e Balonda. We learned from them that they are in the habit of
praying to their idols when unsuccessful in killing game or in any other
enterprise. They behaved with reverence at our religious services. This
will appear important if the reader remembers the almost total want of
prayer and reverence we encountered in the south.

Our friends informed us that Shinte would be highly honored by the
presence of three white men in his town at once. Two others had sent
forward notice of their approach from another quarter (the west); could
it be Barth or Krapf? How pleasant to meet with Europeans in such an
out-of-the-way region! The rush of thoughts made me almost forget my
fever. Are they of the same color as I am? "Yes; exactly so." And have
the same hair? "Is that hair? we thought it was a wig; we never saw the
like before; this white man must be of the sort that lives in the sea."
Henceforth my men took the hint, and always sounded my praises as a true
specimen of the variety of white men who live in the sea. "Only look at
his hair; it is made quite straight by the sea-water!"

I explained to them again and again that, when it was said we came out
of the sea, it did not mean that we came from beneath the water; but the
fiction has been widely spread in the interior by the Mambari that the
real white men live in the sea, and the myth was too good not to be
taken advantage of by my companions; so, notwithstanding my injunctions,
I believe that, when I was out of hearing, my men always represented
themselves as led by a genuine merman: "Just see his hair!" If I
returned from walking to a little distance, they would remark of some to
whom they had been holding forth, "These people want to see your hair."

As the strangers had woolly hair like themselves, I had to give up the
idea of meeting any thing more European than two half-caste Portuguese,
engaged in trading for slaves, ivory, and bees'-wax.

16TH. After a short march we came to a most lovely valley about a mile
and a half wide, and stretching away eastward up to a low prolongation
of Monakadzi. A small stream meanders down the centre of this pleasant
green glen; and on a little rill, which flows into it from the western
side, stands the town of Kabompo, or, as he likes best to be called,
Shinte. (Lat. 12d 37' 35" S., long. 22d 47' E.) When Manenko thought the
sun was high enough for us to make a lucky entrance, we found the town
embowered in banana and other tropical t