloes and mules are
badly used, but I cannot be always near to prevent it.

Bhang[8] is not smoked, but
tobacco is: the people have no sheep or goats; only fowls,
pigeons, and Muscovy ducks are seen. Honey is very cheap; a good
large pot of about a gallon, with four fowls, was given for two
yards of calico. Buffaloes
again bitten by tsetse, and by another fly exactly like the
house-fly, but having a straight hard proboscis instead of a soft
one; other large flies make the blood run. The tsetse does not
disturb the buffaloes, but these others and the smaller flies do.
The tsetse seem to like the camel best; from these they are
gorged with blood—they do not seem to care for the mules
and donkeys.

Carved Door, Zanzibar.

CHAPTER II.

1st May, 1866.—We now came along through a
country comparatively free of wood, and we could move on without
perpetual cutting and clearing. It is beautiful to get a good
glimpse out on the surrounding scenery, though it still seems
nearly all covered with great masses of umbrageous foliage,
mostly of a dark green colour, for nearly all of the individual
trees possess dark glossy leaves like laurel. We passed a
gigantic specimen of the Kumbé, or gum-copal tree. Kumba
means to dig. Changkumbé, or things dug, is the name of
the gum; the Arabs call it “sandarusé.” Did the people
give the name Kumbé to the tree after the value of the gum
became known to them? The Malolé, from the fine grained
wood of which all the bows are made, had shed its fruit on the
ground; it looks inviting to the eye—an oblong
peach-looking thing, with a number of seeds inside, but it is
eaten by maggots only.

When we came to Ntandé’s village, we found it enclosed
in a strong stockade, from a fear of attack by Mabiha, who come
across the river and steal their women when going to draw water: this is for the Ibo
market. They offered to pull down their stockade and let us in if
we would remain over-night, but we declined. Before reaching
Ntandé we passed the ruins of two villages; the owners
were the attacking party when we ascended the Rovuma in 1862. I
have still the old sail, with four bullet-holes through it, made
by the shots which they fired after we had given cloth and got
assurances of friendship. The father and son of this village were
the two men seen by the second boat preparing to shoot; the fire
of her crew struck the father on the chin and the son on the
head. It may have been for the best that the English are thus
known as people who can hit hard when unjustly attacked, as we on
this occasion most certainly were: never was a murderous assault
more unjustly made or less provoked. They had left their villages
and gone up over the highlands away from the river to their
ambush whilst their women came to look at us.

2nd May, 1866.—Mountains again approach us, and
we pass one which was noticed in our first ascent from its
resemblance to a table mountain. It is 600 or 800 feet high, and
called Liparu: the plateau now becomes mountainous, giving forth
a perennial stream which comes down from its western base and
forms a lagoon on the meadow-land that flanks the Rovuma. The
trees which love these perpetual streams spread their roots all
over the surface of the boggy banks, and make a firm surface, but
at spots one may sink a yard deep. We had to fill up these deep
ditches with branches and leaves, unload the animals, and lead
them across. We spent the night on the banks of the
Liparu,[9] and then proceeded on
our way.

3rd May, 1866.—We rested in a Makoa village, the
head of which was an old woman. The Makoa or Makoané are
known by a half-moon figure tattooed on their foreheads or
elsewhere. Our poodle dog
Chitané chased the dogs of this village with unrelenting
fury, his fierce looks inspired terror among the wretched pariah
dogs of a yellow and white colour, and those looks were entirely
owing to its being difficult to distinguish at which end his head
or tail lay. He enjoyed the chase of the yelping curs immensely,
but if one of them had turned he would have bolted the other
way.

A motherly-looking woman came forward and offered me some
meal; this was when we were in the act of departing: others had
given food to the men and no return had been made. I told her to
send it on by her husband, and I would purchase it, but it would
have been better to have accepted it: some give merely out of
kindly feeling and with no prospect of a return.

Many of the Makoa men have their faces thickly tattooed in
double, raised lines of about half an inch in length. After the
incisions are made charcoal is rubbed in and the flesh pressed
out, so that all the cuts are raised above the level of the
surface. It gives them rather a hideous look, and a good deal of
that fierceness which our kings and chiefs of old put on whilst
having their portraits taken.

4th May, 1866.—The stream, embowered in perpetual
shade and overspread with the roots of water-loving, broad-leaved
trees, we found to be called Nkonya. The spot of our encampment
was an island formed by a branch of it parting and re-entering it
again: the owner had used it for rice.

The buffaloes were bitten again by tsetse on 2nd, and also
to-day, from the bites of other flies (which look much more
formidable than tsetse), blood of arterial colour flows down;
this symptom I never saw before, but when we slaughtered an ox
which had been tsetse bitten, we observed that the blood had the
arterial hue. The cow has inflammation of one eye, and a swelling
on the right lumbar portion of the pelvis: the grey buffalo has been sick, but this I
attribute to unmerciful loading; for his back is hurt: the camels
do not seem to feel the fly, though they get weaker from the
horrid running sores upon them and hard work. There are no
symptoms of tsetse in mules or donkeys, but one mule has had his
shoulder sprained, and he cannot stoop to eat or drink.

We saw the last of the flanking range on the north. The
country in front is plain, with a few detached granitic peaks
shot up. The Makoa in large numbers live at the end of the range
in a place called Nyuchi. At Nyamba, a village where we spent the
night of the 5th, was a doctoress and rain-maker, who presented a
large basket of soroko, or, as they call it in India, “mung,” and
a fowl. She is tall and well made, with fine limbs and feet, and
was profusely tattooed all over; even her hips and buttocks had
their elaborate markings: no shame is felt in exposing these
parts.

A good deal of salt is made by lixiviation of the soil and
evaporating by fire. The head woman had a tame khanga tolé
or tufted guinea-fowl, with bluish instead of white spots.

In passing along westwards after leaving the end of the range,
we came first of all on sandstone hardened by fire; then masses
of granite, as if in that had been contained the igneous agency
of partial metamorphosis; it had also lifted up the sandstone, so
as to cause a dip to the east. Then the syenite or granite seemed
as if it had been melted, for it was all in striae, which striae,
as they do elsewhere, run east and west. With the change in
geological structure we get a different vegetation. Instead of
the laurel-leaved trees of various kinds, we have African
ebonies, acacias, and mimosae: the grass is shorter and more
sparse, and we can move along without wood-cutting. We were now
opposite a hill on the south called Simba, a lion, from its
supposed resemblance to that
animal. A large Mabiha population live there, and make raids
occasionally over to this side for slaves.

6th May, 1866.—Tsetse again. The animals look
drowsy. The cow’s eye is dimmed; when punctured, the skin emits a
stream of scarlet blood. The people hereabouts seem intelligent
and respectful. At service a man began to talk, but when I said,
“Ku soma Mlungu,”—”we wish to pray to God,” he desisted. It
would be interesting to know what the ideas of these men are, and
to ascertain what they have gained in their communings with
nature during the ages past. They do not give the idea of that
boisterous wickedness and disregard of life which we read of in
our own dark ages, but I have no one to translate, although I can
understand much of what is said on common topics chiefly from
knowing other dialects.

7th May, 1866.—A camel died during the night, and
the grey buffalo is in convulsions this morning. The cruelty of
these sepoys vitiates my experiment, and I quite expect many
camels, one buffalo, and one mule to die yet; they sit down and
smoke and eat, leaving the animals loaded in the sun. If I am not
with them, it is a constant dawdling; they are evidently
unwilling to exert themselves, they cannot carry their belts and
bags, and their powers of eating and vomiting are astounding. The
Makondé villages are remarkably clean, but no sooner do we
pass a night in one than the fellows make it filthy. The climate
does give a sharp appetite, but these sepoys indulge it till
relieved by vomiting and purging. First of all they breakfast,
then an hour afterwards they are sitting eating the pocketfuls of
corn maize they have stolen and brought for the purpose, whilst I
have to go ahead, otherwise we may be misled into a zigzag course
to see Ali’s friends; and if I remain behind to keep the sepoys
on the move, it deprives me of all the pleasure of travelling. We
have not averaged four miles a day in a straight line, yet the
animals have often been kept
in the sun for eight hours at a stretch. When we get up at 4 A.M.
we cannot get under weigh before 8 o’clock. Sepoys are a
mistake.

7th May, 1866.—We are now opposite a mountain
called Nabungala, which resembles from the north-east an elephant
lying down. Another camel, a very good one, died on the way: its
shiverings and convulsions are not at all like what we observed
in horses and oxen killed by tsetse, but such may lie the cause,
however. The only symptom pointing to the tsetse is the
arterial-looking blood, but we never saw it ooze from the skin
after the bite of the gad-fly as we do now.

8th May, 1866.—We arrived at a village called
Jpondé, or Lipondé, which lies opposite a granitic
hill on the other-side of the river (where we spent a night on
our boat trip), called Nakapuri; this is rather odd, for the
words are not Makondé but Sichuana, and signify goat’s
horn, from the projections jutting out from the rest of the mass.
I left the havildar, sepoys, and Nassick boys here in order to
make a forced march forward, where no food is to be had, and send
either to the south or westwards for supplies, so that after they
have rested the animals and themselves five days they may come.
One mule is very ill; one buffalo drowsy and exhausted; one camel
a mere skeleton from bad sores; and another has an enormous hole
at the point of the pelvis, which sticks out at the side. I
suspect that this was made maliciously, for he came from the
field bleeding profusely; no tree would have perforated a round
hole in this way. I take all the goods and leave only the sepoys’
luggage, which is enough for all the animals now.

9th May, 1866.—I went on with the Johanna men and
twenty-four carriers, for it was a pleasure to get away from the
sepoys and Nassick boys; the two combined to overload the
animals. I told them repeatedly that they would kill them, but no
sooner had I adjusted the burdens and turned my back than
they put on all their things.
It was however such continual vexation to contend with the
sneaking spirit, that I gave up annoying myself by seeing
matters, though I felt certain that the animals would all be
killed. We did at least eight miles pleasantly well, and slept at
Moedaa village. The rocks are still syenite. We passed a valley
with the large thorny acacias of which canoes are often made, and
a euphorbiaceous tree, with seed-vessels as large as mandarin
oranges, with three seeds inside. We were now in a country which,
in addition to the Mazitu invasion, was suffering from one of
those inexplicable droughts to which limited and sometimes large
portions of this country are subject. It had not been nearly so
severe on the opposite or south side, and thither too the Mazitu
had not penetrated. Rushes, which plagued us nearer the coast,
are not observed now; the grass is all crisp and yellow; many of
the plants are dead, and leaves are fallen off the trees as if
winter had begun. The ground is covered with open forest, with
here and there thick jungle on the banks of the streams. All the
rivulets we have passed are mere mountain torrents filled with
sand, in which the people dig for water.

We passed the spot where an Arab called Birkal was asked
payment for leave to pass. After two and a half days’ parley he
fought, killed two Makondé, and mortally wounded a
headman, which settled the matter; no fresh demand has been made.
Ali’s brother also resisted the same sort of demand, fought
several times, or until three Makondé and two of his
people were killed; they then made peace, and no other exactions
have been made.

11th May, 1866.—We now found a difficulty in
getting our carriers along, on account of exhaustion from want of
food. In going up a sand stream called Nyédé, we
saw that all moist spots had been planted with maize and beans,
so the loss caused by the Mazitu, who swept the land like a cloud
of locusts, will not be attended by much actual starvation.
We met a runaway woman: she
was seized by Ali, and it was plain that he expected a reward for
his pains. He thought she was a slave, but a quarter of a mile
off was the village she had left, and it being doubtful if she
were a runaway at all, the would-be fugitive slave-capture turned
out a failure.

12th May, 1866.—About 4′ E.N.E. of Matawatawa, or
Nyamatololé, our former turning point.

13th May, 1866.—We halted at a village at
Matawatawa. A pleasant-looking lady, with her face profusely
tattooed, came forward with a bunch of sweet reed, or Sorghum
saceliaratum, and laid it at my feet, saying, “I met you here
before,” pointing to the spot on the river where we turned. I
remember her coming then, and that I asked the boat to wait while
she went to bring us a basket of food, and I think it was given
to Chiko, and no return made. It is sheer kindliness that prompts
them sometimes, though occasionally people do make presents with
a view of getting a larger one in return: it is pleasant to find
that it is not always so. She had a quiet, dignified manner, both
in talking and walking, and I now gave her a small looking-glass,
and she went and brought me her only fowl and a basket of
cucumber-seeds, from which oil is made; from the amount of oily
matter they contain thov are nutritious when roasted and eaten as
nuts. She made an apology, saying they were hungry times at
present. I gave her a cloth, and so parted with
Kanañgoné, or, as her name may be spelled,
Kanañoné. The carriers were very useless from
hunger, and we could not buy anything for them; for the country
is all dried up, and covered sparsely with mimosas and thorny
acacias.

14th May, 1866.—I could not get the carriers on
more than an hour and three-quarters: men tire very soon on empty
stomachs. We had reached the village of Hassané, opposite
to a conical hill named Chisulwé, which is on the south
side of the river, and evidently of igneous origin. It is
tree-covered, while the
granite always shows lumps of naked rock. All about lie great
patches of beautiful dolomite. It may have been formed by baking
of the tufa, which in this country seems always to have been
poured out with water after volcanic action. Hassané’s
daughter was just lifting a pot of French beans, boiled in their
pods, off the fire when we entered the village, these he
presented to me, and when I invited him to partake, he replied
that he was at home and would get something, while I was a
stranger on a journey. He, like all the other headmen, is a
reputed doctor, and his wife, a stout old lady, a doctoress; he
had never married any wife but this one, and he had four
children, all of whom lived with their parents. We employed one
of his sons to go to the south side and purchase food, sending at
the same time some carriers to buy for themselves. The siroko and
rice bought by Hassané’s son we deposited with him for the
party behind, when they should arrive. The amount of terror the
Mazitu inspire cannot be realized by us. They shake their shields
and the people fly like stricken deer. I observed that a child
would not go a few yards for necessary purposes unless
grandmother stood in sight. Matumora, as the Arabs call the chief
at Ngomano, gave them a warm reception, and killed several of
them: this probably induced them to retire.

15th and 16th May, 1866.—Miserably short marches
from hunger, and I sympathise with the poor fellows. Those sent
to buy food for themselves on the south bank were misled by a
talkative fellow named Chikungu, and went off north, where we
knew nothing could be had. His object was to get paid for three
days, while they only loitered here. I suppose hunger has taken
the spirit out of them; but I told them that a day in which no
work was done did not count: they admitted this. We pay about two
feet of calico per day, and a fathom or six feet for three days’
carriage.

17th May, 1866.—With very empty stomachs they
came on a few miles and
proposed to cross to the south side; as this involved crossing
the Luendi too, I at first objected, but in hopes that we might
get food for them we consented, and were taken over in two very
small canoes. I sent Ali and Musa meanwhile to the south to try
and get some food. I got a little green sorghum for them and paid
them off. These are the little troubles of travelling, and scarce
worth mentioning. A granitic peak now appears about 15′ off, to
the W.S.W. It is called Chihoka.

18th May, 1866.—At our crossing place metamorphic
rocks of a chocolate colour stood on edge; and in the country
round we have patches of dolomite, sometimes as white as marble.
The country is all dry: grass and leaves crisp and yellow. Though
so arid now, yet the great abundance of the dried stalks of a
water-loving plant, a sort of herbaceous acacia, with green
pea-shaped flowers, proves that at other times it is damp enough.
The marks of people’s feet floundering in slush, but now baked,
show that the country can be sloppy.

The headman of the village where we spent the night of 17th is
a martyr to rheumatism. He asked for medicine, and when I gave
some he asked me to give it to him out of my own hand. He
presented me with a basket of siroko and of green sorghum as a
fee, of which I was very glad, for my own party were suffering,
and I had to share out the little portion of flour I had reserved
to myself.

19th May, 1866.—Coming on with what carriers we
could find at the crossing place, we reached the confluence
without seeing it; and Matumora being about two miles up the
Loendi, we sent over to him for aid. He came over this morning
early,—a tall, well-made man, with a somewhat severe
expression of countenance, from a number of wrinkles on his
forehead. He took us over the Loendi, which is decidedly the
parent stream of the Rovuma, though that as it comes from the
west still retains the name Loendi from the south-west here, and is from 150 to 200 yards
wide, while the Rovuma above Matawatawa is from 200 to 250, full
of islands, rocks, and sandbanks. The Loendi has the same
character. We can see the confluence from where we cross about 2′
to the north. Both rivers are rapid, shoal, and sandy; small
canoes are used on them, and the people pride themselves on their
skilful management: in this the women seem in no way inferior to
the men.

In looking up the Loendi we see a large granitic peak called
Nkanjé, some 20 miles off, and beyond it the dim outline
of distant highlands, in which seams of coal are exposed. Pieces
of the mineral are found in Loendi’s sands.

Matumora has a good character in the country, and many flee to
him from oppression. He was very polite; sitting on the right
bank till all the goods were carried over, then coming in the
same canoe wifn me himself, he opened a fish basket in a weir and
gave me the contents, and subsequently a little green sorghum. He
literally has lost all his corn, for he was obliged to flee with
his people to Marumba, a rocky island in Rovuma, about six miles
above Matawatawa. He says that both Loendi and Rovuma come out of
Lake Nyassa; a boat could not ascend, however, because many
waterfalls are in their course: it is strange if all this is a
myth. Matumora asked if the people through whose country I had
come would preserve the peace I wished. He says he has been
assailed on all sides by slave-hunters: he alone has never hunted
for captives: if the people in front should attack me he would
come and fight them: finally he had never seen a European before
(Dr. Roscher travelled as an Arab), nor could I learn where
Likumbu at Ngomano lives; it was with him that Roscher is said to
have left his goods.

The Mazitu had women, children, oxen and goats with them. The
whole tribe lives on plundering the other natives by means of the
terror their shields inspire; had they gone further down the Rovuma, no ox would have survived
the tsetse.

20th May, 1866.—I paid Ali to his entire
satisfaction, and entrusted him with a despatch, “No. 2
Geographical,” and then sent off four men south to buy food. Here
we are among Matambwé. Two of Matumora’s men act as
guides. We are about 2′ south and by west of the confluence
Ngomano. Lat. 11° 26′ 23″ S.; long. 37° 40′ 52″ E.

Abraham, one of the Nassick boys, came up and said he had been
sent by the sepoys, who declared they would come no further. It
was with the utmost difficulty they had come so far, or that the
havildar had forced them on, they would not obey him—would
not get up in the mornings to march; lay in the paths, and gave
their pouches and muskets to the natives to carry: they make
themselves utterly useless. The black buffalo is dead; one camel
ditto, and one mule left behind ill. Were I not aware of the
existence of the tsetse, I should say they died from sheer bad
treatment and hard work.

I sent a note to be read to the sepoys stating that I had seen
their disobedience, unwillingness, and skulking, and as soon as I
received the havildar’s formal evidence, I would send them back.
I regretted parting with the havildar only.

A leopard came a little after dark while the moon was shining,
and took away a little dog from among us; it is said to have
taken off a person a few days ago.

22nd May, 1866.—The men returned with but little
food in return for much cloth. Matumora is very friendly, but he
has nothing to give save a little green sorghum, and that he
brings daily.

A south wind blows strongly every afternoon. The rains ceased
about the middle of May, and the temperature is lowered. A few
heavy night showers closed the rainy season.

23rd—24th May, 1866.—I took some Lunar
observations.

25th May,
1866.—Matumora is not Ndondé. A chief to the
south-west of this owns that name and belongs to the
Matumbwé tribe.

26th May, 1866.—I sent Musa westwards to buy
food, and he returned on the evening of 27th without success; he
found an Arab slave-dealer waiting in the path, who had bought up
all the provisions. About 11 P.M. we saw two men pass our door
with two women in a chain; one man carried fire in front, the one
behind, a musket. Matumora admits that his people sell each
other.

27th May, 1866.—The havildar and Abraham came up.
Havildar says that all I said in my note was true, and when it
was read to the sepoys they bewailed their folly, he adds that if
they were all sent away disgraced, no one would be to blame but
themselves. He brought them to Hassané’s, but they were
useless, though they begged to be kept on: I may give them
another trial, but at present they are a sad incumbrance.
South-west of this the Manganja begin; but if one went by them,
there is a space beyond in the south-west without people.

The country due west of this is described by all to be so
mountainous and beset by Mazitu, that there is no possibility of
passing that way. I must therefore make my way to the middle of
the Lake, cross over, and then take up my line of 1863.

2nd June, 1866.—The men sent to the
Matambwé south-east of this returned with a good supply of
grain. The sepoys won’t come; they say they cannot,—a mere
excuse, v because they tried to prevail on the Nassick boys to go
slowly like them, and wear my patience out. They killed one camel
with the butt ends of their muskets, beating it till it died. I
thought of going down disarming them all, and taking five or six
of the willing ones, but it is more trouble than profit, so I
propose to start westwards on Monday the 4th, or Tuesday the 5th.
My sepoys offered Ali eight
rupees to take them to the coast, thus it has been a regularly
organized conspiracy.

From the appearance of the cow-buffalo, I fear the tsetse is
its chief enemy, but there is a place like a bayonet wound on its
shoulder, and many of the wounds or bruises on the camels were so
probed that I suspect the sepoys.

Many things African are possessed of as great vitality in
their line as the African people. The white ant was imported
accidentally into St. Helena from the coast of Guinea, and has
committed such ravages in the town of St. James, that numerous
people have been ruined, and the governor calls out for aid
against them. In other so-called new countries a wave of English
weeds follows the tide of English emigration, and so with
insects; the European house-fly chases away the blue-bottle fly
in New Zealand. Settlers have carried the house-fly in bottles
and boxes for their new locations, but what European insect will
follow us and extirpate the tsetse? The Arabs have given the
Makondé bugs, but we have the house-fly wherever we go,
the blue-bottle and another like the house-fly, but with a sharp
proboscis; and several enormous gad-flies. Here there is so much
room for everything. In New Zealand the Norwegian rat is driven
off by even the European mouse; not to mention the Hanoverian rat
of Waterton, which is lord of the land. The Maori say that “as
the white man’s rat has driven away the native rat, so the
European fly drives away our own; and as the clover kills our
fern, so will the Maori disappear before the white man himself.”
The hog placed ashore by Captain Cook has now overrun one side of
the island, and is such a nuisance that a large farmer of 100,000
acres has given sixpence per head for the destruction of some
20,000, and without any sensible diminution; this would be no
benefit here, for the wild hogs abound and do much damage,
besides affording food for the tsetse: the brutes follow the ewes
with young, and devour the
poor lambs as soon as they make their appearance.

3rd June, 1866.—The cow-buffalo fell down foaming
at the mouth, and expired. The meat looks fat and nice, and is
relished by the people, a little glariness seemed to be present
on the foreleg, and I sometimes think that, notwithstanding the
dissimilarity of the symptoms observed in the camels and
buffaloes now, and those we saw in oxen and horses, the evil may
be the tsetse, after all, but they have been badly used, without
a doubt. The calf has a cut half an inch deep, the camels have
had large ulcers, and at last a peculiar smell, which portends
death. I feel perplexed, and not at all certain as to the real
causes of death.

I asked Matumora if the Matambwé believed in God, he
replied, that he did not know Him, and I was not to ask the
people among whom I was going if they prayed to Him, because they
would imagine that I wished them to be killed. I told him that we
loved to speak about Him, &c. He said, when they prayed they
offered a little meal and then prayed, but did not know much
about Him.

They have all great reverence for the Deity, and the
deliberate way in which they say “We don’t know Him” is to
prevent speaking irreverently, as that may injure the country.
The name is “Mulungu”: Makochera afterwards said, that “He was
not good, because He killed so many people.”

4th June, 1866.—Left Ngomano. I was obliged to
tell the Nassick boys that they must either work or return, it
was absurd to have them eating up our goods, and not even
carrying their own things, and I would submit to it no more: five
of them carry bales, and two the luggage of the rest. Abraham and
Richard are behind. I gave them bales to carry, and promised them
ten rupees per month, to begin on this date. Abraham has worked
hard all along, and his pay
may be due from 7th April, the day we started from Kindany.

5th June, 1866.—We slept at a village called
Lamba, on the banks of the Rovuma, near a brawling torrent of 150
yards, or 200 perhaps, with many islands and rocks in it. The
country is covered with open forest, with patches of cultivation
everywhere, but all dried up at present and withered, partly from
drought and partly from the cold of winter. We passed a village
with good ripe sorghum cut down, and the heads or ears all laid
neatly in a row, this is to get it dried in the sun, and not
shaken out by the wind, by waving to and fro; besides it is also
more easily watched from being plundered by birds. The sorghum
occasionally does not yield seed, and is then the Sorghum
saccharatum, for the stalk contains abundance of sugar, and
is much relished by the natives. Now that so much has failed to
yield seed, being indeed just in flower, the stalks are chewed as
if sugar-cane, and the people are fat thereon; but the hungry
time is in store when these stalles are all done. They make the
best provision in their power against famine by planting beans
and maize in moist spots. The common native pumpkin forms a
bastard sort in the same way, but that is considered very
inferior.

6th June, 1866.—Great hills of granite are
occasionally in sight towards the north, but the trees, though
scraggy, close in the view. We left a village, called Mekosi, and
goon came to a slaving party by a sand stream. They said that
they had bought two slaves, but they had run away from them, and
asked us to remain with them; more civil than inviting. We came
on to Makochera, the principal headman in this quarter, and found
him a merry laughing mortal, without any good looks to recommend
his genial smile,—low forehead, covered with deep wrinkles;
flat nose, somewhat of the Assyrian shape; a big mouth and lean
body. He complained of the Machinga (a Waiyau tribe north of him and the Rovuma) stealing his
people. Lat. of village, 11° 22′ 49″ S. The river being about
2′ north, still shows that it makes a trend to the north after we
pass Ngomano. Makochera has been an elephant hunter. Few
acknowledge as a reason for slaving that sowing and spinning
cotton for clothing is painful. I waited some days for the
Nassick boys, who are behind, though we could not buy any food
except at enormous prices and long distances off.

7th June, 1866.—The havildar and two sepoys came
up with Abraham, but Richard, a Nassick boy, is still behind from
weakness. I sent three off to help him with the only cordials we
could muster. The sepoys sometimes profess inability to come on,
but it is unwillingness to encounter hardship: I must move on
whether they come or not, for we cannot obtain food here. I sent
the sepoys some cloth, and on the 8th proposed to start, but
every particle of food had been devoured the night before, so we
despatched two parties to scour the country round, and give any
price rather than want.

I could not prevail on Makochera to give me a specimen of
poetry; he was afraid, neither he nor his forefathers had ever
seen an Englishman. He thought that God was not good because He
killed so many people. Dr. Roscher must have travelled as an Arab
if he came this way, for he was not known.[10]

9th June, 1866.—We now left and marched through
the same sort of forest, gradually ascending in altitude as we
went west, then we came to huge masses of granite, or syenite,
with flakes peeling off. They are covered with a plant with
grassy-looking leaves and rough stalk which strips into portions
similar to what are put round candles as ornaments. It makes these hills look light grey,
with patches of black rock at the more perpendicular parts; the
same at about ten miles off look dark blue. The ground is often
hard and stony, but all covered over with grass and plants:
looking down at it, the grass is in tufts, and like that on the
Kalahari desert. Trees show uplands. One tree of which bark cloth
is made, pterocarpus, is abundant. Timber-trees appear here and
there, but for the most part the growth is stunted, and few are
higher than thirty feet. We spent the night by a hill of the
usual rounded form, called Njeñgo. The Rovuma comes close
by, but leaves us again to wind among similar great masses. Lat.
11° 20′ 05″ S.

10th June, 1866.—A very heavy march through the
same kind of country, no human habitation appearing; we passed a
dead body—recently, it was said, starved to death. The
large tract between Makochera’s and our next station at Ngozo
hill is without any perennial stream; water is found often by
digging in the sand streams which we several times crossed;
sometimes it was a trickling rill, but I suspect that at other
seasons all is dry, and people are made dependent on the Rovuma
alone. The first evidence of our being near the pleasant haunts
of man was a nice little woman drawing water at a well. I had
become separated from the rest: on giving me water she knelt
down, and, as country manners require, held it up to me with
both hands. I had been misled by one of the carriers, who
got confused, though the rounded mass of Ngozo was plainly
visible from the heights we crossed east of it.

An Arab party bolted on hearing of our approach: they don’t
trust the English, and this conduct increases our importance
among the natives. Lat. 11° 18′ 10″ S.

11th June, 1866.—Our carriers refuse to go
further, because they say that they fear being captured here on
their return.

12th June, 1866.—I paid off the carriers, and
wait for a set from this. A
respectable man, called Makoloya, or Impandé, visited me,
and wished to ask some questions as to where I was going, and how
long I should be away. He had heard from a man who came from Ibo,
or Wibo, about the Bible, a large book which was consulted.

Tattoo of
Matambwé.

13th June, 1866.—Makoloya brought his wife and a
little corn, and says that his father told him that there is a
God, but nothing more. The marks on their foreheads and bodies
are meant only to give beauty in the dance, they seem a sort of
heraldic ornament, for they can at once tell by his tattoo to
what tribe or portion of tribe a man belongs. The tattoo or tembo
of the Matambwé and Upper Makondé very much
resembles the drawings of the old Egyptians; wavy lines, such as
the ancients made to signify water, trees and gardens enclosed in
squares, seem to have been meant of old for the inhabitants who
lived on the Rovuma, and cultivated also, the son takes the
tattoo of his father, and thus it has been perpetuated, though
the meaning now appears lost. The Makoa have the half or nearly
full moon, but it is, they say, all for ornament. Some blue stuff
is rubbed into the cuts (I am told it is charcoal), and the
ornament shows brightly in
persons of light complexion, who by the bye are common. The
Makondé and Matambwé file their front teeth to
points; the Machinga, a Waiyan tribe, leave two points on the
sides of the front teeth, and knock out one of the middle
incisors above and below.

14th June, 1866.—I am now as much dependent on
carriers as if I had never bought a beast of burden—but
this is poor stuff to fill a journal with. We started off to
Metaba to see if the chief there would lend some men. The
headman, Kitwanga, went a long way to convoy us; then turned,
saying he was going to get men for Musa next day. We passed near
the base of the rounded masses Ngozo and Mekanga, and think, from
a near inspection, that they are over 2000 feet above the plain,
possibly 3000 feet, and nearly bare, with only the peculiar
grassy plant on some parts which are not too perpendicular. The
people are said to have stores of grain on them, and on one the
chief said there is water; he knows of no stone buildings of the
olden time in the country. We passed many masses of ferruginous
conglomerate, and I noticed that most of the gneiss dips
westwards. The striae seem as if the rock had been partially
molten: at times the strike is north and south, at others east
and west; when we come to what may have been its surface, it is
as if the striae had been stirred with a rod while soft.

We slept at a point of the Rovuma, above a cataract where a
reach of comparatively still water, from 150 to 200 yards wide,
allows a school of hippopotami to live: when the river becomes
fordable in many places, as it is said to do in August and
September, they must find it difficult to exist.

15th June, 1866.—Another three hours’ march
brought us from the sleeping-place on the Rovuma to Metaba, the
chief of which, Kinazombé, is an elderly man, with a
cunning and severe cast of
countenance, and a nose Assyrian in type; he has built a large
reception house, in which a number of half-caste Arabs have taken
up their abode. A great many of the people have guns, and it is
astonishing to see the number of slave-taming sticks abandoned
along the road as the poor wretches gave in, and professed to
have lost all hope of escape. Many huts have been built by the
Arabs to screen themselves from the rain as they travelled. At
Kinazombé’s the second crop of maize is ready, so the
hunger will not be very much felt.

16th June, 1866.—We heard very sombre accounts of
the country in front:—four or five days to Mtarika, and
then ten days through jungle to Mataka’s town: little food at
Mtarika’s, but plenty with Mataka, who is near the Lake. The
Rovuma trends southerly after we leave Ngozo, and Masusa on that
river is pointed out as south-west from Metaba, so at Ngozo the
river may be said to have its furthest northing. Masusa is
reported to be five days, or at least fifty miles, from Metaba.
The route now becomes south-west.

The cattle of Africa are like the Indian buffalo, only
partially tamed; they never give their milk without the presence
of the calf or its stuffed skin, the “fulchan.” The women
adjacent to Mozambique partake a little of the wild animal’s
nature, for, like most members of the inferior races of animals,
they refuse all intercourse with their husbands when enceinte and
they continue this for about three years afterwards, or until the
child is weaned, which usually happens about the third year. I
was told, on most respectable authority, that many fine young
native men marry one wife and live happily with her till this
period; nothing will then induce her to continue to cohabit with
him, and, as the separation is to continue for three years, the
man is almost compelled to take up with another wife: this was
mentioned to me as one of the great evils of society. The same
absurdity prevails on the West Coast, and there it is said that the men acquiesce from
ideas of purity.

It is curious that trade-rum should form so important an
article of import on the West Coast while it is almost unknown on
the East Coast, for the same people began the commerce in both
instances. If we look north of Cape Delgado, we might imagine
that the religious convictions of the Arabs had something to do
with the matter, but the Portuguese south of Cape Delgado have no
scruples in the matter, and would sell their grandfathers as well
as the rum if they could make money by the transaction, they have
even erected distilleries to furnish a vile spirit from the fruit
of the cashew and other fruits and grain, but the trade does not
succeed. They give their slaves also rewards of spirit, or “maata
bicho” (“kill the creature,” or “craving within”), and you may
meet a man who, having had much intercourse with Portuguese, may
beg spirits, but the trade does not pay. The natives will drink
it if furnished gratis. The indispensable “dash” of rum on the
West Coast in every political transaction with independent chiefs
is, however, quite unknown. The Moslems would certainly not
abstain from trading in spirits were the trade profitable. They
often asked for brandy from me in a sly way—as medicine;
and when reminded that their religion forbade it, would say, “Oh,
but we can drink it in secret.”

It is something in the nature of the people quite
inexplicable, that throughout the Makondé country hernia
humoralis prevails to a frightful extent; it is believed by the
natives to be the result of beer drinking, so they cannot be
considered as abstemious.

18th June, 1866.—Finding that Musa did not come
up with the goods I left in his charge, and fearing that all was
not right, we set off with all our hands who could carry, after
service yesterday morning, and in six hours’ hard tramp arrived
here just in time, for a tribe of Wanindi, or Manindi, who are either Ajawas (Waiyau),[11] or pretended Mazitu,
had tried to cross the Rovuma from the north bank. They came as
plunderers, and Musa having received no assistance was now ready
to defend the goods. A shot or two from the people of Kitwanga
made the Wanindi desert after they had entered the water.

Six sepoys and Simon had come up this length; Reuben and
Mabruki reported Richard to be dead. This poor boy was left with
the others at Lipondé, and I never saw him again. I
observed him associating too much with the sepoys; and often felt
inclined to reprove him, as their conversation is usually very
bad, but I could not of my own knowledge say so. He came on with
the others as far as Hassané or Pachassané: there
he was too weak to come further, and as the sepoys were
notoriously skulkers, I feared that poor Richard was led away by
them, for I knew that they had made many attempts to draw away
the other Nassick boys from their duty. When, however, Abraham
came up and reported Richard left behind by the sepoys, I became
alarmed, and sent off three boys with cordials to help him on:
two days after Abraham left he seems to have died, and I feel
very sorry that I was not there to do what I could. I am told now
that he never consented to the sepoy temptation: he said to
Abraham that he wished he were dead, he was so much troubled. The
people where he died were not v$ry civil to Simon.

The sepoys had now made themselves such an utter nuisance that
I felt that I must take the upper hand with them, so I called
them up this morning, and asked if they knew the punishment they
had incurred by disobeying orders, and attempting to tamper with
the Nassick boys to turn them
back. I told them they not only remained in the way when ordered
to march, but offered eight rupees to Ali to lead them to the
coast, and that the excuse of sickness was nought, for they had
eaten heartily three meals a day while pretending illness. They
had no excuse to offer, so I disrated the naik or corporal, and
sentenced the others to carry loads; if they behave well, then
they will get fatigue pay for doing fatigue duty, if ill, nothing
but their pay. Their limbs are becoming contracted from sheer
idleness; while all the other men are well and getting stronger
they alone are disreputably slovenly and useless-looking. Their
filthy habits are to be reformed, and if found at their habit of
sitting down and sleeping for hours on the march, or without
their muskets and pouches, they are to be flogged. I sent two of
them back to bring up two comrades, left behind yesterday. All
who have done work are comparatively strong.

[We may venture a word in passing on the subject of native
recruits, enlisted for service in Africa, and who return thither
after a long absence. All the Nassick boys were native-born
Africans, and yet we see one of them succumb immediately. The
truth is that natives; under these circumstances, are just as
liable to the effects of malaria on landing as Europeans,
although it is not often that fever assumes a dangerous form in
such cases. The natives of the interior have the greatest dread
of the illnesses which they say are sure to be in store for them
if they visit the coast.]

19th June, 1866.—I gave the sepoys light loads in
order to inure them to exercise and strengthen them, and they
carried willingly so long as the fright was on them, but when the
fear of immediate punishment wore off they began their skulking
again. One, Perim, reduced his load of about 20 lbs. of tea by
throwing away the lead in which it was rolled, and afterwards about 15 lbs. of the tea,
thereby diminishing our stock to 5 lbs.

[Dr. Livingstone’s short stay in England in 1864-5 was mainly
taken up with compiling an account of his travels on the Zambesi
and Shiré: during this time his mother expired in Scotland
at a good old age. When he went back to Africa he took with him,
as part of his very scanty travelling equipment, a number of
letters which he received from friends at different times in
England, and he very often quoted them when he had an opportunity
of sending letters home. We come to an entry at this time which
shows that in these reminiscences he had not thus preserved an
unmixed pleasure. He says:—]

I lighted on a telegram to-day:—”Your mother died at
noon on the 18th June.”

This was in 1865: it affected me not a little.

Slavers revenging
their Losses.

CHAPTER III.

19th June, 1866.—We passed a woman tied by the
neck to a tree and dead, the people of the country explained that
she had been unable to keep up with the other slaves in a gang,
and her master had determined that she should not become the
property of anyone else if she recovered after resting for a
time. I may mention here that we saw others tied up in a similar
manner, and one lying in the path shot or stabbed[12], for she was in a
pool of blood. The explanation we got invariably was that the
Arab who owned these victims was enraged at losing his money by
the slaves becoming unable to march, and vented his spleen by
murdering them; but I have nothing more than common report in
support of attributing this enormity to the Arabs.

20th June, 1866.—Having returned to Metaba, we
were told by Kinazombé, the chief, that no one had grain
to sell but himself. He had
plenty of powder and common cloth from the Arabs, and our only
chance with him was parting with our finer cloths and other
things that took his fancy. He magnified the scarcity in front in
order to induce us to buy all we could from him, but he gave me
an ample meal of porridge and guinea-fowl before starting.

21st June, 1866.—We had difficulties about
carriers, but on reaching an island in the Rovuma, called
Chimiki, we found the people were Makoa and more civil and
willing to work than the Waiyau: we sent men back to bring up the
havildar to a very civil headman called Chirikaloma.

22nd June, 1866.—A poor little boy with prolapsus
ani was carried yesterday by his mother many a weary mile, lying
over her right shoulder—the only position he could find
ease in,—an infant at the breast occupied the left arm, and
on her head were carried two baskets. The mother’s love was seen
in binding up the part when we halted, whilst the coarseness of
low civilization was evinced in the laugh with which some black
brutes looked at the sufferer.

23rd June, 1866.—The country is covered with
forest, much more open than further east. We are now some 800
feet above the sea. The people all cultivate maize near the
Rovuma, and on islands where moisture helps them, nearly all
possess guns, and plenty of powder and fine beads,—red ones
strung on the hair, and fine blue ones in rolls on the neck,
fitted tightly like soldiers’ stocks. The lip-ring is universal;
teeth filed to points.

24th June, 1866.—Immense quantities of wood are
cut down, collected in heaps, and burned to manure the land, but
this does not prevent the country having an appearance of forest.
Divine service at 8.30 A.M.; great numbers looking on. They have
a clear idea of the Supreme Being, but do not pray to Him.. Cold
south winds prevail; temp. 55°. One of the mules is very
ill—it was left with the havildar when we went back to
Ngozo, and probably remained uncovered at night, for as soon as we saw it, illness was plainly
visible. Whenever an animal has been in their power the sepoys
have abused it. It is difficult to feel charitably to fellows
whose scheme seems to have been to detach the Nassick boys from
me first, then, when the animals were all killed, the Johanna
men, afterwards they could rule me as they liked, or go back and
leave me to perish; but I shall try to feel as charitably as I
can in spite of it all, for the mind has a strong tendency to
brood over the ills of travel. I told the havildar when I came up
to him at Metaba what I had done, and that I was very much
displeased with the sepoys for compassing my failure, if not
death; an unkind word had never passed my lips to them: to this
he could bear testimony. He thought that they would only be a
plague and trouble to me, but he “would go on and die with
me.”

Stone boiling is unknown in these countries, but ovens are
made in anthills. Holes are dug in the ground for baking the
heads of large game, as the zebra, feet of elephants, humps of
rhinoceros, and the production of fire by drilling between the
palms of the hands is universal. It is quite common to see the
sticks so used attached to the clothing or bundles in travelling;
they wet the blunt end of the upright stick with the tongue, and
dip it in the sand to make some particles of silica adhere before
inserting it in the horizontal piece. The wood of a certain wild
fig-tree is esteemed as yielding fire readily.

In wet weather they prefer to carry fire in the dried balls of
elephants’ dung which are met with—the male’s being about
eight inches in diameter and about a foot long: they also employ
the stalk of a certain plant which grows on rocky places for the
same purpose.

We bought a senzé, or Aulacaudatus
Swindernianus, which had been dried over a slow fire. This
custom of drying fish, flesh, and fruits, on stages over slow
fires, is practised very generally: the use of salt for
preservation is unknown. Besides stages for drying, the Makondé use
them about six feet high for sleeping on instead of the damp
ground: a fire beneath helps to keep off the mosquitoes, and they
are used by day as convenient resting-places and for
observation.

Pottery seems to have been known to the Africans from the
remotest times, for fragments are found everywhere, even among
the oldest fossil bones in the country. Their pots for cooking,
holding water and beer, are made by the women, and the form is
preserved by the eye alone, for no sort of machine is ever used.
A foundation or bottom is first laid, and a piece of bone or
bamboo used to scrape the clay or to smooth over the pieces which
are added to increase the roundness; the vessel is then left a
night: the next morning a piece is added to the rim—as the
air is dry several rounds may be added—and all is then
carefully smoothed off; afterwards it is thoroughly sun-dried. A
light fire of dried cow-dung, or corn-stalks, or straw, and grass
with twigs, is made in a hole in the ground for the final baking.
Ornaments are made on these pots of black lead, or before being
hardened by the sun they are ornamented for a couple or three
inches near the rim, all the tracery being in imitation of
plaited basket work.

Chirikaloma says that the surname of the Makoa, to whom he
belongs, is Mirazi—others have the surname Melola or
Malola—Chimposola. All had the half-moon mark when in the
south-east, but now they leave it off a good deal and adopt the
Waiyau marks, because of living in their country. They show no
indications of being named after beasts and birds. Mirazi was an
ancestor; they eat all clean animals, but refuse the hyaena,
leopard, or any beast that devours dead men.[13]

25th June,
1866.—On leaving Chirikaloma we came on to Namalo,
whose village that morning had been deserted, the people moving
off in a body towards the Matambwé country, where food is
more abundant. A poor little girl was left in one of the huts
from being too weak to walk, probably an orphan. The Arab
slave-traders flee from the path as soon as they hear of our
approach. The Rovuma is from 56 to 80 yards wide here. No food to
be had for either love or money.

Near many of the villages we observe a wand bent and both ends
inserted into the ground: a lot of medicine, usually the bark of
trees, is buried beneath it. When sickness is in a village, the
men proceed to the spot, wash themselves with the medicine and
water, creep through beneath the bough, then bury the medicine
and the evil influence together. This is also used to keep off
evil spirits, wild beasts, and enemies.

Chirikaloma told us of a child in his tribe which was deformed
from his birth. He had an abortive toe where his knee should have
been; some said to his mother, “Kill him;” but she replied, “How
can I kill my son?” He grew up and had many fine sons and
daughters, but none deformed like himself: this was told in
connection with an answer to my question about the treatment of
Albinoes: he said they did not kill them, but they never grew to
manhood. On inquiring if he had ever heard of cannibals, or
people with tails, he replied, “Yes, but we have always
understood that these and other monstrosities are met with only
among you sea-going people.” The other monstrosities he referred
to were those who are said to have eyes behind the head as well
as in front: I have heard of them before, but then I was near
Angola, in the west.

The rains are expected here when the Pleiades appear in the
east soon after sunset; they go by the same name here as further
south—Lemila or the “hoeings.”

In the route along the
Rovuma, we pass among people who are so well supplied with white
calico by the slave-trade from Kilwa, that it is quite a drug in
the market: we cannot get food for it. If we held on westwards we
should cross several rivers flowing into the Rovuma from the
southward, as the Zandulo, the Sanjenzé, the Lochiringo,
and then, in going round the north end of Nyassa, we should pass
among the Nindi, who now inhabit the parts vacated by the Mazitu,
and imitate them in having shields and in marauding. An Arab
party went into their country, and got out again only by paying a
whole bale of calico; it would not be wise in me to venture there
at present, but if we return this way we may; meanwhile we shall
push on to Mataka, who is only a few days off from the middle of
the Lake, and has abundance of provisions.

26th June, 1866.—My last mule died. In coming
along in the morning we were loudly accosted by a well-dressed
woman who had just had a very heavy slave-taming stick put on her
neck; she called in such an authoritative tone to us to witness
the flagrant injustice of which she was the victim that all the
men stood still and went to hear the case. She was a near
relative of Chirikaloma, and was going up the river to her
husband, when the old man (at whose house she was now a prisoner)
caught her, took her servant away from her, and kept her in the
degraded state we saw. The withes with which she was bound were
green and sappy. The old man said in justification that she was
running away from Chirikaloma, and he would be offended with him
if he did not secure her.

I asked the officious old gentleman in a friendly tone what he
expected to receive from Chirikaloma, and he said, “Nothing.”
Several slaver-looking fellows came about, and I felt sure that
the woman had been seized in order to sell her to them, so I gave
the captor a cloth to pay to Chirikaloma if he were offended, and
told him to say that I,
feeling ashamed to see one of his relatives in a slave-stick, had
released her, and would, take her on to her husband.

She is evidently a lady among them, having many fine beads and
some strung on elephant’s hair: she has a good deal of spirit
too, for on being liberated she went into the old man’s house and
took her basket and calabash. A virago of a wife shut the door
and tried to prevent her, as well as to cut off the beads from
her person, but she resisted like a good one, and my men thrust
the door open and let her out, but minus her slave. The other
wife—for old officious had two—joined her sister in a
furious tirade of abuse, the elder holding her sides in regular
fishwife fashion till I burst into a laugh, in which the younger
wife joined. I explained to the different headmen in front of
this village what I had done, and sent messages to Chirikaloma
explanatory of my friendly deed to his relative, so that no
misconstruction should be put on my act.

Slaves abandonned.

We passed a slave woman shot or stabbed through the body and
lying on the path: a group of mon stood about a hundred yards off
on one side, and another of women on the other side, looking on;
they said an Arab who passed early that morning had done it in
anger at losing the price he had given for her, because she was
unable to walk any longer.

27th June, 1866.—To-day we came upon a man dead
from starvation, as he was very thin. One of our men wandered and
found a number of slaves with slave-sticks on, abandoned by their
master from want of food; they were too weak to be able to speak
or say where they had come from; some were quite young. We
crossed the Tulosi, a stream coming from south, about twenty
yards wide.

At Chenjewala’s the people are usually much startled when I
explain that the numbers of slaves we see dead on the road have
been killed partly by those who sold them, for I tell them that if they sell their fellows,
they are like the man who holds the victim while the Arab
performs the murder.

Chenjewala blamed Machemba, a chief above him on the Rovuma,
for encouraging the slave-trade; I told him I had travelled so
much among them that I knew all the excuses they could make, each
headman blamed some one else.

“It would be better if you kept your people and cultivated
more largely,” said I, “Oh, Machemba sends his men and robs our
gardens after we have cultivated,” was the reply. One man said
that the Arabs who come and tempt them with fine clothes are the
cause of their selling: this was childish, so I told them they
would very soon have none to sell: their country was becoming
jungle, and all their people who did not die in the road would be
making gardens for Arabs at Kilwa and elsewhere.

28th June, 1866.—When we got about an hour from
Chenjewala’s we came to a party in the act of marauding; the
owners of the gardens made off for the other side of the river,
and waved to us to go against the people of Machemba, but we
stood on a knoll with all our goods on the ground, and waited to
see how matters would turn out. Two of the marauders came to us
and said they had captured five people. I suppose they took us
for Arabs, as they addressed Musa. They then took some green
maize, and so did some of my people, believing that as all was
going, they who were really starving might as well have a
share.

I went on a little way with the two marauders, and by the
footprints thought the whole party might amount to four or five
with guns; the gardens and huts were all deserted. A poor woman
was sitting, cooking green maize, and one of the men ordered her
to follow him. I said to him, “Let her alone, she is dying.”
“Yes,” said he, “of hunger,” and went’on without her.

We passed village after
village, and gardens all deserted! We were now between two
contending parties. We slept at one garden; and as we were told
by Chenjewala’s people to take what we liked, and my men had no
food, we gleaned what congo beans, bean leaves, and sorghum
stalks we could,—poor fare enough, but all we could
get.

29th June, 1866.—We came onto Machemba’s brother,
Chimseia, who gave us food at once. The country is now covered
with deeper soil, and many large acacia-trees grow in the rich
loam: the holms too are large, and many islands afford convenient
maize grounds. One of the Nassiek lads came up and reported his
bundle, containing 240 yards of calico, had been stolen; he went
aside, leaving it on the path (probably fell asleep), and it was
gone when he came back. I cannot impress either on them or the
sepoys that it is wrong to sleep on the march.

Akosakoné, whom we had liberated, now arrived at the
residence of her husband, who was another brother of Machemba.
She behaved like a lady all through, sleeping at a fire apart
from the men. The ladies of the different villages we passed
condoled with her, and she related to them the indignity that had
been done to her. Besides this she did us many services: she
bought food for us, because, having a good address, we saw that
she could get double what any of our men could purchase for the
same cloth; she spoke up for us when any injustice was attempted,
and, when we were in want of carriers, volunteered to carry a bag
of beads on her head. On arriving at Machemba’s brother,
Chimseia, she introduced me to him, and got him to be liberal to
us in food on account of the service we had rendered to her. She
took leave of us all with many expressions of thankfulness, and
we were glad that we had not mistaken her position or lavished
kindness on the undeserving.

One Johanna man was caught stealing maize, then another,
after I had paid for the
first. I sent a request to the chief not to make much of a
grievance about it, as I was very much ashamed at my men
stealing; he replied that he had liked me from the first, and I
was not to fear, as whatever service he could do he would most
willingly in order to save me pain and trouble. A sepoy now came
up having given his musket to a man to carry, who therefore
demanded payment. As it had become a regular nuisance for the
sepoys to employ people to carry for them, telling them that I
would pay, I demanded why he had promised in my name. “Oh, it was
but a little way he carried the musket,” said he. Chimseia warned
us next morning, 30th June, against allowing any one to straggle
or steal in front, for stabbing and plundering were the rule. The
same sepoy who had employed a man to carry his musket now came
forward, with his eyes fixed and shaking all over. This, I was to
understand, meant extreme weakness; but I had accidentally
noticed him walking quite smartly before this exhibition, so I
ordered him to keep close to the donkey that carried the
havildar’s luggage, and on no account to remain behind the party.
He told the havildar that he would sit down only for a little
while; and, I suppose, fell asleep, for he came up to us in the
evening as naked as a robin.

I saw another person bound to a tree and dead—a sad
sight to see, whoever was the perpetrator. So many slave-sticks
lie along our path, that I suspect the people here-about make a
practice of liberating what slaves they cian find abandoned on
the march, to sell them again.

A large quantity of maize is cultivated at Chimsaka’s, at
whose place we this day arrived. We got a supply, but being among
thieves, we thought it advisable to move on to the next place
(Mtarika’s). When starting, we found that fork, kettle, pot, and
shot-pouch had been taken. The thieves, I observed, kept up a
succession of jokes with Chuma
and Wikatani and when the latter was enjoying them, gaping to the
sky, they were busy putting the things of which he had charge
under their cloths! I spoke to the chief, and he got the three
first articles back for me.

A great deal if not all the lawlessness of this quarter is the
result of the slave-trade, for the Arabs buy whoever is brought
to them and in a country covered with forest as this is,
kidnapping can be prosecuted with the greatest ease; elsewhere
the people are honest, and have a regard for justice.

1st July, 1866.—As we approach Mtarika’s place,
the country becomes more mountainous and the land sloping for a
mile down to the south bank of the Rovuma supports a large
population. Some were making new gardens by cutting down trees
and piling the branches for burning; others had stored tip large
quantities of grain and were moving it to a new locality, but
they were all so well supplied with calico (Merikano) that they
would not look at ours: the market was in fact glutted by slavers
from (Quiloa) Kilwa. On asking why people were seen tied to trees
to die as we had seen them, they gave the usual answer that the
Arabs tie them thus and leave them to perish, because they are
vexed, when the slaves can walk no further, that they have lost
their money by them. The path is almost strewed with
slave-sticks, and though the people denied it, I suspect that
they make a practice of following slave caravans and cutting off
the sticks from those who fall out in the march, and thus
stealing them. By selling them again they get the quantities of
cloth we see. Some asked for gaudy prints, of which we had none,
because we knew that the general taste of the Africans of the
Interior is for strength rather than show in what they buy.

The Rovuma here is about 100 yards broad, and still keeps up
its character of a rapid stream, with sandy banks and islands: the latter are generally
occupied, as being defensible when the river is in flood.

2nd July, 1866.—We rested at Mtarika’s old place;
and though we had to pay dearly with our best
table-cloths[14] for it, we got as much as made one meal a
day. At the same dear rate we could give occasionally only two
ears of maize to each man; and if the sepoys got their comrades’
corn into their hands, they eat it without shame. We had to bear
a vast amount of staring, for the people, who are Waiyau, have a
great deal of curiosity, and are occasionally rather rude. They
have all heard of our wish to stop the slave-trade, and are
rather taken aback when told that by selling they are part and
part guilty of the mortality of which we had been unwilling
spectators. Some were dumbfounded when shown that in the eye of
their Maker they are parties to the destruction of human life
which accompanies this traffic both by sea and land. If they did
not sell, the Arabs would not come to buy. Chuma and Wakatani
render what is said very eloquently in Chiyau, most of the people
being of their tribe, with only a sprinkling of slaves. Chimseia,
Chimsaka, Mtarika, Mtendé, Makanjela, Mataka, and all the
chiefs and people in our route to the Lake, are Waiyau, or
Waiau.[15]

On the southern slope down to the river there are many oozing
springs and damp spots where rice has been sown and reaped. The
adjacent land has yielded large crops of sorghum, congo-beans,
and pumpkins. Successive crowds of people came to gaze. My
appearance and acts often cause a burst of laughter; sudden
standing up produces a flight of women and children. To prevent
peeping into the hut which I occupy, and making the place quite
dark, I do my writing in the verandah. Chitané, the poodle
dog, the buffalo-calf, and our
only remaining donkey are greeted with the same amount of
curiosity and laughter-exciting comment as myself.

Every evening a series of loud musket reports is heard from
the different villages along the river; these are imitation
evening guns. All copy the Arabs in dress and chewing tobacco
with “nora” lime, made from burnt river shells instead of
betel-nut and lime. The women are stout, well-built persons, with
thick arms and legs; their heads incline to the bullet shape; the
lip-rings are small; the tattoo a mixture of Makoa and Waiyau.
Fine blue and black beads are in fashion, and so are arm-coils of
thick brass wire. Very nicely inlaid combs are worn in the hair;
the inlaying is accomplished by means of a gum got from the root
of an orchis called Nangazu.

3rd July, 1866.—A short march brought us to
Mtarika’s new place. The chief made his appearance only after he
had ascertained all he could about us. The population is immense;
they are making new gardens, and the land is laid out by straight
lines about a foot broad, cut with the hoe; one goes miles
without getting beyond the marked or surveyed fields.

Mtarika came at last; a big ugly man, with large mouth and
receding forehead. He asked to see all our curiosities, as the
watch, revolver, breech-loading rifle, sextant. I gave him a
lecture on the evil of selling his people, and he wished me to
tell all the other chiefs the same thing.

They dislike the idea of guilt being attached to them for
having sold many who have lost their lives on their way down to
the sea-coast. We had a long visit from Mtarika next day; he gave
us meal, and meat of wild hog, with a salad made of bean-leaves.
A wretched Swaheli Arab, ill with rheumatism, came for aid, and
got a cloth. They all profess to me to be buying ivory only.

5th July,
1866.—We left for Mtendé, who is the last chief
before we enter on a good eight days’ march to Mataka’s; we might
have gone to Kandulo’s, who is near the Rovuma, and more to the
north, but all are so well supplied with everything by
slave-traders that we have difficulty in getting provisions at
all. Mataka has plenty of all kinds of food. On the way we passed
the burnt bones of a person Avho was accused of having eaten
human flesh; he had been poisoned, or, as they said, killed by
poison (muave?), and then burned. His clothes were hung, up on
trees by the wayside as a warning to others. The country was
covered with scraggy forest, but so undulating that one could
often see all around from the crest of the waves. Great mountain
masses appear in the south and south-west. It feels cold, and the
sky is often overcast.

6th July, 1866.—I took lunars yesterday, after
which Mtendé invited us to eat at his house where he had
provided a large mess of rice porridge and bean-leaves as a
relish. He says that many Arabs pass him and many of them die in
their journeys. He knows no deaf or dumb person in the country.
He says that he cuts the throats of all animals to be eaten, and
does not touch lion or hyaena.

7th July, 1866.—We got men from Mtendé to
carry loads and show the way. He asked a cloth to ensure his
people going to the journey’s end and behaving properly; this is
the only case of anything like tribute being demanded in this
journey: I gave him a cloth worth 5s. 6d. Upland vegetation
prevails; trees are dotted here and there among bushes five feet
high, and fine blue and yellow flowers are common. We pass over a
succession of ridges and valleys as in Londa; each valley has a
running stream or trickling rill; garden willows are in full
bloom, and also a species of sage with variegated leaves beneath
the flowers.

When the sepoy Perim threw away the tea and the lead lining, I
only reproved him and promised him punishment if he committed any other wilful offence, but
now he and another skulked behind and gave their loads to a
stranger to carry, with a promise to him that I would pay. We
waited two hours for them; and as the havildar said that they
would not obey him, I gave Perim and the other some smart cuts
with a cane, but I felt that I was degrading myself, and resolved
not to do the punishment myself again.

8th July, 1866.—Hard travelling through a
depopulated country. The trees are about the size of hop-poles
with abundance of tall grass; the soil is sometimes a little
sandy, at other times that reddish, clayey sort which yields
native grain so well. The rock seen uppermost is often a
ferruginous conglomerate, lying on granite rocks. The gum-copal
tree is here a mere bush, and no digging takes place for the gum:
it is called Mchenga, and yields gum when wounded, as also bark,
cloth, and cordage when stripped. Mountain masses are all around
us; we sleep at Linata mountain.

9th July, 1866.—The Masuko fruit abounds: the
name is the same here as in the Batoka country; there are also
rhododendrons of two species, but the flowers white. We slept in
a wild spot, near Mount Leziro, with many lions roaring about us;
one hoarse fellow serenaded us a long time, but did nothing more.
Game is said to be abundant, but we saw none, save an occasional
diver springing away from the path. Some streams ran to the
north-west to the Lismyando, which flows N. for the Rovuma;
others to the south-east for the Loendi.

10th and 11th July, 1866.—Nothing to interest but
the same weary trudge: our food so scarce that we can only give a
handful or half a pound of grain to each person per day. The
Masuko fruit is formed, but not ripe till rains begin; very few
birds are seen or heard, though there is both food and water in
the many grain-bearing grasses and running streams, which we
cross at the junction of every two ridges. A dead body lay in a hut by the wayside; the poor
thing had begun to make a garden by the stream, probably in hopes
of living long enough (two months or so) on wild fruits to reap a
crop of maize.

12th July, 1866.—A drizzling mist set in during
the night and continued this morning, we set off in the dark,
however, leaving our last food for the havildar and sepoys who
had not yet come up. The streams are now of good size. An Arab
brandy bottle was lying broken in one village called Msapa. We
hurried on as fast as we could to the Luatizé, our last
stage before getting to Mataka’s; this stream is rapid, about
forty yards wide, waist deep, with many podostemons on the
bottom. The country gets more and more undulating and is covered
with masses of green foliage, chiefly Masuko trees, which have
large hard leaves. There are hippopotami further down the river
on its way to the Loendi. A little rice which had been kept for
me I divided, but some did not taste food.

13th July, 1866.—A good many stragglers behind,
but we push on to get food and send it back to them. The soil all
reddish clay, the roads baked hard by the sun, and the feet of
many of us are weary and sore: a weary march and long, for it is
perpetually up and down now. I counted fifteen running streams in
one day: they are at the bottom of the valley which separates the
ridges. We got to the brow of a ridge about an hour from Mataka’s
first gardens, and all were so tired that we remained to sleep;
but we first invited volunteers to go on and buy food, and bring
it back early next morning: they had to be pressed to do this
duty.

14th July, 1866.—As our volunteers did not come
at 8 A.M., I set off to see the cause, and after an hour of
perpetual up and down march, as I descended the steep slope which
overlooks the first gardens, I saw my friends start up at the
apparition—they were comfortably cooking porridge for
themselves! I sent men of
Mataka back with food to the stragglers behind and came on to his
town.

An Arab, Sef Rupia or Rubea, head of a large body of slaves,
on his way to the coast, most kindly came forward and presented
an ox, bag of flour, and some cooked meat, all of which were
extremely welcome to half-famished men, or indeed under any
circumstances. He had heard of our want of food and of a band of
sepoys, and what could the English think of doing but putting an
end to the slave-trade? Had he seen our wretched escort, all fear
of them would have vanished! He had a large safari or caravan
under him. This body is usually divided into ten or twelve
portions, and all are bound to obey the leader to á
certain extent: in this case there were eleven parties, and the
traders numbered about sixty or seventy, who were dark coast
Arabs. Each underling had his men under him, and when I saw them
they were busy making the pens of branches in which their slaves
and they sleep. Sef came on with me to Mataka’s, and introduced
me in due form with discharges of gunpowder. I asked him to come
back next morning, and presented three cloths with a request that
he would assist the havildar and sepoys, if he met them, with
food: this he generously did.

We found Mataka’s town situated in an elevated valley
surrounded by mountains; the houses numbered at least 1000, and
there were many villages around. The mountains were pleasantly
green, and had many trees which the people were incessantly
cutting down. They had but recently come here: they were besieged
by Mazitu at their former location west of this; after fighting
four days they left unconquered, having beaten the enemy off.

Mataka kept us waiting some time in the verandah of his large
square house, and then made his appearance, smiling with his
good-natured face. He is about sixty years of age, dressed as an
Arab, and if we may judge from
the laughter with which his remarks were always greeted, somewhat
humorous. He had never seen any but Arabs before. He gave me a
square house to live in, indeed the most of the houses here are
square, for the Arabs are imitated in everything: they have
introduced the English pea, and we were pleased to see large
patches of it in full bearing, and ripe in moist hollows which
had been selected for it. The numerous springs which come out at
various parts are all made use of. Those parts which are too wet
are drained, whilst beds are regularly irrigated by water-courses
and ridges: we had afterwards occasion to admire the very
extensive draining which has been effected among the hills.
Cassava is cultivated on ridges along all the streets in the
town, which give it a somewhat regular and neat appearance. Peas
and tobacco were the chief products raised by irrigation, but
batatas and maize were often planted too: wheat would succeed if
introduced. The altitude is about 2700 feet above the sea: the
air at this time is cool, and many people have coughs.

Mataka soon sent a good mess of porridge and cooked meat
(beef); he has plenty of cattle and sheep: and the next day he
sent abundance of milk. We stand a good deal of staring unmoved,
though it is often accompanied by remarks by no means
complimentary; they think that they are not understood, and
probably I do misunderstand sometimes. The Waiyau jumble their
words as I think, and Mataka thought that I did not enunciate
anything, but kept my tongue still when I spoke.

Town of Matak, Moembé. 15th July,
1866.—The safari under Sef set off this morning for
Kilwa. Sef says that about 100 of the Kilwa people died this
year, so slaving as well as philanthropy is accompanied with loss
of life: we saw about seven of their graves; the rest died on the
road up.

There are two roads from
this to the Lake, one to Loséwa, which is west of this,
and opposite Kotakota; the other, to Makatu, is further south:
the first is five days through deserted country chiefly; but the
other, seven, among people and plenty of provisions all the
way.

It struck me after Sef had numbered up the losses that the
Kilwa people sustained by death in their endeavours to
«nslave people, similar losses on the part of those who go
to “proclaim liberty to the captives, the opening of the prison
to them that are bound,”—to save and elevate, need not be
made so very much of as they sometimes are.

Soon after our arrival we heard that a number of Mataka’s
Waiyau had, without his knowledge, gone to Nyassa, and in a foray
carried off cattle and people: when they came home with the
spoil, Mataka ordered all to be sent back whence they came. The
chief came up to visit me soon after, and I told him that his
decision was the best piece of news I had heard in the country:
he was evidently pleased with my approbation, and, turning to his
people, asked if they heard what I said. He repeated my remark,
and said, “You silly fellows think me wrong in returning the
captives, but all wise men will approve of it,” and he then
scolded them roundly.

I was accidentally spectator of this party going back, for on
going out of the town I saw a meat market opened, and people
buying with maize and meal. On inquiring, I was told that the
people and cattle there were the Nyassas, and they had
slaughtered an ox, in order to exchange meat for grain as
provisions on the journey. The women and children numbered
fifty-four, and about a dozen boys were engaged in milking the
cows: the cattle were from twenty-five to thirty head.

The change from hard and scanty fare caused illness in several
of our party. I had tasted no animal food except what
turtle-doves and guinea-fowls could be shot since we passed Matawatawa,—true, a fowl was
given by Mtendé. The last march was remarkable for the
scarcity of birds, so eight days were spent on porridge and rice
without relish.

I gave Mataka a trinket, to be kept in remembrance of his
having sent back the Nyassa people: he replied that he would
always act in a similar manner. As it was a spontaneous act, it
was all the more valuable.

The sepoys have become quite intolerable, and if I cannot get
rid of them we shall all starve before we accomplish what we
wish. They dawdle behind picking up wild fruits, and over our
last march (which we accomplished on the morning of the eighth
day) they took from fourteen to twenty-two days. Retaining their
brutal feelings to the last they killed the donkey which I lent
to the havildar to carry his things, by striking it on the head
when in boggy places into which they had senselessly driven it
loaded; then the havildar came on (his men pretending they could
go no further from weakness), and killed the young buffalo and
eat it when they thought they could hatch up a plausible story.
They said it had died, and tigers came and devoured it—they
saw them. “Did you see the stripes of the tiger?” said I. All
declared that they saw the stripes distinctly. This gave us an
idea of their truthfulness, as there is no striped tiger in all
Africa. All who resolved on skulking or other bad behaviour
invariably took up with the sepoys; their talk seemed to suit
evil-doers, and they were such a disreputable-looking lot that I
was quite ashamed of them. The havildar had no authority, and all
bore the sulky dogged look of people going where they were forced
but hated to go. This hang-dog expression of countenance was so
conspicuous that I many a time have heard the country people
remark, “These are the slaves of the party.” They have neither
spirit nor pluck as compared with the Africans, and if one saw a
village he turned out of the
way to beg in the most abject manner, or lay down and slept, the
only excuse afterwards being, “My legs were sore.” Having allowed
some of them to sleep at the fire in my house, they began a
wholesale plunder of everything they could sell, as cartridges,
cloths, and meat, so I had to eject them. One of them then
threatened to shoot my interpreter Simon if he got him in a quiet
place away from the English power. As this threat had been
uttered three times, and I suspect that something of the kind had
prevented the havildar exerting his authority, I resolved to get
rid of them by sending them back to the coast by the first
trader. It is likely that some sympathizers will take their part,
but I strove to make them useful. They had but poor and scanty
fare in a part of the way, but all of us suffered alike. They
made themselves thoroughly disliked by their foul talk and abuse,
and if anything tended more than another to show me that theirs
was a moral unfitness for travel, it was the briskness assumed
when they knew they were going back to the coast. I felt inclined
to force them on, but it would have been acting from revenge, and
to pay them out, so I forbore. I gave Mataka forty-eight yards of
calico, and to the sepoys eighteen yards, and arranged that he
should give them food till Suleiman, a respectable trader, should
arrive. He was expected every day, and we passed him near the
town. If they chose to go and get their luggage, it was of course
all safe for them behind. The havildar begged still to go on with
me, and I consented, though he is a drag on the party, but he
will count in any difficulty.

Abraham recognised his uncle among the crowds who came to see
us. On making himself known he found that his mother and two
sisters had been sold to the Arabs after he had been enslaved.
The uncle pressed him to remain, and Mataka urged, and so did
another uncle, but in vain. I added my voice, and could have
given him goods to keep him
afloat a good while, but he invariably replied, “How can I stop
where I have no mother and no sister?” The affection seems to go
to the maternal side. I suggested that he might come after he had
married a wife, but I fear very much that unless some European
would settle, none of these Nassick boys will come to this
country. It would be decidedly better if they were taught
agriculture in the simplest form, as the Indian. Mataka would
have liked to put his oxen to use, but Abraham could not help him
with that. He is a smith, or rather a nothing, for unless he
could smelt iron he would be entirely without materials to work
with.

14th-28th July, 1866.—One day, calling at
Mataka’s, I found as usual a large crowd of idlers, who always
respond with a laugh to everything he utters as wit. He asked, if
he went to Bombay what ought he to take to secure some gold? I
replied, “Ivory,” he rejoined, “Would slaves not be a good
speculation?” I replied that, “if he took slaves there for sale,
they would put him in prison.” The idea of the great Mataka in
“chokee” made him wince, and the laugh turned for once against
him. He said that as all the people from the coast crowd to him,
they ought to give him something handsome for being here to
supply their wants. I replied, if he would fill the fine
well-watered country we had passed over with people instead of
sending them off to Kilwa, he would confer a benefit on visitors,
but we had been starved on the way to him; and I then told him
what the English would do in road-making in a fine country like
this. This led us to talk of railways, ships, ploughing with
oxen—the last idea struck him most. I told him that I
should have liked some of the Nassick boys to remain and teach
this and other things, but they might be afraid to venture lest
they should be sold again. The men who listened never heard such
decided protests against selling each other into slavery
before!

The idea of guilt probably
floated but vaguely in their minds, but the loss of life we have
witnessed (in the guilt of which the sellers as well as the
buyers participate) comes home very forcibly to their minds.

Mataka has been an active hand in slave wars himself, though
now he wishes to settle down in quiet. The Waiyau generally are
still the most active agents the slave-traders have. The caravan
leaders from Kilwa arrive at a Waiyau village, show the goods
they have brought, are treated liberally by the elders, and told
to wait and enjoy themselves, slaves enough to purchase all will
be procured: then a foray is made against the Manganja, who have
few or no guns. The Waiyau who come against them are abundantly
supplied with both by their coast guests. Several of the low
coast Arabs, who differ in nothing from the Waiyau, usually
accompany the foray, and do business on their own account: this
is the usual way in which a safari is furnished with slaves.

Makanjela, a Waiyau chief about a third of the way from
Mtendé’s to Mataka, has lost the friendship of all his
neighbours by kidnapping and selling their people; if any of
Mataka’s people are found in the district between Makanjela and
Moembé, they are considered fair game and sold.
Makanjela’s people cannot piss Mataka to go to the Manganja, so
they do what they can by kidnapping and plundering all who fall
into their hands.

When I employed two of Mataka’s people to go back on the 14th
with food to the havildar and sepoys, they went a little way and
relieved some, but would not venture as far as the
Luatizé, for fear of losing their liberty by Makanjela’s
people. I could not get the people of the country to go back; nor
could I ask the Nassick boys, who had been threatened by the
sepoys with assassination,—and it was the same with the
Johanna men, because, though Mahometans, the sepoys had called
them Caffirs, &c., and they all declared, “We are ready to do anything for
you, but we will do nothing for these Hindis.” I sent back a
sepoy, giving him provisions; he sat down in the first village,
ate all the food, and returned.

An immense tract of country lies uninhabited. To the
north-east of Moembé we have at least fifty miles of as
fine land as can be seen anywhere, still bearing all the marks of
having once supported a prodigious iron-smelting and
grain-growing population. The clay pipes which are put on the
nozzles of their bellows and inserted into the furnace are met
with everywhere—often vitrified. Then the ridges on which
they planted maize, beans, cassava, and sorghum, and which they
find necessary to drain off the too abundant moisture of the
rains, still remain unlevelled to attest the industry of the
former inhabitants; the soil being clayey, resists for a long
time the influence of the weather. These ridges are very regular,
for in crossing the old fields, as the path often compels us to
do, one foot treads regularly on the ridge, and the other in the
hollow, for a considerable distance. Pieces of broken pots, with
their rims ornamented with very good imitations of basket-work,
attest that the lady potters of old followed the example given
them by their still more ancient mothers,—their designs are
rude, but better than we can make them without referring to the
original.

Imitation of
basket-work in Pottery.

No want of water has here acted to drive the people away, as
has been the case further south. It is a perpetual succession of
ridge and valley, with a running stream or oozing bog, where ridge is separated from ridge:
the ridges become steeper and narrower as we approach
Mataka’s.

I counted fifteen running burns of from one to ten yards wide
in one day’s march of about six hours; being in a hilly or rather
mountainous region, they flow rapidly and have plenty of
water-power. In July any mere torrent ceases to flow, but these
were brawling burns with water too cold (61°) for us to bathe
in whose pores were all open by the relaxing regions nearer the
coast. The sound, so un-African, of gushing water dashing over
rocks was quite familiar to our ears.

This district, which rises up west of Mataka’s to 3400 feet
above the sea, catches a great deal of the moisture brought up by
the easterly winds. Many of the trees are covered with lichens.
While here we had cold southerly breezes, and a sky so overcast
every day after 10 A.M., that we could take no astronomical
observations: even the latitude was too poor to be much depended
on. 12° 53′ S. may have been a few miles from this.

The cattle, rather a small breed, black and white in patches,
and brown, with humps, give milk which is duly prized by these
Waiyau. The sheep are the large-tailed variety, and generally of
a black colour. Fowls and pigeons are the only other domestic
animals we see, if we except the wretched village dogs which
our-poodle had immense delight in chasing.

The Waiyau are far from a handsome race, but they are not the
prognathous beings one sees on the West Coast either. Their heads
are of a round shape; compact foreheads, but not particularly
receding; the alae nasi are flattened out; lips full, and with
the women a small lip-ring just turns them up to give additional
thickness. Their style of beauty is exactly that which was in
fashion when the stone deities were made in the caves of
Elephanta and Kenora near Bombay. À favourite mode of
dressing the hair into little
knobs, which was in fashion there, is more common in some tribes
than in this. The mouths of the women would not be so hideous
with a small lip-ring if they did not file their teeth to points,
but they seem strong and able for the work which falls to their
lot. The men are large, strong-boned fellows, and capable of
enduring great fatigue, they undergo a rite which once
distinguished the Jews about the age of puberty, and take a new
name on the occasion; this was not introduced by the Arabs, whose
advent is a recent event, and they speak of the time before they
were inundated with European manufactures in exchange for slaves,
as quite within their memory.

Young Mataka gave me a dish of peas, and usually brought
something every time he made a visit, he seems a nice boy, and
his father, in speaking of learning to read, said he and his
companions could learn, but he himself was too old. The soil
seems very fertile, for the sweet potatoes become very large, and
we bought two loads of them for three cubits and two needles;
they quite exceeded 1 cwt. The maize becomes very large too; one
cob had 1600 seeds. The abundance of water, the richness of soil,
the available labour for building square houses, the coolness of
the climate, make this nearly as desirable a residence as
Magomero; but, alas! instead of three weeks’ easy sail up the
Zambesi and Shiré, we have spent four weary months in
getting here: I shall never cease bitterly to lament the
abandonment of the Magomero mission.

Moaning seems a favourite way of spending the time with some
sick folk. For the sake of the warmth, I allowed a Nassick boy to
sleep in my house; he and I had the same complaint, dysentery,
and I was certainly worse than he, but did not moan, while he
played at it as often as he was awake. I told him that people
moaned only when too ill to be sensible of what they were doing; the groaning
ceased, though he became worse.

Three sepoys played at groaning very vigorously outside my
door; they had nothing the matter with them, except perhaps
fatigue, which we all felt alike; as these fellows prevented my
sleeping, I told them quite civilly that, if so ill that they
required to groan, they had better move off a little way, as I
could not sleep; they preferred the verandah, and at once
forbore.

The abundance of grain and other food is accompanied by great
numbers of rats or large mice, which play all manner of pranks by
night; white ants have always to be guarded against likewise.
Anyone who would find an antidote to drive them away would confer
a blessing; the natural check is the driver ant, which when it
visits a house is a great pest for a time, but it clears the
others out.

CHAPTER IV.

28th July, 1866.—We proposed to start to-day, but
Mataka said that he was not ready yet: the flour had to be
ground, and he had given us no meat. He had sent plenty of cooked
food almost every day. He asked if we would slaughter the ox he
would give here, or take it on; we preferred to kill it at once.
He came on the 28th with a good lot of flour for us, and men to
guide us to Nyassa, telling us that this was Moembé, and
his district extended all the way to the Lake: he would not send
us to Loséwa, as that place had lately been plundered and
burned.

In general the chiefs have shown an anxiety to promote our
safety. The country is a mass of mountains. On leaving Mataka’s
we ascended considerably, and about the end of the first day’s
march, near Magola’s village, the barometer showed our greatest
altitude, about 3400 feet above the sea. There were villages of
these mountaineers everywhere, for the most part of 100 houses or
more each. The springs were made the most use of that they knew;
the damp spots drained, and
the water given a free channel for use in irrigation further
down: most of these springs showed the presence of iron by the
oxide oozing out. A great many patches of peas are seen in full
bearing and flower. The trees are small, except in the hollows:
there is plenty of grass and flowers near streams and on the
heights. The mountain-tops may rise 2000 or 3000 feet above their
flanks, along which we wind, going perpetually up and down the
steep ridges of which the country is but a succession.

Looking at the geology of the district, the plateaux on each
side of the Rovuma are masses of grey sandstone, capped with
masses of ferruginous conglomerate; apparently an aqueous
deposit. When we ascend the Rovuma about sixty miles, a great
many pieces and blocks of silicified wood appear on the surface
of the soil at the bottom of the slope up the plateaux. This in
Africa is a sure indication of the presence of coal beneath, but
it was not observed cropping out; the plateaux are cut up in
various directions by wadys well supplied with grass and trees on
deep and somewhat sandy soil: but at the confluence of the Loendi
highlands they appear in the far distance. In the sands of the
Loendi pieces of coal are quite common.[16]

Before reaching the confluence of the Rovuma and Loendi, or
say about ninety miles from the sea, the plateau is succeeded by
a more level country, having detached granitic masses shooting up
some 500 or 700 feet. The sandstone of the plateau has at first
been hardened, then quite metamorphosed into a chocolate-coloured
schist. As at Chilolé hill, we have igneous rocks,
apparently trap, capped with masses of beautiful white dolomite.
We still ascend in altitude as we go westwards, and come upon
long tracts of gneiss with hornblende. The gneiss is often striated, all the striae
looking one way—sometimes north and south, and at other
times east and west. These rocks look as if a stratified rock had
been nearly melted, and the strata fused together by the heat.
From these striated rocks have shot up great rounded masses of
granite or syenite, whose smooth sides and crowns contain
scarcely any trees, and are probably from 3000 to 4000 feet above
the sea. The elevated plains among these mountain masses show
great patches of ferruginous conglomerate, which, when broken,
look like yellow haematite with madrepore holes in it: this has
made the soil of a red colour.

On the watershed we have still the rounded granitic hills
jutting above the plains (if such they may be called) which are
all ups and downs, and furrowed with innumerable running rills,
the sources of the Rovuma and Loendi. The highest rock observed
with mica schist was at an altitude of 3440 feet. The same uneven
country prevails as we proceed from the watershed about forty
miles down to the Lake, and a great deal of quartz in small
fragments renders travelling-very difficult. Near the Lake, and
along its eastern shore, we have mica schist and gneiss foliated,
with a great deal of hornblende; but the most remarkable feature
of it is that the rocks are all tilted on edge, or slightly
inclined to the Lake. The active agent in effecting this is not
visible. It looks as if a sudden rent had been made, so as to
form the Lake, and tilt all these rocks nearly over. On the east
side of the lower part of the Lake we have two ranges of
mountains, evidently granitic: the nearer one covered with small
trees and lower than the other; the other jagged and bare, or of
the granitic forms. But in all this country no fossil-yielding
rock was visible except the grey sandstone referred to at the
beginning of this note. The rocks are chiefly the old crystalline
forms.

One fine straight tall tree in the hollows seemed a species
of fig: its fruit was just
forming, but it was too high for me to ascertain its species. The
natives don’t eat the fruit, but they eat the large grubs which
come out of it. The leaves were fifteen inches long by five
broad: they call it Unguengo.

29th July, 1866.—At Magola’s village. Although we
are now rid of the sepoys, we cannot yet congratulate ourselves
on being rid of the lazy habits of lying down in the path which
they introduced. A strong scud comes up from the south bringing
much moisture with it: it blows so hard above, this may be a
storm on the coast. Temperature in mornings 55°.

30th July, 1866.—A short march brought us to
Pezimba’s village, which consists of 200 houses and huts. It is
placed very nicely on a knoll between two burns, which, as usual,
are made use of for irrigating peas in winter time. The headman
said that if we left now we had a good piece of jungle before us,
and would sleep twice in it before reaching Mbanga. We therefore
remained. An Arab party, hearing of our approach, took a
circuitous route among the mountains to avoid coming in contact
with us. In travelling to Pezimba’s we had commenced our western
descent to the Lake, for we were now lower than Magola’s by 300
feet. We crossed many rivulets and the Lochesi, a good-sized
stream. The watershed parts some streams for Loendi and some for
Rovuma. There is now a decided scantiness of trees. Many of the
hill-tops are covered with grass or another plant; there is
pleasure now in seeing them bare. Ferns, rhododendrons, and a
foliaged tree, which looks in the distance like silver-fir, are
met with.

The Mandaré root is here called Nyumbo, when cooked it
has a slight degree of bitterness with it which cultivation may
remove. Mica schist crowned some of the heights on the watershed,
then gneiss, and now, as we descend further, we have igneous
rocks of more recent eruption, porphyry and gneiss, with hornblende. A good deal of
ferruginous conglomerate, with holes in it, covers many spots;
when broken, it looks like yellow haematite, with black linings
to the holes: this is probably the ore used in former times by
the smiths, of whose existence we now find still more evidence
than further east.

31st July, 1866.—I had presented Pezimba with a
cloth, so he cooked for us handsomely last night, and this
morning desired us to wait a little as he had not yet sufficient
meal made to present: we waited and got a generous present.

It was decidedly milder here than at Mataka’s, and we had a
clear sky. In our morning’s march we passed the last of the
population, and went on through a fine well-watered fruitful
country, to sleep near a mountain called Mtéwiré,
by a stream called Msapo. A very large Arab slave-party was close
by our encampment, and I wished to speak to them; but as soon as
they knew of our being near they set off in a pathless course
across country, and were six days in the wilderness.[17]

1st August, 1866.—We saw the encampment of
another Arab party. It consisted of ten pens, each of which, from
the number of fires it contained, may have held from eighty to a
hundred slaves. The people of the country magnified the numbers,
saying that they would reach from this to Mataka’s; but from all
I can learn, I think that from 300 to 800 slaves is the commoner
gang. This second party went across country very early this
morning. We saw the fire-sticks which the slaves had borne with
them. The fear they feel is altogether the effect of the English
name, for we have done nothing to cause their alarm.

2nd August, 1866.—There was something very
cheering to me in the sight at our encampment of yellow grass and
trees dotted over it, as in the Bechuana country. The birds were
singing merrily too, inspired
by the cold, which was 47°, and by the vicinity of some
population. Gum-copal trees and bushes grow here as well as all
over the country; but gum is never dug for, probably because the
trees were never large enough to yield the fossil gum. Marks of
smiths are very abundant and some furnaces are still standing.
Much cultivation must formerly have been where now all is
jungle.

We arrived at Mbanga, a village embowered in trees, chiefly of
the euphorbia, so common in the Manganja country further south.
Kandulo, the headman, had gone to drink beer at another village,
but sent orders to give a hut and to cook for us. We remained
next day. Took lunars.

We had now passed through, at the narrowest part, the hundred
miles of depopulated country, of which about seventy are on the
N.E. of Mataka. The native accounts differ as to the cause. Some
say slave wars, and assert that the Makoa from the vicinity of
Mozambique played an important part in them; others say famine;
others that the people have moved to and beyond Nyassa.[18] Certain it is, from
the potsherds strewed over the country, and the still remaining
ridges on which beans, sorghum, maize, and cassava, were planted,
that the departed population was prodigious. The Waiyau, who are
now in the country, came from the other side of the Rovuma, and
they probably supplanted the Manganja, an operation which we see
going on at the present day.

4th August, 1866.—An hour and a half brought us
to Miulé, a village on the same level with Mbanga; and the
chief pressing us to stay, on the plea of our sleeping two nights
in the jungle, instead of one if we left early next morning, we
consented. I asked him what had become of the very large iron-smelting population of this
region; he said many had died of famine, others had fled to the
west of Nyassa: the famine is the usual effect of slave wars, and
much death is thereby caused—probably much more than by the
journey to the coast. He had never heard any tradition of stone
hatchets having been used, nor of stone spear-heads or arrowheads
of that material, nor had he heard of any being turned up by the
women in hoeing. The Makondé, as we saw, use wooden spears
where iron is scarce. I saw wooden hoes used for tilling the soil
in the Bechuana and Bataka countries, but never stone ones. In
1841 I saw a Bushwoman in the Cape Colony with a round stone and
a hole through it; on being asked she showed me how it was used
by inserting the top of a digging-stick into it, and digging a
root. The stone was to give the stick weight.

Digging-stick
weighted with round Stone.

The stones still used as anvils and sledge-hammers by many of
the African smiths, when considered from their point of view,
show sounder sense than if they were burdened with the great
weights we use. They are unacquainted with the process of
case-hardening, which, applied to certain parts of our anvils,
gives them their usefulness, and an anvil of their soft iron
would not do so well as a hard stone. It is true a small light
one might be made, but let any one see how the hammers of their
iron bevel over and round in the faces with a little work, and he
will perceive that only a wild freak would induce any sensible
native smith to make a mass equal to a sledge-hammer, and burden
himself with a weight for what can be better performed by a
stone. If people are settled, as on the coast, then they gladly
use any mass of cast iron they may find, but never where, as in the interior, they have
no certainty of remaining any length of time in one spot.

5th August, 1866.—We left Miulé, and
commenced our march towards Lake Nyassa, and slept at the last of
the streams that flow to the Loendi. In Mataka’s vicinity, N.E.,
there is a perfect brush of streams flowing to that river: one
forms a lake in its course, and the sources of the Rovuma lie in
the same region. After leaving Mataka’s we crossed a good-sized
one flowing to Loendi, and, the day after leaving Pezimba’s,
another going to the Chiringa or Lochiringa, which is a tributary
of the Rovuma.

6th August, 1866.—We passed two cairns this
morning at the beginning of the very sensible descent to the
Lake. They are very common in all this Southern Africa in the
passes of the mountains, and are meant to mark divisions of
countries, perhaps burial-places, but the Waiyau who accompanied
us thought that they were merely heaps of stone collected by some
one making a garden. The cairns were placed just about the spot
where the blue waters of Nyassa first came fairly into view.

We now came upon a stream, the Misinjé, flowing into
the Lake, and we crossed it five times; it was about twenty yards
wide, and thigh deep. We made but short stages when we got on the
lower plateau, for the people had great abundance of food, and
gave large presents of it if we rested. One man gave four fowls,
three large baskets of maize, pumpkins, eland’s fat—a fine
male, as seen by his horns,—and pressed us to stay, that he
might see our curiosities as well as others. He said that at one
day’s distance south of him all sorts of animals, as buffaloes,
elands, elephants, hippopotami, and antelopes, could be shot.

8th August, 1866.—We came to the Lake at the
confluence of the Misinjé, and felt grateful to That Hand
which had protected us thus far on our journey. It was as if I
had come back to an old home I never expected again to see;
and pleasant to bathe in the
delicious waters again, hear the roar of the sea, and dash in the
rollers. Temp. 71° at 8 A.M., while the air was 65°. I
feel quite exhilarated.

The headman here, Mokalaosé, is a real Manganja, and he
and all his people exhibit the greater darkness of colour
consequent on being in a warm moist climate; he is very friendly,
and presented millet, porridge, cassava, and hippopotamus meat
boiled and asked if I liked milk, as he had some of Mataka’s
cattle here. His people bring sanjika the best Lake fish, for
sale; they are dried on stages over slow fires, and lose their
fine flavour by it, but they are much prized inland. I bought
fifty for a fathom of calico; when fresh, they taste exactly like
the best herrings, i.e. as we think, but voyagers’ and
travellers’ appetites are often so whetted as to be incapable of
giving a true verdict in matters of taste.

[It is necessary to explain that Livingstone knew of an Arab
settlement on the western shore of the Lake, and that he hoped to
induce the chief man Jumbé to give him a passage to the
other side.]

10th August, 1866.—I sent Seyed Majid’s letter up
to Jumbé, but the messenger met some coast Arabs at the
Loangwa, which may be seven miles from this, and they came back
with him, haggling a deal about the fare, and then went off,
saying that they would bring the dhow here for us. Finding that
they did not come, I sent Musa, who brought back word that they
had taken the dhow away over to Jumbé at Kotakota, or, as
they pronounce it, Ngotagota. Very few of the coast Arabs can
read; in words they are very polite, but truthfulness seems very
little regarded. I am resting myself and people—working up
journal, lunars, and altitudes—but will either move south
or go to the Arabs towards the north soon.

Mokalaosé’s fears of
the Waiyau will make him welcome Jumbé here, and then the
Arab will some day have an opportunity of scattering his people
as he has done those at Kotakota. He has made Loséwa too
hot for himself. When the people there were carried off by
Mataka’s people, Jumbé seized their stores of grain, and
now has no post to which he can go there. The Loangwa Arabs give
an awful account of Jumbé’s murders and selling the
people, but one cannot take it all in; at the mildest it must
have been bad. This is all they ever do; they cannot form a state
or independent kingdom: slavery and the slave-trade are
insuperable obstacles to any permanence inland; slaves can escape
so easily, all therefore that the Arabs do is to collect as much
money as they can by hook and by crook, and then leave the
country.

We notice a bird called namtambwé, which sings very
nicely with a strong voice after dark here at the Misinjé
confluence.

11th August, 1866.—Two headmen came down country
from villages where we slept, bringing us food, and asking how we
are treated; they advise our going south to Mukaté’s,
where the Lake is narrow.

12th-14th August, 1866.—Map making; but my
energies were sorely taxed by the lazy sepoys, and I was usually
quite tired out at night. Some men have come down from Mataka’s,
and report the arrival of an Englishman with cattle for me, “he
has two eyes behind as well as two in front:” this is enough of
news for awhile!

Mokalaosé has his little afflictions, and he tells me
of them. A wife ran away, I asked how many he had; he told me
twenty in all: I then thought he had nineteen too many. He
answered with the usual reason, “But who would cook for strangers
if I had but one?”

We saw clouds of “kungu” gnats on the Lake; they are not eaten
here. An ungenerous traveller coming here with my statement in his hand, and finding the
people denying all knowledge of how to catch and cook them, might
say that I had been romancing in saying I had seen them made into
cakes in the northern part of the Lake; when asking here about
them, a stranger said, “They know how to use them in the north;
we do not.”

Mokalaosé thinks that the Arabs are afraid that I may
take their dhows from them and go up to the north. He and the
other headmen think that the best way will be to go to
Mukaté’s in the south. All the Arabs flee from me, the
English name being in their minds inseparably connected with
recapturing slavers: they cannot conceive that I have any other
object in view; they cannot read Seyed Majid’s letter.

21st August, 1866.—Started for the Loangwa, on
the east side of the Lake; hilly all the way, about seven miles.
This river may be twenty yards wide near its confluence; the
Misinjé is double that: each has accumulated a promontory
of deposit and enters the Lake near its apex. We got a house from
a Waiyau man on a bank about forty feet above the level of
Nyassa, but I could not sleep for the manoeuvres of a crowd of
the minute ants which infested it. They chirrup distinctly; they
would not allow the men to sleep either, though all were pretty
tired by the rough road up.

22nd August, 1866.—We removed to the south side
of the Loangwa, where there are none of these little pests.

23rd August, 1866.—Proposed to the Waiyau headman
to send a canoe over to call Jumbé, as I did not believe
in the assertions of the half-caste Arab here that he had sent
for his. All the Waiyau had helped me, and why not he? He was
pleased with this, but advised waiting till a man sent to
Loséwa should return.

24th August, 1866.—A leopard took a dog out of a
house next to ours; he had bitten a man before, but not mortally.
29th August,
1866.—News come that the two dhows have come over to
Loséwa (Loséfa). The Mazitu had chased Jumbé
up the hills: had they said, on to an island, I might have
believed them.

30th August,1866.—The fear which the English have
inspired in the Arab slave-traders is rather inconvenient. All
flee from me as if I had the plague, and I cannot in consequence
transmit letters to the coast, or get across the Lake. They seem
to think that if I get into a dhow I will be sure to burn it. As
the two dhows on the Lake are used for nothing else but the
slave-trade, their owners have no hope of my allowing them to
escape, so after we have listened to various lies as excuses, we
resolve to go southwards, and cross at the point of departure of
the Shiré from the Lake. I took lunars several times on
both sides of the moon, and have written a despatch for Lord
Clarendon, besides a number of private letters.

3rd September, 1866.—Went down to confluence of
the Misinjé and came to many of the eatable insect
“kungu,”—they are caught by a quick motion of the hand
holding a basket. We got a cake of these same insects further
down; they make a buzz like a swarm of bees, and are probably the
perfect state of some Lake insect.

I observed two beaches of the Lake: one about fifteen feet
above the present high-water mark, and the other about forty
above that; but between the two the process of disintegration,
which results from the sudden cold and heat in these regions, has
gone on so much that seldom is a well-rounded smoothed one seen;
the lower beach is very well marked.

The strike of large masses of foliated gneiss is parallel with
the major axis of the Lake, and all are tilted on edge. Some are
a little inclined to the Lake, as if dipping to it westwards, but
others are as much inclined the opposite way, or twisted.

I made very good blue ink
from the juice of a berry, the fruit of a creeper, which is the
colour of port wine when expressed. A little ferri carb. ammon.,
added to this is all that is required.

The poodle dog Chitané is rapidly changing the colour
of its hair. All the parts corresponding to the ribs and neck are
rapidly becoming red; the majority of country dogs are of this
colour.

The Manganja, or Wa-nyassa, are an aboriginal race; they have
great masses of hair, and but little, if any, of the prognathous
in the profile. Their bodies and limbs are very well made, and
the countenance of the men is often very pleasant. The women are
very plain and lumpy, but exceedingly industrious in their
gardens from early morning till about 11 A.M., then from 3 P.M.
till dark, or pounding corn and grinding it: the men make twine
or nets by day, and are at their fisheries in the evenings and
nights. They build the huts, the women plaster them.

A black fish, the Nsaka, makes a hole, with raised edges,
which, with the depth from which they are taken, is from fifteen
to eighteen inches, and from two to three feet broad. It is
called by the natives their house. The pair live in it for some
time, or until the female becomes large for spawning; this
operation over, the house is left.

I gave Mokalaosé some pumpkin seed and peas. He took me
into his house, and presented a quantity of beer. I drank a
little, and seeing me desist from taking more, he asked if I
wished a servant-girl to “pata mimba.” Not knowing what
was meant, I offered the girl the calabash of beer, and told her
to drink, but this was not the intention. He asked if I did not
wish more; and then took the vessel, and as he drank the girl
performed the operation on himself. Placing herself in front, she
put both hands round his waist below the short ribs, and pressing
gradually drew them round to
his belly in front. He took several prolonged draughts, and at
each she repeated the operation, as if to make the liquor go
equally over the stomach. Our topers don’t seem to have
discovered the need for this.

5th September, 1866.—Our march is along the shore
to Ngombo promontory, which approaches so near to Senga or Tsenga
opposite, as to narrow the Lake to some sixteen or eighteen
miles. It is a low sandy point, the edge fringed on the
north-west and part of the south with a belt of papyrus and
reeds; the central parts wooded. Part of the south side has high
sandy dunes, blown up by the south wind, which strikes it at
right angles there. One was blowing as we marched along the
southern side eastwards, and was very tiresome. We reached
Panthunda’s village by a brook called Lilolé. Another we
crossed before coming to it is named Libesa: these brooks form
the favourite spawning grounds of the sanjika and mpasa, two of
the best fishes of the Lake. The sanjika is very like our herring
in shape and taste and size; the mpasa larger every way: both
live on green herbage formed at the bottom of the Lake and
rivers.

7th September, 1866.—Chirumba’s village being on
the south side of a long lagoon, we preferred sleeping on the
mainland, though they offered their cranky canoes to ferry us
over. This lagoon is called Pansangwa.

8th September, 1866.—In coming along the southern
side of Ngombo promontory we look eastwards, but when we leave it
we turn southwards, having a double range of lofty mountains on
our left. These are granitic in form, the nearer range being
generally the lowest, and covered with scraggy trees; the second,
or more easterly, is some 6000 feet above the sea, bare and
rugged, with jagged peaks shooting high into the air. This is
probably the newest range. The oldest people have felt no
earthquake, but some say that
they have heard of such things from their elders.

We passed very many sites of old villages, which are easily
known by the tree euphorbia planted round an umbelliferous one,
and the sacred fig. One species here throws out strong buttresses
in the manner of some mangroves instead of sending down twiners
which take root, as is usually the ease with the tropical fig.
These, with millstones—stones for holding the pots in
cooking—and upraised clay benches, which have been turned
into brick by fire in the destruction of the huts, show what were
once the “pleasant haunts of men.” No stone implements ever
appear. If they existed they could not escape notice, since the
eyes in walking are almost always directed to the ground to avoid
stumbling on stones or stumps. In some parts of the world stone
implements are so common they seem to have been often made and
discarded as soon as formed, possibly by getting better tools;
if, indeed, the manufacture is not as modern as that found by Mr.
Waller. Passing some navvies in the City who were digging for the
foundation of a house, he observed a very antique-looking vase,
wet from the clay, standing on the bank. He gave ten shillings
for it, and subsequently, by the aid of a scrubbing brush and
some water, detected the hieroglyphics “Copeland late Spode” on
the bottom of it!

Here the destruction is quite recent, and has been brought
about by some who entertained us very hospitably on the
Misinjé, before we came to the confluence. The woman
chief, Ulenjelenjé, or Njelenjé, bore a part in it
for the supply of Arab caravans. It was the work of the
Masininga, a Waiyau tribe, of which her people form a part. They
almost depopulated the broad fertile tract, of some three or four
miles, between the mountain range and the Lake, along which our
course lay. It was wearisome to see the skulls and bones
scattered about everywhere;
one would fain not notice them, but they are so striking as one
trudges along the sultry path, that it cannot be avoided.

9th September, 1866.—We spent Sunday at
Kandango’s village. The men killed a hippopotamus when it was
sleeping on the shore; a full-grown female, 10 feet 9 inches from
the snout to the insertion of the tail, and 4 feet 4 inches high
at the withers. The bottom here and all along southwards now is
muddy. Many of the Siluris Glanis are caught equal in
length to an eleven or a twelve-pound salmon, but a great portion
is head; slowly roasted on a stick stuck in the ground before the
fire they seemed to me much more savoury than I ever tasted them
before. With the mud we have many shells: north of Ngombo
scarcely one can be seen, and there it is sandy or rocky.

10th September, 1866.—In marching southwards we
came close to the range (the Lake lies immediately on the other
side of it), but we could not note the bays which it forms; we
crossed two mountain torrents from sixty to eighty yards broad,
and now only ankle deep. In flood these bring down enormous
trees, which are much battered and bruised among the rocks in
their course; they spread over the plain, too, and would render
travelling here in the rains impracticable. After spending the
night at a very civil headman’s chefu, we crossed the
Lotendé, another of these torrents: each very lofty mass
in the range seemed to give rise to one. Nothing of interest
occurred as we trudged along. A very poor headman, Pamawawa,
presented a roll of salt instead of food: this was grateful to
us, as we have been without that luxury some time.

12th September, 1866.—We crossed the rivulet
Nguena, and then went on to another with a large village by it,
it is called Pantoza Pangone. The headman had been suffering from
sore eyes for four months, and pressed me to stop and give him
medicine, which I did.

13th September,
1866.—We crossed a strong brook called Nkoré. My
object in mentioning the brooks which were flowing at this time,
and near the end of the dry season, is to give an idea of the
sources of supply of evaporation. The men enumerate the
following, north of the Misinjé. Those which are greater
are marked thus +, and the lesser ones-.

1. Misinjé + has
canoes.
2. Loangwa –
3. Leséfa –
4. Lelula –
5. Nchamanjé
–
6. Musumba +
7. Fubwé +
8. Chia –
9. Kisanga +
10. Bweka –
11. Chifumero + has
canoes.
12. Loangwa –
13. Mkoho –
14. Mangwelo – at N. end of
Lake.

Including the above there are twenty or twenty-four perennial
brooks and torrents which give a good supply of water in the dry
season; in the wet season they are supplemented by a number of
burns, which, though flowing now, have their mouths blocked up
with bars of sand, and yield nothing except by percolation; the
Lake rises at least four feet perpendicularly in the wet season,
and has enough during the year from these perennial brooks to
supply the Shiré’s continual flow.

[It will be remembered that the beautiful river Shiré
carries off the waters of Lake Nyassa and joins the Zambesi near
Mount Morambala, about ninety miles from the sea. It is by this
water-way that Livingstone always hoped to find an easy access to Central Africa. The only
obstacles that exist are, first, the foolish policy of the
Portuguese with regard to Customs’ duties at the mouth of the
Zambesi; and secondly, a succession of cataracts on the
Shiré, which impede navigation for seventy miles. The
first hindrance may give way under more liberal views than those
which prevail at present at the Court of Lisbon, and then the
remaining difficulty—accepted as a fact—will be
solved by the establishment of a boat service both above and
below the cataracts. Had Livingstone survived he would have been
cheered by hearing that already several schemes are afoot to
plant Missions in the vicinity of Lake Nyassa, and we may with
confidence look to the revival of the very enterprise which he
presently so bitterly deplores as a thing of the past, for Bishop
Steere has fully determined to re-occupy the district in which
fell his predecessor, Bishop Mackenzie, and others attached to
the Universities Mission.]

In the course of this day’s march we were pushed close to the
Lake by Mount Gomé, and, being now within three miles of
the end of the Lake, we could see the whole plainly. There we
first saw the Shiré emerge, and there also we first gazed
on the broad waters of Nyassa.

Many hopes have been disappointed here. Far down on the right
bank of the Zambesi lies the dust of her whose death changed all
my future prospects; and now, instead of a check being given to
the slave-trade by lawful commerce on the Lake, slave-dhows
prosper!

An Arab slave-party fled on hearing of us yesterday. It is
impossible not to regret the loss of good Bishop Mackenzie, who
sleeps far down the Shiré, and with him all hope of the
Gospel being introduced into Central Africa. The silly
abandonment of all the advantages of the Shiré route by
the Bishop’s successor I shall ever bitterly deplore, but all will come right some day,
though I may not live to participate in the joy, or even see the
commencement of better times.

In the evening we reached the village of Cherekalongwa on the
brook Pamchololo, and were very jovially received by the headman
with beer. He says that Mukaté,[19] Kabinga, and Mponda alone supply the
slave-traders now by raids on the Manganja, but they go S.W. to
the Maravi, who, impoverished by a Mazitu raid, sell each other
as well.

14th, September, 1866.—At Cherekalongwa’s (who
has a skin disease, believed by him to have been derived from
eating fresh-water turtles), we were requested to remain one day
in order that he might see us. He had heard much about us; had
been down the Shiré, and as far as Mosambique, but never
had an Englishman in his town before. As the heat is great we
were glad of the rest and beer, with which he very freely
supplied us.

I saw the skin of a Phenembe, a species of lizard which
devours chickens; here it is named Salka. It had been flayed by a
cut up the back—body, 12 inches; across belly, 10
inches.

After nearly giving up the search for Dr. Roscher’s point of
reaching the Lake—because no one, either Arab or native,
had the least idea of either Nusseewa or Makawa, the name given
to the place—I discovered it in Lesséfa, the
accentuated é being sounded as our e in
set. This word would puzzle a German philologist, as being
the origin of Nussewa, but the Waiyau pronounce it Loséwa,
the Arabs Lusséwa, and Roscher’s servant transformed the
L and é into N and ee, hence
Nusseewa. In confirmation of this rivulet Leséfa, which is
opposite Kotakota, or, as the Arabs pronounce it, Nkotakota, the
chief is Mangkaka (Makawa), or as there is a confusion of names
as to chief it may be Mataka, whose town and district is called Moembé,
the town Pamoembe = Mamemba.

I rest content with Kingomango so far verifying the place at
which he arrived two months after we had discovered Lake Nyassa.
He deserved all the credit due to finding the way thither, but he
travelled as an Arab, and no one suspected him to be anything
else. Our visits have been known far and wide, and great
curiosity excited; but Dr. Roscher merits the praise only of
preserving his incognito at a distance from Kilwa: his is
almost the only case known of successfully assuming the Arab
guise—Burckhardt is the exception. When Mr. Palgrave came
to Muscat, or a town in Oman where our political agent Col.
Desborough was stationed, he was introduced to that functionary
by an interpreter as Hajee Ali, &c. Col. Desborough replied,
“You are no Hajee Ali, nor anything else but Gifford Palgrave,
with whom I was schoolfellow at the Charter House.” Col.
Desborough said he knew him at once, from a peculiar way of
holding his head, and Palgrave begged him not to disclose his
real character to his interpreter, on whom, and some others, he
had been imposing. I was told this by Mr. Dawes, a Lieutenant in
the Indian navy, who accompanied Colonel Pelly in his visit to
the Nejed, Riad, &c, and took observations for him.

Tañgaré is the name of a rather handsome
bean, which possesses intoxicating qualities. To extract these it
is boiled, then peeled, and new water supplied: after a second
and third boiling it is pounded, and the meal taken to the river
and the water allowed to percolate through it several times.
Twice cooking still leaves the intoxicating quality; but if eaten
then it does not cause death: it is curious that the natives do
not use it expressly to produce intoxication. When planted near a
tree it grows all over it, and yields abundantly: the skin of the
pod is velvety, like our broad beans.

Another bean, with a
pretty white mark on it, grows freely, and is easily cooked, and
good: it is here called Gwingwiza.

15th September, 1866.—We were now a short
distance south of the Lake, and might have gone west to Mosauka’s
(called by some Pasauka’s) to cross the Shiré there, but I
thought that my visit to Mukaté’s, a Waiyau chief still
further south, might do good. He, Mponda, and Kabinga, are the
only three chiefs who still carry on raids against the Manganja
at the instigation of the coast Arabs, and they are now sending
periodical marauding parties to the Maravi (here named Malola) to
supply the Kilwa slave-traders. We marched three hours
southwards, then up the hills of the range which flanks all the
lower part of the Lake. The altitude of the town is about 800
feet above the Lake. The population near the chief is large, and
all the heights as far as the eye can reach are crowned with
villages. The second range lies a few miles off, and is covered
with trees as well as the first, the nearest high mass is
Mañgoché. The people live amidst plenty. All the
chiefs visited by the Arabs have good substantial square houses
built for their accommodation. Mukaté never saw a European
before, and everything about us is an immense curiosity to him
and to his people. We had long visits from him. He tries to
extract a laugh out of every remark. He is darker than the
generality of Waiyau, with a full beard trained on the chin, as
all the people hereabouts have—Arab fashion. The courts of
his women cover a large space, our house being on one side of
them. I tried to go out that way, but wandered, so the ladies
sent a servant to conduct me out in the direction I wished to go,
and we found egress by passing through some huts with two doors
in them.

16th September, 1866.—At Mukaté’s. The
Prayer Book does not give ignorant persons any idea of an unseen
Being addressed, it looks
more like reading or speaking to the book: kneeling and praying
with eyes shut is better than, our usual way of holding Divine
service.

We had a long discussion about the slave-trade. The Arabs have
told the chief that our object in capturing slavers is to get
them into our own possession, and make them of our own religion.
The evils which we have seen—the skulls, the ruined
villages, the numbers who perish on the way to the coast and on
the sea, the wholesale murders committed by the Waiyau to build
up Arab villages elsewhere—these things Mukaté often
tried to turn off with a laugh, but our remarks are safely lodged
in many hearts. Next day, as we went along, our guide
spontaneously delivered their substance to the different villages
along our route. Before we reached him, a headman, in convoying
me a mile or two, whispered to me, “Speak to Mukaté to
give his forays up.”

It is but little we can do, but we lodge a protest in the
heart against a vile system, and time may ripen it. Their great
argument is, “What could we do without Arab cloth?” My answer is,
“Do what you did before the Arabs came into the country.” At the
present rate of destruction of population, the whole country will
soon be a desert.

An earthquake happened here last year, that is about the end
of it or beginning of this (the crater on the Grand. Comoro
Island smoked for three months about that time); it shook all the
houses and everything, but they observed no other
effects.[20] No hot springs are
known here.

17th September,
1866.—We marched down from Mukaté’s and to about
the middle of the Lakelet Pamalombé. Mukaté had no
people with canoes near the usual crossing place, and he sent a
messenger to see that we were fairly served. Here we got the
Manganja headmen to confess that an earthquake had happened; all
the others we have inquired of have denied it; why, I cannot
conceive. The old men said that they had felt earthquakes twice,
once near sunset and the next time at night—they shook
everything, and were accompanied with noise, and all the fowls
cackled; there was no effect on the Lake observed. They profess
ignorance of any tradition of the water having stood higher.
Their traditions say that they came originally from the west, or
west north-west, which they call “Maravi;” and that their
forefathers taught them to make nets and kill fish. They have no
trace of any teaching by a higher instructor; no carvings or
writings on the rocks; and they never heard of a book until we
came among them. Their forefathers never told them that after or
at death they went to God, but they had heard it said of such a
one who died, “God took him.”

18th September, 1866.—We embarked the whole party
in eight canoes, and went up the Lake to the point of junction
between it and the prolongation of Nyassa above it, called
Massangano (“meetings”), which took us two hours. A fishing party
there fled on seeing us, though we shouted that we were a
travelling party (or “Olendo “).

Mukaté’s people here left us, and I walked up to the
village of the fugitives with one attendant only. Their
suspicions were so thoroughly aroused that they would do nothing.
The headman (Pima) was said to be absent; they could not lend us
a hut, but desired us to go on to Mponda’s. We put up a shed for
ourselves, and next morning, though we pressed them for a guide,
no one would come.

From Pima’s village we
had a fine view of Pamalombé and the range of hills on its
western edge, the range which flanks the lower part of
Nyassa,—on part of which Mukaté lives,—the gap
of low land south of it behind which Shirwa Lake lies, and
Chikala and Zomba nearly due south from us. People say
hippopotami come from Lake Shirwa into Lake Nyassa. There is a
great deal of vegetation in Pamalombé, gigantic rushes,
duckweed, and great quantities of aquatic plants on the bottom;
one slimy translucent plant is washed ashore in abundance. Fish
become very fat on these plants; one called “kadiakola” I eat
much of; it has a good mass of flesh on it.

It is probable that the people of Lake Tanganyika and Nyassa,
and those on the Rivers Shiré and Zambesi, are all of one
stock, for the dialects vary very little.[21] I took observations on this point. An Arab
slave-party, hearing of us, decamped.

19th September, 1866.—When we had proceeded a
mile this morning we came to 300 or 400 people making salt on a
plain impregnated with it. They lixiviate the soil and boil the
water, which has filtered through a bunch of grass in a hole in
the bottom of a pot, till all is evaporated and a mass of salt
left. We held along the plain till we came to Mponda’s, a large
village, with a stream running past. The plain at the village is
very fertile, and has many large trees on it. The cattle of
Mponda are like fatted Madagascar beasts, and the hump seems as
if it would weigh 100 lbs.[22] The size of body is so enormous that their
legs, as remarked by our men, seemed very small. Mponda is a
blustering sort of person, but immensely interested in everything European. He says that he
would like to go with me. “Would not care though he were away ten
years.” I say that he may die in the journey.—”He will die
here as well as there, but he will see all the wonderful doings
of our country.” He knew me, having come to the boat, to take a
look incognito when we were here formerly.

We found an Arab slave-party here, and went to look at the
slaves; seeing this; Mponda was alarmed lest we should proceed to
violence in his town, but I said to him that we went to look
only. Eighty-five slaves were in a pen formed of dura stalks
(Holcus sorghum). The majority were boys of about eight or
ten years of age; others were grown men and women. Nearly all
were in the taming-stick; a few of the younger ones were in
thongs, the thong passing round the neck of each. Several pots
were on the fires cooking dura and beans. A crowd went with us,
expecting a scene, but I sat down, and asked a few questions
about the journey, in front. The slave-party consisted of five or
six half-caste coast Arabs, who said that they came from
Zanzibar; but the crowd made such a noise that we could not hear
ourselves speak. I asked if they had any objections to my looking
at the slaves, the owners pointed out the different slaves, and
said that after feeding them, and accounting for the losses in
the way to the coast, they made little by the trip. I suspect
that the gain is made by those who ship them to the ports of
Arabia, for at Zanzibar most of the younger slaves we saw went at
about seven dollars a head. I said to them it was a bad business
altogether. They presented fowls to me in the evening.

20th September, 1866.—The chief begged so hard
that I would stay another day and give medicine to a sick child,
that I consented. He promised plenty of food, and, as an earnest
of his sincerity, sent an immense pot of beer in the evening. The
child had been benefited by the medicine given yesterday. He offered more food than we
chose to take.

The agricultural class does not seem to be a servile one: all
cultivate, and the work is esteemed. The chief was out at his
garden when we arrived, and no disgrace is attached to the field
labourer. The slaves very likely do the chief part of the work,
but all engage in it, and are proud of their skill. Here a great
deal of grain is raised, though nearly all the people are Waiyau
or Machinga. This is remarkable, as they have till lately been
marauding and moving from place to place. The Manganja possessed
the large breed of humped cattle which fell into the hands of the
Waiyau, and knew how to milk them. Their present owners never
milk them, and they have dwindled into a few instead of the
thousands of former times.[23]

A lion killed a woman early yesterday morning, and ate most of
her undisturbed.

It is getting very hot; the ground to the feet of the men
“burns like fire” after noon, so we are now obliged to make short
marches, and early in the morning chiefly.

Wikatani—Bishop Mackenzie’s favourite boy—met a
brother here, and he finds that he has an elder brother and a
sister at Kabinga’s. The father who sold him into slavery is
dead. He wishes to stop with his relatives, and it will be well
if he does. Though he has not much to say, what he does advance
against the slave-trade will have its weight, and it will all be
in the way of preparation for better times and more light.

The elder brother was sent for, but had not arrived when
it was necessary for us to
leave Mponda’s on the Rivulet Ntemangokwé. I therefore
gave Wikatani some cloth, a flint gun instead of the percussion
one he carried, some flints, paper to write upon, and commended
him to Mponda’s care till his relatives arrived. He has lately
shown a good deal of levity, and perhaps it is best that he
should have a touch of what the world is in reality.

[In a letter written about this time Dr. Livingstone, in
speaking of Wikatani, says, “He met with a brother, and found
that he had two brothers and one or two sisters living down at
the western shore of Lake Pamelombé under Kabinga. He
thought that his relatives would not again sell him. I had asked
him if he wished to remain, and he at once said yes, so I did not
attempt to dissuade him: his excessive levity will perhaps be
cooled by marriage. I think he may do good by telling some of
what he has seen and heard. I asked him if he would obey an order
from his chief to hunt the Manganja, and he said, ‘No.’ I hope he
won’t. In the event of any mission coming into the country of
Mataka, he will go there. I gave him paper to write to
you,[24] and, commending him
to the chiefs, bade the poor boy farewell. I was sorry to part
with him, but the Arabs tell the Waiyau chiefs that our object in
liberating slaves is to make them our own and turn them to our
religion. I had declared to them, through Wikatani as
interpreter, that they never became our slaves, and were at
liberty to go back to their relatives if they liked; and now it
was impossible to object to Wikatani going without stultifying my
own statements.” It is only necessary to repeat that Wikatani and
Chuma had been liberated from the slavers by Dr. Livingstone and
Bishop Mackenzie in 1861; they were mere children when set
free.

We must not forget to
record the fact that when Mr. Young reached Maponda, two years
afterwards, to ascertain whether the Doctor really had been
murdered, as Musa declared, he was most hospitably received by
the chief, who had by this time a great appreciation of
everything English.]

The lines of tattoo of the different tribes serve for
ornaments, and are resorted to most by the women; it is a sort of
heraldry closely resembling the Highland tartans.

Manganja and Machinga
women.

CHAPTER V.

21st September, 1866.—We marched westwards,
making across the base of Cape Maclear. Two men employed as
guides and carriers, went along grumbling that their dignity was
so outraged by working—”only fancy Waiyau carrying like
slaves!!” They went but a short distance, and took advantage of
my being in front to lay down the loads, one of which consisted
of the havildar’s bed and cooking things; here they opened the
other bundle and paid themselves—the gallant havildar
sitting and looking on. He has never been of the smallest use,
and lately has pretended to mysterious pains in his feet; no
swelling or other symptom accompanied this complaint. On coming
to Pima’s village he ate a whole fowl and some fish for supper,
slept soundly till daybreak, then on awaking commenced a furious
groaning—”feet were so bad.” I told him that people usually
moaned when insensible, but he had kept quiet till he awaked; he
sulked at this, and remained all day, though I sent a man to
carry his kit for him, and when he came up he had changed the seat of his complaint from
his feet to any part of his abdomen. He gave off his gun-belt and
pouch to the carrier. This was a blind to me, for I examined and
found that he had already been stealing and selling his
ammunition: this is all preparatory to returning to the coast
with some slave-trader. Nothing can exceed the ease and grace
with which sepoys can glide from a swagger into the most abject
begging of food from the villagers. He has remained behind.

22nd September, 1866.—The hills we crossed were
about 700 feet above Nyassa, generally covered with trees; no
people were seen. We slept by the brook Sikoché. Rocks of
hardened sandstone rested on mica schist, which had an
efflorescence of alum on it, above this was dolomite; the hills
often capped with it and oak-spar, giving a snowy appearance. We
had a Waiyau party with us—six handsomely-attired women
carried huge pots of beer for their husbands, who very liberally
invited us to partake. After seven hours’ hard travelling we came
to the village, where we spend Sunday by the torrent Usangazi,
and near a remarkable mountain, Namasi. The chief, a one-eyed
man, was rather coy—coming incognito to visit us;
and, as I suspected that he was present, I asked if the chief
were an old woman, afraid to look at and welcome a stranger? All
burst into a laugh, and looked at him, when he felt forced to
join in it, and asked what sort of food we liked best. Chuma put
this clear enough by saying, “He eats everything eaten by the
Waiyau.” This tribe, or rather the Machinga, now supersede the
Manganja. We passed one village of the latter near this, a sad,
tumble-down affair, while the Waiyau villages are very neat, with
handsome straw or reed fences all around their huts.

24th September, 1866.—We went only 2-1/2 miles to
the village of Marenga, a very large one, situated at the eastern
edge of the bottom of the heel of the Lake. The chief is ill
of a loathsome disease
derived direct from the Arabs. Raised patches of scab of circular
form disfigure the face and neck as well as other parts. His
brother begged me to see him and administer some remedy for the
same complaint. He is at a village a little way off, and though
sent for, was too ill to come or to be carried. The tribe is of
Babisa origin. Many of these people had gone to the coast as
traders, and returning with arms and ammunition joined the Waiyau
in their forays on the Manganja, and eventually set themselves up
as an independent tribe. The women do not wear the lip-ring,
though the majority of them are Waiyau. They cultivate largely,
and have plenty to eat. They have cattle, but do not milk
them.

The bogs, or earthen sponges,[25] of this country occupy a most important part
in its physical geography, and probably explain the annual
inundations of most of the rivers. Wherever a plain sloping
towards a narrow opening in hills or higher ground exists, there
we have the conditions requisite for the formation of an African
sponge. The vegetation, not being of a heathy or peat-forming
kind, falls down, rots, and then forms rich black loam. In many
cases a mass of this loam, two or three feet thick, rests on a
bed of pure river sand, which is revealed by crabs and other
aquatic animals bringing it to the surface. At present, in the
dry season, the black loam is cracked in all directions, and the
cracks are often as much as three inches wide, and very deep. The
whole surface has now fallen down, and rests on the sand, but
when the rains come, the first supply is nearly all absorbed in
the sand. The black loam forms soft slush, and floats on the
sand. The narrow opening prevents it from moving off in a
landslip, but an oozing spring rises at that spot. All the pools in the lower portion of
this spring-course are filled by the first rains, which happen
south of the equator when the sun goes vertically over any spot.
The second, or greater rains, happen in his course north again,
when all the bogs and river-courses being wet, the supply runs
off, and forms the inundation: this was certainly the case as
observed on the Zambesi and Shiré, and, taking the
different times for the sun’s passage north of the equator, it
explains the inundation of the Nile.

25th September, 1866.—Marenga’s town on the west
shore of Lake Nyassa is very large, and his people collected in
great numbers to gaze at the stranger. The chief’s brother asked
a few questions, and I took the occasion to be a good one for
telling him something about the Bible and the future state. The
men said that their fathers had never told them aught about the
soul, but they thought that the whole man rotted and came to
nothing. What I said was very nicely put by a volunteer
spokesman, who seemed to have a gift that way, for all listened
most attentively, and especially when told that our Father in
heaven loved all, and heard prayers addressed to Him.

Marenga came dressed in a red-figured silk shawl, and attended
by about ten court beauties, who spread a mat for him, then a
cloth above, and sat down as if to support him. He asked me to
examine his case inside a hut. He exhibited his loathsome skin
disease, and being blacker than his wives, the blotches with
which he was covered made him appear very ugly. He thought that
the disease was in the country before Arabs came. Another new
disease acquired from them was the small-pox.

26th September, 1866.—An Arab passed us
yesterday, his slaves going by another route across the base of
Cape Maclear. He told Musa that all the country in front was full
of Mazitu; that forty-four Arabs and their followers had been
killed by them at Kasungu, and he only escaped. Musa and all the Johanna men now declared
that they would go no farther. Musa said, “No good country that;
I want to go back to Johanna to see my father and mother and
son.” I took him to Marenga, and asked the chief about the
Mazitu. He explained that the disturbance was caused by the
Manganja finding that Jumbé brought Arabs and ammunition
into the country every year, and they resented it in consequence;
they would not allow more to come, because they were the
sufferers, and their nation was getting destroyed.

I explained to Musa that we should avoid the Mazitu: Marenga
added, “There are no Mazitu near where you are going;” but Musa’s
eyes stood out with terror, and he said, “I no can believe
that man.” But I inquired, “How can you believe the Arab so
easily?” Musa answered, “I ask him to tell me true, and he say
true, true,” &c.

When we started, all the Johanna men walked off, leaving the
goods on the ground. They have been such inveterate thieves that
I am not sorry to get rid of them; for though my party is now
inconveniently small, I could not trust them with flints in their
guns, nor allow them to remain behind, for their object was
invariably to plunder their loads.

[Here then we have Livingstone’s account of the origin of that
well-told story, which at first seemed too true. How Mr. Edward
Young, R.N., declared it to be false, and subsequently proved it
untrue, is already well known. This officer’s quick voyage to
Lake Nyassa reflected the greatest credit on him, and all hearts
were filled with joy when he returned and reported the tale of
Livingstone’s murder to be merely an invention of Musa and his
comrades.]

I ought to mention that the stealing by the Johanna men was
not the effect of hunger; it attained its height when we had plenty. If one remained
behind, we knew his object in delaying was stealing. He gave what
he filched to the others, and Musa shared the dainties they
bought with the stolen property. When spoken to he would say, “I
every day tell Johanna men no steal Doctor’s things.” As he came
away and left them in the march, I insisted out his bringing up
all his men; this he did not relish, and the amount stolen was
not small. One stole fifteen pounds of fine powder, another
seven, another left six table-cloths out of about twenty-four;
another called out to a man to bring a fish, and he would buy it
with beads, the beads being stolen, and Musa knew it all and
connived at it; but it was terror that drove him away at
last.

With our goods in canoes we went round the bottom of the heel
of Nyassa, slept among reeds, and next morning (27th) landed at
Msangwa, which is nearly opposite Kimsusa’s, or Katosa’s, as the
Makololo called him. A man had been taken off by a crocodile last
night; he had been drinking beer, and went down to the water to
cool himself, where he lay down, and the brute seized him. The
water was very muddy, being stirred up by an east wind, which
lashed the waves into our canoes, and wetted our things. The loud
wail of the women is very painful to hear; it sounds so
dolefully.

28th, September, 1866.—We reached Kinisusa’s,
below Mount Mulundini, of Kirk’s range.[26] The chief was absent, but he was sent for
immediately: his town has much increased since I saw it last.

29th September, 1866.—Another Arab passed last
night, with the tale that his slaves had all been taken from him
by the Mazitu. It is more respectable to be robbed by them than
by the Manganja, who are much despised and counted nobodies. I propose to go west of
this among the Maravi until quite away beyond the disturbances,
whether of Mazitu or Manganja.

30th September, 1866.—We enjoy our Sunday here.
We have-abundance of food from Kimsusa’s wife. The chief wished
me to go alone and enjoy his drinking bout, and then we could
return to this place together; but this was not to my taste.

1st October, 1866.—Kimsusa, or Mehusa, came this
morning, and seemed very glad again to see his old friend. He
sent off at once to bring an enormous ram, which had either
killed or seriously injured a man. The animal came tied to a pole
to keep him off the man who held it, while a lot more carried
him. He was prodigiously fat;[27] this is a true African way of showing
love—plenty of fat and beer. Accordingly the chief brought
a huge basket of “pombe,” the native beer, and another of
“nsima,” or porridge, and a pot of cooked meat; to these were
added a large basket of maize. So much food had been brought to
us, that we had at last to explain that we could not carry
it.

[The Doctor states a fact in the next few lines which shows
that the Africans readily profit by advice which appeals to their
common sense, and we make this observation in full knowledge of
similar instances.]

Kimsusa says that they felt earthquakes at the place Mponda
now occupies, but none where he is now. He confirms the tradition
that the Manganja came from the west or W.N.W. He speaks more
rationally about the Deity than some have done, and adds, that it
was by following the advice
which I gave him the last time I saw him, and not selling his
people, that his village is now three times its former size. He
has another village besides, and he was desirous that I should
see that too; that was the reason he invited me to come, but the
people would come and visit me.

2nd October, 1866.—Kimsusa made his appearance
early with a huge basket of beer, 18 inches high and 15 inches in
diameter. He served it out for a time, taking deep draughts
himself, becoming extremely loquacious in consequence. He took us
to a dense thicket behind his town, among numbers of lofty trees,
many of which I have seen nowhere else; that under which we sat
bears a fruit in clusters, which is eatable, and called
“Mbedwa.” A space had been cleared, and we were taken to
this shady spot as the one in which business of importance and
secrecy is transacted. Another enormous basket of beer was
brought here by his wives, but there was little need for it, for
Kimsusa talked incessantly, and no business was done.

3rd October, 1866.—The chief came early, and
sober. I rallied him on his previous loquacity, and said one
ought to find time in the morning if business was to be done: he
took it in good part, and one of his wives joined in bantering
him. She is the wife and the mother of the sons in whom he
delights, and who will succeed him. I proposed to him to send men
with me to the Babisa country, and I would pay them there, where
they could buy ivory for him with the pay, and, bringing it back,
he would be able to purchase clothing without selling his people.
He says that his people would not bring the pay or anything else
back. When he sends to purchase ivory he gives the price to Arabs
or Babisa, and they buy for him and conduct his business
honestly; but his people, the Manganja, cannot be trusted: this
shows a remarkable state of distrust, and, from previous
information, it is probably true.

A party of the Arab
Khambuiri’s people went up lately to the Maravi country above
this, and immediately west of Kirk’s range, to purchase slaves:
but they were attacked by the Maravi, and dispersed with
slaughter: this makes Kimsusa’s people afraid to venture there.
They had some quarrel with the Maravi also of their own, and no
intercourse now took place. A path further south was followed by
Mponda lately, and great damage done, so it would not be wise to
go on his footsteps. Kimsusa said he would give me carriers to go
up to the Maravi, but he wished to be prepaid: to this I agreed,
but even then he could not prevail on anyone to go. He then sent
for an old Mobisa man, who has a village under him, and
acknowledges Kimsusa’s power. He says that he fears that, should
he force his Manganja to go, they would leave us on the road, or
run away on the first appearance of danger; but this Mobisa man
would be going to his own country, and would stick by us.
Meanwhile the chief overstocks us with beer and other food.

4th October, 1866.—The Mobisa man sent for came,
but was so ignorant of his own country, not knowing the names of
the chief Babisa town or any of the rivers, that I declined his
guidance. He would only have been a clog on us; and anything
about the places in front of us we could ascertain at the
villages where we touch by inquiry as well as he could.

A woman turned up here, and persuaded Chuma that she was his
aunt. He wanted to give her at once a fathom of calico and beads,
and wished me to cut his pay down for the purpose. I persuaded
him to be content with a few beads for her. He gave her his spoon
and some other valuables, fully persuaded that she was a
relative, though he was interrogated first as to his father’s
name, and tribe, &c., before she declared herself.

It shows a most forgiving disposition on the part of these
boys to make presents to
those who, if genuine relations, actually sold them. But those
who have been caught young, know nothing of the evils of slavery,
and do not believe in its ills. Chuma, for instance, believes now
that he was caught and sold by the Manganja, and not by his own
Waiyau, though it was just in the opposite way that he became a
slave, and he asserted and believes that no Waiyau ever sold his
own child. When reminded that Wikatani was sold by his own
father, he denied it; then that the father of Chimwala, another
boy, sold him, his mother, and sister, he replied, “These are
Machinga.” This is another tribe of Waiyau; but this showed that
he was determined to justify his countrymen at any rate. I
mention this matter, because though the Oxford and Cambridge
Mission have an advantage in the instruction of boys taken quite
young from slavers, yet these same boys forget the evils to which
they were exposed and from which they were rescued, and it is
even likely that they will, like Chuma, deny that any benefit was
conferred upon them by their deliverance. This was not stated
broadly by Chuma, but his tone led one to believe that he was
quite ready to return to the former state.

5th October, 1866.—The chief came early with an
immense basket of beer, as usual. We were ready to start: he did
not relish this; but I told him it was clear that his people set
very light by his authority. He declared that he would force them
or go himself, with his wives as carriers. This dawdling and
guzzling had a bad effect on my remaining people. Simon, a
Nassick lad, for instance, overheard two words which he
understood; these were “Mazitu” and “lipululu,” or desert; and
from these he conjured up a picture of Mazitu rushing out upon us
from the jungle, and killing all without giving us time to say a
word! To this he added scraps of distorted information: Khambuiri
was a very bad chief in front, &c., all showing egregious
cowardice; yet he came to
give me advice. On asking what he knew (as he could not speak the
language), he replied that he heard the above two words, and that
Chuma could not translate them, but he had caught them, and came
to warn me.

The chief asked me to stay over to-day, and he would go with
his wives to-morrow; I was his friend, and he would not see me in
difficulties without doing his utmost. He says that there is no
danger of our not finding people for carrying loads. It is
probable that Khambuiri’s people went as marauders, and were
beaten off in consequence.

6th October, 1866.—We marched about seven miles
to the north to a village opposite the pass Tapiri, and on a
rivulet, Godedza. It was very hot. Kimsusa behaves like a king:
his strapping wives came to carry loads, and shame his people.
Many of the young men turned out and took the loads, but it was
evident that they feared retaliation if they ventured up the
pass. One wife carried beer, another meal; and as soon as we
arrived, cooking commenced: porridge and roasted goat’s flesh
made a decent meal. A preparation of meal called “Toku” is very
refreshing and brings out all the sugary matter in the grain: he
gave me some in the way, and, seeing I liked it, a calabash full
was prepared for me in the evening. Kimsusa delights in showing
me to his people as his friend. If I could have used his pombe,
or beer, it would have put some fat on my bones, but it requires
a strong digestion; many of the chiefs and their wives live on it
almost entirely. A little flesh is necessary to relieve the
acidity it causes; and they keep all flesh very carefully, no
matter how high it may become: drying it on a stage over a fire
prevents entire putridity.

7th October, 1866.—I heard hooping-cough[28] in the village.
We found our visitors so
disagreeable that I was glad to march; they were Waiyau, and very
impudent, demanding gun or game medicine to enable them to shoot
well: they came into the hut uninvited, and would take no denial.
It is probable that the Arabs drive a trade in gun medicine: it
is inserted in cuts made above the thumb, and on the forearm.
Their superciliousness shows that they feel themselves to be the
dominant race. The Manganja trust to their old bows and arrows;
they are much more civil than Ajawa or Waiyau.

[The difference between these two great races is here well
worthy of the further notice which Livingstone no doubt would
have given it. As a rule, the Manganja are extremely clever in
all the savage arts and manufactures. Their looms turn out a
strong serviceable cotton cloth; their iron weapons and
implements show a taste for design which is not reached by the
neighbouring tribes, and in all matters that relate to husbandry
they excel: but in dash and courage they are deficient. The
Waiyau, on the contrary, have round apple-shaped heads, as
distinguished from the long well-shaped heads of the poor
Manganja; they are jocular and merry, given to travelling, and
bold in war—these are qualities which serve them well as
they are driven from pillar to post through slave wars and
internal dissension, but they have not the brains of the
Manganja, nor the talent to make their mark in any direction
where brains are wanted.]

A Manganja man, who formerly presented us with the whole haul
of his net, came and gave me four fowls: some really delight in
showing kindness. When we came near the bottom of the pass
Tapiri, Kimsusa’s men became loud against his venturing further;
he listened, then burst away from them: he listened again, then
did the same; and as he had now got men for us, I thought it
better to let him go.

In three hours and a
quarter we had made a clear ascent of 2200 feet above the Lake.
The first persons we met were two men and a boy, who were out
hunting with a dog and basket-trap. This is laid down in the run
of some small animal; the dog chases it, and it goes into the
basket which is made of split bamboo, and has prongs looking
inwards, which prevent its egress: mouse traps are made in the
same fashion. I suspected that the younger of the men had other
game in view, and meant, if fit opportunity offered, to insert an
arrow in a Waiyau, who was taking away his wife as a slave. He
told me before we had gained the top of the ascent that some
Waiyau came to a village, separated from his by a small valley,
picked a quarrel with the inhabitants, and then went and took the
wife and child of a poorer countryman to pay these pretended
offences.

8th October, 1866.—At the first village we found
that the people up here and those down below were mutually afraid
of each other. Kimsusa came to the bottom of the range, his last
act being the offer of a pot of beer, and a calabash of Toku,
which latter was accepted. I paid his wives for carrying our
things: they had done well, and after we gained the village where
we slept, sang and clapped their hands vigorously till one
o’clock in the morning, when I advised them to go to sleep. The
men he at last provided were very faithful and easily satisfied.
Here we found the headman, Kawa, of Mpalapala, quite as
hospitable. In addition to providing a supper, it is the custom
to give breakfast before starting. Resting on the 8th to make up
for the loss of rest on Sunday; we marched on Tuesday (the 9th),
but were soon brought to a stand by Gombwa, whose village,
Tamiala, stands on another ridge.

Gombwa, a laughing, good-natured man, said that he had sent
for all his people to see me; and I ought to sleep, to enable
them to look on one the like of whom had never come their way
before. Intending to go on, I explained some of my objects in coming through
the country, advising the people to refrain from selling each
other, as it ends in war and depopulation. He was cunning, and
said, “Well, you must sleep here, and all my people will come and
hear those words of peace.” I explained that I had employed
carriers, who expected to be paid though I had gone but a small
part of a day; he replied, “But they will go home and come again
to-morrow, and it will count but one day:” I was thus constrained
to remain.

9th October, 1866.—Both barometer and
boiling-point showed an altitude of upwards of 4000 feet above
the sea. This is the hottest month, but the air is delightfully
clear, and delicious. The country is very fine, lying in long
slopes, with mountains rising all around, from 2000 to 3000 feet
above this upland. They are mostly jagged and rough (not rounded
like those near to Mataka’s): the long slopes are nearly denuded
of trees, and the patches of cultivation are so large and often
squarish in form, that but little imagination is requisite to
transform the whole into the cultivated fields of England; but no
hedgerows exist. The trees are in clumps on the tops of the
ridges, or at the villages, or at the places of sepulture. Just
now the young leaves are out, but are not yet green. In some
lights they look brown, but with transmitted light, or when one
is near them, crimson prevails. A yellowish-green is met
sometimes in the young leaves, and brown, pink, and orange-red.
The soil is rich, but the grass is only excessively rank in
spots; in general it is short. A kind of trenching of the ground
is resorted to; they hoe deep, and draw it well to themselves:
this exposes the other earth to the hoe. The soil is burned too:
the grass and weeds are placed in flat heaps, and soil placed
over them: the burning is slow, and most of the products of
combustion are retained to fatten the field; in this way the
people raise large crops. Men and women and children engage in
field labour, but at present many of the men are engaged in spinning
buazé[29] and cotton. The former is made into a coarse
sacking-looking stuff, immensely strong, which seems to be worn
by the women alone; the men are clad in uncomfortable goatskins.
No wild animals seem to be in the country, and indeed the
population is so large they would have very unsettled times of
it. At every turning we meet people, or see their villages; all
armed with bows and arrows. The bows are unusually long: I
measured one made of bamboo, and found that along the bowstring
it measured six feet four inches. Many carry large knives of fine
iron; and indeed the metal is abundant. Young men and women wear
the hair long, a mass of small ringlets comes down and rests on
the shoulders, giving them the appearance of the ancient
Egyptians. One side is often cultivated, and the mass hangs
jauntily on that side; some few have a solid cap of it. Not many
women wear the lip-ring: the example of the Waiyau has prevailed
so far; but some of the young women have raised lines crossing
each other on the arms, which must have cost great pain: they
have also small cuts, covering in some cases the whole body. The
Maravi or Manganja here may be said to be in their primitive
state. We find them very liberal with their food: we give a cloth to the headman of the
village where we pass the night, and he gives a goat, or at least
cooked fowls and porridge, at night and morning.

Tattoo on Women.

We were invited by Gombwa in the afternoon to speak the same
words to his people that we used to himself in the morning. He
nudged a boy to respond, which is considered polite, though he
did it only with a rough hem! at the end of each sentence. As for
our general discourse we mention our relationship to our Father:
His love to all His children—the guilt of selling any of
His children—the consequence; e.g. it begets war,
for they don’t like to sell their own, and steal from other
villagers, who retaliate. Arabs and Waiyau invited into the
country by their selling, foster feuds, and war and depopulation
ensue. We mention the Bible—future state—prayer:
advise union, that they should unite as one family to expel
enemies, who came first as slave-traders, and ended by leaving
the country a wilderness. In reference to union, we showed that
they ought to have seen justice done to the man who lost his wife
and child at their very doors; but this want of cohesion is the
bane of the Manganja. If the evil does not affect themselves they
don’t care whom it injures; and Gombwa confirmed this, by saying
that when he routed Khambuiri’s people, the villagers west of him
fled instead of coming to his aid.

We hear that many of the Manganja up here are fugitives from
Nyassa.

10th October, 1866.—Kawa and his people were with
us early this morning, and we started from Tamiala with them. The
weather is lovely, and the scenery, though at present tinged with
yellow from the grass, might be called glorious. The bright sun
and delicious air are quite exhilarating. We passed a fine
flowing rivulet, called Levizé, going into the Lake, and
many smaller runnels of delicious cold water. On resting by a
dark sepulchral grove, a tree attracted the attention, as nowhere
else seen: it is called Bokonto, and said to bear eatable fruit. Many fine flowers were
just bursting into full blossom. After about four hours’ march we
put up at Chitimba, the village of Kañgomba, and were
introduced by Kawa, who came all the way for the purpose.

11th October, 1866.—A very cold morning, with a
great bank of black clouds in the east, whence the wind came.
Therm. 59°; in hut 69°. The huts are built very well. The
roof, with the lower part plastered, is formed so as not to admit
a ray of light, and the only visible mode of ingress for it is by
the door. This case shows that winter is cold: on proposing to
start, breakfast was not ready: then a plan was formed to keep me
another day at a village close by, belonging to one Kulu, a man
of Kauma, to whom we go next. It was effectual, and here we are
detained another day. A curiously cut-out stool is in my hut,
made by the Mkwisa, who are south-west of this: it is of one
block, but hollowed out, and all the spaces indicated are hollow
too: about 2-1/2 feet long by 1-1/2 foot high.

Curiously
cut-out stool of one block of wood.

12th October, 1866.—We march westerly, with a
good deal of southing. Kulu gave us a goat, and cooked liberally
for us all. He set off with us as if to go to Kauma’s in our
company, but after we had gone a couple of miles he slipped
behind, and ran away. Some are naturally mean, and some naturally
noble: the mean cannot help showing their nature, nor can the
noble; but the noble-hearted must enjoy life most. Kulu got a
cloth, and he gave us at least its value; but he thought he had
got more than he gave, and so by running away that he had done us
nicely, without troubling himself to go and introduce us to
Kauma. I usually request a headman of a village to go with us.
They give a good report of us, if for no other reason than for their own credit, because
no one likes to be thought giving his countenance to people other
than respectable, and it costs little.

We came close to the foot of several squarish mountains,
having perpendicular sides. One, called “Ulazo pa Malungo,” is
used by the people, whose villages cluster round its base as a
storehouse for grain. Large granaries stand on its top,
containing food to be used in case of war. A large cow is kept up
there, which is supposed capable of knowing and letting the
owners know when war is coming.[30] There is a path up, but it was not visible to
us. The people are all Kanthunda, or climbers, not Maravi.
Kimsusa said that he was the only Maravi chief, but this I took
to be an ebullition of beer bragging: the natives up here,
however, confirm this, and assert that they are not Maravi, who
are known by having markings down the side of the face.

We spent the night at a Kanthunda village on the western side
of a mountain called Phunzé (the h being an
aspirate only). Many villages are planted round its base, but in
front, that is, westwards, we have plains, and there the villages
are as numerous: mostly they are within half a mile of each
other, and few are a mile from other hamlets. Each village has a
clump of trees around it: this is partly for shade and partly for
privacy from motives of decency. The heat of the sun causes the
effluvia to exhale quickly, so they are seldom offensive. The
rest of the country, where not cultivated, is covered with grass,
the seed-stalks about knee deep. It is gently undulating, lying
in low waves, stretching N.E. and S.W. The space between each
wave is usually occupied by a boggy spot or watercourse, which in
some cases is filled with pools with trickling rills between. All
the people are engaged at
present in making mounds six or eight feet square, and from two
to three feet high. The sods in places not before hoed are
separated from the soil beneath and collected into flattened
heaps, the grass undermost; when dried, fire is applied and slow
combustion goes on, most of the products of the burning being
retained in the ground, much of the soil is incinerated. The
final preparation is effected by the men digging up the subsoil
round the mound, passing each hoeful into the left hand, where it
pulverizes, and is then thrown on to the heap. It is thus virgin
soil on the top of the ashes and burned ground of the original
heap, very clear of weeds. At present many mounds have beans and
maize about four inches high. Holes, a foot in diameter and a few
inches deep, are made irregularly over the surface of the mound,
and about eight or ten grains put into each: these are watered by
hand and calabash, and kept growing till the rains set in, when a
very early crop is secured.

13th October, 1866.—After leaving Phunzé,
we crossed the Leviñgé, a rivulet which flows
northwards, and then into Lake Nyassa; the lines of gentle
undulation tend in that direction. Some hills appear on the
plains, but after the mountains which we have left behind they
are mere mounds. We are over 3000 feet above the sea, and the air
is delicious; but we often pass spots covered with a plant which
grows in marshy places, and its heavy smell always puts me in
mind that at other seasons this may not be so pleasant a
residence. The fact of even maize being planted on mounds where
the ground is naturally quite dry, tells a tale of abundant
humidity of climate.

Kauma, a fine tall man, with a bald head and pleasant manners,
told us that some of his people had lately returned from the
Chibisa or Babisa country, whither they had gone to buy ivory,
and they would give me information about the path. He took a
fancy to one of the boys’ blankets; offering a native cloth, much
larger, in exchange, and even a sheep to boot; but the owner being unwilling to
part with his covering, Kauma told me that he had not sent for
his Babisa travellers on account of my boy refusing to deal with
him. A little childish this, but otherwise he was very
hospitable; he gave me a fine goat, which, unfortunately, my
people left behind.

The chief said that no Arabs ever came his way, nor Portuguese
native traders. When advising them to avoid the first attempts to
begin the slave-trade, as it would inevitably lead to war and
depopulation, Kauma replied that the chiefs had resolved to unite
against the Waiyau of Mpondé should he come again on a
foray up to the highlands; but they are like a rope of sand,
there is no cohesion among them, and each village is nearly
independent of every other: they mutually distrust each
other.

14th October, 1866.—Spent Sunday here. Kauma says
that his people are partly Kanthunda and partly Chipéta.
The first are the mountaineers, the second dwellers on the
plains. The Chipéta have many lines of marking: they are
all only divisions of the great Manganja tribe, and their
dialects differ very slightly from that spoken by the same people
on the Shiré. The population is very great and very
ceremonious. When we meet anyone he turns aside and sits down: we
clap the hand on the chest and say, “Re peta—re peta,” that
is, “we pass,” or “let us pass:” this is responded to at once by
a clapping of the hands together. When a person is called at a
distance he gives two loud claps of assent; or if he rises from
near a superior he does, the same thing, which is a sort of
leave-taking.

We have to ask who are the principal chiefs in the direction
which we wish to take, and decide accordingly. Zomba was pointed
out as a chief on a range of hills on our west: beyond him lies
Undi m’senga. I had to take this route, as my people have a very
vivid idea of the danger of going northwards towards the Mazitu.
We made more southing than
we wished. One day beyond Zomba and W.S.W. is the part called
Chindando, where the Portuguese formerly went for gold. They
don’t seem to have felt it worth while to come here, as neither
ivory nor gold could be obtained if they did. The country is too
full of people to allow any wild animals elbow-room: even the
smaller animals are hunted down by means of nets and dogs.

We rested at Pachoma; the headman offering a goat and beer,
but I declined, and went on to Molomba. Here Kauma’s carriers
turned because a woman had died that morning as we left the
village. They asserted that had she died before we started not a
man would have left: this shows a reverence for death, for the
woman was no relative of any of them. The headman of Molomba was
very poor but very liberal, cooking for us and presenting a goat:
another headman from a neighbouring village, a laughing,
good-natured old man, named Chikala, brought beer and a fowl in
the morning. I asked him to go on with us to Mironga, it being
important, as above-mentioned, to have the like of his kind in
our company, and he consented. We saw Mount Ngala in the
distance, like a large sugar-loaf shot up in the air: in our
former route to Kasungu we passed north of it.

16th October, 1866.—Crossed the rivulet Chikuyo
going N. for the Lake, and Mironga being but one-and-a-half hour
off, we went on to Chipanga: this is the proper name of what on
the Zambesi is corrupted into Shupanga. The headman, a miserable
hemp-consuming[31] leper, fled from us. We were offered a
miserable hut, which we refused, Chikala meanwhile went through
the whole village seeking a better, which we ultimately found: it
was not in this chief to be generous, though Chikala did what he
could in trying to indoctrinate him: when I gave him a present he
immediately proposed to sell a goat! We get on pretty well
however.

Zomha is in a range of hills to our west, called Zala nyama.
The Portuguese, in going to Casembe, went still further west than
this.

Passing on we came to a smithy, and watched the founder at
work drawing off slag from the bottom of his furnace. He broke
through the hardened slag by striking it with an iron instrument
inserted in the end of a pole, when the material flowed out of
the small hole left for the purpose in the bottom of the furnace.
The ore (probably the black oxide) was like sand, and was put in
at the top of the furnace, mixed with charcoal. Only one bellows
was at work, formed out of a goatskin, and the blast was very
poor. Many of these furnaces, or their remains, are met with on
knolls; those at work have a peculiarly tall hut built over
them.

On the eastern edge of a valley lying north and south, with
the Diampwé stream flowing along it, and the Dzala nyama
range on the western side, are two villages screened by fine
specimens of the Ficus Indica. One of these is owned by
the headman Theresa, and there we spent the night. We made very
short marches, for the sun is very powerful, and the soil baked
hard, is sore on the feet: no want of water, however, is felt,
for we come to supplies every mile or two.

The people look very poor, having few or no beads; the
ornaments being lines and cuttings on the skin. They trust more
to buazé than cotton. I noticed but two cotton patches.
The women are decidedly plain; but monopolize all the
buazé cloth. Theresa was excessively liberal, and having
informed us that Zomba lived some distance up the range and was
not the principal man in these parts, we, to avoid climbing the
hills, turned away to the north, in the direction of the paramount chief, Chisumpi,
whom we found to be only traditionally great.

20th October, 1866.—In passing along we came to a
village embowered in fine trees; the headman is Kaveta, a really
fine specimen of the Kanthunda, tall, well-made, with a fine
forehead and Assyrian nose. He proposed to us to remain over
night with him, and I unluckily declined.

Convoying us out a mile, we parted with this gentleman, and
then came to a smith’s village, where the same invitation was
given and refused. A sort of infatuation drove us on, and after a
long hot march we found the great Chisumpi, the facsimile in
black of Sir Colin Campbell; his nose, mouth, and the numerous
wrinkles on his face were identical with those of the great
General, but here all resemblance ceased. Two men had preceded us
to give information, and when I followed I saw that his village
was one of squalid misery, the only fine things about being the
lofty trees in which it lay. Chisumpi begged me to sleep at a
village about half a mile behind: his son was browbeating him on
some domestic affair, and the older man implored me to go. Next
morning he came early to that village, and arranged for our
departure, offering nothing, and apparently not wishing to see us
at all. I suspect that though paramount chief, he is weak-minded,
and has lost thereby all his influence, but in the people’s eyes
he is still a great one.

Several of my men exhibiting symptoms of distress, I inquired
for a village in which we could rest Saturday and Sunday, and at
a distance from Chisumpi. A headman volunteered to lead us to one
west of this. In passing the sepulchral grove of Chisumpi our
guide remarked, “Chisumpi’s forefathers sleep there.” This was
the first time I have heard the word “sleep” applied to death in
these parts. The trees in these groves, and around many of the
villages, are very large, and show what the country would become
if depopulated.

We crossed the
Diampwé or Adiampwé, from five to fifteen yards
wide, and well supplied with water even now. It rises near the
Ndomo mountains, and flows northwards into the Lintipé and
Lake. We found Chitokola’s village, called Paritala, a pleasant
one on the east side of the Adiampwé Valley. Many
elephants and other animals feed in the valley, and we saw the
Bechuana Hopo[32] again after many years.

The Ambarré, otherwise Nyumbo plant, has a pea-shaped,
or rather papilionaceous flower, with a fine scent. It seems to
grow quite wild; its flowers are yellow.

Chaola is the poison used by the Maravi for their arrows, it
is said to cause mortification.

One of the wonders usually told of us in this upland region is
that we sleep without fire. The boys’ blankets suffice for warmth
during the night, when the thermometer sinks to 64°-60°,
but no one else has covering sufficient; some huts in process of
building here show that a thick coating of plaster is put on
outside the roof before the grass thatch is applied; not a chink
is left for the admission of air.

Ohitikola was absent from Paritala when we arrived on some
milando or other. These milandos are the business
of their lives. They are like petty lawsuits; if one trespasses
on his neighbour’s rights in any way it is a milando, and
the headmen of all the villages about are called on to settle it.
Women are a fruitful source of milando. A few ears of
Indian corn had been taken by a person, and Chitikola had been
called a full day’s journey off to settle this milando. He
administered Muavé[33] and the person vomited, therefore innocence was clearly
established! He came in the evening of the 21st footsore and
tired, and at once gave us some beer. This perpetual reference to
food and drink is natural, inasmuch as it is the most important
point in our intercourse. While the chief was absent we got
nothing; the queen even begged a little meat for her child, who
was recovering from an attack of small-pox. There being no shops
we had to sit still without food. I took observations for
longitude, and whiled away the time by calculating the lunars.
Next day the chief gave us a goat cooked whole and plenty of
porridge: I noticed that he too had the Assyrian type of
face.

CHAPTER VI.

We started with Chitikola as our guide on the 22nd of October,
and he led us away westwards across the Lilongwé River,
then turned north till we came to a village called Mashumba, the
headman of which was the only chief who begged anything except
medicine, and he got less than we were in the habit of giving in
consequence: we give a cloth usually, and clothing being very
scarce this is considered munificent.[34]

We had the Zalanyama range on our left, and our course was
generally north, but we had to go in the direction of the
villages which were on friendly terms with our guides, and
sometimes we went but a little way, as they studied to make the
days as short as possible. The headman of the last village,
Chitoku, was with us, and he took us to a village of smiths, four
furnaces and one smithy being at work. We crossed the Chiniambo,
a strong river coming from Zalanyama and flowing into the
Mirongwé, which again goes into Lintipé. The
country near the hills becomes covered with forest, the trees are
chiefly Masuko Mochenga (the
gum-copal tree), the bark-cloth tree and rhododendrons. The heath
known at the Cape as Rhinoster bosch occurs frequently,
and occasionally we have thorny acacias. The grass is short, but
there is plenty of it.

24th October, 1866.—Our guide, Mpanda, led us
through the forest by what he meant to be a short cut to
Chimuna’s. We came on a herd of about fifteen elephants, and many
trees laid down by these animals: they seem to relish the roots
of some kinds, and spend a good deal of time digging them up;
they chew woody roots and branches as thick as the handle of a
spade. Many buffaloes feed here, and we viewed a herd of elands;
they kept out of bow-shot only: a herd of the baama or hartebeest
stood at 200 paces, and one was shot.

While all were rejoicing over the meat we got news, from the
inhabitants of a large village in full flight, that the Mazitu
were out on a foray. While roasting and eating meat I went
forward with Mpanda to get men from Chimuna to carry the rest,
but was soon recalled. Another crowd were also in full retreat;
the people were running straight to the Zalanyama range
regardless of their feet, making a path for themselves through
the forest; they had escaped from the Mazitu that morning; “they
saw them!” Mpanda’s people wished to leave and go to look after
their own village, but we persuaded them, on pain of a
milando, to take us to the nearest village, that was at
the bottom of Zalanyama proper, and we took the spoor of the
fugitives. The hard grass with stalks nearly as thick as quills
must have hurt their feet sorely, but what of that in comparison
with dear life! We meant to take our stand on the hill and defend
our property in case of the Mazitu coming near; and we should, in
the event of being successful, be a defence to the fugitives who
crowded up its rocky sides, but next morning we heard that the
enemy had gone to the south. Had we gone forward, as we intended,
to search for men to carry
the meat we should have met the marauders, for the men of the
second party of villagers had remained behind guarding their
village till the Mazitu arrived, and they told us what a near
escape I had had from walking into their power.

25th October, 1866.—Came along northwards to
Chimuna’s town, a large one of Chipéta with many villages
around. Our path led through the forest, and as we emerged into
the open strath in which the villages lie, we saw the large
anthills, each the size of the end of a one-storied cottage,
covered with men on guard watching for the Mazitu.

A long line of villagers were just arriving from the south,
and we could see at some low hills in that direction the smoke
arising from the burning settlements. None but men were present,
the women and the chief were at the mountain called Pambé;
all were fully armed with their long bows, some flat in the bow,
others round, and it was common to have the quiver on the back,
and a bunch of feathers stuck in the hair like those in our
Lancers’ shakos. But they remained not to fight, but to watch
their homes and stores of grain from robbers amongst their own
people in case no Mazitu came! They gave a good hut, and sent off
at once to let the chief at Pambé know of our arrival. We
heard the cocks crowing up there in the mountain as we passed in
the morning. Chimuna came in the evening, and begged me to remain
a day in his village, Pamaloa, as he was the greatest chief the
Chipéta had. I told him all wished the same thing, and if
I listened to each chief we should never get on, and the rains
were near, but we had to stay over with him.

26th October, 1866.—All the people came down
to-day from Pambé, and crowded to see the strangers. They
know very little beyond their own affairs, though these require a
good deal of knowledge, and we should be sorely put about
if, without their skill, we
had to maintain an existence here. Their furnaces are rather
bottle shaped, and about seven feet high by three broad. One
toothless patriarch had heard of books and umbrellas, but had
never seen either. The oldest inhabitant had never travelled far
from the spot in which he was born, yet he has a good knowledge
of soils and agriculture, hut-building, basket-making, pottery,
and the manufacture of bark-cloth and skins for clothing, as also
making of nets, traps, and cordage.

Chimuna had a most ungainly countenance, yet did well enough:
he was very thankful for a blister on his loins to ease rheumatic
pains, and presented a huge basket of porridge before starting,
with a fowl, and asked me to fire a gun that the Mazitu might
hear and know that armed men were here. They all say that these
marauders flee from fire-arms, so I think that they are not Zulus
at all, though adopting some of their ways.

In going on to Mapuio’s we passed several large villages, each
surrounded by the usual euphorbia hedge, and having large trees
for shade. We are on & level, or rather gently amdulating
country, rather bare of trees. At the junctions of these earthen
waves we have always an oozing bog, this often occurs in the
slope down the trough of this terrestrial sea; bushes are common,
and of the kind which were cut down as trees. Yellow haematite is
very abundant, but the other rocks scarcely appear in the
distance; we have mountains both on the east and west.

On arriving at Mapuio’s village, he was, as often happens,
invisible, but he sent us a calabash of fresh-made beer, which is
very refreshing, gave us a hut, and promised to cook for us in
the evening. We have to employ five or six carriers, and they
rule the length of the day’s march. Those from Chimuna’s village
growled at the cubit of calico with which we paid them, but a few
beads pleased them perfectly, and we parted good friends. It is
not likely I shall ever see
them again, but I always like to please them, because it is right
to consider their desires. Is that not what is meant in “Blessed
is he that considereth the poor”? There is a great deal of good
in these poor people. In cases of milando they rely on the
most distant relations and connections to plead their cause, and
seldom are they disappointed, though time at certain seasons, as
for instance at present, is felt by all to be precious. Every man
appears with hoe or axe on shoulder, and the people often only
sit down as we pass and gaze at us till we are out of sight.

Women’s Teeth hollowed.

Many of the men have large slits in the lobe of the ear, and
they have their distinctive tribal tattoo. The women indulge in
this painful luxury more than the men, probably because they have
very few ornaments. The two central front teeth are hollowed at
the cutting edge. Many have quite the Grecian facial angle.
Mapuio has thin legs and quite a European face. Delicate features
and limbs are common, and the spur-heel is as scarce as among
Europeans; small feet and hands are the rule.

Clapping the hands in various ways is the polite way of saying
“Allow me,” “I beg pardon,” “Permit me to pass,” “Thanks,” it is
resorted to in respectful introduction and leave-taking, and also
is equivalent to “Hear hear.” When inferiors are called they
respond by two brisk claps of the hands, meaning “I am coming.”
They are very punctilious amongst each other. A large ivory
bracelet marks the headman of a village; there is nothing else to
show differences of rank.

28th October, 1866.—We spent Sunday at Mapuio’s
and had a long talk with him; his country is in a poor state from
the continual incursions of the Mazitu, who are wholly
unchecked.

29th October, 1866.—We marched westwards to
Makosa’s village, and could not go further, as the next stage is
long and through an
ill-peopled country. The morning was lovely, the whole country
bathed in bright sunlight, and not a breath of air disturbed the
smoke as it slowly curled up from the heaps of burning weeds,
which the native agriculturist wisely destroys. The people
generally were busy hoeing in the cool of the day. One old man in
a village where we rested had trained the little hair he had left
into a tail, which, well plastered with fat, he had bent on
itself and laid flat on his crown; another was carefully paring a
stick for stirring the porridge, and others were enjoying the
cool shade of the wild fig-trees which are always planted at
villages. It is a sacred tree all over Africa and India, and the
tender roots which drop down towards the ground are used as
medicine—a universal remedy. Can it be a tradition of its
being like the tree of life, which Archbishop Whately conjectures
may have been used in Paradise to render man immortal? One kind
of fig-tree is often seen hacked all over to get the sap, which
is used as bird-lime; bark-cloth is made of it too. I like to see
the men weaving or spinning, or reclining under these glorious
canopies, as much as I love to see our more civilized people
lolling on their sofas or ottomans.

The first rain—a thunder shower—fell in the
afternoon, air in shade before it 92°; wet bulb 74°. At
noon the soil in the sun was 140°, perhaps more, but I was
afraid of bursting the thermometer, as it was graduated only a
few degrees above that. This rain happened at the same time that
the sun was directly overhead on his way south; it was but a
quarter of an inch, but its effect was to deprive us of all
chance of getting the five carriers we needed, all were off to
their gardens to commit the precious seed to the soil. We got
three, but no one else would come, so we have to remain here over
to-day (30th October).

30th October, 1866.—The black traders come from
Tette to this country to buy slaves, and as a consequence here we
come to bugs again, which we
left when we passed the Arab slave-traders’ beat.

31st October, 1866.—We proceed westwards, and a
little south through a country covered with forest trees, thickly
planted, but small, generally of bark-cloth and gum-copal trees,
masukos, rhododendrons, and a few acacias. At one place we saw
ten wild hogs in a group, but no other animal, though marks of
elephants, buffaloes, and other animals having been about in the
wet season were very abundant. The first few miles were rather
more scant of water than usual, but we came to the Leué, a
fine little stream with plenty of water sand from 20 to 30 yards
wide; it is said by the people to flow away westwards into the
Loangwa.

1st November 1866.—In the evening we made the
Chigumokiré, a nice rivulet, where we slept, and the next
morning we proceeded to Kangené, whose village is situated
on a mass of mountains, and to reach which we made more southing
than we wished. Our appearance on the ascent of the hill caused
alarm, and we were desired to wait till our spokesman had
explained the unusual phenomenon of a white man.

This kept us waiting in the hot sun among heated rocks, and
the chief, being a great ugly public-house-keeper looking person,
excused his incivility by saying that his brother had been killed
by the Mazitu, and he was afraid that we were of the same tribe.
On asking if Mazitu wore clothes like us he told some untruths,
and, what has been an unusual thing, began to beg powder and
other things. I told him how other chiefs had treated us, which
made him ashamed. He represented the country in front to the N.W.
to be quite impassable from want of food: the Mazitu had stripped
it of all provisions, and the people were living on what wild
fruits they could pick up.

2nd November,
1866.—Kangené is very disagreeable naturally,
and as we have to employ five men as carriers, we are in his
power.

We can scarcely enter into the feelings of those who are
harried by marauders. Like Scotland in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries harassed by Highland Celts on one side and by English
Marchmen on the other, and thus kept in the rearward of
civilisation, these people have rest neither for many days nor
for few. When they fill their garners they can seldom reckon on
eating the grain, for the Mazitu come when the harvest is over
and catch as many able-bodied young persons as they can to carry
away the corn. Thus it was in Scotland so far as security for
life and property was concerned; but the Scotch were apt pupils
of more fortunate nations. To change of country they were as
indifferent as the Romans of the olden times; they were always
welcome in France, either as pilgrims, scholars, merchants, or
soldiers; but the African is different. If let alone the
African’s mode of life is rather enjoyable; he loves agriculture,
and land is to be had anywhere. He knows nothing of other
countries, but he has imbibed the idea of property in man. This
Kangené told me that he would like to give me a slave to
look after my goats: I believe he would rather give a slave than
a goat!

We were detained by the illness of Simon for four days. When
he recovered we proposed to the headman to start with five of his
men, and he agreed to let us have them; but having called them
together such an enormous demand was made for wages, and in
advance, that on the 7th of November we took seven loads forward
through a level uninhabited country generally covered with small
trees, slept there, and on the morning of the 8th, after leaving
two men at our depôt, came back, and took the remaining
five loads.

Kangené was
disagreeable to the last. He asked where we had gone, and, having
described the turning point as near the hill Chimbimbé, he
complimented us on going so far, and then sent an offer of three
men; but I preferred not to have those who would have been spies
unless he could give five and take on all the loads. He said that
he would find the number, and after detaining us some hours
brought two, one of whom, primed with beer, babbled out that he
was afraid of being killed by us in front. I asked whom we had
killed behind, and moved off. The headman is very childish, does
women’s work—cooking and pounding; and in all cases of that
kind the people take after their leader. The chiefs have scarcely
any power unless they are men of energy; they have to court the
people rather than be courted. We came much further back on our
way from Mapuio’s than we liked; in fact, our course is like that
of a vessel baffled with foul winds: this is mainly owing to
being obliged to avoid places stripped of provisions or suffering
this spoliation. The people, too, can give no information about
others at a distance from their own abodes. Even the smiths, who
are a most plodding set of workers, are as ignorant as the
others: they supply the surrounding villages with hoes and
knives, and, combining agriculture with handicraft, pass through
life. An intelligent smith came as our guide from
Chimbimbé Hill on the 7th, and did not know a range of
mountains about twenty miles off: “it was too far off for him to
know the name.”

9th November, 1866.—The country over which we
actually travel is level and elevated, but there are mountains
all about, which when put on the map make it appear to be a
mountainous region. We are on the watershed, apparently between
the Loangwa of Zumbo on the west, and the Lake on the east. The
Leué or Leuia is said by the people to flow into the
Loangwa. The Chigumokiré coming from the north in front, eastward of
Irongwé (the same mountains on which Kangené skulks
out of sight of Mazitu), flows into the Leué, and north of
that we have the Mando, a little stream, flowing into the Bua.
The rivulets on the west flow in deep defiles, and the elevation
on which we travel makes it certain that no water can come from
the lower lands on the west. It seems that the Portuguese in
travelling to Casembe did not inquire of the people where the
streams they crossed went, for they are often wrongly put, and
indicate the direction only in which they appeared to be flowing
at their crossing places. The natives have a good idea generally
of the rivers into which the streams flow, though they are very
deficient in information as to the condition of the people that
live on their banks. Some of the Portuguese questions must have
been asked through slaves, who would show no hesitation in
answering. Maxinga, or Machinga, means “mountains” only; once or
twice it is put down Saxa de Maxinga, or Machinga, or Mcanga,
which translated from the native tongue means “rocks of
mountains, or mountains of rocks.”

10th November, 1866.—We found the people on the
Mando to be Chawa or Ajawa, but not of the Waiyau race: they are
Manganja, and this is a village of smiths. We got five men
readily to go back and bring up our loads; and the sound of the
hammer is constant, showing a great deal of industry. They
combine agriculture, and hunting with nets, with their
handicraft.

A herd of buffaloes came near the village, and I went and shot
one, thus procuring a supply of meat for the whole party and
villagers too. The hammer which we hear from dawn till sunset is
a large stone, bound with the strong inner bark of a tree, and
loops left which form handles. Two pieces of bark form the tongs,
and a big stone sunk into the ground the anvil. They make several
hoes in a day, and the metal is very good; it is all from yellow
haematite, which abounds all
over this part of the country; the bellows consist of two
goatskins with sticks at the open ends, which are opened and shut
at every blast.

Forging Hoes.

13th November, 1866.—A lion came last night and
gave a growl or two on finding he could not get our meat: a man
had lent us a hunting net to protect it and us from intruders of
this sort. The people kept up a shouting for hours afterwards, in
order to keep him away by the human voice.

We might have gone on, but I had a galled heel from new shoes.
Wild figs are rather nice when quite ripe.

14th November, 1866.—We marched northwards round
the end of Chisia Hill, and remained for the night at a
blacksmith’s, or rather founder’s village; the two occupations of
founder and smith are always
united, and boys taught to be smiths in Europe or India would
find themselves useless if unable to smelt the ore. A good
portion of the trees of the country have been cut down for
charcoal, and those which now spring up are small; certain fruit
trees alone are left. The long slopes on the undulating country,
clothed with fresh foliage, look very beautiful. The young trees
alternate with patches of yellow grass not yet burned; the hills
are covered with a thick mantle of small green trees with, as
usual, large ones at intervals. The people at Kalumbi, on the
Mando (where we spent four days), had once a stockade of wild fig
(Ficus Indica) and euphorbia round their village, which
has a running rill on each side of it; but the trees which
enabled them to withstand a siege by Mazitu fell before elephants
and buffaloes during a temporary absence of the villagers; the
remains of the stockade are all around it yet. Lions sometimes
enter huts by breaking through the roof: elephants certainly do,
for we saw a roof destroyed by one; the only chance for the
inmates is to drive a spear into the belly of the beast while so
engaged.

A man came and reported the Mazitu to be at Chanyandula’s
village, where we are going. The headman advised remaining at his
village till we saw whether they came this way or went by another
path. The women were sent away, but the men went on with their
employments; two proceeded with the building of a furnace on an
anthill, where they are almost always placed, and they keep a
look-out while working. We have the protection of an
all-embracing Providence, and trust that He, whose care of His
people «xceeds all that our utmost self-love can attain,
will shield us and make our way prosperous.

16th November, 1866.—An elephant came near enough
last night to scream at us, but passed on, warned, perhaps, by
the shouting of the villagers not to meddle with man. No Mazitu
having come, we marched on and crossed the Bua, eight yards wide and knee deep. It rises in
the northern hills a little beyond Kanyindula’s village, winds
round his mountains, and away to the east. The scenery among the
mountains is very lovely: they are covered with a close mantle of
green, with here and there red and light-coloured patches,
showing where grass has been burned off recently and the red clay
soil is exposed; the lighter portions are unburned grass or
rocks. Large trees are here more numerous, and give an agreeable
change of contour to the valleys and ridges of the hills; the
boughs of many still retain a tinge of red from young leaves. We
came to the Bua again before reaching Kanyenjé, as
Kanyindula’s place is called. The iron trade must have been
carried on for an immense time in the country, for one cannot go
a quarter of a mile without meeting pieces of slag and broken
pots, calcined pipes, and fragments of the furnaces, which are
converted by the fire into brick. It is curious that the large
stone sledge-hammers now in use are not called by the name
stone-hammers, but by a distinct word, “kama:” nyundo is one made
of iron.

When we arrived at Kanyenjé, Kanyindula was out
collecting charcoal. He sent a party of men to ask if we should
remain next day: an old, unintellectual-looking man was among the
number sent, who had twenty-seven rings of elephant’s skin on his
arm, all killed by himself by the spear alone: he had given up
fighting elephants since the Mazitu came, whom we heard had
passed away to the south-east of this place, taking all the crops
of last year, and the chief alone has food. He gave us some,
which was very acceptable, as we got none at the two villages
south of this. Kanyindula came himself in the evening, an active,
stern-looking man, but we got on very well with him.

The people say that they were taught to smelt iron by
Chisumpi, which is the name of Mulungu (God), and that they came
from Lake Nyassa originally; if so, they are greatly inferior to the Manganja on the Lake in
pottery, for the fragments, as well as modern whole vessels, are
very coarse; the ornamentation is omitted or merely dots. They
never heard of aërolites, but know hail.

I notice here that the tree Mfu, or Mö, having
sweet-scented leaves, yields an edible plum in clusters. Bua-bwa
is another edible fruit-tree with palmated leaves.

Mbéu is a climbing, arboraceous plant, and yields a
very pleasant fruit, which tastes like gooseberries: its seeds
are very minute.

18th and 19th November, 1866.—Rain fell heavily
yesterday afternoon, and was very threatening to-day; we remain
to sew a calico tent.

20th November, 1866.—Kanyindula came with three
carriers this morning instead of five, and joined them in
demanding prepayment: it was natural for him to side with them,
as they have more power than he has, in fact, the chiefs in these
parts all court their people, and he could feel more interest in
them than in an entire stranger whom he might never see again:
however, we came on without his people, leaving two to guard the
loads.

About four miles up the valley we came to a village named
Kanyenjeré Mponda, at the fountain-eye of the Bua, and
thence sent men back for the loads, while we had the shelter of
good huts during a heavy thunder-shower, and made us willing to
remain all night. The valley is lovely in the extreme. The
mountains on each side are gently rounded, and, as usual, covered
over with tree foliage, except where the red soil is exposed by
recent grass-burnings. Quartz rocks jut out, and much drift of
that material has been carried down by the gullies into the
bottom. These gullies being in compact clay, the water has but
little power of erosion, so they are worn deep but narrow. Some
fragments of titaniferous iron ore, with haematite changed by
heat, and magnetic, lay in the gully, which had worn itself a channel on the north side
of the village. The Bua, like most African streams whose sources
I have seen, rises in an oozing boggy spot. Another stream, the
Tembwé, rises near the same spot, and flows N.W. into, the
Loangwa. We saw Shuaré palms in its bed.

21st November, 1866.—We left Bua fountain, lat.
13° 40′ south, and made a short march to Mokatoba, a
stockaded village, where the people refused to admit us till the
headman, came. They have a little food here, and sold us some. We
have been on rather short commons for some time, and this made
our detention agreeable. We rose a little in altitude after
leaving this morning, then, though in the same valley, made a
little descent towards the N.N.W. High winds came driving over
the eastern range, which is called Mchinjé, and bring
large masses of clouds, which are the rain-givers. They seem to
come from the south-east. The scenery of the valley is lovely and
rich in the extreme. All the foliage is fresh washed and clean;
young herbage is bursting through the ground; the air is
deliciously cool, and the birds are singing joyfully: one, called
Mzié, is a good songster, with a loud melodious voice.
Large game abounds, but we do not meet with it.

We are making our way slowly to the north, where food is said
to be abundant. I divided about 50 lbs. of powder among the
people of my following to shoot with, and buy goats or other food
as we could. This reduces our extra loads to three—four
just now, Simon being sick again. He rubbed goat’s-fat on a
blistered surface, and caused an eruption of pimples.

Mem.—The people assent by lifting up the head
instead of nodding it down as we do; deaf mutes are said to do
the same.

22nd November, 1866.—Leaving Mokatoba village,
and proceeding down the valley, which on the north is shut up
apparently by a mountain called Kokwé, we crossed the
Kasamba, about two miles
from Mokatoba, and yet found it, though so near its source, four
yards wide, and knee deep. Its source is about a mile above
Mokatoba, in the same valley, with the Bua and Tembwé. We
were told that elephants were near, and we saw where they had
been an hour before; but after seeking about could not find them.
An old man, in the deep defile between Kokwé and Yasika
Mountains, pointed to the latter, and said, “Elephants! why,
there they are. Elephants, or tusks, walking on foot are never
absent;” but though we were eager for flesh, we could not give
him credit, and went down the defile which gives rise to the
Sandili River: where we crossed it in the defile, it was a mere
rill, having large trees along its banks, yet it is said to go to
the Loangwa of Zumbo, N.W. or N.N.W. We were now in fact upon the
slope which inclines to that river, and made a rapid descent in
altitude. We reached Silubi’s village, on the base of a rocky
detached hill. No food to be had; all taken by Mazitu, so Silubi
gave me some Masuko fruit instead. They find that they can keep
the Mazitu off by going up a rocky eminence, and hurling stones
and arrows down on the invaders: they can defend themselves also
by stockades, and these are becoming very general.

On leaving Silubi’s village, we went to a range of hills, and
after passing through found that we had a comparatively level
country on the north: it would be called a well-wooded country if
we looked at it only from a distance. It is formed into long
ridges, all green and wooded; but clumps of large trees, where
villages have been, or are still situated, show that the sylvan
foliage around and over the whole country is that of mere
hop-poles. The whole of this upland region might be called woody,
if we bear in mind that where the population is dense, and has
been long undisturbed, the trees are cut down to the size of low
bush. Large districts are kept to about the size of hop-poles, growing on pollards three or
four feet from the ground, by charcoal burners, who, in all
instances, are smiths too.

On reaching Zeoré’s village, on the Lokuzhwa, we found
it stockaded, and stagnant pools round three sides of it. The
Mazitu had come, pillaged all the surrounding villages, looked at
this, and then went away; so the people had food to sell. They
here call themselves Echéwa, and have a different marking
from the Atumboka. The men have the hair dressed as if a number
of the hairs of elephants’ tails were stuck around the head: the
women wear a small lip-ring, and a straw or piece of stick in the
lower lip, which dangles down about level with the lower edge of
the chin: their clothing in front is very scanty. The men know
nothing of distant places, the Manganja being a very stay-at-home
people. The stockades are crowded with huts, and the children
have but small room to play in the narrow spaces between.

25th November, 1866.—Sunday at Zeoré’s.
The villagers thought we prayed for rain, which was much needed.
The cracks in the soil have not yet come together by the
«welling of soil produced by moisture. I disabused their
minds about rain-making prayers, and found the headman
intelligent.

I did not intend to notice the Lokuzhwa, it is such a
contemptible little rill, and not at present running; but in
going to our next point, Mpandé’s village, we go along its
valley, and cross it several times, as it makes for the Loangwa
in the north. The valley is of rich dark red loam, and so many
lilies of the Amaryllis kind have established themselves as
completely to mask the colour of the soil. They form a covering
of pure white where the land has been cleared by the hoe. As we
go along this valley to the Loangwa, we descend in altitude. It
is said to rise at “Nombé rumé,” as we formerly
heard.

27th November,
1866.—Zeoré’s people would not carry without
prepayment, so we left our extra loads as usual and went on,
sending men back for them: these, however, did not come till
27th, and then two of my men got fever. I groan in spirit, and do
not know how to make our gear into nine loads only. It is the
knowledge that we shall be detained, some two or three months
during the heavy rains that makes me cleave to it as means of
support.

Advantage has been taken by the people, of spots where the
Lokuzhwa goes round three parts of a circle, to erect their
stockaded villages. This is the case here, and the water, being
stagnant, engenders disease. The country abounds in a fine light
blue flowering perennial pea, which the people make use of as a
relish. At present the blossoms only are collected and boiled. On
inquiring the name, chilóbé, the men asked
me if we had none in our country. On replying in the negative,
they looked with pity on us: “What a wretched, country not to
have chilóbé.” It is on the highlands above; we
never saw it elsewhere! Another species of pea (Chilobé
Weza), with reddish flowers, is eaten in the same way; but it
has spread but little in comparison. It is worth remarking that
porridge of maize or sorghum is never offered without some pulse,
beans, or bean leaves, or flowers, they seem to feel the need of
it, or of pulse, which is richer in flesh-formers than the
porridge.

Last night a loud clapping of hands by the men was followed by
several half-suppressed screams by a woman. They were quite
eldritch, as if she could not get them out. Then succeeded
a lot of utterances as if she were in ecstasy, to which a man
responded, “Moio, moio.” The utterances, so far as I could catch,
were in five-syllable snatches—abrupt and laboured. I
wonder if this “bubbling or boiling over” has been preserved as
the form in which the true prophets of old gave forth their
“burdens”? One sentence, frequently repeated towards the close of
the effusion, was “linyama uta,” “flesh of the bow,” showing that the Pythoness
loved venison killed by the bow. The people applauded, and
attended, hoping, I suppose, that rain would follow her efforts.
Next day she was duly honoured by drumming and dancing.[35]

Prevalent beliefs seem to be persistent in certain tribes.
That strange idea of property in man that permits him to be sold
to another is among the Arabs, Manganja, Makoa, Waiyau, but not
among Kaffirs or Zulus, and Bechuanas. If we exclude the Arabs,
two families of Africans alone are slavers on the east side of
the Continent.

30th November, 1866.—We march to Chilunda’s or
Embora’s, still on the Lokuzhwa, now a sand-stream about twenty
yards wide, with pools in its bed; its course is pretty much
north or N.N.W. We are now near the Loangwa country, covered with
a dense dwarf forest, and the people collected in stockades. This
village is on a tongue of land (between Lokuzhwa and another
sluggish rivulet), chosen for its strength. It is close to a hill
named Chipemba, and there are ranges of hills both east and west
in the distance. Embora came to visit us soon after we
arrived—a tall man with a Yankee face. He was very much
tickled when asked if he were a Motumboka. After indulging in
laughter at the idea of being one of such a small tribe of
Manganja, he said proudly, “That he belonged to the
Echéwa, who inhabited all the country to which I was
going.” They are generally smiths; a mass of iron had just been
brought in to him from some outlying furnaces. It is made into
hoes, which are sold for native cloths down the Loangwa.

3rd December,
1866.—March through a hilly country covered with dwarf
forest to Kandé’s village, still on the Lokuzhwa. We made
some westing. The village was surrounded by a dense hedge of
bamboo and a species of bushy fig that loves edges of
water-bearing streams: it is not found where the moisture is not
perennial. Kandé is a fine tall smith; I asked him if he
knew his antecedents; he said he had been bought by Babisa at
Chipéta, and left at Chilunda’s, and therefore belonged to
no one. Two Waiyau now volunteered to go on with us, and as they
declared their masters were killed by the Mazitu, and
Kandé seemed to confirm them, we let them join. In
general, runaway slaves are bad characters, but these two seem
good men, and we want them to fill up our complement: another
volunteer we employ as goatherd.

A continuous tap-tapping in the villages shows that bark cloth
is being made. The bark, on being removed from the-tree, is
steeped in water, or in a black muddy hole, till the outer of the
two inner barks can be separated, then commences the tapping with
a mallet to separate and soften the fibres. The head of this is
often of ebony, with the face cut into small furrows, which,
without breaking, separate and soften the fibres.

Mallet for
Separating Fibres of Bark.

4th December, 1866.—Marched westwards, over a
hilly, dwarf forest-covered country: as we advanced, trees
increased in size, but no people inhabited it; we spent a
miserable night at Katétté, wetted by a heavy
thunder-shower, which lasted a good while. Morning (5th
December) muggy, clouded all over, and rolling thunder in
distance. Went three hours with, for a wonder, no water, but made
westing chiefly, and got on to the Lokuzhwa again: all the people
are collected on it.

6th December, 1866.—Too ill to march.

7th December,
1866.—Went on, and passed Mesumbé’s village,
also protected by bamboos, and came to the hill Mparawé,
with a village perched on its northern base and well up its
sides. The Babisa have begun to imitate the Mazitu by attacking
and plundering Manganja villages. Muasi’s brother was so
attacked, and now is here and eager to attack in return. In
various villages we have observed miniature huts, about two feet
high, very neatly thatched and plastered, here we noticed them in
dozens. On inquiring, we were told that when a child or relative
dies one is made, and when any pleasant food is cooked or beer
brewed, a little is placed in the tiny hut for the departed soul,
which is believed to enjoy it.

The Lokuzhwa is here some fifty yards wide, and running.
Numerous large pitholes in the fine-grained schist in its bed
show that much water has flowed in it.

8th December, 1866.—A kind of bean called
“chitetta” is eaten here, it is an old acquaintance in the
Bechuana country, where it is called “mositsané,” and is a
mere plant; here it becomes a tree, from fifteen to twenty feet
high. The root is used for tanning; the bean is pounded, and then
put into a sieve of bark cloth to extract, by repeated washings,
the excessively astringent matter it contains. Where the people
have plenty of water, as here, it is used copiously in various
processes, among Bechuanas it is scarce, and its many uses
unknown: the pod becomes from fifteen to eighteen inches long,
and an inch in diameter.

9th December, 1866.—A poor child, whose mother
had died, was unprovided for; no one not a relative will nurse
another’s child. It called out piteously for its mother by name,
and the women (like the servants in the case of the poet Cowper
when a child), said, “She is coming.” I gave it a piece of bread,
but it was too far gone, and is dead to-day.

An alarm of Mazitu sent all the villagers up the sides of
Mparawé this morning.
The affair was a chase of a hyaena, but everything is Mazitu! The
Babisa came here, but were surrounded and nearly all cut off.
Muasi was so eager to be off with a party to return the attack on
the Mazitu, that, when deputed by the headman to give us a guide,
he got the man to turn at the first village, so we had to go on
without guides, and made about due north.

11th December, 1866.—We are now detained in the
forest, at a place called Chondé Forest, by set-in rains.
It rains every day, and generally in the afternoon; but the
country is not wetted till the “set-in” rains commence; the
cracks in the soil then fill up and everything rushes up with
astonishing rapidity; the grass is quite crisp and soft. After
the fine-grained schist, we came on granite with large flakes of
talc in it. This forest is of good-sized trees, many of them
mopané. The birds now make much melody and noise—all
intent on building.

12th December, 1866.—Across an undulating forest
country north we got a man to show us the way, if a pathless
forest can so be called. We used a game-path as long as it ran
north, but left it when it deviated, and rested under a
baobab-tree with a marabou’s nest—a bundle of sticks on a
branch; the young ones uttered a hard chuck, chuck, when the old
ones flew over them. A sun-bird, with bright scarlet throat and
breast, had its nest on another branch, it was formed like the
weaver’s nest, but without a tube. I observed the dam picking out
insects from the bark and leaves of the baobab, keeping on the
wing the while: it would thus appear to be insectivorous as well
as a honey-bibber. Much spoor of elands, zebras, gnus, kamas,
pallahs, buffaloes, reed-bucks, with tsetse, their parasites.

13th December, 1866.—Reached the Tokosusi, which
is said to rise at Nombé Rumé, about twenty yards
wide and knee deep, swollen by the rains: it had left a cake of
black tenacious mud on its banks. Here I got a pallah antelope,
and a very strange flower
called “katendé,” which was a whorl of seventy-two flowers
sprung from a flat, round root; but it cannot be described. Our
guide would have crossed the Tokosusi, which was running
north-west to join the Loangwa, and then gone to that river; but
always when we have any difficulty the “lazies” exhibit
themselves. We had no grain; and three remained behind spending
four hours at what we did in an hour and a quarter. Our guide
became tired and turned, not before securing another; but he
would not go over the Loangwa; no one likes to go out of his own
country: he would go westwards to Maranda’s, and nowhere else. A
“set-in” rain came on after dark, and we went on through slush,
the trees sending down heavier drops than the showers as we
neared the Loangwa; we forded several deep gullies, all flowing
north or north-west into it. The paths were running with water,
and when we emerged from the large Mopané Forest, we came
on the plain of excessively adhesive mud, on which Maranda’s
stronghold stands on the left bank of Loangwa, here a good-sized
river. The people were all afraid of us, and we were mortified to
find that food is scarce. The Mazitu have been here three times,
and the fear they have inspired, though they were successfully
repelled, has prevented agricultural operations from being
carried on.

Mem.—A flake of reed is often used in surgical
operations among the natives, as being sharper than their
knives.

CHAPTER VII.

16th December, 1866.—We could get no food at any
price on 15th, so we crossed the Loangwa, and judged it to be
from seventy to a hundred yards wide: it is deep at present, and
it must always be so, for some Atumboka submitted to the Mazitu,
and ferried them over and back again. The river is said to rise
in the north; it has alluvial banks with large forest trees along
them, bottom sandy, and great sandbanks are in it like the
Zambesi. No guide would come, so we went on without one. The
“lazies” of the party seized the opportunity of remaining
behind—wandering, as they said, though all the cross paths
were marked.[36] This evening we secured the latitude 12°
40′ 48″ S., which would make our crossing place about 12° 45′
S. Clouds prevented observations, as they usually do in the rainy
season.

17 December,
1866.—We went on through a bushy country without paths,
and struck the Pamazi, a river of sixty yards wide, in steep
banks and in flood, and held on as well as we could through a
very difficult country, the river forcing us north-west: I heard
hippopotami in it. Game is abundant but wild; we shot two poku
antelopes[37] here, called “tsébulas,” which drew a
hunter to us, who consented for meat and pay to show us a ford.
He said that the Pamazi rises in a range of mountains we can now
see (in general we could see no high ground during our marches
for the last fortnight), we forded it, thigh deep on one side and
breast deep on the other. We made only about three miles of
northing, and found the people on the left bank uncivil: they
would not lend a hut, so we soon put up a tent of waterproof
cloth and branches.

18th December, 1866.—As the men grumbled at their
feet being pierced by thorns in the trackless portions we had
passed I was anxious to get a guide, but the only one we could
secure would go to Molenga’s only; so I submitted, though this
led us east instead of north. When we arrived we were asked what
we wanted, seeing we brought neither slaves nor ivory: I replied
it was much against our will that we came; but the guide had
declared that this was the only way to Casembe’s, our next stage.
To get rid of us they gave a guide, and we set forward
northwards. The Mopané Forest is perfectly level, and
after rains the water stands in pools; but during most of the
year it is dry. The trees here were very large, and planted some
twenty or thirty yards apart: as there are no branches on their
lower parts animals see very far. I shot a gnu, but wandered in
coming back to the party, and did not find them till it was
getting dark. Many parts of the plain are thrown up into heaps,
of about the size of one’s cap (probably by crabs), which now, being hard, are
difficult to walk over; under the trees it is perfectly smooth.
The Mopané-tree furnishes the iron wood of the Portuguese
Pao Ferro: it is pretty to travel in and look at the bright
sunshine of early morning; but the leaves hang perpendicularly as
the sun rises high, and afford little or no shade through the
day,[38] so as the land is
clayey, it becomes hard-baked thereby.

We observed that the people had placed corn-granaries at
different parts of this forest, and had been careful to leave no
track to them—a provision in case of further visits of
Mazitu. King-hunters[39] abound, and make the air resound with their
stridulous notes, which commence with a sharp, shrill cheep, and
then follows a succession of notes, which resembles a pea in a
whistle. Another bird is particularly conspicuous at present by
its chattering activity, its nest consists of a bundle of fine
seed-stalks of grass hung at the end of a branch, the free ends
being left untrimmed, and no attempt at concealment made. Many
other birds are now active, and so many new notes are heard, that
it is probable this is a richer ornithological region than the
Zambesi. Guinea-fowl and francolins are in abundance, and so
indeed are all the other kinds of game, as zebras, pallahs,
gnus.

19th December, 1866.—I got a fine male kudu. We
have no grain, and live on meat alone, but I am better off than
the men, inasmuch as I get a little goat’s-milk besides. The kudu
stood five feet six inches high; horns, three feet on the
straight.

20th December, 1866.—Reached Casembe,[40] a miserable hamlet
of a few huts. The people
here are very suspicious, and will do nothing but with a haggle
for prepayment; we could get no grain, nor even native herbs,
though we rested a day to try.

After a short march we came to the Nyamazi, another
considerable rivulet coming from the north to fall into the
Loangwa. It has the same character, of steep alluvial banks, as
Pamazi, and about the same width, but much shallower; loin deep,
though somewhat swollen; from fifty to sixty yards wide. We came
to some low hills, of coarse sandstone, and on crossing these we
could see, by looking back, that for many days we had been
travelling over a perfectly level valley, clothed with a mantle
of forest. The barometers had shown no difference of level from
about 1800 feet above the sea. We began our descent into this
great valley when we left the source of the Bua; and now these
low hills, called Ngalé or Ngaloa, though only 100 feet or
so above the level we had left, showed that we had come to the
shore of an ancient lake, which probably was let off when the
rent of Kebra-basa on the Zambesi was made, for we found immense
banks of well-rounded shingle above—or, rather, they may be
called mounds of shingle—all of hard silicious schist with
a few pieces of fossil-wood among them. The gullies reveal a
stratum of this well-rounded shingle, lying on a soft greenish
sandstone, which again lies on the coarse sandstone first
observed. This formation is identical with that observed formerly
below the Victoria Falls. We have the mountains still on our
north and north-west (the so-called mountains of Bisa, or
Babisa), and from them the Nyamazi flows, while Pamazi comes
round the end, or what appears to be the end, of the higher
portion. (22nd December, 1866.) Shot a bush-buck; and
slept on the left bank of Nyamazi.

23rd December, 1866.—Hunger sent us on; for a
meat diet is far from satisfying: we all felt very weak on it,
and soon tired on a march,
but to-day we hurried on to Kavimba, who successfully beat off
the Mazitu. It is very hot, and between three and four hours is a
good day’s march. On sitting down to rest before entering the
village we were observed, and all the force of the village issued
to kill us as Mazitu, but when we stood up the mistake was
readily perceived, and the arrows were placed again in their
quivers. In the hut four Mazitu shields show that they did not
get it all their own way; they are miserable imitations of Zulu
shields, made of eland and water-buck’s hides, and ill sewn.

A very small return present was made by Kavimba, and nothing
could be bought except at exorbitant prices. We remained all day
on the 24th haggling and trying to get some grain. He took a
fancy to a shirt, and left it to his wife to bargain for. She got
the length of cursing and swearing, and we bore it, but could get
only a small price for it. We resolved to hold our Christmas some
other day, and in a better place. The women seem ill-regulated
here—Kavimba’s brother had words with his spouse, and at
the end of every burst of vociferation on both sides called out,
“Bring the Muavi! bring the Muavi!” or ordeal.

Christmas-day, 1866.—No one being willing to
guide us to Moerwa’s, I hinted to Kavimba that should we see a
rhinoceros I would kill it. He came himself, and led us on where
he expected to find these animals, but we saw only their
footsteps. We lost our four goats somewhere—stolen or
strayed in the pathless forest, we do not know which, but the
loss I felt very keenly, for whatever kind of food we had, a
little milk made all right, and I felt strong and well, but
coarse food hard of digestion without it was very trying. We
spent the 26th in searching for them, but all in vain. Kavimba
had a boy carrying two huge elephant spears, with these he
attacks that large animal single-handed. We parted from him, as I
thought, good friends, but a man who volunteered to act as guide
saw him in the forest afterwards, and was counselled by him to leave us
as we should not pay him. This hovering near us after we parted
makes me suspect Kavimba of taking the goats, but I am not
certain. The loss affected me more than I could have imagined. A
little indigestible porridge, of scarcely any taste, is now my
fare, and it makes me dream of better.

27th December, 1866.—Our guide asked for his
cloth to wear on the way, as it was wet and raining, and his bark
cloth was a miserable covering. I consented, and he bolted on the
first opportunity; the forest being so dense he was soon out of
reach of pursuit: he had been advised to this by Kavimba, and
nothing else need have been expected. We then followed the track
of a travelling party of Babisa, but the grass springs up over
the paths, and it was soon lost: the rain had fallen early in
these parts, and the grass was all in seed. In the afternoon we
came to the hills in the north where Nyamazi rises, and went up
the bed of a rivulet for some time, and then ascended out of the
valley. At the bottom of the ascent and in the rivulet the
shingle stratum was sometimes fifty feet thick, then as we
ascended we met mica schist tilted on edge, then grey gneiss, and
last an igneous trap among quartz rocks, with a great deal of
bright mica and talc in them. On resting near the top of the
first ascent two honey hunters came to us. They were using the
honey-guide as an aid, the bird came to us as they arrived,
waited quietly during the half-hour they smoked and chatted, and
then went on with them.[41]

The tsetse flies, which were very numerous at the bottom, came
up the ascent with us, but as we increased our altitude by
another thousand feet they gradually dropped off and left us:
only one remained in the evening, and he seemed out of spirits. Near sunset we encamped by
water on the cool height, and made our shelters with boughs of
leafy trees; mine was rendered perfect by Dr. Stenhouse’s
invaluable patent cloth, which is very superior to mackintosh:
indeed the india-rubber cloth is not to be named in the same day
with it.

28th December, 1866.—Three men, going to hunt
bees, came to us as we were starting and assured us that Moerwa’s
was near. The first party had told us the same thing, and so
often have we gone long distances as “pafupi” (near), when
in reality they were “patari” (far), that we begin to
think pafupi means “I wish you to go there,” and
patari the reverse. In this case near meant an hour
and three-quarters from our sleeping-place to Moerwa’s!

When we look back from the height to which we have ascended we
see a great plain clothed with dark green forest except at the
line of yellowish grass, where probably the Loangwa flows. On the
east and south-east this plain is bounded at the extreme range of
our vision by a wall of dim blue mountains forty or fifty miles
off. The Loangwa is said to rise in the Chibalé country
due north of this Malambwé (in which district Moerwa’s
village is situated), and to flow S.E., then round to where we
found it.

Moerwa came to visit me in my hut, a rather stupid man, though
he has a well-shaped and well-developed forehead, and tried the
usual little arts of getting us to buy all we need here though
the prices are exorbitant. “No people in front, great hunger
there.” “We must buy food here and carry it to support us.” On
asking the names of the next headman he would not inform me, till
I told him to try and speak like a man; he then told us that the
first Lobemba chief was Motuna, and the next Chafunga. We have
nothing, as we saw no animals in our way hither, and hunger is
ill to bear. By giving Moerwa a good large cloth he was induced
to cook a mess of maëre or millet and elephant’s stomach; it
was so good to get a full meal that I could have given him another cloth, and the
more so as it was accompanied by a message that he would cook
more next day and in larger quantity. On inquiring next evening
he said “the man had told lies,” he had cooked nothing more: he
was prone to lie himself, and was a rather bad specimen of a
chief.

The Babisa have round bullet heads, snub noses, often high
cheek-bones, an upward slant of the eyes, and look as if they had
a lot of Bushman blood in them, and a good many would pass for
Bushmen or Hottentots. Both Babisa and Waiyau may have a mixture
of the race, which would account for their roving habits. The
women have the fashion of exposing the upper part of the buttocks
by letting a very stiff cloth fall down behind. Their teeth are
filed to points, they wear no lip-ring, and the hair is parted so
as to lie in a net at the back part of the head. The mode of
salutation among the men is to lie down nearly on the back,
clapping the hands, and making a rather inelegant half-kissing
sound with the lips.

29th December, 1866.—We remain a day at
Malambwé, but get nothing save a little
maëre,[42] which grates in the teeth and in the stomach.
To prevent the Mazitu starving them they cultivate small round
patches placed at wide intervals in the forest, with which the
country is covered. The spot, some ten yards or a little more in
diameter, is manured with ashes and planted with this millet and
pumpkins, in order that should Mazitu come they may be unable to
carry off the pumpkins, or gather the millet, the seed of which
is very small. They have no more valour than the other Africans,
but more craft, and are much given to falsehood. They will not
answer common questions except by misstatements, but this may
arise in our case from our being in disfavour, because we will
not sell all our goods to them for ivory.

30th December,
1866.—Marched for Chitemba’s, because it is said he has
not fled from the Mazitu, and therefore has food to spare. While
resting, Moerwa, with all his force of men, women, and dogs, came
up, on his way to hunt elephants. The men were furnished with big
spears, and their dogs are used to engage the animal’s attention
while they spear it; the women cook the meat and make huts, and a
smith goes with them to mend any spear that may be broken.

We pass over level plateaux on which the roads are wisely
placed, and do not feel that we are travelling in a mountainous
region. It is all covered with dense forest, which in many cases
is pollarded, from being cut for bark cloth or for hunting
purposes. Masuko fruit abounds. From the cisalpinae and gum-copal
trees bark cloth is made.

We now come to large masses of haematite, which is often
ferruginous: there is conglomerate too, many quartz pebbles being
intermixed. It seems as if when the lakes existed in the lower
lands, the higher levels gave forth great quantities of water
from chalybeate fountains, which deposited this iron ore. Grey
granite or quartz with talc in it or gneiss lie under the
haematite.

The forest resounds with singing birds, intent on
nidification. Francolins abound, but are wild. “Whip-poor-wills,”
and another bird, which has a more laboured treble note and
voice—”Oh, oh, oh!” Gay flowers blush unseen, but the
people have a good idea of what is eatable and what not. I looked
at a woman’s basket of leaves which she had collected for supper,
and it contained eight or ten kinds, with mushrooms and
orchidaceous flowers. We have a succession of showers to-day,
from N.E. and E.N.E. We are uncertain when we shall come to a
village, as the Babisa will not tell us where they are situated.
In the evening we encamped beside a little rill, and made our
shelters, but we had so little to eat that I dreamed the night
long of dinners I had eaten, and might have been eating.

I shall make this
beautiful land better known, which is an essential part of the
process by which it will become the “pleasant haunts of men.” It
is impossible to describe its rich luxuriance, but most of it is
running to waste through the slave-trade and internal wars.

31st December, 1866.—When we started this morning
after rain, all the trees and grass dripping, a lion roared, but
we did not see him. A woman had come a long way and built a neat
miniature hut in the burnt-out ruins of her mother’s house: the
food-offering she placed in it, and the act of filial piety, no
doubt comforted this poor mourner’s heart!

We arrived at Chitembo’s village and found it deserted. The
Babisa dismantle their huts and carry off the thatch to their
gardens, where they live till harvest is over. This fallowing of
the framework destroys many insects, but we observed that
wherever Babisa and Arab slavers go they leave the breed of the
domestic bug: it would be well if that were all the ill they did!
Chitembo was working in his garden when we arrived, but soon
came, and gave us the choice of all the standing huts: he is an
old man, much more frank and truthful than our last headman, and
says that Chitapanga is paramount chief of all the Abemba.

Three or four women whom we saw performing a rain dance at
Moerwa’s were here doing the same; their faces smeared with meal,
and axes in their hands, imitating as well as they could the male
voice. I got some maëre or millet here and a fowl.

We now end 1866. It has not been so fruitful or useful as I
intended. Will try to do better in 1867, and be better—more
gentle and loving; and may the Almighty, to whom I commit my way,
bring my desires to pass, and prosper me! Let all the sins of ’66
be blotted out for Jesus’ sake.

1st January, 1867.—May He who was full of grace
and truth impress His character on mine. Grace—eagerness to
show favour;
truth—truthfulness, sincerity, honour—for His mercy’s
sake.

We remain to-day at Mbulukuta-Chitembo’s district, by the
boys’ desire, because it is New Year’s day, and also because we
can get some food.

2nd and 3rd January, 1867.—Remain on account of a
threatened set-in rain. Bought a senzé
(Aulocaudatus Swindernianus), a rat-looking animal; but I
was glad to get anything in the shape of meat.

4th January, 1867.—It is a set-in rain.
The boiling-point thermometer shows an altitude of 3565 feet
above the sea. Barometer, 3983 feet ditto. We get a little
maëre here, and prefer it to being drenched and our goods
spoiled. We have neither sugar nor salt, so there are no soluble
goods; but cloth and gunpowder get damaged easily. It is hard
fare and scanty; I feel always hungry, and am constantly dreaming
of better food when I should be sleeping. Savoury viands of
former times come vividly up before the imagination, even in my
waking hours; this is rather odd as I am not a dreamer; indeed I
scarcely ever dream but when I am going to be ill or actually
so.[43]

We are on the northern brim (or north-western rather) of the
great Loangwa Valley we lately crossed: the rain coming from the
east strikes it, and is deposited both above and below, while
much of the valley itself is not yet well wetted. Here all the
grasses have run up to seed, and yet they are not more than two
feet or so in the seed-stalks. The pasturage is very fine. The
people employ these continuous or set-in rains for hunting
the elephant, which gets bogged, and sinks in from fifteen to
eighteen inches in soft mud,
then even he, the strong one, feels it difficult to
escape.[44]

5th January, 1867.—Still storm-stayed. We shall
be off as soon as we get a fair day and these heavy rains
cease.

6th January, 1867.—After service two men came and
said that they were going to Lobemba, and would guide us to
Motuna’s village; another came a day or two ago, but he had such
a villainous look we all shrank from him. These men’s faces
pleased us, but they did not turn out all we expected, for they
guided us away westwards without a path: it was a drizzling rain,
and this made us averse to striking off in the forest without
them. No inhabitants now except at wide intervals, and no animals
either. In the afternoon we came to a deep ravine full of
gigantic timber trees and bamboos, with the Mavoché River
at the bottom. The dampness had caused the growth of lichens all
over the trees, and the steep descent was so slippery that two
boys fell, and he who carried the chronometers, twice: this was a
misfortune, as it altered the rates, as was seen by the first
comparison of them together in the evening. No food at Motuna’s
village, yet the headman tried to extort two fathoms of calico on
the ground that he was owner of the country: we offered to go out
of his village and make our own sheds on “God’s land,” that is,
where it is uncultivated, rather than have any words about it: he
then begged us to stay. A very high mountain called
Chikokwé appeared W.S.W. from this village; the people who
live on it are called Matumba; this part is named Lokumbi, but
whatever the name, all the people are Babisa, the dependants of
the Babemba, reduced by their own slaving habits to a miserable
jungly state. They feed much on wild fruits, roots, and leaves;
and yet are generally plump. They use a wooden hoe for sowing their maëre, it is a
sort of V-shaped implement, made from a branch with another
springing out of it, about an inch in diameter at the sharp
point, and with it they claw the soil after scattering the seed;
about a dozen young men were so employed in the usual small
patches as we passed in the morning.

The country now exhibits the extreme of leafiness and the
undulations are masses of green leaves; as far as the eye can
reach with distinctness it rests on a mantle of that hue, and
beyond the scene becomes dark blue. Near at hand many gay flowers
peep out. Here and there the scarlet martagón (Lilium
chalcedonicum), bright blue or yellow gingers; red, orange,
yellow, and pure white orchids; pale lobelias, &c.; but they
do not mar the general greenness. As we ascended higher on the
plateau, grasses, which have pink and reddish brown seed-vessels
imparted distinct shades of their colours to the lawns, and were
grateful to the eye. We turned aside early in our march to avoid
being wetted by rains, and took shelter in some old Babisa sheds;
these, when the party is a slaving one, are built so as to form a
circle, with but one opening: a ridge pole, or rather a
succession of ridge poles, form one long shed all round, with no
partitions in the roof-shaped hut.

On the 9th of January we ascended a hardened sandstone
range. Two men who accompanied our guide called out every now and
then to attract the attention of the honey-guide, but none
appeared. A water-buck had been killed and eaten at one spot, the
ground showing marks of a severe struggle, but no game was to be
seen. Buffaloes and elephants come here at certain seasons; at
present they have migrated elsewhere. The valleys are very
beautiful: the oozes are covered with a species of short wiry
grass, which gives the valleys the appearance of well-kept
gentlemen’s parks; but they are full of water to
overflowing—immense sponges in fact;—and one has to
watch carefully in crossing them to avoid plunging into deep
water-holes, made by the
feet of elephants or buffaloes. In the ooze generally the water
comes half-way up the shoe, and we go plash, plash, plash, in the
lawn-like glade. There are no people here now in these lovely
wild valleys; but to-day we came to mounds made of old for
planting grain, and slag from iron furnaces. The guide was rather
offended because he did not get meat and meal, though he is
accustomed to leaves at home, and we had none to give except by
wanting ourselves: he found a mess without much labour in the
forest. My stock of meal came to an end to-day, but Simon gave me
some of his. It is not the unpleasantness of eating unpalatable
food that teases one, but we are never satisfied; I could brace
myself to dispose of a very unsavoury mess, and think no more
about it; but this maëre engenders a craving which plagues
day and night incessantly.

10th January, 1867.—We crossed the Muasi, flowing
strongly to the east to the Loangwa River.

In the afternoon an excessively heavy thunderstorm wetted us
all to the skin before any shelter could be made. Two of our men
wandered, and other two remained behind lost, as our track was
washed out by the rains. The country is a succession of enormous
waves, all covered with jungle, and no traces of paths; we were
in a hollow, and our firing was not heard till this morning, when
we ascended a height and were answered. I am thankful that up one
was lost, for a man might wander a long time before reaching a
village. Simon gave me a little more of his meal this morning,
and went without himself: I took my belt up three holes to
relieve hunger. We got some wretched wild fruit like that called
“jambos” in India, and at midday reached the village of Chafunga.
Famine here too, but some men had killed an elephant and came to
sell the dried meat: it was high, and so were their prices; but
we are obliged to give our best from this craving hunger.

12th January, 1867.—Sitting down this morning
near a tree my head was just one yard off a good-sized cobra,
coiled up in the sprouts at
its root, but it was benumbed with cold: a very pretty little
puff-adder lay in the path, also benumbed; it is seldom that any
harm is done by these reptiles here, although it is different in
India. We bought up all the food we could get; but it did not
suffice for the marches we expect to make to get to the
Chambezé, where food is said to be abundant, we were
therefore again obliged to travel on Sunday. We had prayers
before starting; but I always feel that I am not doing fight, it
lessens the sense of obligation in the minds of my companions;
but I have no choice. We went along a rivulet till it ended in a
small lake, Mapampa or Chimbwé, about five miles long, and
one and a half broad. It had hippopotami, and the poku fed on its
banks.

15th January, 1867.—We had to cross the
Chimbwé at its eastern end, where it is fully a mile wide.
The guide refused to show another and narrower ford up the
stream, which emptied into it from the east; and I, being the
first to cross, neglected to give orders about the poor little
dog, Chitané. The water was waist deep, the bottom soft
peaty stuff with deep holes in it, and the northern side infested
by leeches. The boys were—like myself—all too much
engaged with preserving their balance to think of the spirited
little beast, and he must have swam till he sunk. He was so
useful in keeping all the country curs off our huts; none dare to
approach and steal, and he never stole himself. He shared the
staring of the people with his master, then in the march he took
charge of the whole party, running to the front, and again to the
rear, to see that all was right. He was becoming yellowish-red in
colour; and, poor thing, perished in what the boys all call
Chitané’s water.

16th January, 1867.—March through the mountains,
which are of beautiful white and pink dolomite, scantily covered
with upland trees and vegetation. The rain, as usual, made us
halt early, and wild fruits helped to induce us to stay.

In one place we lighted
on a party of people living on Masuko fruit, and making mats of
the Shuaré[45] palm petioles. We have hard lines ourselves;
nothing but a little maëre porridge and dampers. We roast a
little grain, and boil it, to make believe it is coffee. The
guide, a maundering fellow, turned because he was not fed better
than at home, and because he knew that but for his obstinacy we
should not have lost the dog. It is needless to repeat that it is
all forest on the northern slopes of the mountains—open
glade and miles of forest; ground at present all sloppy; oozes
full and overflowing—feet constantly wet. Rivulets rush
strongly with clear water, though they are in flood: we
can guess which are perennial and which mere torrents that dry
up; they flow northwards and westwards to the
Chambezé.

17th January, 1867.—Detained in an old Babisa
slaving encampment by set-in rain till noon, then set off in the
midst of it. Came to hills of dolomite, but all the rocks were
covered with white lichens (ash-coloured). The path took us
thence along a ridge, which separates the Lotiri, running
westwards, and the Lobo, going northwards, and we came at length
to the Lobo, travelling along its banks till we reached the
village called Lisunga, which was about five yards broad, and
very deep, in flood, with clear water, as indeed are all the
rivulets now; they can only be crossed by felling a tree on the
bant and letting it fall across. They do not abrade their
banks—vegetation protects them. I observed that the brown
ibis, a noisy bird, took care to restrain his loud, harsh voice
when driven from the tree in which his nest was placed, and when
about a quarter of a mile off, then commenced his loud
“Ha-ha-ha!”

18th January, 1867.—The headman of Lisunga,
Chaokila, took our present, and gave nothing in return. A deputy
from Chitapangwa came afterwards and demanded a larger present, as he was the greater man,
and said that if we gave him two fathoms of calico, he would
order all the people to bring plenty of food, not here only, but
all the way to the paramount chief of Lobemba, Chitapangwa. I
proposed that he should begin by ordering Chaokila to give us
some in return for our present. This led, as Chaokila told us, to
the cloth being delivered to the deputy, and we saw that all the
starvelings south of the Chambezé were poor dependants on
the Babemba, or rather their slaves, who cultivate little, and
then only in the rounded patches above mentioned, so as to
prevent their conquerors from taking away more than a small
share. The subjects are Babisa—a miserable lying lot of
serfs. This tribe is engaged in the slave-trade, and the evil
effects are seen in their depopulated country and utter distrust
of every one.

19th January, 1867.—Raining most of the day.
Worked out the longitude of the mountain-station said to be
Mpini, but it will be better to name it Chitané’s, as I
could not get the name from our maundering guide; he probably did
not know it. Lat, 11° 9′ 2″ S.; long. 32° 1′ 30″ E.

Altitude above sea
(barometer)    5353 feet;
Altitude above sea
(boiling-point) 5385 feet.
——
Diff. 32.[46]

Nothing but famine and famine prices, the people living on
mushrooms and leaves. Of mushrooms we observed that they choose
five or six kinds, and rejected ten sorts. One species becomes as
large as the crown of a man’s hat; it is pure white, with a blush
of brown in the middle of the crown, and is very good roasted; it
is named “Motenta;” another, Mofeta; 3rd, Boséfwé;
4th, Nakabausa; 5th, Chisimbé, lobulated, green outside,
and pink and fleshy inside; as a relish to others: some experience must have
been requisite to enable them to distinguish the good from the
noxious, of which they reject ten sorts.

We get some elephants’ meat from the people, but high is no
name for its condition. It is very bitter, but we used it as a
relish to the maëre porridge: none of the animal is wasted;
skin and all is cut up and sold, not one of us would touch it
with the hand if we had aught else, for the gravy in which we dip
our porridge is like an aqueous solution of aloes, but it
prevents the heartburn, which maëre causes when taken alone.
I take mushrooms boiled instead; but the meat is never refused
when we can purchase it, as it seems to ease the feeling of
fatigue which jungle-fruit and fare engenders. The appetite in
this country is always very keen, and makes hunger worse to bear:
the want of salt, probably, makes the gnawing sensation
worse.

[We now come to a disaster which cannot be exaggerated in
importance when we witness its after effects month by month on
Dr. Livingstone. There can be little doubt that the severity of
his subsequent illnesses mainly turned upon it, and it is hardly
too much to believe that his constitution from this time was
steadily sapped by the effects of fever-poison which he was
powerless to counteract, owing to the want of quinine. In his
allusion to Bishop Mackenzie’s death, we have only a further
confirmation of the one rule in all such cases which must be
followed, or the traveller in Africa goes—not with his life
in his hand, but in some luckless box, put in the charge of
careless servants. Bishop Mackenzie had all his drugs destroyed
by the upsetting of a canoe, in which was his case of medicines,
and in a moment everything was soaked and spoilt.

It cannot be too strongly urged on explorers that they should
divide their more important medicines in such a way that a
total loss shall become well-nigh impossible. Three
or four tin canisters
containing some calomel, Dover’s powder, colocynth, and, above
all, a supply of quinine, can be distributed in different
packages, and then, if a mishap occurs similar to that which
Livingstone relates, the disaster is not beyond remedy.]

20th January, 1867.—A guide refused, so we
marched without one. The two Waiyau, who joined us at
Kandé’s village, now deserted. They had been very faithful
all the way, and took our part in every case. Knowing the
language well, they were extremely useful, and no one thought
that they would desert, for they were free men—their
masters had been killed by the Mazitu—and this
circumstance, and their uniform good conduct, made us trust them
more than we should have done any others who had been slaves. But
they left us in the forest, and heavy rain came on, which
obliterated every vestige of their footsteps. To make the loss
the more galling, they took what we could least spare—the
medicine-box, which they would only throw away as soon as they
came to examine their booty. One of these deserters exchanged his
load that morning with a boy called Baraka, who had charge of the
medicine-box, because he was so careful. This was done, because
with the medicine-chest were packed five large cloths and all
Baraka’s clothing and beads, of which he was very careful. The
Waiyau also offered to carry this burden a stage to help Baraka,
while he gave his own load, in which there was no cloth, in
exchange. The forest was so dense and high, there was no chance
of getting a glimpse of the fugitives, who took all the dishes, a
large box of powder, the flour we had purchased dearly to help us
as far as the Chambezé, the tools, two guns, and a
cartridge-pouch; but the medicine-chest was the sorest loss of
all! I felt as if I had now received the sentence of death, like
poor Bishop Mackenzie.

All the other goods I had
divided in case of loss or desertion, but had never dreamed of
losing the precious quinine and other remedies; other losses and
annoyances I felt as just parts of that undercurrent of vexations
which is not wanting in even the smoothest life, and certainly
not worthy of being moaned over in the experience of an explorer
anxious to benefit a country and people—but this loss I
feel most keenly. Everything of this kind happens by the
permission of One who watches over us with most tender care; and
this may turn out for the best by taking away a source of
suspicion among more superstitious, charm-dreading people further
north. I meant it as a source of benefit to my party and to the
heathen.

We returned to Lisunga, and got two men off to go back to
Chafunga’s village, and intercept the deserters if they went
there; but it is likely that, having our supply of flour, they
will give our route a wide berth and escape altogether. It is
difficult to say from the heart, “Thy will be done;” but I shall
try. These Waiyau had few advantages: sold into slavery in early
life, they were in the worst possible school for learning to be
honest and honourable, they behaved well for a long time; but,
having had hard and scanty fare in Lobisa, wet and misery in
passing through dripping forests, hungry nights and fatiguing
days, their patience must have been worn out, and they had no
sentiments of honour, or at least none so strong as we ought to
have; they gave way to the temptation which their good conduct
had led us to put in their way. Some we have come across in this
journey seemed born essentially mean and base—a great
misfortune to them and all who have to deal with them, but they
cannot be so blamable as those who have no natural tendency to
meanness, and whose education has taught them to abhor it. True;
yet this loss of the medicine-box gnaws at the heart
terribly.

21st and 22nd January, 1867.—Remained at
Lisunga—raining nearly
all day; and we bought all the maëre the chief would sell.
We were now forced to go on and made for the next village to buy
food. Want of food and rain are our chief difficulties now, more
rain falls here on this northern slope of the upland than
elsewhere; clouds come up from the north and pour down their
treasures in heavy thunder-showers, which deluge the whole
country south of the edge of the plateau: the rain-clouds come
from the west chiefly.

23rd January, 1867.—A march of five and
three-quarter hours brought us yesterday to a village, Chibanda’s
stockade, where “no food” was the case, as usual. We crossed a
good-sized rivulet, the Mapampa (probably ten yards wide),
dashing along to the east; all the rest of the way was in dark
forest. I sent off the boys to the village of Muasi to buy food,
if successful, to-morrow we march for the Chambezé, on the
other side of which all the reports agree in the statement that
there plenty of food is to be had. We all feel weak and easily
tired, and an incessant hunger teases us, so it is no wonder if
so large a space of this paper is occupied by stomach affairs. It
has not been merely want of nice dishes, but real biting hunger
and faintness.

24th January, 1867.—Four hours through unbroken,
dark forest brought us to the Movushi, which here is a sluggish
stream, winding through and filling a marshy valley a mile wide.
It comes from south-east, and falls into the Chambezé,
about 2′ north of our encampment. The village of Moaba is on the
east side of the marshy valley of the Movuhi, and very difficult
to be approached, as the water is chin-deep in several spots. I
decided to make sheds on the west side, and send over for food,
which, thanks to the Providence which watches over us, we found
at last in a good supply of maëre and some ground-nuts; but
through, all this upland region the trees yielding bark-cloth, or
nyanda, are so
abundant, that the people are all well-clothed with it, and care
but little for our cloth. Red and pink beads are in fashion, and
fortunately we have red.

[We may here add a few particulars concerning beads, which
form such an important item of currency all through Africa. With
a few exceptions they are all manufactured in Venice. The
greatest care must be exercised, or the traveller—ignorant
of the prevailing fashion in the country he is about to
explore—finds himself with an accumulation of beads of no
more value than tokens would be if tendered in this country for
coin of the realm.

Thanks to the kindness of Messrs. Levin & Co., the bead
merchants, of Bevis Marks, E.C., we have been able to get some
idea of the more valuable beads, through a selection made by Susi
and Chuma in their warehouse. The Waiyou prefer exceedingly small
beads, the size of mustard-seed, and of various colours, but they
must be opaque: amongst them dull white chalk varieties, called
“Catchokolo,” are valuable, besides black and pink, named,
respectively, “Bububu” and “Sekundereché” = the “dregs of
pombe.” One red bead, of various sizes, which has a white centre,
is always valuable in every part of Africa. It is called
“Sami-sami” by the Suahélé, “Chitakaraka” by the
Waiyou, “Mangazi,” = “blood,” by the Nyassa, and was found
popular even amongst the Manyuema, under the name of
“Maso-kantussi”, “bird’s eyes.” Whilst speaking of this distant
tribe, it is interesting to observe that one peculiar long bead,
recognised as common in the Manyuema land, is only sent to the
West Coast of Africa, and never to the East. On Chuma
pointing to it as a sort found at the extreme limit explored by
Livingstone, it was at once seen that he must have touched that
part of Africa which begins to be within the reach of the traders
in the Portuguese settlements. “Machua Kanga” = “guinea fowl’s
eyes,” is another popular variety; and the “Moiompio” = “new heart,” a large
pale blue bead, is a favourite amongst the Wabisa; but by far the
most valuable of all is a small white oblong bead, which, when
strung, looks like the joints of the cane root, from which it
takes its name, “Salani” = cane. Susi says that 1 lb. weight of
these beads would buy a tusk of ivory, at the south end of
Tanganyika, so big that a strong man could not carry it more than
two hours.]

25th January, 1867.—Remain and get our maëre
ground into flour. Moaba has cattle, sheep, and goats. The other
side of the Chambezé has everything in still greater
abundance; so we may recover our lost flesh. There are buffaloes
in this quarter, but we have not got a glimpse of any. If game
was to be had, I should have hunted; but the hopo way of hunting
prevails, and we pass miles of hedges by which many animals must
have perished. In passing-through the forests it is surprising to
see none but old footsteps of the game; but the hopo destruction
accounts for its absence. When the hedges are burned, then the
manured space is planted with pumpkins and calabashes.

I observed at Chibanda’s a few green mushrooms, which, on
being peeled, showed a pink, fleshy inside; they are called
“chisimba;” and only one or two are put into the mortar, in which
the women pound the other kinds, to give relish, it was said, to
the mass: I could not ascertain what properties chisimba had when
taken alone; but mushroom diet, in our experience, is good only
for producing dreams of the roast beef of bygone days. The saliva
runs from the mouth in these dreams, and the pillow is wet with
it in the mornings.

These Babisa are full of suspicion; everything has to be paid
for accordingly in advance, and we found that giving a present to
a chief is only putting it in his power to cheat us out of a
supper. They give nothing to each other for nothing, and if this is enlargement of mind
produced by commerce, commend me to the untrading African!

Fish now appear in the rivulets. Higher altitudes have only
small things, not worth catching.

An owl makes the woods resound by night and early morning with
his cries, which consist of a loud, double-initial note, and then
a succession of lower descending notes. Another new bird, or at
least new to me, makes the forests ring.

When the vultures see us making our sheds, they conclude that
we have killed some animal; but after watching awhile, and seeing
no meat, they depart. This is suggestive of what other things
prove, that it is only by sight they are guided.[47]

With respect to the native head-dresses the colouring-matter,
“nkola,” which seems to be camwood, is placed as an ornament on
the head, and some is put on the bark-cloth to give it a pleasant
appearance. The tree, when cut, is burned to bring out the strong
colour, and then, when it is developed, the wood is powdered.

The gum-copal trees now pour out gum where wounded, and I have
seen masses of it fallen on the ground.

26th January, 1867.—Went northwards along the
Movushi, near to its confluence with Chambezé, and then
took lodging in a deserted temporary village. In the evening I
shot a poku, or tsébula, full-grown male. It measured from
snout to insertion of tail,
5 feet 3 inches; tail, 1 foot; height at withers, 3 feet;
circumference of chest, 5 feet; face to insertion of horns, 9-1/2
inches; horns measured on curve, 16 inches. Twelve rings on
horns, and one had a ridge behind, 1/2 inch broad, 1/2 inch high,
and tapering up the horn; probably accidental. Colour:
reddish-yellow, dark points in front of foot and on the ears,
belly nearly white. The shell went through from behind the
shoulder to the spleen, and burst on the other side, yet he ran
100 yards. I felt very thankful to the Giver of all good for this
meat.

27th January, 1867.—A set-in rain all the
morning, but having meat we were comfortable in the old huts. In
changing my dress this morning I was frightened at my own
emaciation.

28th January, 1867.—- We went five miles along
the Movushi and the Chambezé to a crossing-place said to
avoid three rivers on the other side, which require canoes just
now, and have none. Our lat. 10° 34′ S. The Chambezé
was flooded with clear water, but the lines of bushy trees, which
showed its real banks, were not more than forty yards apart, it
showed its usual character of abundant animal life in its waters
and on its banks, as it wended its way westwards. The canoe-man
was excessively suspicious; when prepayment was acceded to, he
asked a piece more, and although he was promised full payment as
soon as we were all safely across he kept the last man on the
south side as a hostage for this bit of calico: he then ran away.
They must cheat each other sadly.

Went northwards, wading across two miles of flooded flats on
to which the Clarias Capensis, a species of siluris, comes
to forage out of the river. We had the Likindazi, a sedgy stream,
with hippopotami, on our right. Slept in forest without seeing
anyone. Then next day we met with a party who had come from their
village to look for us. We were now in Lobemba, but these
villagers had nothing but hopes of plenty at Chitapangwa’s. This
village had half a mile of
ooze and sludgy marsh in front of it, and a stockade as usual. We
observed that the people had great fear of animals at night, and
shut the gates carefully, of even temporary villages. When at
Molemba (Chitapangwa’s village) afterwards, two men were killed
by a lion, and great fear of crocodiles was expressed by our
canoe-man at the Chambezé, when one washed in the margin
of that river. There was evidence of abundance of game,
elephants, and buffaloes, but we saw none.

29th January, 1867.—When near our next stage end
we were shown where lightning had struck; it ran down a gum-copal
tree without damaging it, then ten yards horizontally, and
dividing there into two streams it went up an anthill; the
withered grass showed its course very plainly, and next day
(31st), on the banks of the Mabula, we saw a dry tree which had
been struck; large splinters had been riven off and thrown a
distance of sixty yards in one direction and thirty yards in
another: only a stump was left, and patches of withered grass
where it had gone horizontally.

30th January, 1867.—Northwards through almost
trackless dripping forests and across oozing bogs.

31st January, 1867.—Through forest, but gardens
of larger size than in Lobisa now appear. A man offered a thick
bar of copper for sale, a foot by three inches. The hard-leafed
acacia and mohempi abound. The valleys, with the oozes, have a
species of grass, having pink seed-stalks and yellow seeds: this
is very pretty. At midday we came to the Lopiri, the rivulet
which waters Chitapanga’s stockade, and soon after found that his
village has a triple stockade, the inner being defended also by a
deep broad ditch and hedge of a solanaceous thorny shrub. It is
about 200 yards broad and 500 long. The huts not planted very
closely.

Chitapangwa
receiving Dr. Livingstone.

The rivulets were all making for the Chambezé. They
contain no fish, except very small ones—probably fry. On
the other, or western side
of the ridge, near which “Malemba” is situated, fish abound worth
catching.

Chitapangwa

Chitapangwa, or Motoka, as he is also called, sent to inquire
if we wanted an audience. “We must take something in our hands
the first time we came before so great a man.” Being tired from
marching, I replied, “Not till the evening,” and sent notice at 5
P.M. of my coming. We passed through the inner stockade, and then
on to an enormous hut, where sat Chitapangwa, with three drummers
and ten or more men, with two rattles in their hands. The
drummers beat furiously, and the rattlers kept time to the drums,
two of them advancing and receding in a stooping posture, with
rattles near the ground, as if doing the chief obeisance, but
still keeping time with the others. I declined to sit on the ground, and an enormous tusk was
brought for me. The chief saluted courteously. He has a fat jolly
face, and legs loaded with brass and copper leglets. I mentioned
our losses by the desertion of the Waiyau, but his power is
merely nominal, and he could do nothing. After talking awhile he
came along with us to a group of cows, and pointed out one. “That
is yours,” said he. The tusk on which I sat was sent after me too
as being mine, because I had sat upon it. He put on my cloth as
token of acceptance, and sent two large baskets of sorghum to the
hut afterwards, and then sent for one of the boys to pump him
after dark.

Chitapangwa’s Wives.

1st February, 1867.—We found a small party of
black Arab slave-traders here from Bagamoio on the coast, and as
the chief had behaved
handsomely as I thought, I went this morning and gave him one of
our best cloths; but when we were about to kill the cow, a man
interfered and pointed out a smaller one. I asked if this was by
the orders of the chief. The chief said that the man had lied,
but I declined to take any cow at all if he did not give it
willingly.

The slavers, the headman of whom was Magaru Mafupi, came and
said that they were going off on the 2nd; (2nd February,
1867) but by payment I got them to remain a day, and was all
day employed in writing despatches.

3rd February, 1867.—Magaru Mafupi left this
morning with a packet of letters, for which he is to get Rs. 10
at Zanzibar.[48] They came by a much shorter route than we
followed, in fact, nearly due west or south-west; but not a soul
would tell us of this way of coming into the country when we were
at Zanzibar. Bagamoio is only six hours north of Kurdary Harbour.
It is possible that the people of Zanzibar did not know of it
themselves, as this is the first time they have come so far. The
route is full of villages and people who have plenty of goats,
and very cheap. They number fifteen stations, or sultans, as they
call the chiefs, and will be at Bagamoio in two months:—1.
Chasa; 2. Lombé; 3. Ucheré; 4. Nyamiro; 5. Zonda;
6. Zambi; 7. Lioti; 8. Méreré; 9. Kirangabana; 10.
Nkongozi; 11. Sombogo; 12. Suré; 13. Lomolasenga; 14.
Kapass; 15, Chanzé. They are then in the country adjacent
to Bagamoio. Some of these places are two or three days apart
from each other.

They came to three large rivers: 1. Wembo; 2. Luaha; 3. Luvo;
but I had not time to make further inquiries. They had one of
Speke’s companions to Tanganyika with them, named Janjé,
or Janja, who could imitate a trumpet by blowing into the palm of
his hand. I ordered another supply of cloth and beads, and I sent for a small
quantity of coffee, sugar, candles, French preserved meats, a
cheese in tin, six bottles of port-wine, quinine, calomel, and
resin of jalap, to be sent to Ujiji.

I proposed to go a little way east with this route to buy
goats, but Chitapangwa got very angry, saying, I came only to
show my things, and would buy nothing: he then altered his tone,
and requested me to take the cow first presented and eat it, and
as we were all much in need I took it. We were to give only what
we liked in addition; but this was a snare, and when I gave two
more cloths he sent them back, and demanded a blanket. The boys
alone have blankets; so I told him these were not slaves, and I
could not take from them what I had once given. Though it is
disagreeable to be thus victimized, it is the first time we have
tasted fat for six weeks and more.

6th February, 1867.—Chitapangwa came with his
wife to see the instruments which I explained to them as well as
I could, and the books, as well as the Book of Books, and to my
statements he made intelligent remarks. The boys are sorely
afraid of him. When Abraham does not like to say what I state, he
says to me “I don’t know the proper word;” but when I speak
without him, he soon finds them. He and Simon thought that
talking in a cringing manner was the way to win him over, so I
let them try it with a man he sent to communicate with us, and
the result was this fellow wanted to open their bundles, pulled
them about, and kept them awake most of the night. Abraham came
at night: “Sir, what shall I do? they won’t let me sleep.” “You
have had your own way,” I replied, “and must abide by it.” He
brought them over to me in the morning, but I soon dismissed both
him and them.

7th February, 1867.—I sent to the chief either to
come to me or say Avhen I should come to him and talk; the answer
I got was that he would come when shaved, but he afterwards
sent a man to hear what I
had to advance—this I declined, and when the rain ceased I
went myself.

On coming into his hut I stated that I had given him four
times the value of his cow, but if he thought otherwise, let us
take the four cloths to his brother Moamba, and if he said that I
had not given enough, I would buy a cow and send it back. This he
did not relish at all. “Oh, great Englishman! why should we refer
a dispute to an inferior. I am the great chief of all this
country. Ingleze mokolu, you are sorry that you have to give so
much for the ox you have eaten. You would not take a smaller, and
therefore I gratified your heart by giving the larger; and why
should not you gratify my heart by giving cloth sufficient to
cover me, and please me?”

I said that my cloths would cover him, and his biggest wife
too all over, he laughed at this, but still held out; and as we
have meat, and he sent maize and calabashes, I went away. He
turns round now, and puts the blame of greediness on me. I cannot
enter into his ideas, or see his point of view; cannot, in fact,
enter into his ignorance, his prejudices, or delusions, so it is
impossible to pronounce a true judgment. One who has no humour
cannot understand one who has: this is an equivalent case.

Rain and clouds so constantly, I could not get our latitude
till last night, 10° 14′ 6″ S. On 8th got lunars. Long.
31° 46′ 45″ E. Altitude above sea, 4700 feet, by
boiling-point and barometer.

8th February, 1867.—The chief demands one of my
boxes and a blanket; I explain that one day’s rain would spoil
the contents, and the boys who have blankets, not being slaves, I
cannot take from them what I have given. I am told that he
declares that he will take us back to the Loangwa; make war and
involve us in it, deprive us of food, &c.: this succeeds in
terrifying the boys. He thinks that we have some self-interest to
secure in passing through
the country, and therefore he has a right to a share in the gain.
When told it was for a public benefit, he pulled down the
underlid of the right eye.[49] He believes we shall profit by our journey,
though he knows not in what way.

It is possibly only a coincidence, but no sooner do we meet
with one who accompanied Speke and Burton to Tanganyika, than the
system of mulcting commences. I have no doubt but that
Janjé told this man how his former employers paid down
whatever was demanded of them.

10th February, 1867.—I had service in the open
air, many looking on, and spoke afterwards to the chief, but he
believes nothing save what Speke and Burton’s man has told him.
He gave us a present of corn and ground-nuts, and says he did not
order the people not to sell grain to us. We must stop and eat
green maize. He came after evening service, and I explained a
little to him, and showed him woodcuts in the ‘Bible Dictionary,’
which he readily understood.

11th February, 1867.—The chief sent us a basket
of hippopotamus flesh from the Chambezé, and a large one
of green maize. He says the three cloths I offered are still
mine: all he wants is a box and blanket; if not a blanket, a box
must be given, a tin one. He keeps out of my way, by going to the
gardens every morning. He is good-natured, and our intercourse is
a laughing one; but the boys betray their terrors in their tone
of voice, and render my words powerless.

The black and white, and the brownish-grey water wagtails are
remarkably tame. They come about the huts and even into them, and
no one ever disturbs them. They build their nests about the huts.
In the Bechuana country, a fine is imposed on any man whose boys
kill one, but why, no one
can tell me. The boys with me aver that they are not killed,
because the meat is not eaten! or because they are so tame!!

13th February, 1867.—I gave one of the boxes at
last, Chitapangwa offering a heavy Arab wooden one to preserve
our things, which I declined to take, as I parted with our own
partly to lighten a load. Abraham unwittingly told me that he had
not given me the chiefs statement in full when he pressed me to
take his cow. It was, “Take and eat the one you like, and give me
a blanket.” Abraham said “He has no blanket.” Then he said to me,
“Take it and eat it, and give him any pretty thing you like.” I
was thus led to mistake the chief, and he, believing that he had
said explicitly he wanted a blanket for it, naturally held out.
It is difficult to get these lads to say what one wants uttered:
either with enormous self-conceit, they give different, and, as
they think, better statements, suppress them altogether, or
return false answers: this is the great and crowning difficulty
of my intercourse.

I got ready to go, but the chief was very angry, and came with
all his force, exclaiming that I wanted to leave against his will
and power, though he wished to adjust matters, and send me away
nicely. He does not believe that we have no blankets. It is hard
to be kept waiting here, but all may be for the best: it has
always turned out so, and I trust in Him on whom I can cast all
my cares. The Lord look on this and help me. Though I have these
nine boys, I feel quite alone.

I gave the chief some seeds, peas, and beans, for which he
seemed thankful, and returned little presents of food and beer
frequently. The beer of maëre is stuffed full of the growing
grain as it begins to sprout, it is as thick as porridge, very
strong and bitter, and goes to the head, requiring a strong
digestion to overcome it.

February, 1867.—I showed the chief one of the
boys’ blankets, which he is
willing to part with for two of our cloths, each of which is
larger than it, but he declines to receive it, because we have
new ones. I invited him, since he disbelieved my assertions, to
look in our bales, and if he saw none, to pay us a fine for the
insult: he consented in a laughing way to give us an ox. All our
personal intercourse has been of the good-natured sort. It is the
communications to the boys, by three men who are our protectors,
or rather spies, that is disagreeable; I won’t let them bring
those fellows near me.

10th February, 1867.—He came early in the
morning, and I showed that I had no blanket, and he took the old
one, and said that the affair was ended. A long misunderstanding
would have been avoided, had Abraham told me fully what the chief
said at first.

16th February, 1867.—The chief offered me a cow
for à piece of red serge, and after a deal of talk and
Chitapangwa swearing that no demand would be made after the
bargain was concluded, I gave the serge, a cloth, and a few beads
for a good fat cow. The serge was two fathoms, a portion of that
which Miss Coutts gave me when leaving England in 1858.

The chief is not so bad, as the boys are so cowardly. They
assume a chirping, piping tone of voice in speaking to him, and
do not say what at last has to be said, because in their cringing
souls they believe they know what should be said better than I
do. It does not strike them in the least that I have grown grey
amongst these people; and it is immense conceit in mere boys to
equal themselves to me. The difficulty is greater, because when I
do ask their opinions I only receive the reply, “It is as you
please, sir.” Very likely some men of character may arise and
lead them; but such as I have would do little to civilise.

17th February, 1867.—Too ill with rheumatic-fever
to have service; this is the first attack of it I ever
had—and no medicine!
but I trust in the Lord, who healeth His people.

18th February, 1867.—This cow we divided at once.
The last one we cooked, and divided a full, hearty meal to all
every evening.

The boom—booming of water dashing against or over the
rocks is heard at a good distance from most of the burns in this
upland region; hence it is never quite still.

The rocks here are argillaceous schist, red and white.
(Keel, Scotticé.)

19th February, 1867.—Chitapangwa begged me to
stay another day, that one of the boys might mend his blanket; it
has been worn every night since April, and I, being weak and
giddy, consented. A glorious day of bright sunlight after a
night’s rain. We scarcely ever have a twenty-four hours without
rain, and never half that period without thunder.

The camwood (?) is here called molombwa, and grows very
abundantly. The people take the bark, boil, and grind it fine: it
is then a splendid blood-red, and they use it extensively as an
ornament, sprinkling it on the bark-cloth, or smearing it on the
head. It is in large balls, and is now called mkola. The tree has
pinnated, alternate lanceolate, leaves, and attains a height of
40 or 50 feet, with a diameter of 15 or 18 inches finely and
closely veined above, more widely beneath.

I am informed by Abraham that the Nyumbo (Numbo or Mumbo) is
easily propagated by cuttings, or by cuttings of the roots. A
bunch of the stalks is preserved in the soil for planting next
year, and small pieces are cut off, and take root easily; it has
a pea-shaped flower, but we never saw the seed. It is very much
better here than I have seen it elsewhere; and James says that in
his country it is quite white and better still; what I have seen is of a
greenish tinge after it is boiled.

[Amongst the articles brought to the coast the men took care
not to lose a number of seeds which they found in Dr.
Livingstone’s boxes after his death. These have been placed in
the hands of the authorities at Kew, and we may hope that in some
instances they have maintained vitality.

It is a great pity that there is such a lack of enterprise in
the various European settlements on the East Coast of Africa.
Were it otherwise a large trade in valuable woods and other
products would assuredly spring up. Ebony and lignum vitae
abound; Dr. Livingstone used hardly any other fuel when he
navigated the Pioneer, and no wood was found to make such
“good steam.” India-rubber may be had for the collecting, and we
see that even the natives know some of the dye-woods, besides
which the palm-oil tree is found, indigo is a weed everywhere,
and coffee is indigenous.]

CHAPTER VIII.

20th February, 1867.—I told the chief before
starting that my heart was sore, because he was not sending me
away so cordially as I liked. He at once ordered men to start
with us, and gave me a brass knife with ivory sheath, which he
had long worn, as a memorial. He explained that we ought to go
north as, if we made easting, we should ultimately be obliged to
turn west, and all our cloth would be expended ere we reached the
Lake Tanganyika; he took a piece of clay off the ground and
rubbed it on his tongue as an oath that what he said was true,
and came along with us to see that all was right; and so we
parted.

We soon ascended the plateau, which encloses with its edge the
village and stream of Molemba. Wild pigs are abundant, and there
are marks of former cultivation. A short march brought us to an
ooze, surrounded by hedges, game-traps, and pitfalls, where, as
we are stiff and weak, we spend the night. Rocks abound of the
same dolomite kind as on the
ridge further south, between the Loangwa and Chambezé,
covered, like them, with lichens, orchids, euphorbias, and upland
vegetation, hard-leaved acacias, rhododendrons, masukos. The
gum-copal tree, when perforated by a grub, exudes from branches
no thicker than one’s arm, masses of soft, gluey-looking gum,
brownish yellow, and light grey, as much as would fill a
soup-plate. It seems to yield this gum only in the rainy season,
and now all the trees are full of sap and gum.

21st February, 1867.—A night with loud and near
thunder, and much heavy rain, which came through the boys’ sheds.
Roads all plashy or running with water, oozes full, and rivulets
overflowing; rocks of dolomite jutting out here and there. I
noticed growing here a spikenard-looking shrub, six feet high,
and a foot in diameter. The path led us west against my will. I
found one going north; but the boys pretended that they did not
see my mark, and went west, evidently afraid of incurring
Moamba’s displeasure by passing him. I found them in an old hut,
and made the best of it by saying nothing. They said that they
had wandered; that was, they had never left the west-going
path.

22nd February, 1867.—We came to a perennial
rivulet running north, the Merungu. Here we met Moamba’s people,
but declined going to his village, as huts are disagreeable; they
often have vermin, and one is exposed to the gaze of a crowd
through a very small doorway. The people in their curiosity often
make the place dark, and the impudent ones offer characteristic
remarks, then raise a laugh, and run away.

We encamped on the Meningu’s right bank in forest, sending
word to Moamba that we meant to do so. He sent a deputation,
first of all his young men, to bring us; then old men, and lastly
he came himself with about sixty followers. I explained that I
had become sick by living in
a little hut at Molemba; that I was better in the open air; that
huts contained vermin; and that I did not mean to remain any
while here, but go on our way. He pressed us to come to his
village, and gave us a goat and kid, with a huge calabashful of
beer. I promised to go over and visit him next day; and went
accordingly.

23rd February, 1867.—Moamba’s village was a mile
off, and on the left bank of the Merengé, a larger stream
than the Merungu flowing north and having its banks and oozes
covered with fine, tall, straight, evergreen trees. The village
is surrounded with a stockade, and a dry ditch some fifteen or
twenty feet wide, and as many deep. I had a long talk with
Moamba, a big, stout, public-house-looking person, with a slight
outward cast in his left eye, but intelligent and hearty. I
presented him with a cloth; and he gave me as much maëre
meal as a man could carry, with a large basket of ground-nuts. He
wished us to come to the Merengé, if not into his village,
that he might see and talk with me: I also showed him some
pictures in Smith’s ‘Bible Dictionary,’ which he readily
understood, and I spoke to him about the Bible. He asked me “to
come next day and tell him about prayer to God,” this was a
natural desire after being told that we prayed.

He was very anxious to know why we were going to Tanganyika;
for what we came; what we should buy there; and if I had any
relations there. He then showed me some fine large tusks, eight
feet six in length. “What do you wish to buy, if not slaves or
ivory?” I replied, that the only thing I had seen worth buying
was a fine fat chief like him, as a specimen, and a woman feeding
him, as he had, with beer. He was tickled at this; and said that
when we reached our country, I must put fine clothes on him. This
led us to speak of our climate, and the production of wool.

24th February, 1867.—I went over after service,
but late, as the rain
threatened to be heavy. A case was in process of hearing, and one
old man spoke an hour on end, the chief listening all the while
with the gravity of a judge. He then delivered his decision in
about five minutes, the successful litigant going off
lullilooing. Each person, before addressing him, turns his back
to him and lies down on the ground, clapping the hands: this is
the common mode of salutation. Another form here in Lobemba is to
rattle the arrows or an arrow on the bow, which all carry. We had
a little talk with the chief; but it was late before the cause
was heard through. He asked us to come and spend one night near
him on the Merenga, and then go on, so we came over in the
morning to the vicinity of his village. A great deal of
copper-wire is here made, the wire-drawers using for one part of
the process a seven-inch cable. They make very fine wire, and it
is used chiefly as leglets and anklets; the chief’s wives being
laden with them, and obliged to walk in a stately style from the
weight: the copper comes from Katanga.

26th February, 1867.—The chief wishes to buy a
cloth with two goats, but his men do not bring them up quickly.
Simon, one of the boys, is ill of fever, and this induces me to
remain, though moving from one place to another is the only
remedy we have in our power.

With the chief’s men we did not get on well, but with himself
all was easy. His men demanded prepayment for canoes to cross the
river Loömbé; but in the way that he put it, the
request was not unreasonable, as he gave a man to smooth our way,
and get canoes, or whatever else was needed, all the way to
Chibué’s. I gave a cloth when he put it thus, and he
presented a goat, a spear ornamented with copper-wire, abundance
of meal, and beer, and numbo; so we parted good friends, as his
presents were worth the cloth.

Holding a north-westerly course we met with the Chikosho
flowing west, and thence
came to the Likombé by a high ridge called Losauswa, which
runs a long way westward. It is probably a watershed between
streams going to the Chambezé and those that go to the
northern rivers.

We have the Locopa, Loömbé,
Nikéléngé, then Lofubu or Lovu; the last
goes north into Liembe, but accounts are very confused. The
Chambezé rises in the Mambivé country, which is
north-east of Moamba, but near to it.

The forest through which we passed was dense, but scrubby;
trees unhealthy and no drainage except through oozes. On the keel
which forms a clay soil the rain runs off, and the trees attain a
large size. The roads are not soured by the slow process of the
ooze drainage. At present all the slopes having loamy or sandy
soil are oozes, and full to overflowing; a long time is required
for them to discharge their contents. The country generally may
be called one covered with forest.

6th March, 1867.—We came after a short march to a
village on the Molilanga, flowing east into the
Loömbé, here we meet with bananas for the first time,
called, as in Lunda, nkondé. A few trophies from Mazitu
are hung up: Chitapangwa had twenty-four skulls ornamenting his
stockade. The Babemba are decidedly more warlike than any of the
tribes south of them: their villages are stockaded, and have deep
dry ditches round them, so it is likely that Mochimbé will
be effectually checked, and forced to turn his energies to
something else than to marauding.

Our man from Moamba here refused to go further, and we were
put on the wrong track by the headman wading through three
marshes, each at least half a mile broad. The people of the first
village we came to shut their gates on us, then came running
after us; but we declined to enter their village: it is a way of
showing their independence. We made our sheds on a height in
spite of their protests. They said that the gates were shut by
the boys; but when I pointed
out the boy who had done it, he said that he had been ordered to
do it by the chief. If we had gone in now we should have been
looked on as having come under considerable obligations.

8th March, 1867.—We went on to a village on the
Loömbé, where the people showed an opposite
disposition, for not a soul was in it—all were out at their
farms. When the good wife of the place came she gave us all huts,
which saved us from a pelting shower. The boys herding the goats
did not stir as we passed down the sides of the lovely valley.
The Loömbé looks a sluggish stream from a distance.
The herdsman said we were welcome, and he would show the crossing
next day, he also cooked some food for us.

Guided by our host, we went along the Loömbé
westwards till we reached the bridge (rather a rickety affair),
which, when the water is low may be used as a weir. The
Loömbé main stream is 66 feet wide, 6 feet deep, with
at least 200 feet of flood beyond it. The water was knee deep on
the bridge, but clear; the flooded part beyond was waist deep and
the water flowing fast.

All the people are now transplanting tobacco from the spaces
under the eaves of the huts into the fields. It seems unable to
bear the greater heat of summer: they plant also a kind of
liranda, proper for the cold weather. We thought that we were
conferring a boon in giving peas, but we found them generally
propagated all over the country already, and in the cold time
too. We went along the Diola River to an old hut and made a fire;
thence across country to another river, called Loendawé, 6
feet wide, and 9 feet deep.

10th March, 1867.—I have been ill of fever ever
since we left Moamba’s; every step I take jars in the chest, and
I am very weak; I can scarcely keep up the march, though formerly
I was always first, and had to hold in my pace not to leave the
people altogether. I have a constant singing in the ears, and can scarcely hear the
loud tick of the chronometers. The appetite is good, but we have
no proper food, chiefly maëre meal or beans, or mapemba or
ground-nuts, rarely a fowl.

The country is full of hopo-hedges, but the animals are
harassed, and we never see them.

11th March, 1867..—Detained by a set-in rain.
Marks on masses of dolomite elicited the information that a party
of Londa smiths came once to this smelting ground and erected
their works here. We saw an old iron furnace, and masses of
haematite, which seems to have been the ore universally used.

12th March, 1867.—Rain held us back for some
time, but we soon reached Chibué, a stockaded village.
Like them all, it is situated by a stream, with a dense clump of
trees on the waterside of some species of mangrove. They attain
large size, have soft wood, and succulent leaves; the roots
intertwine in the mud, and one has to watch that he does not step
where no roots exist, otherwise he sinks up to the thigh. In a
village the people feel that we are on their property, and crowd
upon us inconveniently; but outside, where we usually erect our
sheds, no such feeling exists, we are each on a level, and they
don’t take liberties.

The Balungu are marked by three or four little knobs on the
temples, and the lobes of the ears are distended by a piece of
wood, which is ornamented with beads; bands of beads go across
the forehead and hold up the hair.

Chibué’s village is at the source of the
Lokwéna, which goes N. and N.E.; a long range of low hills
is on our N.E., which are the Mambwé, or part of them. The
Chambezé rises in them, but further south. Here the
Lokwéna, round whose source we came on starting this
morning to avoid wet feet, and all others north and west of this,
go to the Lofu or Lobu, and into Liemba Lake. Those from the
hills on our right go east into the Loanzu and so into the
Lake.

15th March,
1867.—We now are making for Kasonso, the chief of the
Lake, and a very large country all around it, passing the
Lochenjé, five yards wide, and knee deep, then to the
Chañumba. All flow very rapidly just now and are flooded
with clean water. Everyone carries an axe, as if constantly
warring with the forest. My long-continued fever ill disposes me
to enjoy the beautiful landscape. We are evidently on the ridge,
but people have not a clear conception of where the rivers
run.

19th March, 1867.—A party of young men came out
of the village near which we had encamped to force us to pay
something for not going into their village. “The son of a great
chief ought to be acknowledged,” &c. They had their bows and
arrows with them, and all ready for action. I told them we had
remained near them because they said we could not reach Kasonso
that day. Their headman had given us nothing. After talking a
while, and threatening to do a deal to-morrow, they left, and
through an Almighty Providence nothing was attempted. We moved on
N.W. in forest, with long green tree-covered slopes on our right,
and came to a village of Kasonso in a very lovely valley. Great
green valleys were now scooped out, and many, as the Kakanza, run
into the Lovu.

20th March, 1867.—The same features of country
prevailed, indeed it was impossible to count the streams flowing
N.W. We found Kasonso situated at the confluence of two streams;
he shook hands a long while, and seems a frank sort of man. A
shower of rain set the driver ants on the move, and about two
hours after we had turned in we were overwhelmed by them. They
are called Kalandu or Nkalanda.

To describe this attack is utterly impossible. I wakened
covered with them: my hair was full of them. One by one they cut
into the flesh, and the more they are disturbed, the more vicious
are their bites; they become quite insolent. I went outside the hut, but there they swarmed
everywhere; they covered the legs, biting furiously; it is only
when they are tired that they leave off.

One good trait of the Balungu up here is, they retire when
they see food brought to anyone, neither Babisa nor Makoa had
this sense of delicacy: the Babemba are equally polite.

We have descended considerably into the broad valley of the
Lake, and it feels warmer than on the heights. Cloth here is more
valuable, inasmuch as bark-cloth is scarce. The skins of goats
and wild animals are used, and the kilt is very diminutive among
the women.

22nd March, 1867.—Cross Loéla, thirty feet
wide and one deep, and meet with tsetse fly, though we have seen
none since we left Chitapangwa’s. Kasonso gave us a grand
reception, and we saw men present from Tanganyika; I saw cassava
here, but not in plenty.

28th March, 1867.—Set-in rain and Chuma fell ill.
There are cotton bushes of very large size here of the South
American kind. After sleeping in various villages and crossing
numerous streams, we came to Mombo’s village, near the ridge
overlooking the Lake.

31st March, and 1st April, 1867.—I was too ill to
march through. I offered to go on the 1st, but Kasonso’s son, who
was with us, objected. We went up a low ridge of hills at its
lowest part, and soon after passing the summit the blue water
loomed through the trees. I was detained, but soon heard the boys
firing their muskets on reaching the edge of the ridge, which
allowed of an undisturbed view. This is the south-eastern end of
Liemba, or, as it is sometimes called, Tanganyika.[50] We had to descend at
least 2000 feet before we got to the level of the Lake. It seems
about eighteen or twenty
miles broad, and we could see about thirty miles up to the north.
Four considerable rivers flow into the space before us. The
nearly perpendicular ridge of about 2000 feet extends with breaks
all around, and there, embosomed in tree-covered rocks, reposes
the Lake peacefully in the huge cup-shaped cavity.