18GC] A NEW VARIETY OF ANT. 93 



statement in his hand, and finding the people denying all 

 knowledge of how to catch and cook them, might say that 

 I had been romancing in saying I had seen them made into 

 cakes in the northern part of the Lake ; when asking here 

 about them, a stranger said, " They know how to use them 

 in the north ; we do not." 



Mokalaose thinks that the Arabs are afraid that I may 

 take their dhows from them and go up to the north. He 

 and the other headmen think that the best way will be to 

 go to Mukate's in the south. All the Arabs flee from me, 

 the English name being in their minds inseparably con- 

 nected with recapturing slavers : they cannot conceive that 

 I have any other object in view; they cannot read Seyed 

 Majid's letter. 



21st August. — Started for the Loangwa, on the east side 

 of the Lake ; hilly all the way, about seven miles. This 

 river may be twenty yards wide near its confluence; the 

 Misinje is double that : each has accumulated a promon- 

 tory of deposit and enters the Lake near its apex. We 

 got a house from a Waiyau man on a bank about forty feet 

 above the level of Nyassa, but I could not sleep for the 

 manoeuvres of a crowd of the minute ants which infested 

 it. They chirrup distinctly ; they would not allow the men 

 to sleep either, though all were pretty tired by the rough 

 road up. 



22nd August. — We removed to the south side of the 

 Loangwa, where there are none of these little pests. 



23rd August. — Proposed to the Waiyau headman to send 

 a canoe over to call Jumbe, as I did not believe in the 

 assertions of the half-caste Arab here that he had sent for 

 his. All the Waiyau had helped me, and why not he ? He 

 was pleased with this, but advised waiting till a man sent to 

 Losewa should return. 



2Mh August. — A leopard took a dog out of a house next 

 to ours ; he had bitten a man before, but not mortally. 



