me that they would come back for me,
but I could not trust thieves to be so honest. I thought of seizing
their paddles, and appealing to the headmen of the island; but aware
from past experience how easy it is for acknowledged thieves like them
to get up a tale to secure the cheap sympathy of the soft-headed, or
tender-hearted, I resolved to bear with meekness, though groaning
inwardly, the loss of two of the four days for which I had paid them.
I had only my coverlet to hire another canoe, and it was now very
cold; the few beads left would all be required to buy food in the way
back, I might have got food by shooting buffaloes, but that on foot
and through grass, with stalks as thick as a goose quill, is
dreadfully hard work; I had thus to return to Masantu's, and trust to
the distances as deduced from the time taken by the natives in their
canoes for the size of the Lake.

We had come to Mpabala at the rate of six knots an hour, and returned
in the same time with six stout paddlers. The latitude was 12' in a
south-east course, which may give 24' as the actual distance. To the
sleeping-place, the Islet Kasango, there was at least 28' more, and
from thence to the mainland "Manda," other 28'. This 24 + 28 + 28 =
80' as the breadth from Masantu village, looking south-east. It lies
in 11 deg. 0' S. If we add on the half distance to this we have 11 deg.
40' as the latitude of Manda. The mainland to the south of Mpabala is
called Kabende. The land's end running south of Masantu's village is the
entrance to the Luapula: the clearest eye cannot see across it there.
I saw clouds as if of grass burning, but they were probably "Kungu,"
an edible insect, whose masses have exactly the same appearance as
they float above and on the water. From the time the canoes take to go
to Kabende I believe the southern shore to be a little into 12 deg. of
south latitude: the length, as inferred from canoes taking ten days to
go from Mpabala to the Chambeze, I take to be 150 miles, probably
more. No one gave a shorter time than that. The Luapula is an arm of
the Lake for some twenty miles, and beyond that is never narrower than
from 180 to 200 yards, generally much broader, and may be compared
with the Thames at London Bridge: I think that I am considerably
within the mark in setting down Bangweolo as 150 miles long by 80
broad.

When told that it contained four large islands, I imagined that these
would considerably diminish the watery acrea