The villagers were busily employed in their gardens. Most of the men have muscular figures. Their colour varies from a dark to a light olive. The women have the extraordinary custom of piercing the upper lip, and gradually enlarging the orifice till a shell can be inserted. The lip appears drawn out beyond the nose, and gives them a very ugly appearance. As Sekwebu remarked: “These women want to make their mouths like those of ducks.” The commonest of these rings are made of bamboo, but others are of ivory or metal. When the wearer tries to smile, the contraction of the muscles turns the ring upwards, so that its upper edge comes in front of the eyes, the nose appearing through the middle, while the whole front teeth are exposed by the motion, exhibiting the way in which they have been clipped to resemble the fangs of a cat or a crocodile.
On their next halt Seole, the chief of the village, instead of receiving them in a friendly way, summoned his followers
and prepared for an attack. The reason was soon discovered. It appeared that an Italian, who had married the chief’s daughter, having armed a party of fifty slaves with guns, had ascended the river in a canoe from Tete, and attacked several inhabited islands beyond Makaba, taking large numbers of prisoners and much ivory. As he descended again with his booty, his party was dispersed and he himself was killed while attempting to escape on foot. Seole imagined that the doctor was another Italian.
This was the first symptom of the abominable slave trade they met with on the east side of the continent. Had not the chief with whom they had previously stayed arrived to explain matters, Seole might have given them much trouble.
Mburuma, another chief of the same tribe, had laid a plan to plunder the party by separating them, but the doctor, suspecting treachery, kept his people together. They had on a previous occasion plundered a party of traders bringing English goods from Mozambique.
On the 14th of January they reached the confluence of the Loangwa and the Zambesi.
Here the doctor discovered the ruins of a town, with the remains of a church in its midst. The situation was well chosen, with lofty hills in the rear and a view of the two rivers in front. On one side of the church lay a broken bell, with the letters IHS and a cross. This he found was a Portuguese settlement called Zumbo. The conduct of Mburuma and his people gave Dr Livingstone much anxiety, as he could not help dreading that they might attack him the next morning. His chief regret was that his efforts for the welfare of the teeming population in that great region would thus be frustrated by savages, of whom it might be said: “They know not what they do.”
He felt especially anxious that the elevated and healthy district which he had now discovered, stretching towards
