Chap. III. CHARACTER OF CHIBISA. 79 



so wise, sometimes rushed with great velocity at us, thinking 

 that we were some huge animal swimming. They kept about 

 a foot from the surface, but made three well-defined ripples 

 from the feet and body, which marked their rapid progress ; 

 raising the head out of the water when only a few yards 

 from the expected feast, down they went to the bottom 

 like a stone, without touching the boat. 



In the middle of March of the same year (1859), we started 

 again for a second trip on the Shire. The natives were now 

 friendly, and readily sold us rice, fowls, and corn. We entered 

 into amicable relations with the Chief, Chibisa, whose village 

 was about ten miles below the cataract. He had sent two men 

 on our first visit to invite us to drink beer ; but the steamer 

 was such a terrible apparition to them, that, after shouting 

 the invitation, they jumped ashore, and left their canoe to 

 drift down the stream. Chibisa was a remarkably shrewd man, 

 the very image, save his dark hue, of one of our most cele- 

 brated London actors, and the most intelligent Chief, by far, in 

 this quarter. A great deal of fighting had fallen to his lot, he 

 said ; but it was always others who began ; he was invariably 

 in the right, and they alone were to blame. He was more- 

 over a firm believer in the divine right of kings. He was an 

 ordinary man, he said, when his father died, and left him the 

 chieftainship ; but directly he succeeded to the high office, he 

 was conscious of power passing into his head, and down his 

 back ; he felt it enter, and knew that he was a Chief, clothed 

 with authority, and possessed of wisdoni ; and people then 

 began to fear and reverence him. He mentioned this, as 

 one would a fact of natural history, any doubt being quite 

 out of the question. His people, too, believed in him, 

 for they bathed in the river without the slightest fear of 

 crocodiles, the Chief having placed a powerful medicine 



