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

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 Luawé 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 Luawé 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 Luawé 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 Milambé, which is the most westerly, the Kongoné, the Luabo, and the Timbwé (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 Kongoné 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 Kongoné 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 Timbwé disappear away to the north; and coming west again, he can easily make out East Luabo from its great size; and Kongoné 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 Kongoné is five miles east of the Milambé, or western branch, and seven miles west from East Luabo, which again is five miles from the Timbwé.  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 Kongoné 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 Kongoné branch comes out of the main stream considerably higher up as the outgoing branch called Doto.

The first twenty miles of the Kongoné 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 Kongoné 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 Kongoné on the right bank, and another named Chindé 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 Shiré, 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, “Uachingeré, Uachingeré Kalé,” “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 5000l. and 6000l. 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 Kongoné 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 vitæ; the latter tree attains an immense size, sometimes as much as four feet in diameter; our engineer, knowing what ebony and lignum vitæ 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 vitæ 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 Shiré.  Its quartz hills are covered with trees and gigantic grasses; the buazé, 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. Ferrão.  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 Ferrão 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 Dembé, 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 Shiré—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 Badèma 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 Badèma 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 Shiré, 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 Shiré 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 Shiré 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 Tingané, 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, Tingané 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 Tingané 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 Shiré 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 Shiré.  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 Milanjé; 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 Shiré, 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 Shiré.  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 Kongoné 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 Kongoné 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 Shiré, 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 Shiré 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 Shiré 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 Madsé-awíra (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 Shiré 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 Shiré 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 Mantlanyané.  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 Shiré flows.  The lagoon itself is called Nyanja ea Motopé (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 Pamalombé.

Late in the afternoon of the first day’s steaming, after we left the wooding-place, we called at the village of Chikanda-Kadzé, 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 Malawé; 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 Tingané, 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 Tingané’s villages.  His people were friendly enough with us now, and covered the banks with a variety of articles for sale.  The majestic mountain, Chipironé, 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 Milanjé 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 Milanjé mountains, and flows to the S.W., to join the Shiré some distance above Tingané’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 Shiré.  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 Shiré 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 (Ploceidæ) 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 Æthiopium).  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 Shiré 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, Mankokwé, 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 padrè 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 padrè seemed willing, but she could not be found.  This padrè 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 Shiré; then the Shiré 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, Sininyané, 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 Sininyané; “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 Milanjé 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 Shiré 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 Njongoné, 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 Shiré 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 “tonjé 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 Shiré 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 “tonjé 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 Shiré 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 buazé, 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 pelélé, 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 pelélé, and it is common on the Upper and Lower Shiré.  The poorer classes make them of hollow or of solid bamboo, but the wealthier of ivory or tin.  The tin pelélé 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 pelélé, 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 pelélé of an old lady, Chikanda Kadzé, 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 pelélé 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, Chinsunsé.  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 pelélé?  She would have a mouth like a man, and no beard; ha! ha! ha!”  Afterwards on the Rovuma, we found men wearing the pelélé, 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 pelélé 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 Chinsunsé’s women of the Makololo; “our men never do.”

The superstitious ordeal, by drinking the poisonous muavé, 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 muavé 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 muavé 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 muavé.

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 Mpambè, and also Morungo, and in a future state.  “We live only a few days here,” said old Chinsunsé, “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 Shiré—Discovery of Lake Nyassa—Distressing exploration—Return to Zambesi—Unpleasant visitors—Start for Sekeletu’s Country in the interior.

Our path followed the Shiré above the cataracts, which is now a broad deep river, with but little current.  It expands in one place into a lakelet, called Pamalombé, 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 Shiré 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 Shiré 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 Chinsunsé’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 Shiré, 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 Kongoné, 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 Shiré 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 Shiré 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, buazé, 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 Cazembé and Katanga’s country, and of other parts of the interior, crosses Nyassa and the Shiré, 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 Shiré 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 Njongoné 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 Shiré 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 Shiré 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.

Mankokwé 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 Ferrão, 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 Shiré to Tette, we ran down the Kongoné 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.

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1

A remedy composed of from six to eight grains of resin of jalap, the same of rhubarb, and three each of calomel and quinine, made up into four pills, with tincture of cardamoms, usually relieved all the symptoms in five or six hours.  Four pills are a full dose for a man—one will suffice for a woman.  They received from our men the name of “rousers,” from their efficacy in rousing up even those most prostrated.  When their operation is delayed, a dessert-spoonful of Epsom salts should be given.  Quinine after or during the operation of the pills, in large doses every two or three hours, until deafness or cinchonism ensued, completed the cure.  The only cases in which, we found ourselves completely helpless, were those in which obstinate vomiting ensued.

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2

The late Mr. Robson.

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