CHAPTER XVIII. 



THE SHIRE. 



Mouth of the Shire — Difficulties Vanish — "Englishman" — Shire Valley — Afri- 

 can Swamp — Livingstone's Art — Mount Morambala — Mountain Village — 

 Chikanda — Two Pythons — Pursued by a Buffalo — The Steamer — A Sinking 

 Ship — No Note of Time — The Musician — Hippopotamus Traps — Shire 

 Marshes — Water-fowl — Kites and Vultures — Forest of Palm Trees— Islands of 

 the Shire — An Unhappy Chief — Village of Chibisa — Chibisa — Lake Shirwa — 

 Sympathy of Fools — Discovery of Lake Shirwa — Return to the Ship — Expedi- 

 tion to Lake Nyassa — Manganja Hills — Village of Chilimba — The Manganja 

 People — Agriculture — Cotton — Manufactures — Iron Ore— Native Trade — The 

 Upper Lip Ping — Beer Drinking— Drunken Villages — Love of Home — The 

 Muave Again — Faith — Nyassa Discovered — Return to Tete. 



Sailing down the Zambesi amidst scenes which are always 

 strange and wonderful to those whose imaginations have only- 

 had the training of northern climes, passing many points which 

 they could not call familiar, though they were not new to them, 

 the expedition turned into the river whose bar of duck-weed or 

 hedge of poisoned arrows had kept the secret of its wealth and 

 wonders so securely against the feebleness and irresolution of 

 the Portuguese, and were pleased to find deeper though nar- 

 rower water than they had left. 



On their right hand, not far from the river, stood the stockade 

 of Mariano, one of those villanous half-caste marauders whose 

 unscrupulous barbarity justified the native saying that " God 

 made the African and God made the white man, but the devil 

 made the half-castes," a conclusion which the most zealous 

 defender of Divine sovereignty, who has had experience with 

 them, does not feel called on to question. The residence of this 

 man may go far toward explaining the suspicion with which the 

 natives under Tingane had regarded all approaches from the 

 Zambesi. Their poisoned arrows were in constant demand in 

 protecting themselves from the slave-yoke which he handled 

 with a cruelty which must have been very exhilarating to his 

 supposed creator. And the knowledge that he represented a 



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