Chap. XXVII. THE LESUNGWE. 565 



On the 24th we were again in Banda, at the village of 

 Chasundu, and could now see clearly the hot valley in which 

 the Shire flows, and the mountains of the Manganja beyond 

 to our south-east. Instead of following the road by which 

 we had come, we resolved to go south along the Lesungwe, 

 which rises at Zunje, a peak on the same ridge as Mvai, and 

 a part of Kirk's range, which bounds the country of the 

 Maravi on our west. This is about the limit of the beat 

 of the Portuguese native traders, and it is but recently 

 that, following our footsteps, they have come so far. It 

 is not likely that their enterprise will lead them further 

 north, for Chasundu informed us that the Babisa under-sell 

 the agents from Tette. He had tried to deal with the latter 

 when they first came ; but they offered only ten fathoms of 

 calico for a tusk, for which the Babisa gave him twenty 

 fathoms and a little powder. Ivory was brought to us for 

 sale again and again, and, as far as we could judge, the price 

 expected would be about one yard of calico per pound, or 

 possibly more, for there is no scale of prices known. The 

 rule seems to be that buyer and seller shall spend a good 

 deal of time in trying to cheat each other before coming to 

 any conclusion over a bargain. 



"We found the Lesungwe a fine stream near its source, and 

 about forty feet wide and knee-deep, when joined by the 

 Lekudzi, which comes down from the Maravi country. The 

 banks and slopes down to the stream are dry and hard. 

 The soil is largely mixed with disintegrated gneiss and mica 

 schist, and is not so fertile as is common in this country. 

 The gneiss and mica schist have been given their present 

 dip away from the chain, or eastwards, by the granitic 

 masses which form Kirk's range. The people had been 

 subjected to the slave-trading scourge of the Ajawa and 

 Tette dealers. Indeed, a party of the latter was actually on 



