mission to man, and to pray
with them, associated the idea of Sunday with the meeting, and, before
anything of the sort was proposed, came and asked that he and his people
might be "sundayed" as well as his neighbours; and be given a little seed
wheat, and fruit-tree seeds; with which request of course we very
willingly complied. The idea of praying direct to the Supreme Being,
though not quite new to all, seems to strike their minds so forcibly that
it will not be forgotten. Sinamane said that he prayed to God, Morungo,
and made drink-offerings to him. Though he had heard of us, he had never
seen white men before.

Beautiful crowned cranes, named from their note "ma-wang," were seen
daily, and were beginning to pair. Large flocks of spur-winged geese, or
machikwe, were common. This goose is said to lay her eggs in March. We
saw also pairs of Egyptian geese, as well as a few of the knob-nosed, or,
as they are called in India, combed geese. When the Egyptian geese, as
at the present time, have young, the goslings keep so steadily in the
wake of their mother, that they look as if they were a part of her tail;
and both parents, when on land, simulate lameness quite as well as our
plovers, to draw off pursuers. The ostrich also adopts the lapwing
fashion, but no quadrupeds do: they show fight to defend their young
instead. In some places the steep banks were dotted with the holes which
lead into the nests of bee-eaters. These birds came out in hundreds as
we passed. When the red-breasted species settle on the trees, they give
them the appearance of being covered with red foliage.

On the morning of the 12th October we passed through a wild, hilly
country, with fine wooded scenery on both sides, but thinly inhabited.
The largest trees were usually thorny acacias, of great size and
beautiful forms. As we sailed by several villages without touching, the
people became alarmed, and ran along the banks, spears in hand. We
employed one to go forward and tell Mpande of our coming. This allayed
their fears, and we went ashore, and took breakfast near the large island
with two villages on it, opposite the mouth of the Zungwe, where we had
left the Zambesi on our way up. Mpande was sorry that he had no canoes
of his own to sell, but he would lend us two. He gave us cooked pumpkins
and a water-melon. His servant had lateral curvature of the spine. We
have often seen cases of humpback, but this was the only case of thi