338 DIFFERENCE IN COLOUR OF AFRICANS. Chap. XVI IT. 



just when it was possible to admit of cattle. Hence the success 

 of Katema, Shinte, and Matiamvo with their herds. It would 

 not be surprising, though they know nothing of the circum- 

 stance ; a tribe on the Zambesi, winch I encountered, whose 

 country was swarming with tsetse, believed that they could not 

 keep any cattle because " no one loved them well enough to 

 give them the medicine of oxen ;" and even the Portuguese at 

 Loanda accounted for the death of the cattle brought from the 

 interior to the sea-coast, by the prejudicial influence of the sea 

 air ! One ox which I took down to the sea from the interior, 

 died at Loanda, with all the symptoms of the poison injected by 

 tsetse, which I saw myself, in a district a hundred miles from 

 the coast. 



While at the villages of the Kasabi, we saw no evidence of 

 want of food among the people. Our beads were very valuable, 

 but cotton cloth would have been still more so ; as we tra- 

 velled along, men, women, and children came running after us, 

 with meal and fowls for sale, which we would gladly have pur- 

 chased had we possessed any English manufactures. When 

 they heard that we had no cloth, they turned back much dis- 

 appointed. 



The amount of population in the central parts of the country 

 may be called large, only as compared with the Cape Colony or 

 the Bechuana country. The cultivated land is as nothing com- 

 pared with what might be brought under the plough. There 

 are flowing streams in abundance, which, were it necessary, 

 could be turned to the purpose of irrigation with but little 

 labour. Miles of fruitful country are now lying absolutely waste, 

 for there is not even game to eat off the fine pasturage, and to 

 recline under the evergreen shady groves which we are ever 

 passing in our progress. The people who inhabit the central 

 region are not all quite black in colour. Many incline to that 

 of bronze, and others are as light in hue as the Bushmen ; who, 

 it may be remembered, afford a proof that heat alone does not 

 cause blackness, but that heat and moisture combined, do very 

 materially deepen the colour. Wherever we find people who 

 have continued for ages in a hot humid district, they are deep 

 black, but to this apparent law there are exceptions, caused by 

 the misrations of both tribes and individuals : the Makololo for 



