Digging-stick weighted with round Stone.
The stones still used as anvils and sledge-hammers by many of the African smiths, when considered from their point of view, show sounder sense than if they were burdened with the great weights we use. They are unacquainted with the process of case-hardening, which, applied to certain parts of our anvils, gives them their usefulness, and an anvil of their soft iron would not do so well as a hard stone. It is true a small light one might be made, but let any one see how the hammers of their iron bevel over and round in the faces with a little work, and he will perceive that only a wild freak would induce any sensible native smith to make a mass equal to a sledge-hammer, and burden himself with a weight for what can be better performed by a stone. If people are settled, as on the coast, then they gladly use any mass of cast iron they may find, but never where, as in the interior, they have no certainty of remaining any length of time in one spot.
5th August, 1866.—We left Miulé, and commenced our march towards Lake Nyassa, and slept at the last of the streams that flow to the Loendi. In Mataka's vicinity, N.E., there is a perfect brush of streams flowing to that river: one forms a lake in its course, and the sources of the Rovuma lie in the same region. After leaving Mataka's we crossed a good-sized one flowing to Loendi, and, the day after leaving Pezimba's, another going to the Chiringa or Lochiringa, which is a tributary of the Rovuma.
6th August, 1866.—We passed two cairns this morning at the beginning of the very sensible descent to the Lake. They are very common in all this Southern Africa in the passes of the mountains, and are meant to mark divisions of countries, perhaps burial-places, but the Waiyau who accompanied us thought that they were merely heaps of stone collected by some one making a garden. The cairns were placed just about the spot where the blue waters of Nyassa first came fairly into view.
We now came upon a stream, the Misinjé, flowing into the Lake, and we crossed it five times; it was about twenty yards wide, and thigh deep. We made but short stages when we got on the lower plateau, for the people had great abundance of food, and gave large presents of it if we rested. One man gave four fowls, three large baskets of maize, pumpkins, eland's fat—a fine male, as seen by his horns,—and pressed us to stay, that he might see our curiosities as well as others. He said that at one day's distance south of him all sorts of animals, as buffaloes, elands, elephants, hippopotami, and antelopes, could be shot.
8th August, 1866.—We came to the Lake at the confluence of the Misinjé, and felt grateful to That Hand which had protected us thus far on our journey. It was as if I had come back to an old home I never expected again to see; and pleasant to bathe in the delicious waters again, hear the roar of the sea, and dash in the rollers. Temp. 71° at 8 A.M., while the air was 65°. I feel quite exhilarated.
The headman here, Mokalaosé, is a real Manganja, and he and all his people exhibit the greater darkness of colour consequent on being in a warm moist climate; he is very friendly, and presented millet, porridge, cassava, and hippopotamus meat boiled and asked if I liked milk, as he had some of Mataka's cattle here. His people bring sanjika the best Lake fish, for sale; they are dried on stages over slow fires, and lose their fine flavour by it, but they are much prized inland. I bought fifty for a fathom of calico; when fresh, they taste exactly like the best herrings, i.e. as we think, but voyagers' and travellers' appetites are often so whetted as to be incapable of giving a true verdict in matters of taste.
[It is necessary to explain that Livingstone knew of an Arab settlement on the western shore of the Lake, and that he hoped to induce the chief man Jumbé to give him a passage to the other side.]
10th August, 1866.—I sent Seyed Majid's letter up to Jumbé, but the messenger met some coast Arabs at the Loangwa, which may be seven miles from this, and they came back with him, haggling a deal about the fare, and then went off, saying that they would bring the dhow here for us. Finding that they did not come, I sent Musa, who brought back word that they had taken the dhow away over to Jumbé at Kotakota, or, as they pronounce it, Ngotagota. Very few of the coast Arabs can read; in words they are very polite, but truthfulness seems very little regarded. I am resting myself and people—working up journal, lunars, and altitudes—but will either move south or go to the Arabs towards the north soon.
Mokalaosé's fears of the Waiyau will make him welcome Jumbé here, and then the Arab will some day have an opportunity of scattering his people as he has done those at Kotakota. He has made Loséwa too hot for himself. When the people there were carried off by Mataka's people, Jumbé seized their stores of grain, and now has no post to which he can go there. The Loangwa Arabs give an awful account of Jumbé's murders and selling the people, but one cannot take it all in; at the mildest it must have been bad. This is all they ever do; they cannot form a state or independent kingdom: slavery and the slave-trade are insuperable obstacles to any permanence inland; slaves can escape so easily, all therefore that the Arabs do is to collect as much money as they can by hook and by crook, and then leave the country.