“The Doctor and his little party arrived on the 18th day of July, 1866, at a village belonging to a chief of the Mahiyaw, situated eight days’ march south of the Rovuma and overlooking the watershed of the Lake Nyassa. The territory lying between the Rovuma river and this Mahiyaw chieftain was an uninhabited wilderness, during the transit of which Livingstone and the expedition suffered considerably from hunger and desertion of men.
“Early in August, 1866, the Doctor came to Mponda’s country, a chief who dwelt near the Lake Nyassa. On the road thither two of the liberated slaves deserted him. Here, also, Wakotani (not Wikotani) a protege of the Doctor, insisted upon his discharge, alleging as an excuse, which the Doctor subsequently found to be untrue, that he had found his brother.”
Hence the explorer proceeded to the heel of Lake Nyassa where there is a village of a Babisa chief. The chief was ill, and Doctor Livingstone remained there for some time to give him medical aid. It was here that he was deserted by his Johanna men, the chief of whom, Ali Moosa (or Musa), pretended to give credence to a mournful story of plunder perpetrated upon a certain half-caste Arab who had been along the western shore of the lake. Though the explorer gave no faith to the Arab story, he determined not to go among the Ma-zitu, reported so hostile, and proceeded in a southwestern course for a considerable distance. The correspondent’s letter goes on to say:
“As soon as he turned his face westward Musa and the Johanna men ran away in a body. The Doctor says, in commenting upon Musa’s conduct, that he felt strongly tempted to shoot Musa and another ringleader, but was nevertheless glad that he did not soil his hands with their vile blood. A day or two afterwards another of his men—Simon Price by name—came to the Doctor with the same tale about the Ma-Zitu, but, compelled by the scant number of his people to repress all such tendencies to desertion and faint-heartedness, the Doctor ‘shut him up’ at once and forbade him to utter the name of the Ma-Zitu any more. Had the natives not assisted him he must have despaired of ever being able to penetrate the wild and unexplored interior which he was now about to tread.
“‘Fortunately,’ as the Doctor says with unction, ‘I was in a country now, after leaving the shores of the Nyassa, where the feet of the slave trader had not trodden. It was a new and virgin land, and of course, as I have always found it in such cases, the natives were really good and hospitable, and for very small portions of cloth my baggage was conveyed from village to village by them.’ In many other ways the traveller in his extremity was kindly treated by the undefiled and unspoiled natives. On leaving this hospitable region in the early part of December, 1866, the Doctor entered a country where the Mazitu had exercised their customary spoliating propensities. The land was swept clean of all provisions and cattle, and the people had emigrated to other countries beyond the bounds of these ferocious plunderers. Again the expedition was besieged by famine, and was reduced to great extremity. To satisfy the pinching hunger it suffered it had recourse to the wild fruits which some parts of the country furnished. At intervals the condition of the hard-pressed band was made worse by the heartless desertion of some of its members, who more than once departed with the Doctor’s personal kit—changes of clothes and linen, etc. With more or less misfortunes constantly dogging his footsteps, he traversed in safety the countries of the Babisa, Bobemba, Barungu, Baulungu, and Londa.
“In the country of Londa lives the famous Cazembe—made known to Europeans first by Dr. Lacerda, the Portuguese traveller. Cazembe is a most intelligent prince; is a tall, stalwart man, who wears a peculiar kind of dress, made of crimson print, in the form of a prodigious kilt. The mode of arranging it is most ludicrous. All the folds of this enormous kilt are massed in front, which causes him to look as if the peculiarities of the human body were reversed in his case. The abdominal parts are thus covered with a balloon-like expansion of cloth, while the lumbar region, which is by us jealously clothed, with him is only half draped by a narrow curtain which by no means suffices to obscure its naturally fine proportions. In this state dress King Cazembe received Dr. Livingstone, surrounded by his chiefs and body guards. A chief, who had been deputed by the King and elders to find out all about the white man, then stood up before the assembly, and in a loud voice gave the result of the inquiry he had instituted. He had heard the white man had come to look for waters, for rivers and seas. Though he did not understand what the white man could want with such things, he had no doubt that the object was good. Then Cazembe asked what the Doctor proposed doing and where he thought of going. The Doctor replied that he had thought of going south, as he had heard of lakes and rivers being in that direction. Cazembe asked: ‘What can you want to go there for? The water is close here. There is plenty of large water in this neighborhood.’ Before breaking up the assembly Cazembe gave orders to let the white man go where he would through his country undisturbed and unmolested. He was the first Englishman he had seen, he said, and he liked him.
“Shortly after his introduction to the King the Queen entered the large house surrounded by a body guard of Amazons armed with spears. She was a fine, tall, handsome young woman, and evidently thought she was about to make a great impression upon the rustic white man, for she had clothed herself after a most royal fashion, and was armed with a ponderous spear. But her appearance, so different from what the Doctor had imagined, caused him to laugh, which entirely spoiled the effect intended, for the laugh of the Doctor was so contagious that she herself was the first who imitated, and the Amazons, courtier-like, followed suit. Much disconcerted by this, the Queen ran back, followed by her obedient damsels—a retreat most undignified and unqueenlike compared to her majestic advent into the Doctor’s presence.
“Soon after his arrival in the country of Londa, or Lunda, and before he had entered the district of Cazembe, he had crossed a river called the Chambezi, which was quite an important stream. The similarity of the name with that large and noble river south, which will be forever connected with his name, misled Livingstone at that time, and he accordingly did not pay it the attention it deserved, believing that the Chambezi was but the head-waters of the Zambezi, and consequently had no bearing or connection with the sources of the river of Egypt, of which he was in search. His fault was in relying too implicitly upon the correctness of Portuguese information. This error cost him many months of tedious labor and travel. But these travels and tedious labors of his in Londa and the adjacent countries have established beyond doubt, first, that the Chambezi is a totally distinct river from the Zambezi of the Portuguese, and secondly, that the Chambezi, starting from about latitude eleven degrees south, is none other than the most southerly feeder of the great Nile, thus giving this famous river a length of over two thousand six hundred miles of direct latitude, making it second to the Mississippi, the longest river in the world. The real and true name of the Zambezi is Dombazi. When Lacuda and his Portuguese successors came to Cazembe, crossed the Chambezi and heard its name, they very naturally set it down as ‘our own Zambezi,’ and without further inquiry sketched it as running in that direction.
AMAZON WARRIORS.