till stoutly maintained that
he had seen these little people, and had actually been in their town;
thus making himself the hero of the traditional story, which before and
since the time of Herodotus has, with curious persistency, clung to the
native mind. The mere fact that such absurd notions are permanent, even
in the entire absence of literature, invests the religious ideas of these
people also with importance, as fragments of the wreck of the primitive
faith floating down the stream of time.

We waded across the rapid Luia, which took us up to the waist, and was
about forty yards wide. The water was discoloured at the time, and we
were not without apprehension that a crocodile might chance to fancy a
white man for dinner. Next day one of the men crawled over the black
rocks to within ten yards of a sleeping hippopotamus, and shot him
through the brain. The weather being warm, the body floated in a few
hours, and some of us had our first trial of hippopotamus flesh. It is a
cross-grained meat, something between pork and beef,--pretty good food
when one is hungry and can get nothing better. When we reached the foot
of the mountain named Chipereziwa, whose perpendicular rocky sides are
clothed with many-coloured lichens, our Portuguese companion informed us
there were no more obstructions to navigation, the river being all smooth
above; he had hunted there and knew it well. Supposing that the object
of our trip was accomplished we turned back; but two natives, who came to
our camp at night, assured us that a cataract, called Morumbwa, did still
exist in front. Drs. Livingstone and Kirk then decided to go forward
with three Makololo and settle the question for themselves. It was as
tough a bit of travel as they ever had in Africa, and after some painful
marching the Badema guides refused to go further; "the Banyai," they
said, "would be angry if they showed white men the country; and there was
besides no practicable approach to the spot, neither elephant, nor
hippopotamus, nor even a crocodile could reach the cataract." The slopes
of the mountains on each side of the river, now not 300 yards wide, and
without the flattish flood-channel and groove, were more than 3000 feet
from the sky-line down, and were covered either with dense thornbush or
huge black boulders; this deep trough-like shape caused the sun's rays to
converge as into a focus, making the surface so hot that the soles of the
feet of the Makololo be