Chap. XXV. KOTA-KOTA BAY. 511 



CHAPTER XXV. 



Kota-kota Bay — Arabs building a dhow — Natives congregate to any point 

 which affords hope of protection from war — Does Mohammedanism spread 

 in Africa ? — Pagan Africans superior in morality to followers of the False 

 Prophet — Leave for the West — Ascent of the plateau — Native ceremony 

 of initiation — Slave route — Effects of rarefied air — Primitive African 

 religion inculcates humility — Unlike Mohammedanism — Cruel rites limited 

 to the small district of Dahomey • — Witchcraft or influence of plants — ■ Ab- 

 sence of idol worship — Humid climate — Loangwa of the Lake and Loangwa 

 of Maravi — Matumboka — Fding the teeth and tattooing — Gunpowder the 

 source of slave-trader's power — Slave-hunters mode of attack — Muazi in 

 Kasungu — Causes of inundations — Eains — Climate dependent on pre- 

 vailing winds — The watershed — Native geography — Comparison between 

 Africa and India — Fossils — The iron age — Minute topography — Native 

 language. 



We arrived at Kota-kota Bay in the afternoon of the 10th 

 September, 1863 ; and sat down under a magnificent wild 

 fig-tree with leaves ten inches long, by five broad, about a 

 quarter of a mile from the village of Juma ben Saidi, and 

 Yakobe ben Arame, whom we had met on the River Kaombe, 

 a little north of this, in our first exploration of the Lake. 

 We had rested but a short time when Juma, who is evidently 

 the chief person here, followed by about fifty people, came to 

 salute us and to invite us to take up our quarters in his 

 village. The hut which, by mistake, was offered, was so 

 small and dirty that we preferred sleeping in an open space 

 a few hundred yards off. 



Juma afterwards apologized for the mistake, and presented 

 us with rice, meal, sugar-cane, and a piece of malachite. 

 We returned his visit on the following day, and found him 

 engaged in building a dhow or Arab vessel, to replace one 

 which he said had been wrecked. This new one was fifty 



