88 LIVINGSTONE'S LAST JOURNALS. [Chap. IV. 



singing merrily too, inspired by the cold, which was 47°, and 

 by the vicinity of some population. Gum-copal trees and 

 bushes grow here as well as all over the country ; but gum 

 is never dug for, probably because the trees were never 

 large enough to yield the fossil gum. Marks of smiths 

 are very abundant and some furnaces are still standing. 

 Much cultivation must formerly have been where now all 

 is jungle. 



We arrived at Mbanga, a village embowered in trees, 

 chiefly of the euphorbia, so common in the Manganja country 

 further south. Kandulo, the headman, had gone to drink 

 beer at another village, but sent orders to give a hut and to 

 cook for us. We remained next day. Took lunars. 



We had now passed through, at the narrowest part, the 

 hundred miles of depopulated country, of which about seventy 

 are on the N.E. of Mataka. The native accounts differ as 

 to the cause. Some say slave wars, and assert that the 

 Makoa from the vicinity of Mozambique played an impor- 

 tant part in them ; others say famine ; others that the 

 people have moved to and beyond Nyassa.* Certain it is, 

 from the potsherds strewed over the country, and the still 

 remaining ridges on which beans, sorghum, maize, and 

 cassava, were planted, that the departed population was 

 prodigious. The Waiyau, who are now in the country, 

 came from the other side of the Eovuma, and they pro- 

 bably supplanted the Manganja, an operation which we see 

 going on at the present day. 



Ath August. — An hour and a half brought us to Miule, 

 a village on the same level with Mbanga ; and the chief 

 pressing us to stay, on the plea of our sleeping two nights in 

 the jungle, instead of one if we left early next morning, we 

 consented. I asked him what had become of the very large 



* The greater part were driven down into the Manganja country by- 

 war and famine combined, and eventually filled the slave gangs of the Por- 

 tuguese, whose agents went from Tette and Senna to procure them. — Ed. 



