546 CLEARINGS IN FORESTS. Chap. XXVII. 



CHAPTEE XXVII. 



Clearings in forests — Resemblance of hunters to ancient Egyptian figures — 

 Muazi — Difficulty about guides — Babisa undertake to lead us to Chin- 

 sambas — Babisa and Manganja heads — Different characteristics — Dialects 

 different though akin — Nkoma — The Bua — We are taken for Mazitu, and 

 treated accordingly — Intractable headman — Well-broken-in husband — Op- 

 pressive stillness of the deserted country — Bangwe — Meet the Mazitu — 

 Show a bold front with success — Zachariah mends his pace — We are taken 

 for a war party — Oct. 8th, we reach Molamba on Lake Nyassa — The unpaid 

 guide and his doings — Polygamy — Loapula and Tanganyika — Babisa's 

 knowledge of interior tested — False alarm of Mazitu — Prevailing direction 

 of wind easterly — Shores of the Lake — Fugitives and their distress — 

 Tobacco-traders attacked by Mazitu — Guns versus bows — Mosapo — Chin- 

 samba's — Minute information of Chief — Africans not so degraded as de- 

 scribed — Presents — Guides — Brisk slave-trading — Sad thoughts — 1 5th 

 Oct., Katosa's — His description of the conduct of the Ajawa — Their admi- 

 ration of red hair — Sugar-cane probably indigenous — Bamboos — Katosa is 

 invested in an officer's coat and epaulets — 'His present village and his former 

 one — 20th Oct, we arrive at Motunda's — Hidden stores of provisions — 

 Kabambe and Nyango — The Goa or Gova valley — The Lesungwe — Kind- 

 ness of native women — 31st Oct., we reach the Mukuru-Madse — Thunder 

 and rain — Wet clothes and fever. 



We passed several clearings, each a mile or more square, in 

 which all the trees had been cut down, and the stumps left 

 only two or three feet high. The felled wood was gathered 

 into heaps, about fifty yards long, by thirty broad, and when 

 dry was burned. The ashes were spread on these cleared 

 spots, and a species of millet called Maere was raised, of 

 which the natives seemed very fond, though to our stomachs 

 the meal was as indigestible as so much coarse sand. On 

 one side of these cleared spaces the hunters set large strong 

 nets made of baobab bark, into which they drive the game. 

 We saw about a dozen hartebeests which were small in size, 

 and a few zebras on these uplands. We were struck with 

 the resemblance the men carrying their hunting-nets bore to 

 figures in ancient Egyptian tombs, but the proportion of these 



