ng forest country north we
got a man to show us the way, if a pathless forest can so be called.
We used a game-path as long as it ran north, but left it when it
deviated, and rested under a baobab-tree with a marabou's nest--a
bundle of sticks on a branch; the young ones uttered a hard chuck,
chuck, when the old ones flew over them. A sun-bird, with bright
scarlet throat and breast, had its nest on another branch, it was
formed like the weaver's nest, but without a tube. I observed the dam
picking out insects from the bark and leaves of the baobab, keeping on
the wing the while: it would thus appear to be insectivorous as well
as a honey-bibber. Much spoor of elands, zebras, gnus, kamas, pallahs,
buffaloes, reed-bucks, with tsetse, their parasites.

_13th December, 1866._--Reached the Tokosusi, which is said to rise at
Nombe Rume, about twenty yards wide and knee deep, swollen by the
rains: it had left a cake of black tenacious mud on its banks. Here I
got a pallah antelope, and a very strange flower called "katende,"
which was a whorl of seventy-two flowers sprung from a flat, round
root; but it cannot be described. Our guide would have crossed the
Tokosusi, which was running north-west to join the Loangwa, and then
gone to that river; but always when we have any difficulty the
"lazies" exhibit themselves. We had no grain; and three remained
behind spending four hours at what we did in an hour and a quarter.
Our guide became tired and turned, not before securing another; but he
would not go over the Loangwa; no one likes to go out of his own
country: he would go westwards to Maranda's, and nowhere else. A
"set-in" rain came on after dark, and we went on through slush, the
trees sending down heavier drops than the showers as we neared the
Loangwa; we forded several deep gullies, all flowing north or
north-west into it. The paths were running with water, and when we
emerged from the large Mopane Forest, we came on the plain of
excessively adhesive mud, on which Maranda's stronghold stands on the
left bank of Loangwa, here a good-sized river. The people were all
afraid of us, and we were mortified to find that food is scarce. The
Mazitu have been here three times, and the fear they have inspired,
though they were successfully repelled, has prevented agricultural
operations from being carried on.

_Mem._--A flake of reed is often used in surgical operations among the
natives, as being sharper than their knives.

FOOTNO