THE MUTU. 715 



It ought to be remembered that the testimony of these gentle- 

 men is all the more valuable, because they visited the river when 

 the water was at its lowest, and the surface of the Zambesi was 

 not, as it was now, on a level with and flowing into the Mutu, 

 but sixteen feet beneath its bed. The Mutu, at the point of de- 

 parture, was only ten or twelve yards broad, shallow, and filled 

 with aquatic plants. Trees and reeds along the banks overhang 

 it so much, that, though we had brought canoes and a boat from 

 Tete, we were unable to enter the Mutu with them, and left 

 them at Mazaro. During most of the year this part of the 

 Mutu is dry, and we were even now obliged to carry all our 

 luggage by land for about fifteen miles. As Kilimane is called, 

 in all the Portuguese documents, the capital of the rivers of 

 Senna, it seemed strange to me that the capital should be built 

 at a point where there was no direct water conveyance to the 

 magnificent river whose name it bore ; and, on inquiry, I was in- 

 formed that the whole of the Mutu was large in days of yore, and 

 admitted of the free passage of great launches from Kilimane all 

 the year round, but that now this part of the Mutu had been 

 filled up. 



I was seized by a severe tertian fever at Mazaro, but went 

 along the right bank of the Mutu to the N.N.E. and E. for about 

 fifteen miles. We then found that it was made navigable by a 

 river called the Pangazi, which comes into it from the north. 

 Another river, flowing from the same direction, called the Luare, 

 swells it still more ; and, last of all, the Likuare, with the tide, 

 make up the river of Kilimane. The Mutu at Mazaro is simply 

 a connecting link, such as is so often seen in Africa, and neither 

 its flow nor stoppage affects the river of Kilimane. The waters 

 of the JPangazi were quite clear compared with those of the 

 Zambesi.* 



* I owe the following information, of a much later date, also to the politeness 

 of Captain "Washington. H. M. sloop " Grecian" visited the coast in 1852-3, and 

 the master remarks that "the entrance to the Luaho is in lat. 18° 51' S., long. 36° 

 12' E., and may he known by a range of hummocks on its eastern side, and very 

 low land to the S.W. The entrance is narrow, and, as with all the rivers on this 

 coast, is fronted by a bar, which renders the navigation, particularly for boats, very 

 dangerous with the wind to the south of east or west. Our boats proceeded twenty 

 miles up this river, 2 fathoms on the bar, then 2\ — 5—6 — 7 fathoms. It was navi- 

 gable farther up, but they did not proceed. It is quite possible for a moderate-sized 



