presented some manioc roots, and then politely requested to
be anointed with butter: as I had been bountifully supplied by the
Makololo, I gave her as much as would suffice, and as they have little
clothing, I can readily believe that she felt her comfort greatly
enhanced thereby.

The favorite wife, who was also present, was equally anxious for butter.
She had a profusion of iron rings on her ankles, to which were attached
little pieces of sheet iron, to enable her to make a tinkling as she
walked in her mincing African style; the same thing is thought pretty by
our own dragoons in walking jauntingly.

We had so much rain and cloud that I could not get a single observation
for either longitude or latitude for a fortnight. Yet the Leeba does
not show any great rise, nor is the water in the least discolored. It
is slightly black, from the number of mossy rills which fall into it. It
has remarkably few birds and fish, while the Leeambye swarms with both.
It is noticeable that alligators here possess more of the fear of man
than in the Leeambye. The Balonda have taught them, by their poisoned
arrows, to keep out of sight. We did not see one basking in the sun. The
Balonda set so many little traps for birds that few appear. I observed,
however, many (to me) new small birds of song on its banks. More rain
has been falling in the east than here, for the Leeambye was rising fast
and working against the sandy banks so vigorously that a slight yellow
tinge was perceptible in it.

One of our men was bitten by a non-venomous serpent, and of course felt
no harm. The Barotse concluded that this was owing to many of them being
present and seeing it, as if the sight of human eyes could dissolve the
poison and act as a charm.

On the 6th of January we reached the village of another female chief,
named Nyamoana, who is said to be the mother of Manenko, and sister
of Shinte or Kabompo, the greatest Balonda chief in this part of the
country. Her people had but recently come to the present locality, and
had erected only twenty huts. Her husband, Samoana, was clothed in a
kilt of green and red baize, and was armed with a spear and a broadsword
of antique form, about eighteen inches long and three broad. The chief
and her husband were sitting on skins placed in the middle of a circle
thirty paces in diameter, a little raised above the ordinary level of
the ground, and having a trench round it. Outside the trench sat about a
hundred perso