londa--Villages beyond
Lonaje--Cazembe--Our Guides and the Makololo--Night Rains--Inquiries
for English cotton Goods--Intemese's Fiction--Visit from an old
Man--Theft--Industry of our Guide--Loss of Pontoon--Plains covered
with Water--Affection of the Balonda for their Mothers--A Night on an
Island--The Grass on the Plains--Source of the Rivers--Loan of the
Roofs of Huts--A Halt--Fertility of the Country through which the
Lokalueje flows--Omnivorous Fish--Natives' Mode of catching them--
The Village of a Half-brother of Katema, his Speech and Present--Our
Guide's Perversity--Mozenkwa's pleasant Home and Family--Clear Water of
the flooded Rivers--A Messenger from Katema--Quendende's Village: his
Kindness--Crop of Wool--Meet People from the Town of Matiamvo--Fireside
Talk--Matiamvo's Character and Conduct--Presentation at Katema's Court:
his Present, good Sense, and Appearance--Interview on the following
Day--Cattle--A Feast and a Makololo Dance--Arrest of a Fugitive--
Dignified old Courtier--Katema's lax Government--Cold Wind from the
North--Canaries and other singing Birds--Spiders, their Nests and
Webs--Lake Dilolo--Tradition--Sagacity of Ants.

26TH. Leaving Shinte, with eight of his men to aid in carrying our
luggage, we passed, in a northerly direction, down the lovely valley
on which the town stands, then went a little to the west through pretty
open forest, and slept at a village of Balonda. In the morning we had
a fine range of green hills, called Saloisho, on our right, and were
informed that they were rather thickly inhabited by the people of
Shinte, who worked in iron, the ore of which abounds in these hills.

The country through which we passed possessed the same general character
of flatness and forest that we noticed before. The soil is dark, with a
tinge of red--in some places it might be called red--and appeared very
fertile. Every valley contained villages of twenty or thirty huts, with
gardens of manioc, which here is looked upon as the staff of life. Very
little labor is required for its cultivation. The earth is drawn up into
oblong beds, about three feet broad and one in height, and in these are
planted pieces of the manioc stalk, at four feet apart. A crop of beans
or ground-nuts is sown between them, and when these are reaped the land
around the manioc is cleared of weeds. In from ten to eighteen months
after planting, according to the quality of the soil, the roots are fit
for food. There is