uch
given to falsehood. They will not answer common questions except by
misstatements, but this may arise in our case from our being in
disfavour, because we will not sell all our goods to them for ivory.

_30th December, 1866._--Marched for Chitemba's, because it is said he
has not fled from the Mazitu, and therefore has food to spare. While
resting, Moerwa, with all his force of men, women, and dogs, came up,
on his way to hunt elephants. The men were furnished with big spears,
and their dogs are used to engage the animal's attention while they
spear it; the women cook the meat and make huts, and a smith goes with
them to mend any spear that may be broken.

We pass over level plateaux on which the roads are wisely placed, and
do not feel that we are travelling in a mountainous region. It is all
covered with dense forest, which in many cases is pollarded, from
being cut for bark cloth or for hunting purposes. Masuko fruit
abounds. From the cisalpinae and gum-copal trees bark cloth is made.

We now come to large masses of haematite, which is often ferruginous:
there is conglomerate too, many quartz pebbles being intermixed. It
seems as if when the lakes existed in the lower lands, the higher
levels gave forth great quantities of water from chalybeate fountains,
which deposited this iron ore. Grey granite or quartz with talc in it
or gneiss lie under the haematite.

The forest resounds with singing birds, intent on nidification.
Francolins abound, but are wild. "Whip-poor-wills," and another bird,
which has a more laboured treble note and voice--"Oh, oh, oh!" Gay
flowers blush unseen, but the people have a good idea of what is
eatable and what not. I looked at a woman's basket of leaves which she
had collected for supper, and it contained eight or ten kinds, with
mushrooms and orchidaceous flowers. We have a succession of showers
to-day, from N.E. and E.N.E. We are uncertain when we shall come to a
village, as the Babisa will not tell us where they are situated. In
the evening we encamped beside a little rill, and made our shelters,
but we had so little to eat that I dreamed the night long of dinners I
had eaten, and might have been eating.

I shall make this beautiful land better known, which is an essential
part of the process by which it will become the "pleasant haunts of
men." It is impossible to describe its rich luxuriance, but most of it
is running to waste through the slave-trade and internal wars.

_31st