6th December, 1866.—Too ill to march.
7th December, 1866.—Went on, and passed Mesumbé's village, also protected by bamboos, and came to the hill Mparawé, with a village perched on its northern base and well up its sides. The Babisa have begun to imitate the Mazitu by attacking and plundering Manganja villages. Muasi's brother was so attacked, and now is here and eager to attack in return. In various villages we have observed miniature huts, about two feet high, very neatly thatched and plastered, here we noticed them in dozens. On inquiring, we were told that when a child or relative dies one is made, and when any pleasant food is cooked or beer brewed, a little is placed in the tiny hut for the departed soul, which is believed to enjoy it.
The Lokuzhwa is here some fifty yards wide, and running. Numerous large pitholes in the fine-grained schist in its bed show that much water has flowed in it.
8th December, 1866.—A kind of bean called "chitetta" is eaten here, it is an old acquaintance in the Bechuana country, where it is called "mositsané," and is a mere plant; here it becomes a tree, from fifteen to twenty feet high. The root is used for tanning; the bean is pounded, and then put into a sieve of bark cloth to extract, by repeated washings, the excessively astringent matter it contains. Where the people have plenty of water, as here, it is used copiously in various processes, among Bechuanas it is scarce, and its many uses unknown: the pod becomes from fifteen to eighteen inches long, and an inch in diameter.
9th December, 1866.—A poor child, whose mother had died, was unprovided for; no one not a relative will nurse another's child. It called out piteously for its mother by name, and the women (like the servants in the case of the poet Cowper when a child), said, "She is coming." I gave it a piece of bread, but it was too far gone, and is dead to-day.
An alarm of Mazitu sent all the villagers up the sides of Mparawé this morning. The affair was a chase of a hyaena, but everything is Mazitu! The Babisa came here, but were surrounded and nearly all cut off. Muasi was so eager to be off with a party to return the attack on the Mazitu, that, when deputed by the headman to give us a guide, he got the man to turn at the first village, so we had to go on without guides, and made about due north.
11th December, 1866.—We are now detained in the forest, at a place called Chondé Forest, by set-in rains. It rains every day, and generally in the afternoon; but the country is not wetted till the "set-in" rains commence; the cracks in the soil then fill up and everything rushes up with astonishing rapidity; the grass is quite crisp and soft. After the fine-grained schist, we came on granite with large flakes of talc in it. This forest is of good-sized trees, many of them mopané. The birds now make much melody and noise—all intent on building.
12th December, 1866.—Across an undulating forest country north we got a man to show us the way, if a pathless forest can so be called. We used a game-path as long as it ran north, but left it when it deviated, and rested under a baobab-tree with a marabou's nest—a bundle of sticks on a branch; the young ones uttered a hard chuck, chuck, when the old ones flew over them. A sun-bird, with bright scarlet throat and breast, had its nest on another branch, it was formed like the weaver's nest, but without a tube. I observed the dam picking out insects from the bark and leaves of the baobab, keeping on the wing the while: it would thus appear to be insectivorous as well as a honey-bibber. Much spoor of elands, zebras, gnus, kamas, pallahs, buffaloes, reed-bucks, with tsetse, their parasites.
13th December, 1866.—Reached the Tokosusi, which is said to rise at Nombé Rumé, about twenty yards wide and knee deep, swollen by the rains: it had left a cake of black tenacious mud on its banks. Here I got a pallah antelope, and a very strange flower called "katendé," which was a whorl of seventy-two flowers sprung from a flat, round root; but it cannot be described. Our guide would have crossed the Tokosusi, which was running north-west to join the Loangwa, and then gone to that river; but always when we have any difficulty the "lazies" exhibit themselves. We had no grain; and three remained behind spending four hours at what we did in an hour and a quarter. Our guide became tired and turned, not before securing another; but he would not go over the Loangwa; no one likes to go out of his own country: he would go westwards to Maranda's, and nowhere else. A "set-in" rain came on after dark, and we went on through slush, the trees sending down heavier drops than the showers as we neared the Loangwa; we forded several deep gullies, all flowing north or north-west into it. The paths were running with water, and when we emerged from the large Mopané Forest, we came on the plain of excessively adhesive mud, on which Maranda's stronghold stands on the left bank of Loangwa, here a good-sized river. The people were all afraid of us, and we were mortified to find that food is scarce. The Mazitu have been here three times, and the fear they have inspired, though they were successfully repelled, has prevented agricultural operations from being carried on.
Mem.—A flake of reed is often used in surgical operations among the natives, as being sharper than their knives.