472 GREAT NUMBER OF PEOPLE. 



have to ask who are the principal chiefs in the direction 

 which we wish to take, and decide accordingly. Zoraba was 

 mentioned as a chief on a range of hills on our west : beyond 

 him lies Undi m'senga. I had to take this route, as my people 

 have a very vivid idea of the danger of going northwards 

 towards the Mazitu." 



One day's travel from Zomba, and west-southwest, is the part 

 where the Portuguese formerly went for gold. They did not 

 come there, however, as it would have been entirely useless. 

 The country is too full of people to allow wild animals 

 elbow-room : even the smaller ones are hunted by nets and 

 dogs. The doctor rested at Pachoma ; whose head man offered 

 a goat and beer, but he declined and went on to Molomba. Here 

 Kauma's carriers turned because a woman died that morning as 

 they left the village ; they asserted if she had died before they 

 started, not a man would have started. The head man of Molomba 

 was poor but liberal, gave a goat and cooked for Livingstone ; 

 another head man from a neighboring village also called on their 

 friends here, brought beer and a fowl. He went on to Mironga 

 with them ; they saw Mount Nyala in the distance, " like a sugar 

 loaf shot up in the air." This place being only one and a half 

 hours off, they went on to Chipanga ; this is the proper name of 

 what on the Zambesi is corrupted into Shupanga. The head 

 man here, a miserable hemp-consuming leper, fled from them 

 (hemp-dange is smoked in Central Africa). 



They came to a smithy, and watched the founder at work 

 drawing off slag from the bottom of his furnace. He broke 

 through the hardened slag by striking it with an iron instru- 

 ment inserted in the end of a pole, when the material flowed 

 out of the small hole left for the purpose in the bottom of 

 the furnace. The ore (probably the black oxide) was like 

 sand, and was put in at the top of the furnace, mixed with char- 

 coal. Only one bellows was at work, formed out of goatskin, 

 and the blast was very poor. Many of these furnaces, or their 

 remains, are met with on knolls ; those at work have a peculiarly 

 all hut built over them. 



On the eastern edge of a valley lying north and south, w T ith 

 the Diampwe stream flowing along it, and the Dzala nyama 

 range on the western side, are two villages screened by fine speci- 





