all
his people to see me; and I ought to sleep, to enable them to look on
one the like of whom had never come their way before. Intending to go
on, I explained some of my objects in coming through the country,
advising the people to refrain from selling each other, as it ends in
war and depopulation. He was cunning, and said, "Well, you must sleep
here, and all my people will come and hear those words of peace." I
explained that I had employed carriers, who expected to be paid though
I had gone but a small part of a day; he replied, "But they will go
home and come again to-morrow, and it will count but one day:" I was
thus constrained to remain.

_9th October, 1866._--Both barometer and boiling-point showed an
altitude of upwards of 4000 feet above the sea. This is the hottest
month, but the air is delightfully clear, and delicious. The country
is very fine, lying in long slopes, with mountains rising all around,
from 2000 to 3000 feet above this upland. They are mostly jagged and
rough (not rounded like those near to Mataka's): the long slopes are
nearly denuded of trees, and the patches of cultivation are so large
and often squarish in form, that but little imagination is requisite
to transform the whole into the cultivated fields of England; but no
hedgerows exist. The trees are in clumps on the tops of the ridges, or
at the villages, or at the places of sepulture. Just now the young
leaves are out, but are not yet green. In some lights they look brown,
but with transmitted light, or when one is near them, crimson
prevails. A yellowish-green is met sometimes in the young leaves, and
brown, pink, and orange-red. The soil is rich, but the grass is only
excessively rank in spots; in general it is short. A kind of trenching
of the ground is resorted to; they hoe deep, and draw it well to
themselves: this exposes the other earth to the hoe. The soil is
burned too: the grass and weeds are placed in flat heaps, and soil
placed over them: the burning is slow, and most of the products of
combustion are retained to fatten the field; in this way the people
raise large crops. Men and women and children engage in field labour,
but at present many of the men are engaged in spinning buaze[29] and
cotton. The former is made into a coarse sacking-looking stuff,
immensely strong, which seems to be worn by the women alone; the men
are clad in uncomfortable goatskins. No wild animals seem to be in the
country, and indeed the populatio