PIT AT END OF HOPO. [Larger.]

The village he reached was inhabited by the Manganza, who are extremely clever in the art of manufacture. Their looms turn out a strong serviceable cotton cloth. Their iron weapons show a taste for design not equalled by any of their neighbors, and it is the same with all implements relating to husbandry. Though far better artisans than the more distinctive Waiyau, they are deficient in dash and courage. He was now at an elevation of 4,000 feet above the sea, in the midst of a very fine country, where the air was delightfully clear and delicious. The cultivation was so general, and the fields so regularly laid out, that it required but little imagination to picture it as an English scene. The trees were only in clumps, and marked the tops of ridges, the sites of villages or the places of sepulture. The people go well armed with bows and arrows, and fine knives of domestic manufacture, and being great hunters they have pretty well rid their section of game. The women

wear their hair long, dress in reasonably full clothing, and have somewhat the appearance of the ancient Egyptians.

The westward journey brought him to the Kanthunda people, partly plain-dwellers and partly mountaineers. They are very pompous and ceremonious. Food was found in plenty, raised by their own hands, since game was well nigh extinct. The villages were now very frequent, mostly situated in groves composed of large trees. The country was broken into high ranges of hills with broad valley sweeps between. The thermometer frequently sank to 64° at night, but the sun was intolerably hot during the day, necessitating short journeys.

All this time Livingstone had been passing westward through the system which drains either into Lake Nyassa or directly into the Zambesi. His objective being the basin which supplies the head streams of the Congo, he turned his journey northward in the direction of the mountains which divide the two great river systems.

The tribes he now struck were greatly harassed by the Mazuti, who stole their corn annually and made frequent raids for the capture of slaves. Yet they were hospitable and prosperous, being skillful weavers and iron-workers. The country was mountainous, for he was on the divide between the waters which drain into Lake Nyassa and those which flow into the Loangwa on the west, the latter being an important affluent of the Zambesi. Striking the head-waters of the Lokushwa, a tributary of the Loangwa, he followed its course to the main stream, through a country of dwarf forests, and peoples collected in stockades, who were the smiths for a large region, making and selling hoes and other iron utensils.

He crossed the Loangwa at a point where it is 100 yards wide, and in a country abounding in game. It was here that he indulged in those regretful thoughts respecting the gradual passing away of the magnificent herds of wild animals—zebras, elands, buffaloes, giraffes, gnus, and numerous species of deer and antelope—which once roamed all over Central and South Africa, down to the Cape of Good Hope, which are every year being thinned away, or driven northwards. The lion—the boasted king of animals—makes a poor figure beside the tsetse fly in travellers’ records. The general impression about him is that, in spite of his formidable strength,

his imposing roaring, and his majestic mane, he is a coward and a skulker. Livingstone had a hearty contempt for the brute, though in his time he had been severely mauled and bitten by him. The lion, however, when sore pressed by hunger, has been known to pluck up sufficient courage to tear off the flimsy roof of a native hut and leap down upon the sleeping inmates. The elephant—a much grander animal in every respect—occasionally performs a similar feat, his motive being curiosity, or perhaps mischief, if one of his periodical fits of ill-nature is upon him. A sight may now and again be got of a roaming rhinoceros tramping stolidly with surly gruntings through the depths of the thicket: a glade will be suddenly opened up where a group of shaggy buffaloes are grazing; or a herd of startled giraffes will break away in a shambling gallop, their long necks swinging ungracefully to and fro, as they crash their way through the forest, like “locomotive obelisks.” Now and then a shot may be got at a troop of zebras, pallahs, wild beeste, or other big-game animals, and the scanty larder be replenished for a time; but the traveler must often lay his account with being absolutely in want of food, and be fain, like Livingstone, to draw in his belt an inch or two in lieu of dinner.

CAPSIZED BY A HIPPOPOTAMUS.