132 THE BONDS OF AFRICA 



formed by the late Colonel Edwards and General 

 Sir William Manning, which has been tried and 

 not found wanting in many parts of Africa. 



At Dombole, a beautiful station of the Zambesi 

 Industrial Mission Society, all kinds of fruit, 

 coffee, and rubber are being grown. The N'Cheu 

 Boma is situated about five miles from Dombole, 

 and is a very prettily laid out administrative post ; 

 indeed, it is not too much to say that all the 

 Bomas in Nyasaland — all that I saw, at any rate 

 — are real beauty patches in a country which 

 possesses its full share of typically grand and 

 picturesque African scenery. 



Until I had reached the Dombole mission I 

 had walked the whole way from Salisbury to 

 the fringe of the Bangweolo marshes, through 

 Tete, Fort Jameson and M'Pika, and the whole 

 of the way from this Bangweolo country to 

 Dombole — a journey which, with the hunting 

 tramps undertaken in different parts, involved 

 a total distance of well over 2000 miles. 



Illness, however, had rendered me so weak, 

 and the repeated doses of medicine containing 

 opium had made me so sleepy, that, after 

 leaving the mission, I got my '* tenga-tengas " 

 to make a '' machilla " out of a stretcher bed, and 

 in this I was carried into Blantyre. From N'Cheu 

 to Rivi Rivi, where the African Lakes Corpora- 

 tion has a tobacco plantation, is about thirteen 

 miles, and eight miles farther on the Kapene 

 River was reached — the only healthy-looking 

 river to be found just before the rains in this 

 part of the territory until one reaches the Shire. 

 Even the Shire was scarcely entitled to the 

 distinction of a river in December, when I 

 crossed it, for the water did not reach the knees 

 of my " machilla " men. The rains were excep- 



