y say, all for ornament. Some blue stuff is rubbed into the cuts (I
am told it is charcoal), and the ornament shows brightly in persons
of light complexion, who by the bye are common. The Makonde and
Matambwe file their front teeth to points; the Machinga, a Waiyan
tribe, leave two points on the sides of the front teeth, and knock out
one of the middle incisors above and below.

[Illustration: Machinga and Waiyan Teeth.]

_14th June, 1866._--I am now as much dependent on carriers as if I had
never bought a beast of burden--but this is poor stuff to fill a
journal with. We started off to Metaba to see if the chief there would
lend some men. The headman, Kitwanga, went a long way to convoy us;
then turned, saying he was going to get men for Musa next day. We
passed near the base of the rounded masses Ngozo and Mekanga, and
think, from a near inspection, that they are over 2000 feet above the
plain, possibly 3000 feet, and nearly bare, with only the peculiar
grassy plant on some parts which are not too perpendicular. The people
are said to have stores of grain on them, and on one the chief said
there is water; he knows of no stone buildings of the olden time in
the country. We passed many masses of ferruginous conglomerate, and I
noticed that most of the gneiss dips westwards. The striae seem as if
the rock had been partially molten: at times the strike is north and
south, at others east and west; when we come to what may have been its
surface, it is as if the striae had been stirred with a rod while
soft.

We slept at a point of the Rovuma, above a cataract where a reach of
comparatively still water, from 150 to 200 yards wide, allows a school
of hippopotami to live: when the river becomes fordable in many
places, as it is said to do in August and September, they must find it
difficult to exist.

_15th June, 1866._--Another three hours' march brought us from the
sleeping-place on the Rovuma to Metaba, the chief of which, Kinazombe,
is an elderly man, with a cunning and severe cast of countenance, and
a nose Assyrian in type; he has built a large reception house, in
which a number of half-caste Arabs have taken up their abode. A great
many of the people have guns, and it is astonishing to see the number
of slave-taming sticks abandoned along the road as the poor wretches
gave in, and professed to have lost all hope of escape. Many huts have
been built by the Arabs to screen themselves from the rain as they
travelled.