1868._--Wind still too strong to go. Took lunars.

_24th July, 1868._--Wind still strong.

_25th July, 1868._--Strong S.E. wind still blowing, but having paid
the canoe-men amply for four days with beads, and given Masantu a hoe
and beads too, we embarked at 11.40 A.M. in a fine canoe, 45 feet
long, 4 feet deep, and 4 feet broad. The waves were high, but the
canoe was very dry and five stout men propelled her quickly towards an
opening in Lifunge Island, on our S.E. Here we stopped to wood, and I
went away to look at the island, which had the marks of hippopotami
and a species of jackal on it: it had hard wiry grass, some flowers,
and a species of Gapparidaceous tree. The trees showed well the
direction of the prevailing wind to be south-east, for the branches on
that side were stunted or killed, while those on the north-west ran
out straight, and made the trees appear, as sailors say, lopsided: the
trunks too were bent that way.

The canoe-men now said that they would start, then that they would
sleep here, because we could not reach the Island Mpabala before dark,
and would not get a hut. I said that it would be sleeping out of doors
only in either case, so they went. We could see the island called Kisi
on our east, apparently a double island, about 15 miles off, and the
tops of the trees barely visible on Mpabala on our south-east. It was
all sea horizon on our south and north, between Lifunge and Mpabala,
and between Lifunge and Kisi. We could not go to Kisi, because, as the
canoe-men told us, they had stolen their canoe thence. Though we
decided to go, we remained awhile to let the sea go down. A
hammerhead's nest on one of the trees was fully four feet high. Coarse
rushes show the shoals near the islands. Only one shell was seen on
the shores. The canoe ships much less water in this surf than our boat
did in that of Nyassa. The water is of a deep sea-green colour,
probably from the reflection of the fine white sand of the bottom; we
saw no part having the deep dark blue of Nyassa, and conjecture that
the depth is not great; but I had to leave our line when Amoda
absconded. On Kisi we observed a dark square mass, which at first I
took to be a low hill: it turned out to be a mass of trees (probably
the place of sepulture, for the graveyards are always untouched), and
shows what a dense forest this land would become were it not for the
influence of men.

We reached Mpabala after dark. It was bitterly cold, from t