slaughtered out of the four which they had with them,
when suddenly, to the evident consternation of the men, seven Mazitu
appeared armed with spears and shields, with their heads dressed
fantastically with feathers. To hold a parley, Dr. Livingstone and
Moloka, a Makololo man who spoke Zulu, went unarmed to meet them. On Dr.
Livingstone approaching them, they ordered him to stop, and sit down in
the sun, while they sat in the shade. "No, no!" was the reply, "if you
sit in the shade, so will we." They then rattled their shields with
their clubs, a proceeding which usually inspires terror; but Moloka
remarked, "It is not the first time we have heard shields rattled." And
all sat down together. They asked for a present, to show their chief
that they had actually met strangers--something as evidence of having
seen men who were not Arabs. And they were requested in turn to take
these strangers to the boat, or to their chief. All the goods were in
the boat, and to show that no present such as they wanted was in his
pockets, Dr. Livingstone emptied them, turning out, among other things, a
note-book: thinking it was a pistol they started up, and said, "Put that
in again." The younger men then became boisterous, and demanded a goat.
That could not be spared, as they were the sole provisions. When they
insisted, they were asked how many of the party they had killed, that
they thus began to divide the spoil; this evidently made them ashamed.
The elders were more reasonable; they dreaded treachery, and were as much
afraid of Dr. Livingstone and his party as his men were of them; for on
leaving they sped away up the hills like frightened deer. One of them,
and probably the leader, was married, as seen by portions of his hair
sewn into a ring; all were observed by their teeth to be people of the
country, who had been incorporated into the Zulu tribe.

The way still led over a succession of steep ridges with ravines of from
500 to 1000 feet in depth; some of the sides had to be scaled on hands
and knees, and no sooner was the top reached than the descent began
again. Each ravine had a running stream; and the whole country, though
so very rugged, had all been cultivated, and densely peopled. Many
banana-trees, uncared for patches of corn, and Congo-bean bushes attested
former cultivation. The population had all been swept away; ruined
villages, broken utensils, and human skeletons, met with at every turn,
told a sad tale