The tribe is of Babisa origin. Many of these
people had gone to the coast as traders, and returning with arms and
ammunition joined the Waiyau in their forays on the Manganja, and
eventually set themselves up as an independent tribe. The women do not
wear the lip-ring, though the majority of them are Waiyau. They
cultivate largely, and have plenty to eat. They have cattle, but do
not milk them.

The bogs, or earthen sponges,[25] of this country occupy a most
important part in its physical geography, and probably explain the
annual inundations of most of the rivers. Wherever a plain sloping
towards a narrow opening in hills or higher ground exists, there we
have the conditions requisite for the formation of an African sponge.
The vegetation, not being of a heathy or peat-forming kind, falls
down, rots, and then forms rich black loam. In many cases a mass of
this loam, two or three feet thick, rests on a bed of pure river sand,
which is revealed by crabs and other aquatic animals bringing it to
the surface. At present, in the dry season, the black loam is cracked
in all directions, and the cracks are often as much as three inches
wide, and very deep. The whole surface has now fallen down, and rests
on the sand, but when the rains come, the first supply is nearly all
absorbed in the sand. The black loam forms soft slush, and floats on
the sand. The narrow opening prevents it from moving off in a
landslip, but an oozing spring rises at that spot. All the pools in
the lower portion of this spring-course are filled by the first rains,
which happen south of the equator when the sun goes vertically over
any spot. The second, or greater rains, happen in his course north
again, when all the bogs and river-courses being wet, the supply runs
off, and forms the inundation: this was certainly the case as observed
on the Zambesi and Shire, and, taking the different times for the
sun's passage north of the equator, it explains the inundation of the
Nile.

_25th September, 1866._--Marenga's town on the west shore of Lake Nyassa is
very large, and his people collected in great numbers to gaze at the
stranger. The chief's brother asked a few questions, and I took the
occasion to be a good one for telling him something about the Bible
and the future state. The men said that their fathers had never told
them aught about the soul, but they thought that the whole man rotted
and came to nothing. What I said was very nicely put by a voluntee