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A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries

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Title: A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries

Author: David Livingstone


        
Release date: February 1, 2001 [eBook #2519]
                Most recently updated: January 1, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2519

Credits: Transcribed from the 1894 John Murray edition by David Price


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A POPULAR ACCOUNT OF DR. LIVINGSTONE'S EXPEDITION TO THE ZAMBESI AND ITS TRIBUTARIES ***






Transcribed from the 1894 John Murray edition by David Price, email
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk





A POPULAR ACCOUNT OF
DR. LIVINGSTONE'S EXPEDITION TO THE ZAMBESI AND ITS TRIBUTARIES:
AND THE DISCOVERY OF LAKES SHIRWA AND NYASSA
1858-1864


TO THE RIGHT HON. LORD PALMERSTON,
K.G., G.C.B.

My Lord,

I beg leave to dedicate this Volume to your Lordship, as a tribute justly
due to the great Statesman who has ever had at heart the amelioration of
the African race; and as a token of admiration of the beneficial effects
of that policy which he has so long laboured to establish on the West
Coast of Africa; and which, in improving that region, has most forcibly
shown the need of some similar system on the opposite side of the
Continent.

DAVID LIVINGSTONE.




NOTICE TO THIS WORK.


The name of the late Mr. Charles Livingstone takes a prominent place
amongst those who acted under the leadership of Dr. Livingstone during
the adventurous sojourn of the "Zambesi Expedition" in East Africa.  In
laying the result of their discoveries before the public, it was arranged
that Mr. Charles Livingstone should place his voluminous notes at the
disposal of his brother: they are incorporated in the present work, but
in a necessarily abridged form.




PREFACE.


It has been my object in this work to give as clear an account as I was
able of tracts of country previously unexplored, with their river
systems, natural productions, and capabilities; and to bring before my
countrymen, and all others interested in the cause of humanity, the
misery entailed by the slave-trade in its inland phases; a subject on
which I and my companions are the first who have had any opportunities of
forming a judgment.  The eight years spent in Africa, since my last work
was published, have not, I fear, improved my power of writing English;
but I hope that, whatever my descriptions want in clearness, or literary
skill, may in a measure be compensated by the novelty of the scenes
described, and the additional information afforded on that curse of
Africa, and that shame, even now, in the 19th century, of an European
nation,--the slave-trade.

I took the "Lady Nyassa" to Bombay for the express purpose of selling
her, and might without any difficulty have done so; but with the thought
of parting with her arose, more strongly than ever, the feeling of
disinclination to abandon the East Coast of Africa to the Portuguese and
slave-trading, and I determined to run home and consult my friends before
I allowed the little vessel to pass from my hands.  After, therefore,
having put two Ajawa lads, Chuma and Wakatani, to school under the
eminent missionary the Rev. Dr. Wilson, and having provided
satisfactorily for the native crew, I started homewards with the three
white sailors, and reached London July 20th, 1864.  Mr. and Mrs. Webb, my
much-loved friends, wrote to Bombay inviting me, in the event of my
coming to England, to make Newstead Abbey my headquarters, and on my
arrival renewed their invitation: and though, when I accepted it, I had
no intention of remaining so long with my kind-hearted generous friends,
I stayed with them until April, 1865, and under their roof transcribed
from my own and my brother's journal the whole of this present book.  It
is with heartfelt gratitude I would record their unwearied kindness.  My
acquaintance with Mr. Webb began in Africa, where he was a daring and
successful hunter, and his continued friendship is most valuable because
he has seen missionary work, and he would not accord his respect and
esteem to me had he not believed that I, and my brethren also, were to be
looked on as honest men earnestly trying to do our duty.

The Government have supported the proposal of the Royal Geographical
Society made by my friend Sir Roderick Murchison, and have united with
that body to aid me in another attempt to open Africa to civilizing
influences, and a valued private friend has given a thousand pounds for
the same object.  I propose to go inland, north of the territory which
the Portuguese in Europe claim, and endeavour to commence that system on
the East which has been so eminently successful on the West Coast; a
system combining the repressive efforts of H.M. cruisers with lawful
trade and Christian Missions--the moral and material results of which
have been so gratifying.  I hope to ascend the Rovuma, or some other
river North of Cape Delgado, and, in addition to my other work, shall
strive, by passing along the Northern end of Lake Nyassa and round the
Southern end of Lake Tanganyika, to ascertain the watershed of that part
of Africa.  In so doing, I have no wish to unsettle what with so much
toil and danger was accomplished by Speke and Grant, but rather to
confirm their illustrious discoveries.

I have to acknowledge the obliging readiness of Lord Russell in lending
me the drawings taken by the artist who was in the first instance
attached to the Expedition.  These sketches, with photographs by Charles
Livingstone and Dr. Kirk, have materially assisted in the illustrations.
I would also very sincerely thank my friends Professor Owen and Mr.
Oswell for many valuable hints and other aid in the preparation of this
volume.

Newstead Abbey,

April 16, 1865.




THE ZAMBESI AND ITS TRIBUTARIES.


INTRODUCTION.


Objects of the Expedition--Personal Interest shown by Naval
Authorities--Members of the Zambesi Expedition.

When first I determined on publishing the narrative of my "Missionary
Travels," I had a great misgiving as to whether the criticism my
endeavours might provoke would be friendly or the reverse, more
particularly as I felt that I had then been so long a sojourner in the
wilderness, as to be quite a stranger to the British public.  But I am
now in this, my second essay at authorship, cheered by the conviction
that very many readers, who are personally unknown to me, will receive
this narrative with the kindly consideration and allowances of friends;
and that many more, under the genial influences of an innate love of
liberty, and of a desire to see the same social and religious blessings
they themselves enjoy, disseminated throughout the world, will sympathize
with me in the efforts by which I have striven, however imperfectly, to
elevate the position and character of our fellow-men in Africa.  This
knowledge makes me doubly anxious to render my narrative acceptable to
all my readers; but, in the absence of any excellence in literary
composition, the natural consequence of my pursuits, I have to offer only
a simple account of a mission which, with respect to the objects proposed
to be thereby accomplished, formed a noble contrast to some of the
earlier expeditions to Eastern Africa.  I believe that the information it
will give, respecting the people visited and the countries traversed,
will not be materially gainsaid by any future commonplace traveller like
myself, who may be blest with fair health and a gleam of sunshine in his
breast.  This account is written in the earnest hope that it may
contribute to that information which will yet cause the great and fertile
continent of Africa to be no longer kept wantonly sealed, but made
available as the scene of European enterprise, and will enable its people
to take a place among the nations of the earth, thus securing the
happiness and prosperity of tribes now sunk in barbarism or debased by
slavery; and, above all, I cherish the hope that it may lead to the
introduction of the blessings of the Gospel.

In order that the following narrative may be clearly understood, it is
necessary to call to mind some things which took place previous to the
Zambesi Expedition being sent out.  Most geographers are aware that,
before the discovery of Lake Ngami and the well-watered country in which
the Makololo dwell, the idea prevailed that a large part of the interior
of Africa consisted of sandy deserts, into which rivers ran and were
lost.  During my journey in 1852-6, from sea to sea, across the south
intertropical part of the continent, it was found to be a well-watered
country, with large tracts of fine fertile soil covered with forest, and
beautiful grassy valleys, occupied by a considerable population; and one
of the most wonderful waterfalls in the world was brought to light.  The
peculiar form of the continent was then ascertained to be an elevated
plateau, somewhat depressed in the centre, and with fissures in the sides
by which the rivers escaped to the sea; and this great fact in physical
geography can never be referred to without calling to mind the remarkable
hypothesis by which the distinguished President of the Royal Geographical
Society (Sir Roderick I. Murchison) clearly indicated this peculiarity,
before it was verified by actual observation of the altitudes of the
country and by the courses of the rivers.  New light was thrown on other
portions of the continent by the famous travels of Dr. Barth, by the
researches of the Church of England missionaries Krapf, Erkhardt, and
Rebman, by the persevering efforts of Dr. Baikie, the last martyr to the
climate and English enterprise, by the journey of Francis Galton, and by
the most interesting discoveries of Lakes Tanganyika and Victoria Nyanza
by Captain Burton, and by Captain Speke, whose untimely end we all so
deeply deplore.  Then followed the researches of Van der Decken,
Thornton, and others; and last of all the grand discovery of the main
source of the Nile, which every Englishman must feel an honest pride in
knowing was accomplished by our gallant countrymen, Speke and Grant.  The
fabulous torrid zone, of parched and burning sand, was now proved to be a
well-watered region resembling North America in its fresh-water lakes,
and India in its hot humid lowlands, jungles, ghauts, and cool highland
plains.

The main object of this Zambesi Expedition, as our instructions from Her
Majesty's Government explicitly stated, was to extend the knowledge
already attained of the geography and mineral and agricultural resources
of Eastern and Central Africa--to improve our acquaintance with the
inhabitants, and to endeavour to engage them to apply themselves to
industrial pursuits and to the cultivation of their lands, with a view to
the production of raw material to be exported to England in return for
British manufactures; and it was hoped that, by encouraging the natives
to occupy themselves in the development of the resources of the country,
a considerable advance might be made towards the extinction of the slave-
trade, as they would not be long in discovering that the former would
eventually be a more certain source of profit than the latter.  The
Expedition was sent in accordance with the settled policy of the English
Government; and the Earl of Clarendon, being then at the head of the
Foreign Office, the Mission was organized under his immediate care.  When
a change of Government ensued, we experienced the same generous
countenance and sympathy from the Earl of Malmesbury, as we had
previously received from Lord Clarendon; and, on the accession of Earl
Russell to the high office he has so long filled, we were always favoured
with equally ready attention and the same prompt assistance.  Thus the
conviction was produced that our work embodied the principles, not of any
one party, but of the hearts of the statesmen and of the people of
England generally.  The Expedition owes great obligations to the Lords of
the Admiralty for their unvarying readiness to render us every assistance
in their power; and to the warm-hearted and ever-obliging hydrographer to
the Admiralty, the late Admiral Washington, as a subordinate, but most
effective agent, our heartfelt gratitude is also due; and we must ever
thankfully acknowledge that our efficiency was mainly due to the kind
services of Admirals Sir Frederick Grey, Sir Baldwin Walker, and all the
naval officers serving under them on the East Coast.  Nor must I omit to
record our obligations to Mr. Skead, R.N.  The Luawe was carefully
sounded and surveyed by this officer, whose skilful and zealous labours,
both on that river, and afterwards on the Lower Zambesi, were deserving
of all praise.

In speaking of what has been done by the Expedition, it should always be
understood that Dr. Kirk, Mr. Charles Livingstone, Mr. R. Thornton, and
others composed it.  In using the plural number they are meant, and I
wish to bear testimony to the untiring zeal, energy, courage, and
perseverance with which my companions laboured; undaunted by
difficulties, dangers, or hard fare.  It is my firm belief that, were
their services required in any other capacity, they might be implicitly
relied on to perform their duty like men.  The reason why Dr. Kirk's name
does not appear on the title-page of this narrative is, because it is
hoped that he may give an account of the botany and natural history of
the Expedition in a separate work from his own pen.  He collected above
four thousand species of plants, specimens of most of the valuable woods,
of the different native manufactures, of the articles of food, and of the
different kinds of cotton from every spot we visited, and a great variety
of birds and insects; besides making meteorological observations, and
affording, as our instructions required, medical assistance to the
natives in every case where he could be of any use.

Charles Livingstone was also fully occupied in his duties in following
out the general objects of our mission, in encouraging the culture of
cotton, in making many magnetic and meteorological observations, in
photographing so long as the materials would serve, and in collecting a
large number of birds, insects, and other objects of interest.  The
collections, being Government property, have been forwarded to the
British Museum, and to the Royal Botanic, Gardens at Kew; and should Dr.
Kirk undertake their description, three or four years will be required
for the purpose.

Though collections were made, it was always distinctly understood that,
however desirable these and our explorations might be, "Her Majesty's
Government attached more importance to the moral influence that might be
exerted on the minds of the natives by a well-regulated and orderly
household of Europeans setting an example of consistent moral conduct to
all who might witness it; treating the people with kindness, and
relieving their wants, teaching them to make experiments in agriculture,
explaining to them the more simple arts, imparting to them religious
instruction as far as they are capable of receiving it, and inculcating
peace and good will to each other."

It would be tiresome to enumerate in detail all the little acts which
were performed by us while following out our instructions.  As a rule,
whenever the steamer stopped to take in wood, or for any other purpose,
Dr. Kirk and Charles Livingstone went ashore to their duties: one of our
party, who it was intended should navigate the vessel and lay down the
geographical positions, having failed to answer the expectations formed
of him, these duties fell chiefly to my share.  They involved a
considerable amount of night work, in which I was always cheerfully aided
by my companions, and the results were regularly communicated to our warm
and ever-ready friend, Sir Thomas Maclear of the Royal Observatory, Cape
of Good Hope.  While this work was going through the press, we were
favoured with the longitudes of several stations determined from observed
occultations of stars by the moon, and from eclipses and reappearances of
Jupiter's satellites, by Mr. Mann, the able Assistant to the Cape
Astronomer Royal; the lunars are still in the hands of Mr. G. W. H.
Maclear of the same Observatory.  In addition to these, the altitudes,
variations of the compass, latitudes and longitudes, as calculated on the
spot, appear in the map by Mr. Arrowsmith, and it is hoped may not differ
much from the results of the same data in abler bands.  The office of
"skipper," which, rather than let the Expedition come to a stand, I
undertook, required no great ability in one "not too old to learn:" it
saved a salary, and, what was much more valuable than gold, saved the
Expedition from the drawback of any one thinking that he was
indispensable to its further progress.  The office required attention to
the vessel both at rest and in motion.  It also involved considerable
exposure to the sun; and to my regret kept me from much anticipated
intercourse with the natives, and the formation of full vocabularies of
their dialects.

I may add that all wearisome repetitions are as much as possible avoided
in the narrative; and, our movements and operations having previously
been given in a series of despatches, the attempt is now made to give as
fairly as possible just what would most strike any person of ordinary
intelligence in passing through the country.  For the sake of the
freshness which usually attaches to first impressions, the Journal of
Charles Livingstone has been incorporated in the narrative; and many
remarks made by the natives, which ho put down at the moment of
translation, will convey to others the same ideas as they did to
ourselves.  Some are no doubt trivial; but it is by the little acts and
words of every-day life that character is truly and best known.  And
doubtless many will prefer to draw their own conclusions from them rather
than to be schooled by us.



CHAPTER I.


Arrival at the Zambesi--Rebel Warfare--Wild Animals--Shupanga--Hippopotamus
Hunters--The Makololo--Crocodiles.

The Expedition left England on the 10th of March, 1858, in Her Majesty's
Colonial Steamer "Pearl," commanded by Captain Duncan; and, after
enjoying the generous hospitality of our friends at Cape Town, with the
obliging attentions of Sir George Grey, and receiving on board Mr.
Francis Skead, R.N., as surveyor, we reached the East Coast in the
following May.

Our first object was to explore the Zambesi, its mouths and tributaries,
with a view to their being used as highways for commerce and Christianity
to pass into the vast interior of Africa.  When we came within five or
six miles of the land, the yellowish-green tinge of the sea in soundings
was suddenly succeeded by muddy water with wrack, as of a river in flood.
The two colours did not intermingle, but the line of contact was as
sharply defined as when the ocean meets the land.  It was observed that
under the wrack--consisting of reeds, sticks, and leaves,--and even under
floating cuttlefish bones and Portuguese "men-of-war" (Physalia), numbers
of small fish screen themselves from the eyes of birds of prey, and from
the rays of the torrid sun.

We entered the river Luawe first, because its entrance is so smooth and
deep, that the "Pearl," drawing 9 feet 7 inches, went in without a boat
sounding ahead.  A small steam launch having been brought out from
England in three sections on the deck of the "Pearl" was hoisted out and
screwed together at the anchorage, and with her aid the exploration was
commenced.  She was called the "Ma Robert," after Mrs. Livingstone, to
whom the natives, according to their custom, gave the name Ma (mother) of
her eldest son.  The harbour is deep, but shut in by mangrove swamps; and
though the water a few miles up is fresh, it is only a tidal river; for,
after ascending some seventy miles, it was found to end in marshes
blocked up with reeds and succulent aquatic plants.  As the Luawe had
been called "West Luabo," it was supposed to be a branch of the Zambesi,
the main stream of which is called "Luabo," or "East Luabo."  The "Ma
Robert" and "Pearl" then went to what proved to be a real mouth of the
river we sought.

The Zambesi pours its waters into the ocean by four mouths, namely, the
Milambe, which is the most westerly, the Kongone, the Luabo, and the
Timbwe (or Muselo).  When the river is in flood, a natural canal running
parallel with the coast, and winding very much among the swamps, forms a
secret way for conveying slaves from Quillimane to the bays Massangano
and Nameara, or to the Zambesi itself.  The Kwakwa, or river of
Quillimane, some sixty miles distant from the mouth of the Zambesi, has
long been represented as the principal entrance to the Zambesi, in order,
as the Portuguese now maintain, that the English cruisers might be
induced to watch the false mouth, while slaves were quietly shipped from
the true one; and, strange to say, this error has lately been propagated
by a map issued by the colonial minister of Portugal.

After the examination of three branches by the able and energetic
surveyor, Francis Skead, R.N., the Kongone was found to be the best
entrance.  The immense amount of sand brought down by the Zambesi has in
the course of ages formed a sort of promontory, against which the long
swell of the Indian Ocean, beating during the prevailing winds, has
formed bars, which, acting against the waters of the delta, may have led
to their exit sideways.  The Kongone is one of those lateral branches,
and the safest; inasmuch as the bar has nearly two fathoms on it at low
water, and the rise at spring tides is from twelve to fourteen feet.  The
bar is narrow, the passage nearly straight, and, were it buoyed and a
beacon placed on Pearl Island, would always be safe to a steamer.  When
the wind is from the east or north, the bar is smooth; if from the south
and south-east, it has a heavy break on it, and is not to be attempted in
boats.  A strong current setting to the east when the tide is flowing,
and to the west when ebbing, may drag a boat or ship into the breakers.
If one is doubtful of his longitude and runs east, he will soon see the
land at Timbwe disappear away to the north; and coming west again, he can
easily make out East Luabo from its great size; and Kongone follows
several miles west.  East Luabo has a good but long bar, and not to be
attempted unless the wind be north-east or east.  It has sometimes been
called "Barra Catrina," and was used in the embarkations of slaves.  This
may have been the "River of Good Signs," of Vasco da Gama, as the mouth
is more easily seen from the seaward than any other; but the absence of
the pillar dedicated by that navigator to "St. Raphael," leaves the
matter in doubt.  No Portuguese live within eighty miles of any mouth of
the Zambesi.

The Kongone is five miles east of the Milambe, or western branch, and
seven miles west from East Luabo, which again is five miles from the
Timbwe.  We saw but few natives, and these, by escaping from their canoes
into the mangrove thickets the moment they caught sight of us, gave
unmistakeable indications that they had no very favourable opinion of
white men.  They were probably fugitives from Portuguese slavery.  In the
grassy glades buffaloes, wart-hogs, and three kinds of antelope were
abundant, and the latter easily obtained.  A few hours' hunting usually
provided venison enough for a score of men for several days.

On proceeding up the Kongone branch it was found that, by keeping well in
the bends, which the current had worn deep, shoals were easily avoided.
The first twenty miles are straight and deep; then a small and rather
tortuous natural canal leads off to the right, and, after about five
miles, during which the paddles almost touch the floating grass of the
sides, ends in the broad Zambesi.  The rest of the Kongone branch comes
out of the main stream considerably higher up as the outgoing branch
called Doto.

The first twenty miles of the Kongone are enclosed in mangrove jungle;
some of the trees are ornamented with orchilla weed, which appears never
to have been gathered.  Huge ferns, palm bushes, and occasionally wild
date-palms peer out in the forest, which consists of different species of
mangroves; the bunches of bright yellow, though scarcely edible fruit,
contrasting prettily with the graceful green leaves.  In some spots the
Milola, an umbrageous hibiscus, with large yellowish flowers, grows in
masses along the bank.  Its bark is made into cordage, and is especially
valuable for the manufacture of ropes attached to harpoons for killing
the hippopotamus.  The Pandanus or screw-palm, from which sugar bags are
made in the Mauritius, also appears, and on coming out of the canal into
the Zambesi many are so tall as in the distance to remind us of the
steeples of our native land, and make us relish the remark of an old
sailor, "that but one thing was wanting to complete the picture, and that
was a 'grog-shop near the church.'"  We find also a few guava and lime-
trees growing wild, but the natives claim the crops.  The dark woods
resound with the lively and exultant song of the kinghunter (_Halcyon
striolata_), as he sits perched on high among the trees.  As the steamer
moves on through the winding channel, a pretty little heron or bright
kingfisher darts out in alarm from the edge of the bank, flies on ahead a
short distance, and settles quietly down to be again frightened off in a
few seconds as we approach.  The magnificent fishhawk (_Halietus
vocifer_) sits on the top of a mangrove-tree, digesting his morning meal
of fresh fish, and is clearly unwilling to stir until the imminence of
the danger compels him at last to spread his great wings for flight.  The
glossy ibis, acute of ear to a remarkable degree, hears from afar the
unwonted sound of the paddles, and, springing from the mud where his
family has been quietly feasting, is off, screaming out his loud, harsh,
and defiant Ha! ha! ha! long before the danger is near.

Several native huts now peep out from the bananas and cocoa-palms on the
right bank; they stand on piles a few feet above the low damp ground, and
their owners enter them by means of ladders.  The soil is wonderfully
rich, and the gardens are really excellent.  Rice is cultivated largely;
sweet potatoes, pumpkins, tomatoes, cabbages, onions (shalots), peas, a
little cotton, and sugar-cane are also raised.  It is said that English
potatoes, when planted at Quillimane on soil resembling this, in the
course of two years become in taste like sweet potatoes (_Convolvulus
batatas_), and are like our potato frosted.  The whole of the fertile
region extending from the Kongone canal to beyond Mazaro, some eighty
miles in length, and fifty in breadth, is admirably adapted for the
growth of sugar-cane; and were it in the hands of our friends at the
Cape, would supply all Europe with sugar.  The remarkably few people seen
appear to be tolerably well fed, but there was a dearth of clothing among
them; all were blacks, and nearly all Portuguese "colonos" or serfs.  They
manifested no fear of white men, and stood in groups on the bank gazing
in astonishment at the steamers, especially at the "Pearl," which
accompanied us thus far up the river.  One old man who came on board
remarked that never before had he seen any vessel so large as the
"Pearl," it was like a village, "Was it made out of one tree?"  All were
eager traders, and soon came off to the ship in light swift canoes with
every kind of fruit and food they possessed; a few brought honey and
beeswax, which are found in quantities in the mangrove forests.  As the
ships steamed off, many anxious sellers ran along the bank, holding up
fowls, baskets of rice and meal, and shouting "Malonda, Malonda," "things
for sale," while others followed in canoes, which they sent through the
water with great velocity by means of short broad-bladed paddles.

Finding the "Pearl's" draught too great for that part of the river near
the island of Simbo, where the branch called the Doto is given off to the
Kongone on the right bank, and another named Chinde departs to the secret
canal already mentioned on the left, the goods belonging to the
expedition were taken out of her, and placed on one of the grassy islands
about forty miles from the bar.  The "Pearl" then left us, and we had to
part with our good friends Duncan and Skead; the former for Ceylon, the
latter to return to his duties as Government Surveyor at the Cape.

Of those who eventually did the work of the expedition the majority took
a sober common-sense view of the enterprise in which we were engaged.
Some remained on Expedition Island from the 18th June until the 13th
August, while the launch and pinnace were carrying the goods up to
Shupanga and Senna.  The country was in a state of war, our luggage was
in danger, and several of our party were exposed to disease from
inactivity in the malaria of the delta.  Here some had their first
introduction to African life, and African fever.  Those alone were safe
who were actively employed with the vessels, and of course, remembering
the perilous position of their fellows, they strained every nerve to
finish the work and take them away.

Large columns of smoke rose daily from different points of the horizon,
showing that the natives were burning off the immense crops of tall
grass, here a nuisance, however valuable elsewhere.  A white cloud was
often observed to rest on the head of the column, as if a current of hot
damp air was sent up by the heat of the flames and its moisture was
condensed at the top.  Rain did not follow, though theorists have
imagined that in such cases it ought.

Large game, buffaloes, and zebras, were abundant abreast the island, but
no men could be seen.  On the mainland, over on the right bank of the
river, we were amused by the eccentric gyrations and evolutions of flocks
of small seed-eating birds, who in their flight wheeled into compact
columns with such military precision as to give us the impression that
they must be guided by a leader, and all directed by the same signal.
Several other kinds of small birds now go in flocks, and among others the
large Senegal swallow.  The presence of this bird, being clearly in a
state of migration from the north, while the common swallow of the
country, and the brown kite are away beyond the equator, leads to the
conjecture that there may be a double migration, namely, of birds from
torrid climates to the more temperate, as this now is, as well as from
severe winters to sunny regions; but this could not be verified by such
birds of passage as ourselves.

On reaching Mazaro, the mouth of a narrow creek which in floods
communicates with the Quillimane river, we found that the Portuguese were
at war with a half-caste named Mariano _alias_ Matakenya, from whom they
had generally fled, and who, having built a stockade near the mouth of
the Shire, owned all the country between that river and Mazaro.  Mariano
was best known by his native name Matakenya, which in their tongue means
"trembling," or quivering as trees do in a storm.  He was a keen slave-
hunter, and kept a large number of men, well armed with muskets.  It is
an entire mistake to suppose that the slave trade is one of buying and
selling alone; or that engagements can be made with labourers in Africa
as they are in India; Mariano, like other Portuguese, had no labour to
spare.  He had been in the habit of sending out armed parties on slave-
hunting forays among the helpless tribes to the north-east, and carrying
down the kidnapped victims in chains to Quillimane, where they were sold
by his brother-in-law Cruz Coimbra, and shipped as "Free emigrants" to
the French island of Bourbon.  So long as his robberies and murders were
restricted to the natives at a distance, the authorities did not
interfere; but his men, trained to deeds of violence and bloodshed in
their slave forays, naturally began to practise on the people nearer at
hand, though belonging to the Portuguese, and even in the village of
Senna, under the guns of the fort.  A gentleman of the highest standing
told us that, while at dinner with his family, it was no uncommon event
for a slave to rush into the room pursued by one of Mariano's men with
spear in hand to murder him.

The atrocities of this villain, aptly termed by the late governor of
Quillimane a "notorious robber and murderer," became at length
intolerable.  All the Portuguese spoke of him as a rare monster of
inhumanity.  It is unaccountable why half-castes, such as he, are so much
more cruel than the Portuguese, but such is undoubtedly the case.

It was asserted that one of his favourite modes of creating an impression
in the country, and making his name dreaded, was to spear his captives
with his own hands.  On one occasion he is reported to have thus killed
forty poor wretches placed in a row before him.  We did not at first
credit these statements, and thought that they were merely exaggerations
of the incensed Portuguese, who naturally enough were exasperated with
him for stopping their trade, and harbouring their runaway slaves; but we
learned afterwards from the natives, that the accounts given us by the
Portuguese had not exceeded the truth; and that Mariano was quite as
great a ruffian as they had described him.  One expects slave-owners to
treat their human chattels as well as men do other animals of value, but
the slave-trade seems always to engender an unreasoning ferocity, if not
blood-thirstiness.

War was declared against Mariano, and a force sent to take him; he
resisted for a time; but seeing that he was likely to get the worst of
it, and knowing that the Portuguese governors have small salaries, and
are therefore "disposed to be reasonable," he went down to Quillimane to
"arrange" with the Governor, as it is termed here; but Colonel da Silva
put him in prison, and then sent him for trial to Mozambique.  When we
came into the country, his people were fighting under his brother Bonga.
The war had lasted six months and stopped all trade on the river during
that period.  On the 15th June we first came into contact with the
"rebels."  They appeared as a crowd of well-armed and
fantastically-dressed people under the trees at Mazaro.  On explaining
that we were English, some at once came on board and called to those on
shore to lay aside their arms.  On landing among them we saw that many
had the branded marks of slaves on their chests, but they warmly approved
our objects, and knew well the distinctive character of our nation on the
slave question.  The shout at our departure contrasted strongly with the
suspicious questioning on our approach.  Hence-forward we were recognized
as friends by both parties.

At a later period we were taking in wood within a mile of the scene of
action, but a dense fog prevented our hearing the noise of a battle at
Mazaro; and on arriving there, immediately after, many natives and
Portuguese appeared on the bank.

Dr. Livingstone, landing to salute some of his old friends among the
latter, found himself in the sickening smell, and among the mutilated
bodies of the slain; he was requested to take the Governor, who was very
ill of fever, across to Shupanga, and just as he gave his assent, the
rebels renewed the fight, and the balls began to whistle about in all
directions.  After trying in vain to get some one to assist the Governor
down to the steamer, and unwilling to leave him in such danger, as the
officer sent to bring our Kroomen did not appear, he went into the hut,
and dragged along his Excellency to the ship.  He was a very tall man,
and as he swayed hither and thither from weakness, weighing down Dr.
Livingstone, it must have appeared like one drunken man helping another.
Some of the Portuguese white soldiers stood fighting with great bravery
against the enemy in front, while a few were coolly shooting at their own
slaves for fleeing into the river behind.  The rebels soon retired, and
the Portuguese escaped to a sandbank in the Zambesi, and thence to an
island opposite Shupanga, where they lay for some weeks, looking at the
rebels on the mainland opposite.  This state of inactivity on the part of
the Portuguese could not well be helped, as they had expended all their
ammunition and were waiting anxiously for supplies; hoping, no doubt
sincerely, that the enemy might not hear that their powder had failed.
Luckily their hopes were not disappointed; the rebels waited until a
supply came, and were then repulsed after three-and-a-half hours' hard
fighting.  Two months afterwards Mariano's stockade was burned, the
garrison having fled in a panic; and as Bonga declared that he did not
wish to fight with this Governor, with whom he had no quarrel, the war
soon came to an end.  His Excellency meanwhile, being a disciple of
Raspail, had taken nothing for the fever but a little camphor, and after
he was taken to Shupanga became comatose.  More potent remedies were
administered to him, to his intense disgust, and he soon recovered.  The
Colonel in attendance, whom he never afterwards forgave, encouraged the
treatment.  "Give what is right; never mind him; he is very (_muito_)
impertinent:" and all night long, with every draught of water the Colonel
gave a quantity of quinine: the consequence was, next morning the patient
was cinchonized and better.

For sixty or seventy miles before reaching Mazaro, the scenery is tame
and uninteresting.  On either hand is a dreary uninhabited expanse, of
the same level grassy plains, with merely a few trees to relieve the
painful monotony.  The round green top of the stately palm-tree looks at
a distance, when its grey trunk cannot be seen, as though hung in mid-
air.  Many flocks of busy sand-martins, which here, and as far south as
the Orange River, do not migrate, have perforated the banks two or three
feet horizontally, in order to place their nests at the ends, and are now
chasing on restless wing the myriads of tropical insects.  The broad
river has many low islands, on which are seen various kinds of waterfowl,
such as geese, spoonbills, herons, and flamingoes.  Repulsive crocodiles,
as with open jaws they sleep and bask in the sun on the low banks, soon
catch the sound of the revolving paddles and glide quietly into the
stream.  The hippopotamus, having selected some still reach of the river
to spend the day, rises out of the bottom, where he has been enjoying his
morning bath after the labours of the night on shore, blows a puff of
spray from his nostrils, shakes the water out of his ears, puts his
enormous snout up straight and yawns, sounding a loud alarm to the rest
of the herd, with notes as of a monster bassoon.

As we approach Mazaro the scenery improves.  We see the well-wooded
Shupanga ridge stretching to the left, and in front blue hills rise dimly
far in the distance.  There is no trade whatever on the Zambesi below
Mazaro.  All the merchandise of Senna and Tette is brought to that point
in large canoes, and thence carried six miles across the country on men's
heads to be reshipped on a small stream that flows into the Kwakwa, or
Quillimane river, which is entirely distinct from the Zambesi.  Only on
rare occasions and during the highest floods can canoes pass from the
Zambesi to the Quillimane river through the narrow natural canal _Mutu_.
The natives of Maruru, or the country around Mazaro, the word Mazaro
meaning the "mouth of the creek" Mutu, have a bad name among the
Portuguese; they are said to be expert thieves, and the merchants
sometimes suffer from their adroitness while the goods are in transit
from one river to the other.  In general they are trained canoe-men, and
man many of the canoes that ply thence to Senna and Tette; their pay is
small, and, not trusting the traders, they must always have it before
they start.  Africans being prone to assign plausible reasons for their
conduct, like white men in more enlightened lands, it is possible they
may be good-humouredly giving their reason for insisting on being
invariably paid in advance in the words of their favourite canoe-song,
"Uachingere, Uachingere Kale," "You cheated me of old;" or, "Thou art
slippery slippery truly."

The Landeens or Zulus are lords of the right bank of the Zambesi; and the
Portuguese, by paying this fighting tribe a pretty heavy annual tribute,
practically admit this.  Regularly every year come the Zulus in force to
Senna and Shupanga for the accustomed tribute.  The few wealthy merchants
of Senna groan under the burden, for it falls chiefly on them.  They
submit to pay annually 200 pieces of cloth, of sixteen yards each,
besides beads and brass wire, knowing that refusal involves war, which
might end in the loss of all they possess.  The Zulus appear to keep as
sharp a look out on the Senna and Shupanga people as ever landlord did on
tenant; the more they cultivate, the more tribute they have to pay.  On
asking some of them why they did not endeavour to raise certain highly
profitable products, we were answered, "What's the use of our cultivating
any more than we do? the Landeens would only come down on us for more
tribute."

In the forests of Shupanga the Mokundu-kundu tree abounds; its bright
yellow wood makes good boat-masts, and yields a strong bitter medicine
for fever; the Gunda-tree attains to an immense size; its timber is hard,
rather cross-grained, with masses of silica deposited in its substance;
the large canoes, capable of carrying three or four tons, are made of its
wood.  For permission to cut these trees, a Portuguese gentleman of
Quillimane was paying the Zulus, in 1858, two hundred dollars a year, and
his successor now pays three hundred.

At Shupanga, a one-storied stone house stands on the prettiest site on
the river.  In front a sloping lawn, with a fine mango orchard at its
southern end, leads down to the broad Zambesi, whose green islands repose
on the sunny bosom of the tranquil waters.  Beyond, northwards, lie vast
fields and forests of palm and tropical trees, with the massive mountain
of Morambala towering amidst the white clouds; and further away more
distant hills appear in the blue horizon.  This beautifully situated
house possesses a melancholy interest from having been associated in a
most mournful manner with the history of two English expeditions.  Here,
in 1826, poor Kirkpatrick, of Captain Owen's Surveying Expedition, died
of fever; and here, in 1862, died, of the same fatal disease, the beloved
wife of Dr. Livingstone.  A hundred yards east of the house, under a
large Baobab-tree, far from their native land, both are buried.

The Shupanga-house was the head-quarters of the Governor during the
Mariano war.  He told us that the province of Mosambique costs the Home
Government between 5000_l_. and 6000_l_. annually, and East Africa yields
no reward in return to the mother country.  We met there several other
influential Portuguese.  All seemed friendly, and expressed their
willingness to assist the expedition in every way in their power; and
better still, Colonel Nunes and Major Sicard put their good-will into
action, by cutting wood for the steamer and sending men to help in
unloading.  It was observable that not one of them knew anything about
the Kongone Mouth; all thought that we had come in by the "Barra
Catrina," or East Luabo.  Dr. Kirk remained here a few weeks; and,
besides exploring a small lake twenty miles to the south-west, had the
sole medical care of the sick and wounded soldiers, for which valuable
services he received the thanks of the Portuguese Government.  We wooded
up at this place with African ebony or black wood, and lignum vitae; the
latter tree attains an immense size, sometimes as much as four feet in
diameter; our engineer, knowing what ebony and lignum vitae cost at home,
said it made his heart sore to burn wood so valuable.  Though botanically
different, they are extremely alike; the black wood as grown in some
districts is superior, and the lignum vitae inferior in quality, to these
timbers brought from other countries.  Caoutchouc, or India-rubber, is
found in abundance inland from Shupanga-house, and calumba-root is
plentiful in the district; indigo, in quantities, propagates itself close
to the banks of the Aver, and was probably at some time cultivated, for
manufactured indigo was once exported.  The India-rubber is made into
balls for a game resembling "fives," and calumba-root is said to be used
as a mordant for certain colours, but not as a dye itself.

We started for Tette on the 17th August, 1858; the navigation was rather
difficult, the Zambesi from Shupanga to Senna being wide and full of
islands; our black pilot, John Scisssors, a serf, sometimes took the
wrong channel and ran us aground.  Nothing abashed, he would exclaim in
an aggrieved tone, "This is not the path, it is back yonder."  "Then why
didn't you go yonder at first?" growled out our Kroomen, who had the work
of getting the vessel off.  When they spoke roughly to poor Scissors, the
weak cringing slave-spirit came forth in, "Those men scold me so, I am
ready to run away."  This mode of finishing up an engagement is not at
all uncommon on the Zambesi; several cases occurred, when we were on the
river, of hired crews decamping with most of the goods in their charge.
If the trader cannot redress his own wrongs, he has to endure them.  The
Landeens will not surrender a fugitive slave, even to his master.  One
belonging to Mr. Azevedo fled, and was, as a great favour only, returned
after a present of much more than his value.

We landed to wood at Shamoara, just below the confluence of the Shire.
Its quartz hills are covered with trees and gigantic grasses; the buaze,
a small forest-tree, grows abundantly; it is a species of polygala; its
beautiful clusters of sweet-scented pinkish flowers perfume the air with
a rich fragrance; its seeds produce a fine drying oil, and the bark of
the smaller branches yields a fibre finer and stronger than flax; with
which the natives make their nets for fishing.  Bonga, the brother of the
rebel Mariano, and now at the head of the revolted natives, with some of
his principal men came to see us, and were perfectly friendly, though
told of our having carried the sick Governor across to Shupanga, and of
our having cured him of fever.  On our acquainting Bonga with the object
of the expedition, he remarked that we should suffer no hindrance from
his people in our good work.  He sent us a present of rice, two sheep,
and a quantity of firewood.  He never tried to make any use of us in the
strife; the other side showed less confidence, by carefully
cross-questioning our pilot whether we had sold any powder to the enemy.
We managed, however, to keep on good terms with both rebels and
Portuguese.

Senna is built on a low plain, on the right bank of the Zambesi, with
some pretty detached hills in the background; it is surrounded by a
stockade of living trees to protect its inhabitants from their
troublesome and rebellious neighbours.  It contains a few large houses,
some ruins of others, and a weather-beaten cross, where once stood a
church; a mound shows the site of an ancient monastery, and a mud fort by
the river is so dilapidated, that cows were grazing peacefully over its
prostrate walls.

The few Senna merchants, having little or no trade in the village, send
parties of trusted slaves into the interior to hunt for and purchase
ivory.  It is a dull place, and very conducive to sleep.  One is sure to
take fever in Senna on the second day, if by chance one escapes it on the
first day of a sojourn there; but no place is entirely bad.  Senna has
one redeeming feature: it is the native village of the large-hearted and
hospitable Senhor H. A. Ferrao.  The benevolence of this gentleman is
unbounded.  The poor black stranger passing through the town goes to him
almost as a matter of course for food, and is never sent away hungry.  In
times of famine the starving natives are fed by his generosity; hundreds
of his own people he never sees except on these occasions; and the only
benefit derived from being their master is, that they lean on him as a
patriarchal chief, and he has the satisfaction of settling their
differences, and of saving their lives in seasons of drought and
scarcity.

Senhor Ferrao received us with his usual kindness, and gave us a
bountiful breakfast.  During the day the principal men of the place
called, and were unanimously of opinion that the free natives would
willingly cultivate large quantities of cotton, could they find
purchasers.  They had in former times exported largely both cotton and
cloth to Manica and even to Brazil.  "On their own soil," they declared,
"the natives are willing to labour and trade, provided only they can do
so to advantage: when it is for their interest, blacks work very hard."
We often remarked subsequently that this was the opinion of men of
energy; and that all settlers of activity, enterprise, and sober habits
had become rich, while those who were much addicted to lying on their
backs smoking, invariably complained of the laziness of the negroes, and
were poor, proud, and despicable.

Beyond Pita lies the little island Nyamotobsi, where we met a small
fugitive tribe of hippopotamus hunters, who had been driven by war from
their own island in front.  All were busy at work; some were making
gigantic baskets for grain, the men plaiting from the inside.  With the
civility so common among them the chief ordered a mat to be spread for us
under a shed, and then showed us the weapon with which they kill the
hippopotamus; it is a short iron harpoon inserted in the end of a long
pole, but being intended to unship, it is made fast to a strong cord of
milola, or hibiscus, bark, which is wound closely round the entire length
of the shaft, and secured at its opposite end.  Two men in a swift canoe
steal quietly down on the sleeping animal.  The bowman dashes the harpoon
into the unconscious victim, while the quick steersman sweeps the light
craft back with his broad paddle; the force of the blow separates the
harpoon from its corded handle, which, appearing on the surface,
sometimes with an inflated bladder attached, guides the hunters to where
the wounded beast hides below until they despatch it.

These hippopotamus hunters form a separate people, called Akombwi, or
Mapodzo, and rarely--the women it is said never--intermarry with any
other tribe.  The reason for their keeping aloof from certain of the
natives on the Zambesi is obvious enough, some having as great an
abhorrence of hippopotamus meat as Mahomedans have of swine's flesh.  Our
pilot, Scissors, was one of this class; he would not even cook his food
in a pot which had contained hippopotamus meat, preferring to go hungry
till he could find another; and yet he traded eagerly in the animal's
tusks, and ate with great relish the flesh of the foul-feeding marabout.
These hunters go out frequently on long expeditions, taking in their
canoes their wives and children, cooking-pots, and sleeping-mats.  When
they reach a good game district, they erect temporary huts on the bank,
and there dry the meat they have killed.  They are rather a
comely-looking race, with very black smooth skins, and never disfigure
themselves with the frightful ornaments of some of the other tribes.  The
chief declined to sell a harpoon, because they could not now get the
milola bark from the coast on account of Mariano's war.  He expressed
some doubts about our being children of the same Almighty Father,
remarking that "they could not become white, let them wash ever so much."
We made him a present of a bit of cloth, and he very generously gave us
in return some fine fresh fish and Indian corn.

The heat of the weather steadily increases during this month (August),
and foggy mornings are now rare.  A strong breeze ending in a gale blows
up stream every night.  It came in the afternoon a few weeks ago, then
later, and at present its arrival is near midnight; it makes our frail
cabin-doors fly open before it, but continues only for a short time, and
is succeeded by a dead calm.  Game becomes more abundant; near our
wooding-places we see herds of zebras, both Burchell's and the mountain
variety, pallahs (_Antelope melampus_), waterbuck, and wild hogs, with
the spoor of buffaloes and elephants.

Shiramba Dembe, on the right bank, is deserted; a few old iron guns show
where a rebel stockade once stood; near the river above this, stands a
magnificent Baobab hollowed out into a good-sized hut, with bark inside
as well as without.  The old oaks in Sherwood Forest, when hollow, have
the inside dead or rotten; but the Baobab, though stripped of its bark
outside, and hollowed to a cavity inside, has the power of exuding new
bark from its substance to both the outer and inner surfaces; so, a hut
made like that in the oak called the "Forest Queen," in Sherwood, would
soon all be lined with bark.

The portions of the river called Shigogo and Shipanga are bordered by a
low level expanse of marshy country, with occasional clumps of palm-trees
and a few thorny acacias.  The river itself spreads out to a width of
from three to four miles, with many islands, among which it is difficult
to navigate, except when the river is in flood.  In front, a range of
high hills from the north-east crosses and compresses it into a deep
narrow channel, called the Lupata Gorge.  The Portuguese thought the
steamer would not stem the current here; but as it was not more than
about three knots, and as there was a strong breeze in our favour, steam
and sails got her through with ease.  Heavy-laden canoes take two days to
go up this pass.  A current sweeps round the little rocky promontories
Chifura and Kangomba, forming whirlpools and eddies dangerous for the
clumsy craft, which are dragged past with long ropes.

The paddlers place meal on these rocks as an offering to the turbulent
deities, which they believe preside over spots fatal to many a large
canoe.  We were slily told that native Portuguese take off their hats to
these river gods, and pass in solemn silence; when safely beyond the
promontories, they fire muskets, and, as we ought to do, give the canoe-
men grog.  From the spoor of buffaloes and elephants it appears that
these animals frequent Lupata in considerable numbers, and--we have often
observed the association--the tsetse fly is common.  A horse for the
Governor of Tette was sent in a canoe from Quillimane; and, lest it
should be wrecked on the Chifura and Kangomba rocks, it was put on shore
and sent in the daytime through the pass.  It was of course bitten by the
tsetse, and died soon after; it was thought that the _air_ of Tette had
not agreed with it.  The currents above Lupata are stronger than those
below; the country becomes more picturesque and hilly, and there is a
larger population.

The ship anchored in the stream, off Tette, on the 8th September, 1858,
and Dr. Livingstone went ashore in the boat.  No sooner did the Makololo
recognize him, than they rushed to the water's edge, and manifested great
joy at seeing him again.  Some were hastening to embrace him, but others
cried out, "Don't touch him, you will spoil his new clothes."  The five
headmen came on board and listened in quiet sadness to the story of poor
Sekwebu, who died at the Mauritius on his way to England.  "Men die in
any country," they observed, and then told us that thirty of their own
number had died of smallpox, having been bewitched by the people of
Tette, who envied them because, during the first year, none of their
party had died.  Six of their young men, becoming tired of cutting
firewood for a meagre pittance, proposed to go and dance for gain before
some of the neighbouring chiefs.  "Don't go," said the others, "we don't
know the people of this country;" but the young men set out and visited
an independent half-caste chief, a few miles to the north, named Chisaka,
who some years ago burned all the Portuguese villas on the north bank of
the river; afterwards the young men went to Bonga, son of another half-
caste chief, who bade defiance to the Tette authorities, and had a
stockade at the confluence of the Zambesi and Luenya, a few miles below
that village.  Asking the Makololo whence they came, Bonga rejoined, "Why
do you come from my enemy to me?  You have brought witchcraft medicine to
kill me."  In vain they protested that they did not belong to the
country; they were strangers, and had come from afar with an Englishman.
The superstitious savage put them all to death.  "We do not grieve," said
their companions, "for the thirty victims of the smallpox, who were taken
away by Morimo (God); but our hearts are sore for the six youths who were
murdered by Bonga."  Any hope of obtaining justice on the murderer was
out of the question.  Bonga once caught a captain of the Portuguese army,
and forced him to perform the menial labour of pounding maize in a wooden
mortar.  No punishment followed on this outrage.  The Government of
Lisbon has since given Bonga the honorary title of Captain, by way of
coaxing him to own their authority; but he still holds his stockade.

Tette stands on a succession of low sandstone ridges on the right bank of
the Zambesi, which is here nearly a thousand yards wide (960 yards).
Shallow ravines, running parallel with the river, form the streets, the
houses being built on the ridges.  The whole surface of the streets,
except narrow footpaths, were overrun with self-sown indigo, and tons of
it might have been collected.  In fact indigo, senna, and stramonium,
with a species of cassia, form the weeds of the place, which are annually
hoed off and burned.  A wall of stone and mud surrounds the village, and
the native population live in huts outside.  The fort and the church,
near the river, are the strongholds; the natives having a salutary dread
of the guns of the one, and a superstitious fear of the unknown power of
the other.  The number of white inhabitants is small, and rather select,
many of them having been considerately sent out of Portugal "for their
country's good."  The military element preponderates in society; the
convict and "incorrigible" class of soldiers, receiving very little pay,
depend in great measure on the produce of the gardens of their black
wives; the moral condition of the resulting population may be imagined.

Droughts are of frequent occurrence at Tette, and the crops suffer
severely.  This may arise partly from the position of the town between
the ranges of hills north and south, which appear to have a strong
attraction for the rain-clouds.  It is often seen to rain on these hills
when not a drop falls at Tette.  Our first season was one of drought.
Thrice had the women planted their gardens in vain, the seed, after just
vegetating, was killed by the intense dry heat.  A fourth planting shared
the same hard fate, and then some of the knowing ones discovered the
cause of the clouds being frightened away: our unlucky rain-gauge in the
garden.  We got a bad name through that same rain-gauge, and were
regarded by many as a species of evil omen.  The Makololo in turn blamed
the people of Tette for drought: "A number of witches live here, who
won't let it rain."  Africans in general are sufficiently superstitious,
but those of Tette are in this particular pre-eminent above their
fellows.  Coming from many different tribes, all the rays of the separate
superstitions converge into a focus at Tette, and burn out common sense
from the minds of the mixed breed.  They believe that many evil spirits
live in the air, the earth, and the water.  These invisible malicious
beings are thought to inflict much suffering on the human race; but, as
they have a weakness for beer and a craving for food, they may be
propitiated from time to time by offerings of meat and drink.  The
serpent is an object of worship, and hideous little images are hung in
the huts of the sick and dying.  The uncontaminated Africans believe that
Morungo, the Great Spirit who formed all things, lives above the stars;
but they never pray to him, and know nothing of their relation to him, or
of his interest in them.  The spirits of their departed ancestors are all
good, according to their ideas, and on special occasions aid them in
their enterprises.  When a man has his hair cut, he is careful to burn
it, or bury it secretly, lest, falling into the hands of one who has an
evil eye, or is a witch, it should be used as a charm to afflict him with
headache.  They believe, too, that they will live after the death of the
body, but do not know anything of the state of the Barimo (gods, or
departed spirits).

The mango-tree grows luxuriantly above Lupata, and furnishes a grateful
shade.  Its delicious fruit is superior to that on the coast.  For weeks
the natives who have charge of the mangoes live entirely on the fruit,
and, as some trees bear in November and some in March, while the main
crop comes between, fruit in abundance may easily be obtained during four
months of the year; but no native can be induced to plant a mango.  A
wide-spread superstition has become riveted in the native mind, that if
any one plants this tree he will soon die.  The Makololo, like other
natives, were very fond of the fruit; but when told to take up some mango-
stones, on their return, and plant them in their own country--they too
having become deeply imbued with the belief that it was a suicidal act to
do so--replied "they did not wish to die too soon."  There is also a
superstition even among the native Portuguese of Tette, that if a man
plants coffee he will never afterwards be happy: they drink it, however,
and seem the happier for it.

The Portuguese of Tette have many slaves, with all the usual vices of
their class, as theft, lying, and impurity.  As a general rule the real
Portuguese are tolerably humane masters and rarely treat a slave cruelly;
this may be due as much to natural kindness of heart as to a fear of
losing the slaves by their running away.  When they purchase an adult
slave they buy at the same time, if possible, all his relations along
with him.  They thus contrive to secure him to his new home by domestic
ties.  Running away then would be to forsake all who hold a place in his
heart, for the mere chance of acquiring a freedom, which would probably
be forfeited on his entrance into the first native village, for the chief
might, without compunction, again sell him into slavery.

A rather singular case of voluntary slavery came to our knowledge: a free
black, an intelligent active young fellow, called Chibanti, who had been
our pilot on the river, told us that he had sold himself into slavery.  On
asking why he had done this, he replied that he was all alone in the
world, had neither father nor mother, nor any one else to give him water
when sick, or food when hungry; so he sold himself to Major Sicard, a
notoriously kind master, whose slaves had little to do, and plenty to
eat.  "And how much did you get for yourself?" we asked.  "Three thirty-
yard pieces of cotton cloth," he replied; "and I forthwith bought a man,
a woman, and child, who cost me two of the pieces, and I had one piece
left."  This, at all events, showed a cool and calculating spirit; he
afterwards bought more slaves, and in two years owned a sufficient number
to man one of the large canoes.  His master subsequently employed him in
carrying ivory to Quillimane, and gave him cloth to hire mariners for the
voyage; he took his own slaves, of course, and thus drove a thriving
business; and was fully convinced that he had made a good speculation by
the sale of himself, for had he been sick his master must have supported
him.  Occasionally some of the free blacks become slaves voluntarily by
going through the simple but significant ceremony of breaking a spear in
the presence of their future master.  A Portuguese officer, since dead,
persuaded one of the Makololo to remain in Tette, instead of returning to
his own country, and tried also to induce him to break a spear before
him, and thus acknowledge himself his slave, but the man was too shrewd
for this; he was a great elephant doctor, who accompanied the hunters,
told them when to attack the huge beast, and gave them medicine to ensure
success.  Unlike the real Portuguese, many of the half-castes are
merciless slave-holders; their brutal treatment of the wretched slaves is
notorious.  What a humane native of Portugal once said of them is
appropriate if not true: "God made white men, and God made black men, but
the devil made half-castes."

The officers and merchants send parties of slaves under faithful headmen
to hunt elephants and to trade in ivory, providing them with a certain
quantity of cloth, beads, etc., and requiring so much ivory in return.
These slaves think that they have made a good thing of it, when they kill
an elephant near a village, as the natives give them beer and meal in
exchange for some of the elephant's meat, and over every tusk that is
brought there is expended a vast amount of time, talk, and beer.  Most of
the Africans are natural-born traders, they love trade more for the sake
of trading than for what they make by it.  An intelligent gentleman of
Tette told us that native traders often come to him with a tusk for sale,
consider the price he offers, demand more, talk over it, retire to
consult about it, and at length go away without selling it; next day they
try another merchant, talk, consider, get puzzled and go off as on the
previous day, and continue this course daily until they have perhaps seen
every merchant in the village, and then at last end by selling the
precious tusk to some one for even less than the first merchant had
offered.  Their love of dawdling in the transaction arises from the self-
importance conferred on them by their being the object of the wheedling
and coaxing of eager merchants, a feeling to which even the love of gain
is subordinate.

The native medical profession is reasonably well represented.  In
addition to the regular practitioners, who are a really useful class, and
know something of their profession, and the nature and power of certain
medicines, there are others who devote their talents to some speciality.
The elephant doctor prepares a medicine which is considered indispensable
to the hunters when attacking that noble and sagacious beast; no hunter
is willing to venture out before investing in this precious nostrum.  The
crocodile doctor sells a charm which is believed to possess the singular
virtue of protecting its owner from crocodiles.  Unwittingly we offended
the crocodile school of medicine while at Tette, by shooting one of these
huge reptiles as it lay basking in the sun on a sandbank; the doctors
came to the Makololo in wrath, clamouring to know why the white man had
shot their crocodile.

A shark's hook was baited one evening with a dog, of which the crocodile
is said to be particularly fond; but the doctors removed the bait, on the
principle that the more crocodiles the more demand for medicine, or
perhaps because they preferred to eat the dog themselves.  Many of the
natives of this quarter are known, as in the South Seas, to eat the dog
without paying any attention to its feeding.  The dice doctor or diviner
is an important member of the community, being consulted by Portuguese
and natives alike.  Part of his business is that of a detective, it being
his duty to discover thieves.  When goods are stolen, he goes and looks
at the place, casts his dice, and waits a few days, and then, for a
consideration, tells who is the thief: he is generally correct, for he
trusts not to his dice alone; he has confidential agents all over the
village, by whose inquiries and information he is enabled to detect the
culprit.  Since the introduction of muskets, gun doctors have sprung up,
and they sell the medicine which professes to make good marksmen; others
are rain doctors, etc., etc.  The various schools deal in little charms,
which are hung round the purchaser's neck to avert evil: some of them
contain the medicine, others increase its power.

Indigo, about three or four feet high, grows in great luxuriance in the
streets of Tette, and so does the senna plant.  The leaves are
undistinguishable from those imported in England.  A small amount of
first-rate cotton is cultivated by the native population for the
manufacture of a coarse cloth.  A neighbouring tribe raises the sugar-
cane, and makes a little sugar; but they use most primitive wooden
rollers, and having no skill in mixing lime with the extracted juice, the
product is of course of very inferior quality.  Plenty of magnetic iron
ore is found near Tette, and coal also to any amount; a single cliff-seam
measuring twenty-five feet in thickness.  It was found to burn well in
the steamer on the first trial.  Gold is washed for in the beds of
rivers, within a couple of days of Tette.  The natives are fully aware of
its value, but seldom search for it, and never dig deeper than four or
five feet.  They dread lest the falling in of the sand of the river's bed
should bury them.  In former times, when traders went with hundreds of
slaves to the washings, the produce was considerable.  It is now
insignificant.  The gold-producing lands have always been in the hands of
independent tribes.  Deep cuttings near the sources of the gold-yielding
streams seem never to have been tried here, as in California and
Australia, nor has any machinery been used save common wooden basins for
washing.



CHAPTER II.


Kebrabasa Rapids--Tette--African fever--Exploration of the
Shire--Discovery of Lake Shirwa.

Our curiosity had been so much excited by the reports we had heard of the
Kebrabasa rapids, that we resolved to make a short examination of them,
and seized the opportunity of the Zambesi being unusually low, to
endeavour to ascertain their character while uncovered by the water.  We
reached them on the 9th of November.  The country between Tette and Panda
Mokua, where navigation ends, is well wooded and hilly on both banks.
Panda Mokua is a hill two miles below the rapids, capped with dolomite
containing copper ore.

Conspicuous among the trees, for its gigantic size, and bark coloured
exactly like Egyptian syenite, is the burly Baobab.  It often makes the
other trees of the forest look like mere bushes in comparison.  A hollow
one, already mentioned, is 74 feet in circumference, another was 84, and
some have been found on the West Coast which measure 100 feet.  The lofty
range of Kebrabasa, consisting chiefly of conical hills, covered with
scraggy trees, crosses the Zambesi, and confines it within a narrow,
rough, and rocky dell of about a quarter of a mile in breadth; over this,
which may be called the flood-bed of the river, large masses of rock are
huddled in indescribable confusion.  The drawing, for the use of which,
and of others, our thanks are due to Lord Russell, conveys but a faint
idea of the scene, inasmuch as the hills which confine the river do not
appear in the sketch.  The chief rock is syenite, some portions of which
have a beautiful blue tinge like _lapis lazuli_ diffused through them;
others are grey.  Blocks of granite also abound, of a pinkish tinge; and
these with metamorphic rocks, contorted, twisted, and thrown into every
conceivable position, afford a picture of dislocation or unconformability
which would gladden a geological lecturer's heart; but at high flood this
rough channel is all smoothed over, and it then conforms well with the
river below it, which is half a mile wide.  In the dry season the stream
runs at the bottom of a narrow and deep groove, whose sides are polished
and fluted by the boiling action of the water in flood, like the rims of
ancient Eastern wells by the draw-ropes.  The breadth of the groove is
often not more than from forty to sixty yards, and it has some sharp
turnings, double channels, and little cataracts in it.  As we steamed up,
the masts of the "Ma Robert," though some thirty feet high, did not reach
the level of the flood-channel above, and the man in the chains sung out,
"No bottom at ten fathoms."  Huge pot-holes, as large as draw-wells, had
been worn in the sides, and were so deep that in some instances, when
protected from the sun by overhanging boulders, the water in them was
quite cool.  Some of these holes had been worn right through, and only
the side next the rock remained; while the sides of the groove of the
flood-channel were polished as smooth as if they had gone through the
granite-mills of Aberdeen.  The pressure of the water must be enormous to
produce this polish.  It had wedged round pebbles into chinks and
crannies of the rocks so firmly that, though they looked quite loose,
they could not be moved except with a hammer.  The mighty power of the
water here seen gave us an idea of what is going on in thousands of
cataracts in the world.  All the information we had been able to obtain
from our Portuguese friends amounted to this, that some three or four
detached rocks jutted out of the river in Kebrabasa, which, though
dangerous to the cumbersome native canoes, could be easily passed by a
steamer, and that if one or two of these obstructions were blasted away
with gunpowder, no difficulty would hereafter be experienced.  After we
had painfully explored seven or eight miles of the rapid, we returned to
the vessel satisfied that much greater labour was requisite for the mere
examination of the cataracts than our friends supposed necessary to
remove them; we therefore went down the river for fresh supplies, and
made preparation for a more serious survey of this region.

The steamer having returned from the bar, we set out on the 22nd of
November to examine the rapids of Kebrabasa.  We reached the foot of the
hills again, late in the afternoon of the 24th, and anchored in the
stream.  Canoe-men never sleep on the river, but always spend the night
on shore.  The natives on the right bank, in the country called Shidima,
who are Banyai, and even at this short distance from Tette, independent,
and accustomed to lord it over Portuguese traders, wondered what could be
our object in remaining afloat, and were naturally suspicious at our
departing from the universal custom.

They hailed us from the bank in the evening with "Why don't you come and
sleep onshore like other people?"

The answer they received from our Makololo, who now felt as independent
as the Banyai, was, "We are held to the bottom with iron; you may see we
are not like your Bazungu."

This hint, a little amplified, saved us from the usual exactions.  It is
pleasant to give a present, but that pleasure the Banyai usually deny to
strangers by making it a fine, and demanding it in such a supercilious
way, that only a sorely cowed trader could bear it.  They often refuse to
touch what is offered--throw it down and leave it--sneer at the trader's
slaves, and refuse a passage until the tribute is raised to the utmost
extent of his means.

Leaving the steamer next morning, we proceeded on foot, accompanied by a
native Portuguese and his men and a dozen Makololo, who carried our
baggage.  The morning was pleasant, the hills on our right furnished for
a time a delightful shade; but before long the path grew frightfully
rough, and the hills no longer shielded us from the blazing sun.  Scarcely
a vestige of a track was now visible; and, indeed, had not our guide
assured us to the contrary, we should have been innocent of even the
suspicion of a way along the patches of soft yielding sand, and on the
great rocks over which we so painfully clambered.  These rocks have a
singular appearance, from being dislocated and twisted in every
direction, and covered with a thin black glaze, as if highly polished and
coated with lamp-black varnish.  This seems to have been deposited while
the river was in flood, for it covers only those rocks which lie between
the highest water-mark and a line about four feet above the lowest.
Travellers who have visited the rapids of the Orinoco and the Congo say
that the rocks there have a similar appearance, and it is attributed to
some deposit from the water, formed only when the current is strong.  This
may account for it in part here, as it prevails only where the narrow
river is confined between masses of rock, backed by high hills, and where
the current in floods is known to be the strongest; and it does not exist
where the rocks are only on one side, with a sandy beach opposite, and a
broad expanse of river between.  The hot rocks burnt the thick soles of
our men's feet, and sorely fatigued ourselves.  Our first day's march did
not exceed four miles in a straight line, and that we found more than
enough to be pleasant.

The state of insecurity in which the Badema tribe live is indicated by
the habit of hiding their provisions in the hills, and keeping only a
small quantity in their huts; they strip a particular species of tree of
its bitter bark, to which both mice and monkeys are known to have an
antipathy, and, turning the bark inside out, sew it into cylindrical
vessels for their grain, and bury them in holes and in crags on the
wooded hill-sides.  By this means, should a marauding party plunder their
huts, they save a supply of corn.  They "could give us no information,
and they had no food; Chisaka's men had robbed them a few weeks before."

"Never mind," said our native Portuguese, "they will sell you plenty when
you return, they are afraid of you now, as yet they do not know who you
are."  We slept under trees in the open air, and suffered no
inconvenience from either mosquitoes or dew: and no prowling wild beast
troubled us; though one evening, while we were here, a native sitting
with some others on the opposite bank was killed by a leopard.

One of the Tette slaves, who wished to be considered a great traveller,
gave us, as we sat by our evening fire, an interesting account of a
strange race of men whom he had seen in the interior; they were only
three feet high, and had horns growing out of their heads; they lived in
a large town and had plenty of food.  The Makololo pooh-poohed this
story, and roundly told the narrator that he was telling a downright lie.
"_We_ come from the interior," cried out a tall fellow, measuring some
six feet four, "are _we_ dwarfs? have _we_ horns on our heads?" and thus
they laughed the fellow to scorn.  But he still stoutly maintained that
he had seen these little people, and had actually been in their town;
thus making himself the hero of the traditional story, which before and
since the time of Herodotus has, with curious persistency, clung to the
native mind.  The mere fact that such absurd notions are permanent, even
in the entire absence of literature, invests the religious ideas of these
people also with importance, as fragments of the wreck of the primitive
faith floating down the stream of time.

We waded across the rapid Luia, which took us up to the waist, and was
about forty yards wide.  The water was discoloured at the time, and we
were not without apprehension that a crocodile might chance to fancy a
white man for dinner.  Next day one of the men crawled over the black
rocks to within ten yards of a sleeping hippopotamus, and shot him
through the brain.  The weather being warm, the body floated in a few
hours, and some of us had our first trial of hippopotamus flesh.  It is a
cross-grained meat, something between pork and beef,--pretty good food
when one is hungry and can get nothing better.  When we reached the foot
of the mountain named Chipereziwa, whose perpendicular rocky sides are
clothed with many-coloured lichens, our Portuguese companion informed us
there were no more obstructions to navigation, the river being all smooth
above; he had hunted there and knew it well.  Supposing that the object
of our trip was accomplished we turned back; but two natives, who came to
our camp at night, assured us that a cataract, called Morumbwa, did still
exist in front.  Drs. Livingstone and Kirk then decided to go forward
with three Makololo and settle the question for themselves.  It was as
tough a bit of travel as they ever had in Africa, and after some painful
marching the Badema guides refused to go further; "the Banyai," they
said, "would be angry if they showed white men the country; and there was
besides no practicable approach to the spot, neither elephant, nor
hippopotamus, nor even a crocodile could reach the cataract."  The slopes
of the mountains on each side of the river, now not 300 yards wide, and
without the flattish flood-channel and groove, were more than 3000 feet
from the sky-line down, and were covered either with dense thornbush or
huge black boulders; this deep trough-like shape caused the sun's rays to
converge as into a focus, making the surface so hot that the soles of the
feet of the Makololo became blistered.  Around, and up and down, the
party clambered among these heated blocks, at a pace not exceeding a mile
an hour; the strain upon the muscles in jumping from crag to boulder, and
wriggling round projections, took an enormous deal out of them, and they
were often glad to cower in the shadow formed by one rock overhanging and
resting on another; the shelter induced the peculiarly strong and
overpowering inclination to sleep, which too much sun sometimes causes.
This sleep is curative of what may be incipient sunstroke: in its first
gentle touches, it caused the dream to flit over the boiling brain, that
they had become lunatics and had been sworn in as members of the Alpine
club; and then it became so heavy that it made them feel as if a portion
of existence had been cut out from their lives.  The sun is excessively
hot, and feels sharp in Africa; but, probably from the greater dryness of
the atmosphere, we never heard of a single case of sunstroke, so common
in India.  The Makololo told Dr. Livingstone they "always thought he had
a heart, but now they believed he had none," and tried to persuade Dr.
Kirk to return, on the ground that it must be evident that, in attempting
to go where no living foot could tread, his leader had given
unmistakeable signs of having gone mad.  All their efforts of persuasion,
however, were lost upon Dr. Kirk, as he had not yet learned their
language, and his leader, knowing his companion to be equally anxious
with himself to solve the problem of the navigableness of Kebrabasa, was
not at pains to enlighten him.  At one part a bare mountain spur barred
the way, and had to be surmounted by a perilous and circuitous route,
along which the crags were so hot that it was scarcely possible for the
hand to hold on long enough to ensure safety in the passage; and had the
foremost of the party lost his hold, he would have hurled all behind him
into the river at the foot of the promontory; yet in this wild hot
region, as they descended again to the river, they met a fisherman
casting his hand-net into the boiling eddies, and he pointed out the
cataract of Morumbwa; within an hour they were trying to measure it from
an overhanging rock, at a height of about one hundred feet.  When you
stand facing the cataract, on the north bank, you see that it is situated
in a sudden bend of the river, which is flowing in a short curve; the
river above it is jammed between two mountains in a channel with
perpendicular sides, and less than fifty yards wide; one or two masses of
rock jut out, and then there is a sloping fall of perhaps twenty feet in
a distance of thirty yards.  It would stop all navigation, except during
the highest floods; the rocks showed that the water then rises upwards of
eighty feet perpendicularly.

Still keeping the position facing the cataract, on its right side rises
Mount Morumbwa from 2000 to 3000 feet high, which gives the name to the
spot.  On the left of the cataract stands a noticeable mountain which may
be called onion-shaped, for it is partly conical and a large concave
flake has peeled off, as granite often does, and left a broad, smooth
convex face as if it were an enormous bulb.  These two mountains extend
their bases northwards about half a mile, and the river in that distance,
still very narrow, is smooth, with a few detached rocks standing out from
its bed.  They climbed as high up the base of Mount Morumbwa, which
touches the cataract, as they required.  The rocks were all water-worn
and smooth, with huge potholes, even at 100 feet above low water.  When
at a later period they climbed up the north-western base of this same
mountain, the familiar face of the onion-shaped one opposite was at once
recognised; one point of view on the talus of Mount Morumbwa was not more
than 700 or 800 yards distant from the other, and they then completed the
survey of Kebrabasa from end to end.

They did not attempt to return by the way they came, but scaled the slope
of the mountain on the north.  It took them three hours' hard labour in
cutting their way up through the dense thornbush which covered the
ascent.  The face of the slope was often about an angle of 70 degrees,
yet their guide Shokumbenla, whose hard, horny soles, resembling those of
elephants, showed that he was accustomed to this rough and hot work,
carried a pot of water for them nearly all the way up.  They slept that
night at a well in a tufaceous rock on the N.W. of Chipereziwa, and never
was sleep more sweet.

A band of native musicians came to our camp one evening, on our own way
down, and treated us with their wild and not unpleasant music on the
Marimba, an instrument formed of bars of hard wood of varying breadth and
thickness, laid on different-sized hollow calabashes, and tuned to give
the notes; a few pieces of cloth pleased them, and they passed on.

The rainy season of Tette differs a little from that of some of the other
intertropical regions; the quantity of rain-fall being considerably less.
It begins in November and ends in April.  During our first season in that
place, only a little over nineteen inches of rain fell.  In an average
year, and when the crops are good, the fall amounts to about thirty-five
inches.  On many days it does not rain at all, and rarely is it wet all
day; some days have merely a passing shower, preceded and followed by hot
sunshine; occasionally an interval of a week, or even a fortnight, passes
without a drop of rain, and then the crops suffer from the sun.  These
partial droughts happen in December and January.  The heat appears to
increase to a certain point in the different latitudes so as to
necessitate a change, by some law similar to that which regulates the
intense cold in other countries.  After several days of progressive heat
here, on the hottest of which the thermometer probably reaches 103
degrees in the shade, a break occurs in the weather, and a thunderstorm
cools the air for a time.  At Kuruman, when the thermometer stood above
84 degrees, rain might be expected; at Kolobeng, the point at which we
looked for a storm was 96 degrees.  The Zambesi is in flood twice in the
course of the year; the first flood, a partial one, attains its greatest
height about the end of December or beginning of January; the second, and
greatest, occurs after the river inundates the interior, in a manner
similar to the overflow of the Nile, this rise not taking place at Tette
until March.  The Portuguese say that the greatest height which the March
floods attain is thirty feet at Tette, and this happens only about every
fourth year; their observations, however, have never been very accurate
on anything but ivory, and they have in this case trusted to memory
alone.  The only fluviometer at Tette, or anywhere else on the river, was
set up at our suggestion; and the first flood was at its greatest height
of thirteen feet six inches on the 17th January, 1859, and then gradually
fell a few feet, until succeeded by the greater flood of March.  The
river rises suddenly, the water is highly discoloured and impure, and
there is a four-knot current in many places; but in a day or two after
the first rush of waters is passed, the current becomes more equally
spread over the whole bed of the river, and resumes its usual rate in the
channel, although continuing in flood.  The Zambesi water at other times
is almost chemically pure, and the photographer would find that it is
nearly as good as distilled water for the nitrate of silver bath.

A third visit to Kebrabasa was made for the purpose of ascertaining
whether it might be navigable when the Zambesi was in flood, the chief
point of interest being of course Morumbwa; it was found that the rapids
observed in our first trip had disappeared, and that while they were
smoothed over, in a few places the current had increased in strength.  As
the river fell rapidly while we were on the journey, the cataract of
Morumbwa did not differ materially from what it was when discovered.  Some
fishermen assured us that it was not visible when the river was at its
fullest, and that the current was then not very strong.  On this occasion
we travelled on the right bank, and found it, with the additional
inconvenience of rain, as rough and fatiguing as the left had been.  Our
progress was impeded by the tall wet grass and dripping boughs, and
consequent fever.  During the earlier part of the journey we came upon a
few deserted hamlets only; but at last in a pleasant valley we met some
of the people of the country, who were miserably poor and hungry.  The
women were gathering wild fruits in the woods.  A young man having
consented for two yards of cotton cloth to show us a short path to the
cataract led us up a steep hill to a village perched on the edge of one
of its precipices; a thunderstorm coming on at the time, the headman
invited us to take shelter in a hut until it had passed.  Our guide
having informed him of what he knew and conceived to be our object, was
favoured in return with a long reply in well-sounding blank verse; at the
end of every line the guide, who listened with deep attention, responded
with a grunt, which soon became so ludicrous that our men burst into a
loud laugh.  Neither the poet nor the responsive guide took the slightest
notice of their rudeness, but kept on as energetically as ever to the
end.  The speech, or more probably our bad manners, made some impression
on our guide, for he declined, although offered double pay, to go any
further.

A great deal of fever comes in with March and April; in March, if
considerable intervals take place between the rainy days, and in April
always, for then large surfaces of mud and decaying vegetation are
exposed to the hot sun.  In general an attack does not continue long, but
it pulls one down quickly; though when the fever is checked the strength
is as quickly restored.  It had long been observed that those who were
stationed for any length of time in one spot, and lived sedentary lives,
suffered more from fever than others who moved about and had both mind
and body occupied; but we could not all go in the small vessel when she
made her trips, during which the change of place and scenery proved so
conducive to health; and some of us were obliged to remain in charge of
the expedition's property, making occasional branch trips to examine
objects of interest in the vicinity.  Whatever may be the cause of the
fever, we observed that all were often affected at the same time, as if
from malaria.  This was particularly the case during a north wind: it was
at first commonly believed that a daily dose of quinine would prevent the
attack.  For a number of months all our men, except two, took quinine
regularly every morning.  The fever some times attacked the believers in
quinine, while the unbelievers in its prophylactic powers escaped.
Whether we took it daily, or omitted it altogether for months, made no
difference; the fever was impartial, and seized us on the days of quinine
as regularly and as severely as when it remained undisturbed in the
medicine chest, and we finally abandoned the use of it as a prophylactic
altogether.  The best preventive against fever is plenty of interesting
work to do, and abundance of wholesome food to eat.  To a man well housed
and clothed, who enjoys these advantages, the fever at Tette will not
prove a more formidable enemy than a common cold; but let one of these be
wanting--let him be indolent, or guilty of excesses in eating or
drinking, or have poor, scanty fare,--and the fever will probably become
a more serious matter.  It is of a milder type at Tette than at
Quillimane or on the low sea-coast; and, as in this part of Africa one is
as liable to fever as to colds in England, it would be advisable for
strangers always to hasten from the coast to the high lands, in order
that when the seizure does take place, it may be of the mildest type.
Although quinine was not found to be a preventive, except possibly in the
way of acting as a tonic, and rendering the system more able to resist
the influence of malaria, it was found invaluable in the cure of the
complaint, as soon as pains in the back, sore bones, headache, yawning,
quick and sometimes intermittent pulse, noticeable pulsations of the
jugulars, with suffused eyes, hot skin, and foul tongue, began. {1}

Very curious are the effects of African fever on certain minds.
Cheerfulness vanishes, and the whole mental horizon is overcast with
black clouds of gloom and sadness.  The liveliest joke cannot provoke
even the semblance of a smile.  The countenance is grave, the eyes
suffused, and the few utterances are made in the piping voice of a
wailing infant.  An irritable temper is often the first symptom of
approaching fever.  At such times a man feels very much like a fool, if
he does not act like one.  Nothing is right, nothing pleases the fever-
stricken victim.  He is peevish, prone to find fault and to contradict,
and think himself insulted, and is exactly what an Irish naval surgeon
before a court-martial defined a drunken man to be: "a man unfit for
society."

Finding that it was impossible to take our steamer of only ten-horse
power through Kebrabasa, and convinced that, in order to force a passage
when the river was in flood, much greater power was required, due
information was forwarded to Her Majesty's Government, and application
made for a more suitable vessel.  Our attention was in the mean time
turned to the exploration of the river Shire, a northern tributary of the
Zambesi, which joins it about a hundred miles from the sea.  We could
learn nothing satisfactory from the Portuguese regarding this affluent;
no one, they said, had ever been up it, nor could they tell whence it
came.  Years ago a Portuguese expedition is said, however, to have
attempted the ascent, but to have abandoned it on account of the
impenetrable duckweed (_Pistia stratiotes_.)  We could not learn from any
record that the Shire had ever been ascended by Europeans.  As far,
therefore, as we were concerned, the exploration was absolutely new.  All
the Portuguese believed the Manganja to be brave but bloodthirsty
savages; and on our return we found that soon after our departure a
report was widely spread that our temerity had been followed by fatal
results, Dr. Livingstone having been shot, and Dr. Kirk mortally wounded
by poisoned arrows.

Our first trip to the Shire was in January, 1859.  A considerable
quantity of weed floated down the river for the first twenty-five miles,
but not sufficient to interrupt navigation with canoes or with any other
craft.  Nearly the whole of this aquatic plant proceeds from a marsh on
the west, and comes into the river a little beyond a lofty hill called
Mount Morambala.  Above that there is hardly any.  As we approached the
villages, the natives collected in large numbers, armed with bows and
poisoned arrows; and some, dodging behind trees, were observed taking aim
as if on the point of shooting.  All the women had been sent out of the
way, and the men were evidently prepared to resist aggression.  At the
village of a chief named Tingane, at least five hundred natives collected
and ordered us to stop.  Dr. Livingstone went ashore; and on his
explaining that we were English and had come neither to take slaves nor
to fight, but only to open a path by which our countrymen might follow to
purchase cotton, or whatever else they might have to sell, except slaves,
Tingane became at once quite friendly.  The presence of the steamer,
which showed that they had an entirely new people to deal with, probably
contributed to this result; for Tingane was notorious for being the
barrier to all intercourse between the Portuguese black traders and the
natives further inland; none were allowed to pass him either way.  He was
an elderly, well-made man, grey-headed, and over six feet high.  Though
somewhat excited by our presence, he readily complied with the request to
call his people together, in order that all might know what our objects
were.

In commencing intercourse with any people we almost always referred to
the English detestation of slavery.  Most of them already possess some
information respecting the efforts made by the English at sea to suppress
the slave-trade; and our work being to induce them to raise and sell
cotton, instead of capturing and selling their fellow-men, our errand
appears quite natural; and as they all have clear ideas of their own self-
interest, and are keen traders, the reasonableness of the proposal is at
once admitted; and as a belief in a Supreme Being, the Maker and Ruler of
all things, and in the continued existence of departed spirits, is
universal, it becomes quite appropriate to explain that we possess a Book
containing a Revelation of the will of Him to whom in their natural state
they recognise no relationship.  The fact that His Son appeared among
men, and left His words in His Book, always awakens attention; but the
great difficulty is to make them feel that they have any relationship to
Him, and that He feels any interest in them.  The numbness of moral
perception exhibited, is often discouraging; but the mode of
communication, either by interpreters, or by the imperfect knowledge of
the language, which not even missionaries of talent can overcome save by
the labour of many years, may, in part, account for the phenomenon.
However, the idea of the Father of all being displeased with His
children, for selling or killing each other, at once gains their ready
assent: it harmonizes so exactly with their own ideas of right and wrong.
But, as in our own case at home, nothing less than the instruction and
example of many years will secure their moral elevation.

The dialect spoken here closely resembles that used at Senna and Tette.
We understood it at first only enough to know whether our interpreter was
saying what we bade him, or was indulging in his own version.  After
stating pretty nearly what he was told, he had an inveterate tendency to
wind up with "The Book says you are to grow cotton, and the English are
to come and buy it," or with some joke of his own, which might have been
ludicrous, had it not been seriously distressing.

In the first ascent of the Shire our attention was chiefly directed to
the river itself.  The delight of threading out the meanderings of
upwards of 200 miles of a hitherto unexplored river must be felt to be
appreciated.  All the lower part of the river was found to be at least
two fathoms in depth.  It became shallower higher up, where many
departing and re-entering branches diminished the volume of water, but
the absence of sandbanks made it easy of navigation.  We had to exercise
the greatest care lest anything we did should be misconstrued by the
crowds who watched us.  After having made, in a straight line, one
hundred miles, although the windings of the river had fully doubled the
distance, we found further progress with the steamer arrested, in 15
degrees 55 minutes south, by magnificent cataracts, which we called, "The
Murchison," after one whose name has already a world-wide fame, and whose
generous kindness we can never repay.  The native name of that figured in
the woodcut is Mamvira.  It is that at which the progress of the steamer
was first stopped.  The angle of descent is much smaller than that of the
five cataracts above it; indeed, so small as compared with them, that
after they were discovered this was not included in the number.

A few days were spent here in the hope that there might be an opportunity
of taking observations for longitude, but it rained most of the time, or
the sky was overcast.  It was deemed imprudent to risk a land journey
whilst the natives were so very suspicious as to have a strong guard on
the banks of the river night and day; the weather also was unfavourable.
After sending presents and messages to two of the chiefs, we returned to
Tette.  In going down stream our progress was rapid, as we were aided by
the current.  The hippopotami never made a mistake, but got out of our
way.  The crocodiles, not so wise, sometimes rushed with great velocity
at us, thinking that we were some huge animal swimming.  They kept about
a foot from the surface, but made three well-defined ripples from the
feet and body, which marked their rapid progress; raising the head out of
the water when only a few yards from the expected feast, down they went
to the bottom like a stone, without touching the boat.

In the middle of March of the same year (1859), we started again for a
second trip on the Shire.  The natives were now friendly, and readily
sold us rice, fowls, and corn.  We entered into amicable relations with
the chief, Chibisa, whose village was about ten miles below the cataract.
He had sent two men on our first visit to invite us to drink beer; but
the steamer was such a terrible apparition to them, that, after shouting
the invitation, they jumped ashore, and left their canoe to drift down
the stream.  Chibisa was a remarkably shrewd man, the very image, save
his dark hue, of one of our most celebrated London actors, {2} and the
most intelligent chief, by far, in this quarter.  A great deal of
fighting had fallen to his lot, he said; but it was always others who
began; he was invariably in the right, and they alone were to blame.  He
was moreover a firm believer in the divine right of kings.  He was an
ordinary man, he said, when his father died, and left him the
chieftainship; but directly he succeeded to the high office, he was
conscious of power passing into his head, and down his back; he felt it
enter, and knew that he was a chief, clothed with authority, and
possessed of wisdom; and people then began to fear and reverence him.  He
mentioned this, as one would a fact of natural history, any doubt being
quite out of the question.  His people, too, believed in him, for they
bathed in the river without the slightest fear of crocodiles, the chief
having placed a powerful medicine there, which protected them from the
bite of these terrible reptiles.

Leaving the vessel opposite Chibisa's village, Drs. Livingstone and Kirk
and a number of the Makololo started on foot for Lake Shirwa.  They
travelled in a northerly direction over a mountainous country.  The
people were far from being well-disposed to them, and some of their
guides tried to mislead them, and could not be trusted.  Masakasa, a
Makololo headman, overheard some remarks which satisfied him that the
guide was leading them into trouble.  He was quiet till they reached a
lonely spot, when he came up to Dr. Livingstone, and said, "That fellow
is bad, he is taking us into mischief; my spear is sharp, and there is no
one here; shall I cast him into the long grass?"  Had the Doctor given
the slightest token of assent, or even kept silence, never more would any
one have been led by that guide, for in a twinkling he would have been
where "the wicked cease from troubling."  It was afterwards found that in
this case there was no treachery at all, but a want of knowledge on their
part of the language and of the country.  They asked to be led to "Nyanja
Mukulu," or Great Lake, meaning, by this, Lake Shirwa; and the guide took
them round a terribly rough piece of mountainous country, gradually
edging away towards a long marsh, which from the numbers of those animals
we had seen there we had called the Elephant Marsh, but which was really
the place known to him by the name "Nyanja Mukulu," or Great Lake.  Nyanja
or Nyanza means, generally, a marsh, lake, river, or even a mere rivulet.

The party pushed on at last without guides, or only with crazy ones; for,
oddly enough, they were often under great obligations to the madmen of
the different villages: one of these honoured them, as they slept in the
open air, by dancing and singing at their feet the whole night.  These
poor fellows sympathized with the explorers, probably in the belief that
they belonged to their own class; and, uninfluenced by the general
opinion of their countrymen, they really pitied, and took kindly to the
strangers, and often guided them faithfully from place to place, when no
sane man could be hired for love or money.

The bearing of the Manganja at this time was very independent; a striking
contrast to the cringing attitude they afterwards assumed, when the cruel
scourge of slave-hunting passed over their country.  Signals were given
from the different villages by means of drums, and notes of defiance and
intimidation were sounded in the travellers' ears by day; and
occasionally they were kept awake the whole night, in expectation of an
instant attack.  Drs. Livingstone and Kirk were desirous that nothing
should occur to make the natives regard them as enemies; Masakasa, on the
other hand, was anxious to show what he could do in the way of fighting
them.

The perseverance of the party was finally crowned with success; for on
the 18th of April they discovered Lake Shirwa, a considerable body of
bitter water, containing leeches, fish, crocodiles, and hippopotami.  From
having probably no outlet, the water is slightly brackish, and it appears
to be deep, with islands like hills rising out of it.  Their point of
view was at the base of Mount Pirimiti or Mopeu-peu, on its S.S.W. side.
Thence the prospect northwards ended in a sea horizon with two small
islands in the distance--a larger one, resembling a hill-top and covered
with trees, rose more in the foreground.  Ranges of hills appeared on the
east; and on the west stood Mount Chikala, which seems to be connected
with the great mountain-mass called Zomba.

The shore, near which they spent two nights, was covered with reeds and
papyrus.  Wishing to obtain the latitude by the natural horizon, they
waded into the water some distance towards what was reported to be a
sandbank, but were so assaulted by leeches, they were fain to retreat;
and a woman told them that in enticing them into the water the men only
wanted to kill them.  The information gathered was that this lake was
nothing in size compared to another in the north, from which it is
separated by only a tongue of land.  The northern end of Shirwa has not
been seen, though it has been passed; the length of the lake may probably
be 60 or 80 miles, and about 20 broad.  The height above the sea is 1800
feet, and the taste of the water is like a weak solution of Epsom salts.
The country around is very beautiful, and clothed with rich vegetation;
and the waves, at the time they were there breaking and foaming over a
rock on the south-eastern side, added to the beauty of the picture.
Exceedingly lofty mountains, perhaps 8000 feet above the sea-level, stand
near the eastern shore.  When their lofty steep-sided summits appear,
some above, some below the clouds, the scene is grand.  This range is
called Milanje; on the west stands Mount Zomba, 7000 feet in height, and
some twenty miles long.

Their object being rather to gain the confidence of the people by degrees
than to explore, they considered that they had advanced far enough into
the country for one trip; and believing that they could secure their end
by a repetition of their visit, as they had done on the Shire, they
decided to return to the vessel at Dakanamoio island; but, instead of
returning by the way they came, they passed down southwards close by
Mount Chiradzuru, among the relatives of Chibisa, and thence by the pass
Zedi, down to the Shire.  The Kroomen had, while we were away, cut a good
supply of wood for steaming, and we soon proceeded down the river.

The steamer reached Tette on the 23rd of June, and, after undergoing
repairs, proceeded to the Kongone to receive provisions from one of H.M.
cruisers.  We had been very abundantly supplied with first-rate stores,
but were unfortunate enough to lose a considerable portion of them, and
had now to bear the privation as best we could.  On the way down, we
purchased a few gigantic cabbages and pumpkins at a native village below
Mazaro.  Our dinners had usually consisted of but a single course; but we
were surprised the next day by our black cook from Sierra Leone bearing
in a second course.  "What have you got there?" was asked in wonder.  "A
tart, sir."  "A tart! of what is it made?"  "Of cabbage, sir."  As we had
no sugar, and could not "make believe," as in the days of boyhood, we did
not enjoy the feast that Tom's genius had prepared.  Her Majesty's brig
"Persian," Lieutenant Saumarez commanding, called on her way to the Cape;
and, though somewhat short of provisions herself, generously gave us all
she could spare.  We now parted with our Kroomen, as, from their
inability to march, we could not use them in our land journeys.  A crew
was picked out from the Makololo, who, besides being good travellers,
could cut wood, work the ship, and required only native food.

While at the Kongone it was found necessary to beach the steamer for
repairs.  She was built of a newly invented sort of steel plates, only a
sixteenth of an inch in thickness, patented, but unfortunately never
tried before.  To build an exploring ship of untried material was a
mistake.  Some chemical action on this preparation of steel caused a
minute hole; from this point, branches like lichens, or the little ragged
stars we sometimes see in thawing ice, radiated in all directions.  Small
holes went through wherever a bend occurred in these branches.  The
bottom very soon became like a sieve, completely full of minute holes,
which leaked perpetually.  The engineer stopped the larger ones, but the
vessel was no sooner afloat, than new ones broke out.  The first news of
a morning was commonly the unpleasant announcement of another leak in the
forward compartment, or in the middle, which was worse still.

Frequent showers fell on our way up the Zambesi, in the beginning of
August.  On the 8th we had upwards of three inches of rain, which large
quantity, more than falls in any single rainy day during the season at
Tette, we owed to being near the sea.  Sometimes the cabin was nearly
flooded; for, in addition to the leakage from below, rain poured through
the roof, and an umbrella had to be used whenever we wished to write: the
mode of coupling the compartments, too, was a new one, and the action of
the hinder compartment on the middle one pumped up the water of the
river, and sent it in streams over the floor and lockers, where lay the
cushions which did double duty as chairs and beds.  In trying to form an
opinion of the climate, it must be recollected that much of the fever,
from which we suffered, was caused by sleeping on these wet cushions.
Many of the botanical specimens, laboriously collected and carefully
prepared by Dr. Kirk, were destroyed, or double work imposed, by their
accidentally falling into wet places in the cabin.

About the middle of August, after cutting wood at Shamoara, we again
steamed up the Shire, with the intention of becoming better acquainted
with the people, and making another and longer journey on foot to the
north of Lake Shirwa, in search of Lake Nyassa, of which we had already
received some information, under the name Nyinyesi (the stars).  The
Shire is much narrower than the Zambesi, but deeper, and more easily
navigated.  It drains a low and exceedingly fertile valley of from
fifteen to twenty miles in breadth.  Ranges of wooded hills bound this
valley on both sides.  For the first twenty miles the hills on the left
bank are close to the river; then comes Morambala, a detached mountain
500 yards from the river's brink, which rises, with steep sides on the
west, to 4000 feet in height, and is about seven miles in length.  It is
wooded up to the very top, and very beautiful.  The southern end, seen
from a distance, has a fine gradual slope, and looks as if it might be of
easy ascent; but the side which faces the Shire is steep and rocky,
especially in the upper half.  A small village peeps out about halfway up
the mountain; it has a pure and bracing atmosphere; and is perched above
mosquito range.  The people on the summit have a very different climate
and vegetation from those of the plains; but they have to spend a great
portion of their existence amidst white fleecy clouds, which, in the
rainy season, rest daily on the top of their favourite mountain.  We were
kindly treated by these mountaineers on our first ascent; before our
second they were nearly all swept away by Mariano.  Dr. Kirk found
upwards of thirty species of ferns on this and other mountains, and even
good-sized tree-ferns; though scarcely a single kind is to be met with on
the plains.  Lemon and orange trees grew wild, and pineapples had been
planted by the people.  Many large hornbills, hawks, monkeys, antelopes,
and rhinoceroses found a home and food among the great trees round its
base.  A hot fountain boils up on the plain near the north end.  It
bubbles out of the earth, clear as crystal, at two points, or eyes, a few
yards apart from each other, and sends off a fine flowing stream of hot
water.  The temperature was found to be 174 degrees Fahr., and it boiled
an egg in about the usual time.  Our guide threw in a small branch to
show us how speedily the Madse-awira (boiling water) could kill the
leaves.  Unlucky lizards and insects did not seem to understand the
nature of a hot-spring, as many of their remains were lying at the
bottom.  A large beetle had alighted on the water, and been killed before
it had time to fold its wings.  An incrustation, smelling of sulphur, has
been deposited by the water on the stones.  About a hundred feet from the
eye of the fountain the mud is as hot as can be borne by the body.  In
taking a bath there, it makes the skin perfectly clean, and none of the
mud adheres: it is strange that the Portuguese do not resort to it for
the numerous cutaneous diseases with which they are so often afflicted.

A few clumps of the palm and acacia trees appear west of Morambala, on
the rich plain forming the tongue of land between the rivers Shire and
Zambesi.  This is a good place for all sorts of game.  The Zambesi canoe-
men were afraid to sleep on it from the idea of lions being there; they
preferred to pass the night on an island.  Some black men, who
accompanied us as volunteer workmen from Shupanga, called out one evening
that a lion stood on the bank.  It was very dark, and we could only see
two sparkling lights, said to be the lion's eyes looking at us; for here,
as elsewhere, they have a theory that the lion's eyes always flash fire
at night.  Not being fireflies--as they did not move when a shot was
fired in their direction--they were probably glowworms.

Beyond Morambala the Shire comes winding through an extensive marsh.  For
many miles to the north a broad sea of fresh green grass extends, and is
so level, that it might be used for taking the meridian altitude of the
sun.  Ten or fifteen miles north of Morambala, stands the dome-shaped
mountain Makanga, or Chi-kanda; several others with granitic-looking
peaks stretch away to the north, and form the eastern boundary of the
valley; another range, but of metamorphic rocks, commencing opposite
Senna, bounds the valley on the west.  After streaming through a portion
of this marsh, we came to a broad belt of palm and other trees, crossing
the fine plain on the right bank.  Marks of large game were abundant.
Elephants had been feeding on the palm nuts, which have a pleasant fruity
taste, and are used as food by man.  Two pythons were observed coiled
together among the branches of a large tree, and were both shot.  The
larger of the two, a female, was ten feet long.  They are harmless, and
said to be good eating.  The Makololo having set fire to the grass where
they were cutting wood, a solitary buffalo rushed out of the
conflagration, and made a furious charge at an active young fellow named
Mantlanyane.  Never did his fleet limbs serve him better than during the
few seconds of his fearful flight before the maddened animal.  When he
reached the bank, and sprang into the river, the infuriated beast was
scarcely six feet behind him.  Towards evening, after the day's labour in
wood-cutting was over, some of the men went fishing.  They followed the
common African custom of agitating the water, by giving it a few sharp
strokes with the top of the fishing-rod, immediately after throwing in
the line, to attract the attention of the fish to the bait.  Having
caught nothing, the reason assigned was the same as would have been given
in England under like circumstances, namely, that "the wind made the fish
cold, and they would not bite."  Many gardens of maize, pumpkins, and
tobacco, fringed the marshy banks as we went on.  They belong to natives
of the hills, who come down in the dry season, and raise a crop on parts
at other times flooded.  While the crops are growing, large quantities of
fish are caught, chiefly _Clarias capensis_, and _Mugil Africanus_; they
are dried for sale or future consumption.

As we ascended, we passed a deep stream about thirty yards wide, flowing
in from a body of open water several miles broad.  Numbers of men were
busy at different parts of it, filling their canoes with the lotus root,
called _Nyika_, which, when boiled or roasted, resembles our chestnuts,
and is extensively used in Africa as food.  Out of this lagoon, and by
this stream, the chief part of the duckweed of the Shire flows.  The
lagoon itself is called Nyanja ea Motope (Lake of Mud).  It is also named
Nyanja Pangono (Little Lake), while the elephant marsh goes by the name
of Nyanja Mukulu (Great Lake).  It is evident from the shore line still
to be observed on the adjacent hills, that in ancient times these were
really lakes, and the traditional names thus preserved are only another
evidence of the general desiccation which Africa has undergone.



CHAPTER III.


The Steamer in difficulties--Elephant hunting--Arrival at
Chibisa's--Search for Lake Nyassa--The Manganja country--Weavers and
smelters--Lake Pamalombe.

Late in the afternoon of the first day's steaming, after we left the
wooding-place, we called at the village of Chikanda-Kadze, a female
chief, to purchase rice for our men; but we were now in the blissful
region where time is absolutely of no account, and where men may sit down
and rest themselves when tired; so they requested us to wait till next
day, and they would then sell us some food.  As our forty black men,
however, had nothing to cook for supper, we were obliged to steam on to
reach a village a few miles above.  When we meet those who care not
whether we purchase or let it alone, or who think men ought only to be in
a hurry when fleeing from an enemy, our ideas about time being money, and
the power of the purse, receives a shock.  The state of eager
competition, which in England wears out both mind and body, and makes
life bitter, is here happily unknown.  The cultivated spots are mere dots
compared to the broad fields of rich soil which is never either grazed or
tilled.  Pity that the plenty in store for all, from our Father's
bountiful hands, is not enjoyed by more.

The wretched little steamer could not carry all the hands we needed; so,
to lighten her, we put some into the boats and towed them astern.  In the
dark, one of the boats was capsized; but all in it, except one poor
fellow who could not swim, were picked up.  His loss threw a gloom over
us all, and added to the chagrin we often felt at having been so
ill-served in our sorry craft.

Next day we arrived at the village of Mboma (16 degrees 56 minutes 30
seconds S.), where the people raised large quantities of rice, and were
eager traders; the rice was sold at wonderfully low rates, and we could
not purchase a tithe of the food brought for sale.

A native minstrel serenaded us in the evening, playing several quaint
tunes on a species of one stringed fiddle, accompanied by wild, but not
unmusical songs.  He told the Makololo that he intended to play all night
to induce us to give him a present.  The nights being cold, the
thermometer falling to 47 degrees, with occasional fogs, he was asked if
he was not afraid of perishing from cold; but, with the genuine spirit of
an Italian organ-grinder, he replied, "Oh, no; I shall spend the night
with my white comrades in the big canoe; I have often heard of the white
men, but have never seen them till now, and I must sing and play well to
them."  A small piece of cloth, however, bought him off, and he moved
away in good humour.  The water of the river was 70 degrees at sunrise,
which was 23 degrees warmer than the air at the same time, and this
caused fogs, which rose like steam off the river.  When this is the case
cold bathing in the mornings at this time of the year is improper, for,
instead of a glow on coming out, one is apt to get a chill; the air being
so much colder than the water.

A range of hills, commencing opposite Senna, comes to within two or three
miles of Mboma village, and then runs in a north-westerly direction; the
principal hill is named Malawe; a number of villages stand on its tree-
covered sides, and coal is found cropping out in the rocks.  The country
improves as we ascend, the rich valley becoming less swampy, and adorned
with a number of trees.

Both banks are dotted with hippopotamus traps, over every track which
these animals have made in going up out of the water to graze.  The
hippopotamus feeds on grass alone, and, where there is any danger, only
at night.  Its enormous lips act like a mowing-machine, and form a path
of short-cropped grass as it feeds.  We never saw it eat aquatic plants
or reeds.  The tusks seem weapons of both offence and defence.  The
hippopotamus trap consists of a beam five or six feet long, armed with a
spear-head or hard-wood spike, covered with poison, and suspended to a
forked pole by a cord, which, coming down to the path, is held by a
catch, to be set free when the beast treads on it.  Being wary brutes,
they are still very numerous.  One got frightened by the ship, as she was
steaming close to the bank.  In its eager hurry to escape it rushed on
shore, and ran directly under a trap, when down came the heavy beam on
its back, driving the poisoned spear-head a foot deep into its flesh.  In
its agony it plunged back into the river, to die in a few hours, and
afterwards furnished a feast for the natives.  The poison on the spear-
head does not affect the meat, except the part around the wound, and that
is thrown away.  In some places the descending beam is weighted with
heavy stones, but here the hard heavy wood is sufficient.

"She is leaking worse than ever forward, sir, and there is a foot of
water in the hold," was our first salutation on the morning of the 20th.
But we have become accustomed to these things now; the cabin-floor is
always wet, and one is obliged to mop up the water many times a day,
giving some countenance to the native idea that Englishmen live in or on
the water, and have no houses but ships.  The cabin is now a favourite
breeding-place for mosquitoes, and we have to support both the ship-bred
and shore-bred bloodsuckers, of which several species show us their
irritating attentions.  A large brown sort, called by the Portuguese
_mansos_ (tame), flies straight to its victim, and goes to work at once,
as though it were an invited guest.  Some of the small kinds carry
uncommonly sharp lancets, and very potent poison.  "What would these
insects eat, if we did not pass this way?" becomes a natural question.

The juices of plants, and decaying vegetable matter in the mud, probably
form the natural food of mosquitoes, and blood is not necessary for their
existence.  They appear so commonly at malarious spots, that their
presence may be taken as a hint to man to be off to more healthy
localities.  None appear on the high lands.  On the low lands they swarm
in myriads.  The females alone are furnished with the biting apparatus,
and their number appears to be out of all proportion in excess of the
males.  At anchor, on a still evening, they were excessively annoying;
and the sooner we took refuge under our mosquito curtains, the better.
The miserable and sleepless night that only one mosquito inside the
curtain can cause, is so well known, and has been so often described,
that it is needless to describe it here.  One soon learns, from
experience, that to beat out the curtains thoroughly before entering
them, so that not one of these pests can possibly be harboured within, is
the only safeguard against such severe trials to one's tranquillity and
temper.

A few miles above Mboma we came again to the village (16 degrees 44
minutes 30 seconds S.) of the chief Tingane, the beat of whose war-drums
can speedily muster some hundreds of armed men.  The bows and poisoned
arrows here are of superior workmanship to those below.  Mariano's slave-
hunting parties stood in great awe of these barbed arrows, and long kept
aloof from Tingane's villages.  His people were friendly enough with us
now, and covered the banks with a variety of articles for sale.  The
majestic mountain, Chipirone, to which we have given the name of Mount
Clarendon, now looms in sight, and further to the N.W. the southern end
of the grand Milanje range rises in the form of an unfinished sphinx
looking down on Lake Shirwa.  The Ruo (16 degrees 31 minutes 0 seconds
S.) is said to have its source in the Milanje mountains, and flows to the
S.W., to join the Shire some distance above Tingane's.  A short way
beyond the Ruo lies the Elephant marsh, or Nyanja Mukulu, which is
frequented by vast herds of these animals.  We believe that we counted
eight hundred elephants in sight at once.  In the choice of such a strong
hold, they have shown their usual sagacity, for no hunter can get near
them through the swamps.  They now keep far from the steamer; but, when
she first came up, we steamed into the midst of a herd, and some were
shot from the ship's deck.  A single lesson was sufficient to teach them
that the steamer was a thing to be avoided; and at the first glimpse they
are now off two or three miles to the midst of the marsh, which is
furrowed in every direction by wandering branches of the Shire.  A fine
young elephant was here caught alive, as he was climbing up the bank to
follow his retreating dam.  When laid hold of, he screamed with so much
energy that, to escape a visit from the enraged mother, we steamed off,
and dragged him through the water by the proboscis.  As the men were
holding his trunk over the gunwale, Monga, a brave Makololo
elephant-hunter, rushed aft, and drew his knife across it in a sort of
frenzy peculiar to the chase.  The wound was skilfully sewn up, and the
young animal soon became quite tame, but, unfortunately the breathing
prevented the cut from healing, and he died in a few days from loss of
blood.  Had he lived, and had we been able to bring him home, he would
have been the first _African_ elephant ever seen in England.  The African
male elephant is from ten to a little over eleven feet in height, and
differs from the Asiatic species more particularly in the convex shape of
his forehead, and the enormous size of his ears.  In Asia many of the
males, and all the females, are without tusks, but in Africa both sexes
are provided with these weapons.  The enamel in the molar teeth is
arranged differently in the two species.  By an admirable provision, new
teeth constantly come up at the part where in man the wisdom teeth
appear, and these push the others along, and out at the front end of the
jaws, thus keeping the molars sound by renewal, till the animal attains a
very great age.  The tusks of animals from dry rocky countries are very
munch more dense and heavier than those from wet and marshy districts,
but the latter attain much the larger size.

The Shire marshes support prodigious numbers of many kinds of water-fowl.
An hour at the mast-head unfolds novel views of life in an African marsh.
Near the edge, and on the branches of some favourite tree, rest scores of
plotuses and cormorants, which stretch their snake-like necks, and in
mute amazement turn one eye and then another towards the approaching
monster.  By and-by the timid ones begin to fly off, or take "headers"
into the stream; but a few of the bolder, or more composed, remain, only
taking the precaution to spread their wings ready for instant flight.  The
pretty ardetta (_Herodias bubulcus_), of a light yellow colour when at
rest, but seemingly of a pure white when flying, takes wing, and sweeps
across the green grass in large numbers, often showing us where buffaloes
and elephants are, by perching on their backs.  Flocks of ducks, of which
the kind called "Soriri" (_Dendrocygna personata_) is most abundant,
being night feeders, meditate quietly by the small lagoons, until
startled by the noise of the steam machinery.  Pelicans glide over the
water, catching fish, while the Scopus (_Scopus umbretta_) and large
herons peer intently into pools.  The large black and white spur-winged
goose (a constant marauder of native gardens) springs up, and circles
round to find out what the disturbance can be, and then settles down
again with a splash.  Hundreds of Linongolos (_Anastomus lamelligerus_)
rise on the wing from the clumps of reeds, or low trees (the
_Eschinomena_, from which pith hats are made), on which they build in
colonies, and are speedily high in mid-air.  Charming little red and
yellow weavers (_Ploceidae_) remind one of butterflies, as they fly in
and out of the tall grass, or hang to the mouths of their pendent nests,
chattering briskly to their mates within.  These weavers seem to have
"cock nests," built with only a roof, and a perch beneath, with a doorway
on each side.  The natives say they are made to protect the bird from the
rain.  Though her husband is very attentive, we have seen the hen bird
tearing her mate's nest to pieces, but why we cannot tell.  Kites and
vultures are busy overhead, beating the ground for their repast of
carrion; and the solemn-looking, stately-stepping Marabout, with a taste
for dead fish, or men, stalks slowly along the almost stagnant channels.
Groups of men and boys are searching diligently in various places for
lotus and other roots.  Some are standing in canoes, on the weed-covered
ponds, spearing fish, while others are punting over the small
intersecting streams, to examine their sunken fish-baskets.

Towards evening, hundreds of pretty little hawks (_Erythropus
vespertinus_) are seen flying in a southerly direction, and feeding on
dragon-flies and locusts.  They come, apparently, from resting on the
palm-trees during the heat of the day.  Flocks of scissor-bills
(_Rhyncops_) are then also on the wing, and in search of food, ploughing
the water with their lower mandibles, which are nearly half an inch
longer than the upper ones.

At the north-eastern end of the marsh, and about three miles from the
river, commences a great forest of palm-trees (_Borassus AEthiopium_).  It
extends many miles, and at one point comes close to the river.  The grey
trunks and green tops of this immense mass of trees give a pleasing tone
of colour to the view.  The mountain-range, which rises close behind the
palms, is generally of a cheerful green, and has many trees, with patches
of a lighter tint among them, as if spots of land had once been
cultivated.  The sharp angular rocks and dells on its sides have the
appearance of a huge crystal broken; and this is so often the case in
Africa, that one can guess pretty nearly at sight whether a range is of
the old crystalline rocks or not.  The Borassus, though not an
oil-bearing palm, is a useful tree.  The fibrous pulp round the large
nuts is of a sweet fruity taste, and is eaten by men and elephants.  The
natives bury the nuts until the kernels begin to sprout; when dug up and
broken, the inside resembles coarse potatoes, and is prized in times of
scarcity as nutritious food.  During several months of the year, palm-
wine, or sura, is obtained in large quantities; when fresh, it is a
pleasant drink, somewhat like champagne, and not at all intoxicating;
though, after standing a few hours, it becomes highly so.  Sticks, a foot
long, are driven into notches in the hard outside of the tree--the inside
being soft or hollow--to serve as a ladder; the top of the fruit-shoot is
cut off, and the sap, pouring out at the fresh wound, is caught in an
earthen pot, which is hung at the point.  A thin slice is taken off the
end, to open the pores, and make the juice flow every time the owner
ascends to empty the pot.  Temporary huts are erected in the forest, and
men and boys remain by their respective trees day and night; the nuts,
fish, and wine, being their sole food.  The Portuguese use the palm-wine
as yeast, and it makes bread so light, that it melts in the mouth like
froth.

Beyond the marsh the country is higher, and has a much larger population.
We passed a long line of temporary huts, on a plain on the right bank,
with crowds of men and women hard at work making salt.  They obtain it by
mixing the earth, which is here highly saline, with water, in a pot with
a small hole in it, and then evaporating the liquid, which runs through,
in the sun.  From the number of women we saw carrying it off in bags, we
concluded that vast quantities must be made at these works.  It is worth
observing that on soils like this, containing salt, the cotton is of
larger and finer staple than elsewhere.  We saw large tracts of this rich
brackish soil both in the Shire and Zambesi valleys, and hence, probably,
sea-island cotton would do well; a single plant of it, reared by Major
Sicard, flourished and produced the long staple and peculiar tinge of
this celebrated variety, though planted only in the street at Tette; and
there also a salt efflorescence appears, probably from decomposition of
the rock, off which the people scrape it for use.

The large village of the chief, Mankokwe, occupies a site on the right
bank; he owns a number of fertile islands, and is said to be the Rundo,
or paramount chief, of a large district.  Being of an unhappy suspicious
disposition, he would not see us; so we thought it best to move on,
rather than spend time in seeking his favour.

On the 25th August we reached Dakanamoio island, opposite the
perpendicular bluff on which Chibisa's village stands; he had gone, with
most of his people, to live near the Zambesi, but his headman was civil,
and promised us guides and whatever else we needed.  A few of the men
were busy cleaning, sorting, spinning, and weaving cotton.  This is a
common sight in nearly every village, and each family appears to have its
patch of cotton, as our own ancestors in Scotland had each his patch of
flax.  Near sunset an immense flock of the large species of horn-bill
(_Buceros cristatus_) came here to roost on the great trees which skirt
the edge of the cliff.  They leave early in the morning, often before
sunrise, for their feeding-places, coming and going in pairs.  They are
evidently of a loving disposition, and strongly attached to each other,
the male always nestling close beside his mate.  A fine male fell to the
ground, from fear, at the report of Dr. Kirk's gun; it was caught and
kept on board; the female did not go off in the mornings to feed with the
others, but flew round the ship, anxiously trying, by her plaintive
calls, to induce her beloved one to follow her: she came again in the
evenings to repeat the invitations.  The poor disconsolate captive soon
refused to eat, and in five days died of grief, because he could not have
her company.  No internal injury could be detected after death.

Chibisa and his wife, with a natural show of parental feeling, had told
the Doctor, on his previous visit, that a few years before some of
Chisaka's men had kidnapped and sold their little daughter, and that she
was now a slave to the padre at Tette.  On his return to Tette, the
Doctor tried hard to ransom and restore the girl to her parents, and
offered twice the value of a slave; the padre seemed willing, but she
could not be found.  This padre was better than the average men of the
country; and, being always civil and obliging, would probably have
restored her gratuitously, but she had been sold, it might be to the
distant tribe Bazizulu, or he could not tell where.  Custom had rendered
his feelings callous, and Chibisa had to be told that his child would
never return.  It is this callous state of mind which leads some of our
own blood to quote Scripture in support of slavery.  If we could afford
to take a backward step in civilization, we might find men among
ourselves who would in like manner prove Mormonism or any other enormity
to be divine.

We left the ship on the 28th of August, 1859, for the discovery of Lake
Nyassa.  Our party numbered forty-two in all--four whites, thirty-six
Makololo, and two guides.  We did not actually need so many, either for
carriage or defence; but took them because we believed that, human nature
being everywhere the same, blacks are as ready as whites to take
advantage of the weak, and are as civil and respectful to the powerful.
We armed our men with muskets, which gave us influence, although it did
not add much to our strength, as most of the men had never drawn a
trigger, and in any conflict would in all probability have been more
dangerous to us than the enemy.

Our path crossed the valley, in a north-easterly direction, up the course
of a beautiful flowing stream.  Many of the gardens had excellent cotton
growing in them.  An hour's march brought us to the foot of the Manganja
hills, up which lay the toilsome road.  The vegetation soon changed; as
we rose bamboos appeared, and new trees and plants were met with, which
gave such incessant employment to Dr. Kirk, that he travelled the
distance three times over.  Remarkably fine trees, one of which has oil-
yielding seeds, and belongs to the mahogany family, grow well in the
hollows along the rivulet courses.  The ascent became very fatiguing, and
we were glad of a rest.  Looking back from an elevation of a thousand
feet, we beheld a lovely prospect.  The eye takes in at a glance the
valley beneath, and the many windings of its silver stream Makubula, or
Kubvula, from the shady hill-side, where it emerges in foaming haste, to
where it slowly glides into the tranquil Shire; then the Shire itself is
seen for many a mile above and below Chibisa's, and the great level
country beyond, with its numerous green woods; until the prospect, west
and north-west, is bounded far away by masses of peaked and dome-shaped
blue mountains, that fringe the highlands of the Maravi country.

After a weary march we halted at Makolongwi, the village of Chitimba.  It
stands in a woody hollow on the first of the three terraces of the
Manganja hills, and, like all other Manganja villages, is surrounded by
an impenetrable hedge of poisonous euphorbia.  This tree casts a deep
shade, which would render it difficult for bowmen to take aim at the
villagers inside.  The grass does not grow beneath it, and this may be
the reason why it is so universally used, for when dry the grass would
readily convey fire to the huts inside; moreover, the hedge acts as a
fender to all flying sparks.  As strangers are wont to do, we sat down
under some fine trees near the entrance of the village.  A couple of
mats, made of split reeds, were spread for the white men to sit on; and
the headman brought a seguati, or present, of a small goat and a basket
of meal.  The full value in beads and cotton cloth was handed to him in
return.  He measured the cloth, doubled it, and then measured that again.
The beads were scrutinized; he had never seen beads of that colour
before, and should like to consult with his comrades before accepting
them, and this, after repeated examinations and much anxious talk, he
concluded to do.  Meal and peas were then brought for sale.  A fathom of
blue cotton cloth, a full dress for man or woman, was produced.  Our
Makololo headman, Sininyane, thinking a part of it was enough for the
meal, was proceeding to tear it, when Chitimba remarked that it was a
pity to cut such a nice dress for his wife, he would rather bring more
meal.  "All right," said Sininyane; "but look, the cloth is very wide, so
see that the basket which carries the meal be wide too, and add a cock to
make the meal taste nicely."  A brisk trade sprang up at once, each being
eager to obtain as fine things as his neighbour,--and all were in good
humour.  Women and girls began to pound and grind meal, and men and boys
chased the screaming fowls over the village, until they ran them down.  In
a few hours the market was completely glutted with every sort of native
food; the prices, however, rarely fell, as they could easily eat what was
not sold.

We slept under the trees, the air being pheasant, and no mosquitoes on
the hills.  According to our usual plan of marching, by early dawn our
camp was in motion.  After a cup of coffee and a bit of biscuit we were
on the way.  The air was deliciously cool, and the path a little easier
than that of yesterday.  We passed a number of villages, occupying very
picturesque spots among the hills, and in a few hours gained the upper
terrace, 3000 feet above the level of the sea.  The plateau lies west of
the Milanje mountains, and its north-eastern border slopes down to Lake
Shirwa.  We were all charmed with the splendid country, and looked with
never-failing delight on its fertile plains, its numerous hills, and
majestic mountains.  In some of the passes we saw bramble-berries
growing; and the many other flowers, though of great beauty, did not
remind us of youth and of home like the ungainly thorny bramble-bushes.
We were a week in crossing the highlands in a northerly direction; then
we descended into the Upper Shire Valley, which is nearly 1200 feet above
the level of the sea.  This valley is wonderfully fertile, and supports a
large population.  After leaving the somewhat flat-topped southern
portion, the most prominent mountain of the Zomba range is Njongone,
which has a fine stream running past its northern base.  We were detained
at the end of the chain some days by one of our companions being laid up
with fever.  One night we were suddenly aroused by buffaloes rushing
close by the sick-bed.  We were encamped by a wood on the border of a
marsh, but our patient soon recovered, notwithstanding the unfavourable
situation, and the poor accommodation.

The Manganja country is delightfully well watered.  The clear, cool,
gushing streams are very numerous.  Once we passed seven fine brooks and
a spring in a single hour, and this, too, near the close of the dry
season.  Mount Zomba, which is twenty miles long, and from 7000 to 8000
feet high, has a beautiful stream flowing through a verdant valley on its
summit, and running away down into Lake Shirwa.  The highlands are well
wooded, and many trees, admirable for their height and timber, grow on
the various watercourses.  "Is this country good for cattle?" we inquired
of a Makololo herdsman, whose occupation had given him skill in
pasturage.  "Truly," he replied, "do you not see abundance of those
grasses which the cattle love, and get fat upon?"  Yet the people have
but few goats, and fewer sheep.  With the exception of an occasional
leopard, there are no beasts of prey to disturb domestic animals.  Wool-
sheep would, without doubt, thrive on these highlands.  Part of the Upper
Shire valley has a lady paramount, named Nyango; and in her dominions
women rank higher and receive more respectful treatment than their
sisters on the hills.

The hill chief, Mongazi, called his wife to take charge of a present we
had given him.  She dropped down on her knees, clapping her hands in
reverence, before and after receiving our presents from his lordly hands.
It was painful to see the abject manner in which the women of the hill
tribes knelt beside the path as we passed; but a great difference took
place when we got into Nyango's country.

On entering a village, we proceeded, as all strangers do, at once to the
Boalo: mats of split reeds or bamboo were usually spread for us to sit
on.  Our guides then told the men who might be there, who we were, whence
we had come, whither we wanted to go, and what were our objects.  This
information was duly carried to the chief, who, if a sensible man, came
at once; but, if he happened to be timid and suspicious, waited until he
had used divination, and his warriors had time to come in from outlying
hamlets.  When he makes his appearance, all the people begin to clap
their hands in unison, and continue doing so till he sits down opposite
to us.  His counsellors take their places beside him.  He makes a remark
or two, and is then silent for a few seconds.  Our guides then sit down
in front of the chief and his counsellors, and both parties lean forward,
looking earnestly at each other; the chief repeats a word, such as
"Ambuiatu" (our Father, or master)--or "moio" (life), and all clap their
hands.  Another word is followed by two claps, a third by still more
clapping, when each touches the ground with both hands placed together.
Then all rise and lean forward with measured clap, and sit down again
with clap, clap, clap, fainter, and still fainter, till the last dies
away, or is brought to an end by a smart loud clap from the chief.  They
keep perfect time in this species of court etiquette.  Our guides now
tell the chief, often in blank verse, all they have already told his
people, with the addition perhaps of their own suspicions of the
visitors.  He asks some questions, and then converses with us through the
guides.  Direct communication between the chief and the head of the
stranger party is not customary.  In approaching they often ask who is
the spokesman, and the spokesman of the chief addresses the person
indicated exclusively.  There is no lack of punctilious good manners.  The
accustomed presents are exchanged with civil ceremoniousness; until our
men, wearied and hungry, call out, "English do not buy slaves, they buy
food," and then the people bring meal, maize, fowls, batatas, yams,
beans, beer, for sale.

The Manganja are an industrious race; and in addition to working in iron,
cotton, and basket-making, they cultivate the soil extensively.  All the
people of a village turn out to labour in the fields.  It is no uncommon
thing to see men, women, and children hard at work, with the baby lying
close by beneath a shady bush.  When a new piece of woodland is to be
cleared, they proceed exactly as farmers do in America.  The trees are
cut down with their little axes of soft native iron; trunks and branches
are piled up and burnt, and the ashes spread on the soil.  The corn is
planted among the standing stumps which are left to rot.  If grass land
is to be brought under cultivation, as much tall grass as the labourer
can conveniently lay hold of is collected together and tied into a knot.
He then strikes his hoe round the tufts to sever the roots, and leaving
all standing, proceeds until the whole ground assumes the appearance of a
field covered with little shocks of corn in harvest.  A short time before
the rains begin, these grass shocks are collected in small heaps, covered
with earth, and burnt, the ashes and burnt soil being used to fertilize
the ground.  Large crops of the mapira, or Egyptian dura (_Holcus
sorghum_), are raised, with millet, beans, and ground-nuts; also patches
of yams, rice, pumpkins, cucumbers, cassava, sweet potatoes, tobacco, and
hemp, or bang (_Cannabis setiva_).  Maize is grown all the year round.
Cotton is cultivated at almost every village.  Three varieties of cotton
have been found in the country, namely, two foreign and one native.  The
"tonje manga," or foreign cotton, the name showing that it has been
introduced, is of excellent quality, and considered at Manchester to be
nearly equal to the best New Orleans.  It is perennial, but requires
replanting once in three years.  A considerable amount of this variety is
grown in the Upper and Lower Shire valleys.  Every family of any
importance owns a cotton patch which, from the entire absence of weeds,
seemed to be carefully cultivated.  Most were small, none seen on this
journey exceeding half an acre; but on the former trip some were observed
of more than twice that size.

The "tonje cadja," or indigenous cotton, is of shorter staple, and feels
in the hand like wool.  This kind has to be planted every season in the
highlands; yet, because it makes stronger cloth, many of the people
prefer it to the foreign cotton; the third variety is not found here.  It
was remarked to a number of men near the Shire Lakelet, a little further
on towards Nyassa, "You should plant plenty of cotton, and probably the
English will come and buy it."  "Truly," replied a far-travelled Babisa
trader to his fellows, "the country is full of cotton, and if these
people come to buy they will enrich us."  Our own observation on the
cotton cultivated convinced us that this was no empty flourish, but a
fact.  Everywhere we met with it, and scarcely ever entered a village
without finding a number of men cleaning, spinning, and weaving.  It is
first carefully separated from the seed by the fingers, or by an iron
roller, on a little block of wood, and rove out into long soft bands
without twist.  Then it receives its first twist on the spindle, and
becomes about the thickness of coarse candlewick; after being taken off
and wound into a large ball, it is given the final hard twist, and spun
into a firm cop on the spindle again: all the processes being painfully
slow.

Iron ore is dug out of the hills, and its manufacture is the staple trade
of the southern highlands.  Each village has its smelting-house, its
charcoal-burners, and blacksmiths.  They make good axes, spears, needles,
arrowheads, bracelets and anklets, which, considering the entire absence
of machinery, are sold at surprisingly low rates; a hoe over two pounds
in weight is exchanged for calico of about the value of fourpence.  In
villages near Lake Shirwa and elsewhere, the inhabitants enter pretty
largely into the manufacture of crockery, or pottery, making by hand all
sorts of cooking, water, and grain pots, which they ornament with
plumbago found in the hills.  Some find employment in weaving neat
baskets from split bamboos, and others collect the fibre of the buaze,
which grows abundantly on the hills, and make it into fish-nets.  These
they either use themselves, or exchange with the fishermen on the river
or lakes for dried fish and salt.  A great deal of native trade is
carried on between the villages, by means of barter in tobacco, salt,
dried fish, skins, and iron.  Many of the men are intelligent-looking,
with well-shaped heads, agreeable faces, and high foreheads.  We soon
learned to forget colour, and we frequently saw countenances resembling
those of white people we had known in England, which brought back the
looks of forgotten ones vividly before the mind.  The men take a good
deal of pride in the arrangement of their hair; the varieties of style
are endless.  One trains his long locks till they take the admired form
of the buffalo's horns; others prefer to let their hair hang in a thick
coil down their backs, like that animal's tail; while another wears it in
twisted cords, which, stiffened by fillets of the inner bark of a tree
wound spirally round each curl, radiate from the head in all directions.
Some have it hanging all round the shoulders in large masses; others
shave it off altogether.  Many shave part of it into ornamental figures,
in which the fancy of the barber crops out conspicuously.  About as many
dandies run to seed among the blacks as among the whites.  The Man ganja
adorn their bodies extravagantly, wearing rings on their fingers and
thumbs, besides throatlets, bracelets, and anklets of brass, copper, or
iron.  But the most wonderful of ornaments, if such it may be called, is
the pelele, or upper-lip ring of the women.  The middle of the upper lip
of the girls is pierced close to the septum of the nose, and a small pin
inserted to prevent the puncture closing up.  After it has healed, the
pin is taken out and a larger one is pressed into its place, and so on
successively for weeks, and months, and years.  The process of increasing
the size of the lip goes on till its capacity becomes so great that a
ring of two inches diameter can be introduced with ease.  All the
highland women wear the pelele, and it is common on the Upper and Lower
Shire.  The poorer classes make them of hollow or of solid bamboo, but
the wealthier of ivory or tin.  The tin pelele is often made in the form
of a small dish.  The ivory one is not unlike a napkin-ring.  No woman
ever appears in public without the pelele, except in times of mourning
for the dead.  It is frightfully ugly to see the upper lip projecting two
inches beyond the tip of the nose.  When an old wearer of a hollow bamboo
ring smiles, by the action of the muscles of the cheeks, the ring and lip
outside it are dragged back and thrown above the eyebrows.  The nose is
seen through the middle of the ring, amid the exposed teeth show how
carefully they have been chipped to look like those of a cat or
crocodile.  The pelele of an old lady, Chikanda Kadze, a chieftainess,
about twenty miles north of Morambala, hung down below her chin, with, of
course, a piece of the upper lip around its border.  The labial letters
cannot be properly pronounced, but the under lip has to do its best for
them, against the upper teeth and gum.  Tell them it makes them ugly;
they had better throw it away; they reply, "Kodi!  Really! it is the
fashion."  How this hideous fashion originated is an enigma.  Can thick
lips ever have been thought beautiful, and this mode of artificial
enlargement resorted to in consequence?  The constant twiddling of the
pelele with the tongue by the younger women suggested the irreverent idea
that it might have been invented to give safe employment to that little
member.  "Why do the women wear these things?" we inquired of the old
chief, Chinsunse.  Evidently surprised at such a stupid question, he
replied, "For beauty, to be sure!  Men have beards and whiskers; women
have none; and what kind of creature would a woman be without whiskers,
and without the pelele?  She would have a mouth like a man, and no beard;
ha! ha! ha!"  Afterwards on the Rovuma, we found men wearing the pelele,
as well as women.  An idea suggested itself on seeing the effects of the
slight but constant pressure exerted on the upper gum and front teeth, of
which our medical brethren will judge the value.  In many cases the upper
front teeth, instead of the natural curve outwards, which the row
presents, had been pressed so as to appear as if the line of alveoli in
which they were planted had an inward curve.  As this was produced by the
slight pressure of the pelele backwards, persons with too prominent teeth
might by slight, but long-continued pressure, by some appliance only as
elastic as the lip, have the upper gum and teeth depressed, especially in
youth, more easily than is usually imagined.  The pressure should be
applied to the upper gum more than to the teeth.

The Manganja are not a sober people: they brew large quantities of beer,
and like it well.  Having no hops, or other means of checking
fermentation, they are obliged to drink the whole brew in a few days, or
it becomes unfit for use.  Great merry-makings take place on these
occasions, and drinking, drumming, and dancing continue day and night,
till the beer is gone.  In crossing the hills we sometimes found whole
villages enjoying this kind of mirth.  The veteran traveller of the party
remarked, that he had not seen so much drunkenness during all the sixteen
years he had spent in Africa.  As we entered a village one afternoon, not
a man was to be seen; but some women were drinking beer under a tree.  In
a few moments the native doctor, one of the innocents, "nobody's enemy
but his own," staggered out of a hut, with his cupping-horn dangling from
his neck, and began to scold us for a breach of etiquette.  "Is this the
way to come into a man's village, without sending him word that you are
coming?"  Our men soon pacified the fuddled but good-humoured medico,
who, entering his beer-cellar, called on two of them to help him to carry
out a huge pot of beer, which he generously presented to us.  While the
"medical practitioner" was thus hospitably employed, the chief awoke in a
fright, and shouted to the women to run away, or they would all be
killed.  The ladies laughed at the idea of their being able to run away,
and remained beside the beer-pots.  We selected a spot for our camp, our
men cooked the dinner as usual, and we were quietly eating it, when
scores of armed men, streaming with perspiration, came pouring into the
village.  They looked at us, then at each other, and turning to the chief
upbraided him for so needlessly sending for them.  "These people are
peaceable; they do not hurt you; you are killed with beer:" so saying,
they returned to their homes.

Native beer has a pinkish colour, and the consistency of gruel.  The
grain is made to vegetate, dried in the sun, pounded into meal, and
gently boiled.  When only a day or two old, the beer is sweet, with a
slight degree of acidity, which renders it a most grateful beverage in a
hot climate, or when fever begets a sore craving for acid drinks.  A
single draught of it satisfies this craving at once.  Only by deep and
long-continued potations can intoxication be produced: the grain being in
a minutely divided state, it is a good way of consuming it, and the
decoction is very nutritious.  At Tette a measure of beer is exchanged
for an equal-sized pot full of grain.  A present of this beer, so
refreshing to our dark comrades, was brought to us in nearly every
village.  Beer-drinking does not appear to produce any disease, or to
shorten life on the hills.  Never before did we see so many old, grey-
headed men and women; leaning on their staves they came with the others
to see the white men.  The aged chief, Muata Manga, could hardly have
been less than ninety years of age; his venerable appearance struck the
Makololo.  "He is an old man," said they, "a very old man; his skin hangs
in wrinkles, just like that on elephants' hips."  "Did you never," he was
asked, "have a fit of travelling come over you; a desire to see other
lands and people?"  No, he had never felt that, and had never been far
from home in his life.  For long life they are not indebted to frequent
ablutions.  An old man told us that he remembered to have washed once in
his life, but it was so long since that he had forgotten how it felt.
"Why do you wash?" asked Chinsunse's women of the Makololo; "our men
never do."

The superstitious ordeal, by drinking the poisonous muave, obtains credit
here; and when a person is suspected of crime, this ordeal is resorted
to.  If the stomach rejects the poison, the accused is pronounced
innocent; but if it is retained, guilt is believed to be demonstrated.
Their faith is so firm in its discriminating power, that the supposed
criminal offers of his own accord to drink it, and even chiefs are not
exempted.  Chibisa, relying on its efficacy, drank it several times, in
order to vindicate his character.  When asserting that all his wars had
been just, it was hinted that, as every chief had the same tale of
innocence to tell, we ought to suspend our judgment.  "If you doubt my
word," said he, "give me the muave to drink."  A chief at the foot of
Mount Zomba successfully went through the ordeal the day we reached his
village; and his people manifested their joy at his deliverance by
drinking beer, dancing, and drumming for two days and nights.  It is
possible that the native doctor, who mixes the ingredients of the
poisoned bowl, may be able to save those whom he considers innocent; but
it is difficult to get the natives to speak about the matter, and no one
is willing to tell what the muave poison consists of.  We have been shown
trees said to be used, but had always reason to doubt the accuracy of our
informants.  We once found a tree in a village, with many pieces of the
bark chipped off, closely allied to the Tangena or Tanghina, the ordeal
poison tree of Madagascar; but we could not ascertain any particulars
about it.  Death is inflicted on those found guilty of witchcraft, by the
muave.

The women wail for the dead two days.  Seated on the ground they chant a
few plaintive words, and end each verse with the prolonged sound of a--a,
or o--o, or ea-ea-ea--a.  Whatever beer is in the house of the deceased,
is poured out on the ground with the meal, and all cooking and water pots
are broken, as being of no further use.  Both men and women wear signs of
mourning for their dead relatives.  These consist of narrow strips of the
palm-leaf wound round the head, the arms, legs, neck, and breasts, and
worn till they drop off from decay.  They believe in the existence of a
supreme being, called Mpambe, and also Morungo, and in a future state.
"We live only a few days here," said old Chinsunse, "but we live again
after death: we do not know where, or in what condition, or with what
companions, for the dead never return to tell us.  Sometimes the dead do
come back, and appear to us in dreams; but they never speak nor tell us
where they have gone, nor how they fare."



CHAPTER IV.


The Upper Shire--Discovery of Lake Nyassa--Distressing exploration--Return
to Zambesi--Unpleasant visitors--Start for Sekeletu's Country in the
interior.

Our path followed the Shire above the cataracts, which is now a broad
deep river, with but little current.  It expands in one place into a
lakelet, called Pamalombe, full of fine fish, and ten or twelve miles
long by five or six in breadth.  Its banks are low, and a dense wall of
papyrus encircles it.  On its western shore rises a range of hills
running north.  On reaching the village of the chief Muana-Moesi, and
about a day's march distant from Nyassa, we were told that no lake had
ever been heard of there; that the River Shire stretched on as we saw it
now to a distance of "two months," and then came out from between
perpendicular rocks, which towered almost to the skies.  Our men looked
blank at this piece of news, and said, "Let us go back to the ship, it is
of no use trying to find the lake."  "We shall go and see those wonderful
rocks at any rate," said the Doctor.  "And when you see them," replied
Masakasa, "you will just want to see something else.  But there _is_ a
lake," rejoined Masakasa, "for all their denying it, for it is down in a
book."  Masakasa, having unbounded faith in whatever was in a book, went
and scolded the natives for telling him an untruth.  "There is a lake,"
said he, "for how could the white men know about it in a book if it did
not exist?"  They then admitted that there was a lake a few miles off.
Subsequent inquiries make it probable that the story of the
"perpendicular rocks" may have had reference to a fissure, known to both
natives and Arabs, in the north-eastern portion of the lake.  The walls
rise so high that the path along the bottom is said to be underground.  It
is probably a crack similar to that which made the Victoria Falls, and
formed the Shire Valley.

The chief brought a small present of meal in the evening, and sat with us
for a few minutes.  On leaving us he said that he wished we might sleep
well.  Scarce had he gone, when a wild sad cry arose from the river,
followed by the shrieking of women.  A crocodile had carried off his
principal wife, as she was bathing.  The Makololo snatched up their arms,
and rushed to the bank, but it was too late, she was gone.  The wailing
of the women continued all night, and next morning we met others coming
to the village to join in the general mourning.  Their grief was
evidently heartfelt, as we saw the tears coursing down their cheeks.  In
reporting this misfortune to his neighbours, Muana-Moesi said, "that
white men came to his village; washed themselves at the place where his
wife drew water and bathed; rubbed themselves with a white medicine
(soap); and his wife, having gone to bathe afterwards, was taken by a
crocodile; he did not know whether in consequence of the medicine used or
not."  This we could not find fault with.  On our return we were viewed
with awe, and all the men fled at our approach; the women remained; and
this elicited the remark from our men, "The women have the advantage of
men, in not needing to dread the spear."  The practice of bathing, which
our first contact with Chinsunse's people led us to believe was unknown
to the natives, we afterwards found to be common in other parts of the
Manganja country.

We discovered Lake Nyassa a little before noon of the 16th September,
1859.  Its southern end is in 14 degrees 25 minutes S. Lat., and 35
degrees 30 minutes E. Long.  At this point the valley is about twelve
miles wide.  There are hills on both sides of the lake, but the haze from
burning grass prevented us at the time from seeing far.  A long time
after our return from Nyassa, we received a letter from Captain R. B.
Oldfield, R.N., then commanding H.M.S. "Lyra," with the information that
Dr. Roscher, an enterprising German who unfortunately lost his life in
his zeal for exploration, had also reached the Lake, but on the 19th
November following our discovery; and on his arrival had been informed by
the natives that a party of white men were at the southern extremity.  On
comparing dates (16th September and 19th November) we were about two
months before Dr. Roscher.

It is not known where Dr. Roscher first saw its waters; as the exact
position of Nusseewa on the borders of the Lake, where he lived some
time, is unknown.  He was three days north-east of Nusseewa, and on the
Arab road back to the usual crossing-place of the Rovuma, when he was
murdered.  The murderers were seized by one of the chiefs, sent to
Zanzibar, and executed.  He is said to have kept his discoveries to
himself, with the intention of publishing in Europe the whole at once, in
a splendid book of travels.

The chief of the village near the confluence of the Lake and River Shire,
an old man, called Mosauka, hearing that we were sitting under a tree,
came and kindly invited us to his village.  He took us to a magnificent
banyan-tree, of which he seemed proud.  The roots had been trained down
to the ground into the form of a gigantic arm-chair, without the seat.
Four of us slept in the space betwixt its arms.  Mosauka brought us a
present of a goat and basket of meal "to comfort our hearts."  He told us
that a large slave party, led by Arabs, were encamped close by.  They had
been up to Cazembe's country the past year, and were on their way back,
with plenty of slaves, ivory, and malachite.  In a few minutes half a
dozen of the leaders came over to see us.  They were armed with long
muskets, and, to our mind, were a villanous-looking lot.  They evidently
thought the same of us, for they offered several young children for sale,
but, when told that we were English, showed signs of fear, and decamped
during the night.  On our return to the Kongone, we found that H.M.S.
"Lynx" had caught some of these very slaves in a dhow; for a woman told
us she first saw us at Mosauka's, and that the Arabs had fled for fear of
an _uncanny_ sort of Basungu.

This is one of the great slave-paths from the interior, others cross the
Shire a little below, and some on the lake itself.  We might have
released these slaves but did not know what to do with them afterwards.
On meeting men, led in slave-sticks, the Doctor had to bear the
reproaches of the Makololo, who never slave, "Ay, you call us bad, but
are we yellow-hearted, like these fellows--why won't you let us choke
them?"  To liberate and leave them, would have done but little good, as
the people of the surrounding villages would soon have seized them, and
have sold them again into slavery.  The Manganja chiefs sell their own
people, for we met Ajawa and slave-dealers in several highland villages,
who had certainly been encouraged to come among them for slaves.  The
chiefs always seemed ashamed of the traffic, and tried to excuse
themselves.  "We do not sell many, and only those who have committed
crimes."  As a rule the regular trade is supplied by the low and criminal
classes, and hence the ugliness of slaves.  Others are probably sold
besides criminals, as on the accusation of witchcraft.  Friendless
orphans also sometimes disappear suddenly, and no one inquires what has
become of them.  The temptation to sell their people is peculiarly great,
as there is but little ivory on the hills, and often the chief has
nothing but human flesh with which to buy foreign goods.  The Ajawa offer
cloth, brass rings, pottery, and sometimes handsome young women, and
agree to take the trouble of carrying off by night all those whom the
chief may point out to them.  They give four yards of cotton cloth for a
man, three for a woman, and two for a boy or girl, to be taken to the
Portuguese at Mozambique, Iboe, and Quillimane.

The Manganja were more suspicious and less hospitable than the tribes on
the Zambesi.  They were slow to believe that our object in coming into
their country was really what we professed it to be.  They naturally
judge us by the motives which govern themselves.  A chief in the Upper
Shire Valley, whose scared looks led our men to christen him Kitlabolawa
(I shall be killed), remarked that parties had come before, with as
plausible a story as ours, and, after a few days, had jumped up and
carried off a number of his people as slaves.  We were not allowed to
enter some of the villages in the valley, nor would the inhabitants even
sell us food; Zimika's men, for instance, stood at the entrance of the
euphorbia hedge, and declared we should not pass in.  We sat down under a
tree close by.  A young fellow made an angry oration, dancing from side
to side with his bow and poisoned arrows, and gesticulating fiercely in
our faces.  He was stopped in the middle of his harangue by an old man,
who ordered him to sit down, and not talk to strangers in that way; he
obeyed reluctantly, scowling defiance, and thrusting out his large lips
very significantly.  The women were observed leaving the village; and,
suspecting that mischief might ensue, we proceeded on our journey, to the
great disgust of our men.  They were very angry with the natives for
their want of hospitality to strangers, and with us, because we would not
allow them to give "the things a thrashing."  "This is what comes of
going with white men," they growled out; "had we been with our own chief,
we should have eaten their goats to-night, and had some of themselves to
carry the bundles for us to-morrow."  On our return by a path which left
his village on our right, Zimika sent to apologize, saying that "he was
ill, and in another village at the time; it was not by his orders we were
sent away; his men did not know that we were a party wishing the land to
dwell in peace."

We were not able, when hastening back to the men left in the ship, to
remain in the villages belonging to this chief; but the people came after
us with things for sale, and invited us to stop, and spend the night with
them, urging, "Are we to have it said that white people passed through
our country and we did not see them?"  We rested by a rivulet to gratify
these sight-seers.  We appear to them to be red rather than white; and,
though light colour is admired among themselves, our clothing renders us
uncouth in aspect.  Blue eyes appear savage, and a red beard hideous.
From the numbers of aged persons we saw on the highlands, and the
increase of mental and physical vigour we experienced on our ascent from
the lowlands, we inferred that the climate was salubrious, and that our
countrymen might there enjoy good health, and also be of signal benefit,
by leading the multitude of industrious inhabitants to cultivate cotton,
buaze, sugar, and other valuable produce, to exchange for goods of
European manufacture; at the same time teaching them, by precept and
example, the great truths of our Holy Religion.

Our stay at the Lake was necessarily short.  We had found that the best
plan for allaying any suspicions, that might arise in the minds of a
people accustomed only to slave-traders, was to pay a hasty visit, and
then leave for a while, and allow the conviction to form among the people
that, though our course of action was so different from that of others,
we were not dangerous, but rather disposed to be friendly.  We had also a
party at the vessel, and any indiscretion on their part might have proved
fatal to the character of the Expedition.

The trade of Cazembe and Katanga's country, and of other parts of the
interior, crosses Nyassa and the Shire, on its way to the Arab port,
Kilwa, and the Portuguese ports of Iboe and Mozambique.  At present,
slaves, ivory, malachite, and copper ornaments, are the only articles of
commerce.  According to information collected by Colonel Rigby at
Zanzibar, and from other sources, nearly all the slaves shipped from the
above-mentioned ports come from the Nyassa district.  By means of a small
steamer, purchasing the ivory of the Lake and River above the cataracts,
which together have a shore-line of at least 600 miles, the slave-trade
in this quarter would be rendered unprofitable,--for it is only by the
ivory being carried by the slaves, that the latter do not eat up all the
profits of a trip.  An influence would be exerted over an enormous area
of country, for the Mazitu about the north end of the Lake will not allow
slave-traders to pass round that way through their country.  They would
be most efficient allies to the English, and might themselves be
benefited by more intercourse.  As things are now, the native traders in
ivory and malachite have to submit to heavy exactions; and if we could
give them the same prices which they at present get after carrying their
merchandise 300 miles beyond this to the Coast, it might induce them to
return without going further.  It is only by cutting off the supplies in
the interior, that we can crush the slave-trade on the Coast.  The plan
proposed would stop the slave-trade from the Zambesi on one side and
Kilwa on the other; and would leave, beyond this tract, only the
Portuguese port of Inhambane on the south, and a portion of the Sultan of
Zanzibar's dominion on the north, for our cruisers to look after.  The
Lake people grow abundance of cotton for their own consumption, and can
sell it for a penny a pound or even less.  Water-carriage exists by the
Shire and Zambesi all the way to England, with the single exception of a
portage of about thirty-five miles past the Murchison Cataracts, along
which a road of less than forty miles could be made at a trifling
expense; and it seems feasible that a legitimate and thriving trade
might, in a short time, take the place of the present unlawful traffic.

Colonel Rigby, Captains Wilson, Oldfield, and Chapman, and all the most
intelligent officers on the Coast, were unanimous in the belief, that one
small vessel on the Lake would have decidedly more influence, and do more
good in suppressing the slave-trade, than half a dozen men-of-war on the
ocean.  By judicious operations, therefore, on a small scale inland,
little expense would be incurred, and the English slave-trade policy on
the East would have the same fair chance of success, as on the West
Coast.

After a land-journey of forty days, we returned to the ship on the 6th of
October, 1859, in a somewhat exhausted condition, arising more from a
sort of poisoning, than from the usual fatigue of travel.  We had taken a
little mulligatawney paste, for making soup, in case of want of time to
cook other food.  Late one afternoon, at the end of an unusually long
march, we reached Mikena, near the base of Mount Njongone to the north of
Zomba, and the cook was directed to use a couple of spoonfuls of the
paste; but, instead of doing so, he put in the whole potful.  The soup
tasted rather hot, but we added boiled rice to it, and, being very
hungry, partook freely of it; and, in consequence of the overdose, we
were delayed several days in severe suffering, and some of the party did
not recover till after our return to the ship.  Our illness may partly
have arisen from another cause.  One kind of cassava (_Jatropha maligna_)
is known to be, in its raw state, poisonous, but by boiling it carefully
in two waters, which must be thrown off, the poison is extracted and the
cassava rendered fit for food.  The poisonous sort is easily known by
raising a bit of the bark of the root, and putting the tongue to it.  A
bitter taste shows poison, but it is probable that even the sweet kind
contains an injurious principle.  The sap, which, like that of our
potatoes, is injurious as an article of food, is used in the "Pepper-pot"
of the West Indies, under the name of "Cassereep," as a perfect
preservative of meat.  This juice put into an earthen vessel with a
little water and Chili pepper is said to keep meat, that is immersed in
it, good for a great length of time; even for years.  No iron or steel
must touch the mixture, or it will become sour.  This "Pepper-pot," of
which we first heard from the late Archbishop Whately, is a most
economical meat-safe in a hot climate; any beef, mutton, pork, or fowl
that may be left at dinner, if put into the mixture and a little fresh
cassereep added, keeps perfectly, though otherwise the heat of the
climate or flies would spoil it.  Our cook, however, boiled the cassava
root as he was in the habit of cooking meat, namely, by filling the pot
with it, and then pouring in water, which he allowed to stand on the fire
until it had become absorbed and boiled away.  This method did not expel
the poisonous properties of the root, or render it wholesome; for,
notwithstanding our systematic caution in purchasing only the harmless
sort, we suffered daily from its effects, and it was only just before the
end of our trip that this pernicious mode of boiling it was discovered by
us.

In ascending 3000 feet from the lowlands to the highlands, or on reaching
the low valley of the Shire from the higher grounds, the change of
climate was very marked.  The heat was oppressive below, the thermometer
standing at from 84 degrees to 103 degrees in the shade; and our spirits
were as dull and languid as they had been exhilarated on the heights in a
temperature cooler by some 20 degrees.  The water of the river was
sometimes 84 degrees or higher, whilst that we had been drinking in the
hill streams was only 65 degrees.

It was found necessary to send two of our number across from the Shire to
Tette; and Dr. Kirk, with guides from Chibisa, and accompanied by Mr.
Rae, the engineer, accomplished the journey.  We had found the country to
the north and east so very well watered, that no difficulty was
anticipated in this respect in a march of less than a hundred miles; but
on this occasion our friends suffered severely.  The little water to be
had at this time of the year, by digging in the beds of dry watercourses,
was so brackish as to increase thirst--some of the natives indeed were
making salt from it; and when at long intervals a less brackish supply
was found, it was nauseous and muddy from the frequent visits of large
game.  The tsetse abounded.  The country was level, and large tracts of
it covered with mopane forest, the leaves of which afford but scanty
shade to the baked earth, so that scarcely any grass grows upon it.  The
sun was so hot, that the men frequently jumped from the path, in the vain
hope of cooling, for a moment, their scorched feet under the almost
shadeless bushes; and the native who carried the provision of salt pork
got lost, and came into Tette two days after the rest of the party, with
nothing but the fibre of the meat left, the fat, melted by the blazing
sun, having all run down his back.  This path was soon made a highway for
slaving parties by Captain Raposo, the Commandant.  The journey nearly
killed our two active young friends; and what the slaves must have since
suffered on it no one can conceive; but slaving probably can never be
conducted without enormous suffering and loss of life.

Mankokwe now sent a message to say that he wished us to stop at his
village on our way down.  He came on board on our arrival there with a
handsome present, and said that his young people had dissuaded him from
visiting us before; but now he was determined to see what every one else
was seeing.  A bald square-headed man, who had been his Prime Minister
when we came up, was now out of office, and another old man, who had
taken his place accompanied the chief.  In passing the Elephant Marsh, we
saw nine large herds of elephants; they sometimes formed a line two miles
long.

On the 2nd of November we anchored off Shamoara, and sent the boat to
Senna for biscuit and other provisions.  Senhor Ferrao, with his wonted
generosity, gave us a present of a bullock, which he sent to us in a
canoe.  Wishing to know if a second bullock would be acceptable to us, he
consulted his Portuguese and English dictionary, and asked the sailor in
charge if he would take _another_; but Jack, mistaking the Portuguese
pronunciation of the letter h, replied, "Oh no, sir, thank you, I don't
want an _otter_ in the boat, they are such terrible biters!"

We had to ground the vessel on a shallow sandbank every night; she leaked
so fast, that in deep water she would have sunk, and the pump had to be
worked all day to keep her afloat.  Heavy rains fell daily, producing the
usual injurious effects in the cabin; and, unable to wait any longer for
our associates, who had gone overland from the Shire to Tette, we ran
down the Kongone and beached her for repairs.  Her Majesty's ship "Lynx,"
Lieut. Berkeley commanding, called shortly afterwards with supplies; the
bar, which had been perfectly smooth for some time before, became rather
rough just before her arrival, so that it was two or three days before
she could communicate with us.  Two of her boats tried to come in on the
second day, and one of them, mistaking the passage, capsized in the heavy
breakers abreast of the island.  Mr. Hunt, gunner, the officer in charge
of the second boat, behaved nobly, and by his skilful and gallant conduct
succeeded in rescuing every one of the first boat's crew.  Of course the
things that they were bringing to us were lost, but we were thankful that
all the men were saved.  The loss of the mail-bags, containing Government
despatches and our friends' letters for the past year, was felt severely,
as we were on the point of starting on an expedition into the interior,
which might require eight or nine months; and twenty months is a weary
time to be without news of friends and family.  In the repairing of our
crazy craft, we received kind and efficient aid from Lieutenant Berkeley,
and we were enabled to leave for Tette on December 16th.

We had now frequent rains, and the river rose considerably; our progress
up the stream was distressingly slow, and it was not until the 2nd of
February, 1860, that we reached Tette.  Mr. Thornton returned on the same
day from a geological tour, by which some Portuguese expected that a
fabulous silver-mine would be rediscovered.  The tradition in the country
is, that the Jesuits formerly knew and worked a precious lode at Chicova.
Mr. Thornton had gone beyond Zumbo, in company with a trader of colour;
he soon after this left the Zambesi and, joining the expedition of the
Baron van der Decken, explored the snow mountain Kilimanjaro, north-west
of Zanzibar.  Mr. Thornton's companion, the trader, brought back much
ivory, having found it both abundant and cheap.  He was obliged, however,
to pay heavy fines to the Banyai and other tribes, in the country which
is coolly claimed in Europe as Portuguese.  During this trip of six
mouths 200 pieces of cotton cloth of sixteen yards each, besides beads
and brass wire, were paid to the different chiefs, for leave to pass
through their country.  In addition to these sufficiently weighty
exactions, the natives of _this dominion_ have got into the habit of
imposing fines for alleged milandos, or crimes, which the traders' men
may have unwittingly committed.  The merchants, however, submit rather
than run the risk of fighting.

The general monotony of existence at Tette is sometimes relieved by an
occasional death or wedding.  When the deceased is a person of
consequence, the quantity of gunpowder his slaves are allowed to expend
is enormous.  The expense may, in proportion to their means, resemble
that incurred by foolishly gaudy funerals in England.  When at Tette, we
always joined with sympathizing hearts in aiding, by our presence at the
last rites, to soothe the sorrows of the surviving relatives.  We are
sure that they would have done the same to us had we been the mourners.
We never had to complain of want of hospitality.  Indeed, the great
kindness shown by many of whom we have often spoken, will never be
effaced from our memory till our dying day.  When we speak of their
failings it is in sorrow, not in anger.  Their trading in slaves is an
enormous mistake.  Their Government places them in a false position by
cutting them off from the rest of the world; and of this they always
speak with a bitterness which, were it heard, might alter the tone of the
statesmen of Lisbon.  But here there is no press, no booksellers' shops,
and scarcely a schoolmaster.  Had we been born in similar untoward
circumstances--we tremble to think of it!

The weddings are celebrated with as much jollity as weddings are
anywhere.  We witnessed one in the house of our friend the Padre.  It
being the marriage of his goddaughter, he kindly invited us to be
partakers in his joy; and we there became acquainted with old Donna
Engenia, who was a married wife and had children, when the slaves came
from Cassange, before any of us were born.  The whole merry-making was
marked by good taste amid propriety.

About the only interesting object in the vicinity of Tette is the coal a
few miles to the north.  There, in the feeders of the stream Revubue, it
crops out in cliff sections.  The seams are from four to seven feet in
thickness; one measured was found to be twenty-five feet thick.

Learning that it would be difficult for our party to obtain food beyond
Kebrabasa before the new crop came in and knowing the difficulty of
hunting for so many men in the wet season, we decided on deferring our
departure for the interior until May, and in the mean time to run down
once more to the Kongone, in the hopes of receiving letters and
despatches from the man-of-war that was to call in March.  We left Tette
on the 10th, and at Senna heard that our lost mail had been picked up on
the beach by natives, west of the Milambe; carried to Quillimane, sent
thence to Senna, and, passing us somewhere on the river, on to Tette.  At
Shupanga the governor informed us that it was a very large mail; no great
comfort, seeing it was away up the river.

Mosquitoes were excessively troublesome at the harbour, and especially
when a light breeze blew from the north over the mangroves.  We lived for
several weeks in small huts, built by our men.  Those who did the hunting
for the party always got wet, and were attacked by fever, but generally
recovered in time to be out again before the meat was all consumed.  No
ship appearing, we started off on the 15th of March, and stopped to wood
on the Luabo, near an encampment of hippopotamus hunters; our men heard
again, through them, of the canoe path from this place to Quillimane, but
they declined to point it out.

We found our friend Major Sicard at Mazaro with picks, shovels, hurdles,
and slaves, having come to build a fort and custom-house at the Kongone.
As we had no good reason to hide the harbour, but many for its being made
known, we supplied him with a chart of the tortuous branches, which,
running among the mangroves, perplex the search; and with such directions
as would enable him to find his way down to the river.  He had brought
the relics of our fugitive mail, and it was a disappointment to find that
all had been lost, with the exception of a bundle of old newspapers, two
photographs, and three letters, which had been written before we left
England.

The distance from Mazaro, on the Zambesi side, to the Kwakwa at Nterra,
is about six miles, over a surprisingly rich dark soil.  We passed the
night in the long shed, erected at Nterra, on the banks of this river,
for the use of travellers, who have often to wait several days for
canoes; we tried to sleep, but the mosquitoes and rats were so
troublesome as to render sleep impossible.  The rats, or rather large
mice, closely resembling _Mus pumilio_ (Smith), of this region, are quite
facetious, and, having a great deal of fun in them, often laugh heartily.
Again and again they woke us up by scampering over our faces, and then
bursting into a loud laugh of He! he! he! at having performed the feat.
Their sense of the ludicrous appears to be exquisite; they screamed with
laughter at the attempts which disturbed and angry human nature made in
the dark to bring their ill-timed merriment to a close.  Unlike their
prudent European cousins, which are said to leave a sinking ship, a party
of these took up their quarters in our leaky and sinking vessel.  Quiet
and invisible by day, they emerged at night, and cut their funny pranks.
No sooner were we all asleep, than they made a sudden dash over the
lockers and across our faces for the cabin door, where all broke out into
a loud He! he! he! he! he! he! showing how keenly they enjoyed the joke.
They next went forward with as much delight, and scampered over the men.
Every night they went fore and aft, rousing with impartial feet every
sleeper, and laughing to scorn the aimless blows, growls, and deadly
rushes of outraged humanity.  We observed elsewhere a species of large
mouse, nearly allied to _Euryotis unisulcatus_ (F. Cuvier), escaping up a
rough and not very upright wall, with six young ones firmly attached to
the perineum.  They were old enough to be well covered with hair, and
some were not detached by a blow which disabled the dam.  We could not
decide whether any involuntary muscles were brought into play in helping
the young to adhere.  Their weight seemed to require a sort of cataleptic
state of the muscles of the jaw, to enable them to hold on.

Scorpions, centipedes, and poisonous spiders also were not unfrequently
brought into the ship with the wood, and occasionally found their way
into our beds; but in every instance we were fortunate enough to discover
and destroy them before they did any harm.  Naval officers on this coast
report that, when scorpions and centipedes remain a few weeks after being
taken on board in a similar manner, their poison loses nearly all its
virulence; but this we did not verify.  Snakes sometimes came in with the
wood, but oftener floated down the river to us, climbing on board with
ease by the chain-cable, and some poisonous ones were caught in the
cabin.  A green snake lived with us several weeks, concealing himself
behind the casing of the deckhouse in the daytime.  To be aroused in the
dark by five feet of cold green snake gliding over one's face is rather
unpleasant, however rapid the movement may be.  Myriads of two varieties
of cockroaches infested the vessel; they not only ate round the roots of
our nails, but even devoured and defiled our food, flannels, and boots.
Vain were all our efforts to extirpate these destructive pests; if you
kill one, say the sailors, a hundred come down to his funeral!  In the
work of Commodore Owen it is stated that cockroaches, pounded into a
paste, form a powerful carminative; this has not been confirmed, but when
monkeys are fed on them they are sure to become lean.

On coming to Senna, we found that the Zulus had arrived in force for
their annual tribute.  These men are under good discipline, and never
steal from the people.  The tax is claimed on the ground of conquest, the
Zulus having formerly completely overcome the Senna people, and chased
them on to the islands in the Zambesi.  Fifty-four of the Portuguese were
slain on the occasion, and, notwithstanding the mud fort, the village has
never recovered its former power.  Fever was now very prevalent, and most
of the Portuguese were down with it.

For a good view of the adjacent scenery, the hill, Baramuana, behind the
village, was ascended.  A caution was given about the probability of an
attack of fever from a plant that grows near the summit.  Dr. Kirk
discovered it to be the _Paedevia foetida_, which, when smelt, actually
does give headache and fever.  It has a nasty fetor, as its name
indicates.  This is one instance in which fever and a foul smell
coincide.  In a number of instances offensive effluvia and fever seems to
have no connection.  Owing to the abundant rains, the crops in the Senna
district were plentiful; this was fortunate, after the partial failure of
the past two years.  It was the 25th of April, 1860, before we reached
Tette; here also the crops were luxuriant, and the people said that they
had not had such abundance since 1856, the year when Dr. Livingstone came
down the river.  It is astonishing to any one who has seen the works for
irrigation in other countries, as at the Cape and in Egypt, that no
attempt has ever been made to lead out the water either of the Zambesi or
any of its tributaries; no machinery has ever been used to raise it even
from the stream, but droughts and starvations are endured, as if they
were inevitable dispensations of Providence, incapable of being
mitigated.

Feeling in honour bound to return with those who had been the faithful
companions of Dr. Livingstone, in 1856, and to whose guardianship and
services was due the accomplishment of a journey which all the Portuguese
at Tette had previously pronounced impossible, the requisite steps were
taken to convey them to their homes.

We laid the ship alongside of the island Kanyimbe, opposite Tette; and,
before starting for the country of the Makololo, obtained a small plot of
land, to form a garden for the two English sailors who were to remain in
charge during our absence.  We furnished them with a supply of seeds, and
they set to work with such zeal, that they certainly merited success.
Their first attempt at African horticulture met with failure from a most
unexpected source; every seed was dug up and the inside of it eaten by
mice.  "Yes," said an old native, next morning, on seeing the husks,
"that is what happens this month; for it is the mouse month, and the seed
should have been sown last mouth, when I sowed mine."  The sailors,
however, sowed more next day; and, being determined to outwit the mice,
they this time covered the beds over with grass.  The onions, with other
seeds of plants cultivated by the Portuguese, are usually planted in the
beginning of April, in order to have the advantage of the cold season;
the wheat a little later, for the same reason.  If sown at the beginning
of the rainy season in November, it runs, as before remarked, entirely to
straw; but as the rains are nearly over in May, advantage is taken of low-
lying patches, which have been flooded by the river.  A hole is made in
the mud with a hoe, a few seeds dropped in, and the earth shoved back
with the foot.  If not favoured with certain misty showers, which, lower
down the river, are simply fogs, water is borne from the river to the
roots of the wheat in earthern pots; and in about four months the crop is
ready for the sickle.  The wheat of Tette is exported, as the best grown
in the country; but a hollow spot at Maruru, close by Mazaro, yielded
very good crops, though just at the level of the sea, as a few inches
rise of tide shows.

A number of days were spent in busy preparation for our journey; the
cloth, beads, and brass wire, for the trip were sewn up in old canvas,
and each package had the bearer's name printed on it.  The Makololo, who
had worked for the Expedition, were paid for their services, and every
one who had come down with the Doctor from the interior received a
present of cloth and ornaments, in order to protect them from the greater
cold of their own country, and to show that they had not come in vain.
Though called Makololo by courtesy, as they were proud of the name,
Kanyata, the principal headman, was the only real Makololo of the party;
and he, in virtue of his birth, had succeeded to the chief place on the
death of Sekwebu.  The others belonged to the conquered tribes of the
Batoka, Bashubia, Ba-Selea, and Barotse.  Some of these men had only
added to their own vices those of the Tette slaves; others, by toiling
during the first two years in navigating canoes, and hunting elephants,
had often managed to save a little, to take back to their own country,
but had to part with it all for food to support the rest in times of
hunger, and, latterly, had fallen into the improvident habits of slaves,
and spent their surplus earnings in beer and agua ardiente.

Everything being ready on the 15th of May, we started at 2 p.m. from the
village where the Makololo had dwelt.  A number of the men did not leave
with the goodwill which their talk for months before had led us to
anticipate; but some proceeded upon being told that they were not
compelled to go unless they liked, though others altogether declined
moving.  Many had taken up with slave-women, whom they assisted in
hoeing, and in consuming the produce of their gardens.  Some fourteen
children had been born to them; and in consequence of now having no chief
to order them, or to claim their services, they thought that they were
about as well off as they had been in their own country.  They knew and
regretted that they could call neither wives nor children their own; the
slave-owners claimed the whole; but their natural affections had been so
enchained, that they clave to the domestic ties.  By a law of Portugal
the baptized children of slave women are all free; by the custom of the
Zambesi that law is void.  When it is referred to, the officers laugh and
say, "These Lisbon-born laws are very stringent, but somehow, possibly
from the heat of the climate, here they lose all their force."  Only one
woman joined our 

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