THE WORLD'S WONDERS. 349 



displeasing. Stone boiling is unknown in their country, but 

 ovens are made in ant-hills. Holes are dug in the ground for 

 baking heads of large game, such as of zebras, the feet of 

 elephants, and humps of the rhinoceros. In the production of 

 fire they use two sticks, which are usually carried with them, one 

 of which has a hole through the center. They wet the blunt end 

 of the upright stick with the tongue and dip it in the sand to 

 cause some particles of silica to adhere before inserting it in the 

 horizontal piece, which they then rub briskly. The wood of a 

 certain wild fig-tree is esteemed as }delding fire readily. In wet 

 weather they usually carry fire in the dried balls of elephants' 

 dung. 



The country is generally beautiful, but the curse of slave- 

 trading had blighted it until, at the time Livingstone passed 

 through, famine and starvation were rife; skeletons by the 

 wayside, and slaves in galling yokes dying for want of food. 

 He mentions having met with a number of slaves, all yoked 

 together, that had been abandoned by their captors to die of 

 starvation ; some of them were already in an unconscious condition 

 from want of food, and others barely able to raise their heads 

 from the ground. It was a shocking sight, but only one of a 

 thousand such. 



CARRIED OFF BY A LION AND A CROCODILE. 



LIVINGSTONE reached Lake Nyassa at the confluence of the 

 Misinje on August 8th, having surmounted many obstacles, not 

 the least of which was a distressing scarcity of food. He passed 

 around the south end of the lake and was most hospitably 

 entertained at all the villages. So dense is the population that 

 there is a. succession of villages with scarcely any break or line 

 of separation between them. At a village called Mponda he 

 found an Arab party with nearly eight hundred slaves confined 

 in a pen made of dura stalks ; nearly all of them were in the 

 taming stick except the boys, who were tied together by a thong 

 passing round their necks. 



Livingstone remained two days at Mponda ; on the morning of 

 the second day a woman was fo'ind in a bush by the village who 



