32 LIVINGSTONE'S LAST JOURNALS. [Chap. IT. 



draw water : this is for the Ibo market. They offered to 

 pull down their stockade and let us in if we would remain 

 over-night, but we declined. Before reaching Ntande we 

 passed the ruins of two villages ; the owners were the 

 attacking party when we ascended the Rovuma in 1862. 

 I have still the old sail, with four bullet-holes through it, 

 made by the shots which they fired after we had given cloth 

 and got assurances of friendship. The father and son of 

 this village were the two men seen by the second boat 

 preparing to shoot ; the fire of her crew struck the father 

 on the chin and the son on the head. It may have been 

 for the best that the English are thus known as people who 

 can hit hard when unjustly attacked, as we on this occasion 

 most certainly were : never was a murderous assault more 

 unjustly made or less provoked. They had left their villages 

 and gone up over the highlands away from the river to 

 their ambush whilst their women came to look at us. 



2nd May. — Mountains again approach us, and we pass 

 ■one which was noticed in our first ascent from its resem- 

 blance to a table mountain. It is 600 or 800 feet high, and 

 called Liparu : the plateau now becomes mountainous, giving 

 forth a perennial stream which comes down from its western 

 base and forms a lagoon on the meadow-land that flanks 

 the Rovuma. The trees which love these perpetual streams 

 spread their roots all over the surface of the boggy banks, 

 and make a firm surface, but at spots one may sink a yard 

 deep. We had to fill up these deep ditches with branches 

 and leaves, unload the animals, and lead them across. We 

 spent the night on the banks of the Liparu,* and then pro- 

 ceeded on our way. 



3rd May. — We rested in a Makoa village, the head of 

 which was an old woman. The Makoa or Makoane are 

 known by a half-moon figure tattooed on their foreheads or 



* Farther on we found it called Nkonya. 



