184 LIVINGSTONE'S LAST JOURNALS. [Chap. VII. 



half a mile of ooze and sludgy marsh in front of it, and 

 a stockade as usual. We observed that the people had 

 great fear of animals at night, and shut the gates carefully, 

 of even temporary villages. When at Molemba (Chita- 

 pangwa's village) afterwards, two men were killed by a 

 lion, and great fear of crocodiles was expressed by our 

 canoe-man at the Chambeze, when one washed in the 

 margin of that river. There was evidence of abundance 

 of game, elephants, and buffaloes, but we saw none. 



29th January. — When near our next stage end we were 

 shown where lightning had struck; it ran down a gum- 

 copal tree without damaging it, then ten yards horizontally, 

 and dividing there into two streams it went up an anthill ; 

 the withered grass showed its course very plainly, and next 

 day (31st), on the banks of the Mabula, we saw a dry tree 

 Avhich had been struck ; large splinters had been riven off 

 and thrown a distance of sixty yards in one direction and 

 thirty yards in another : only a stump was left, and patches 

 of withered grass where it had gone horizontally. 



30^ January. — Northwards through almost trackless 

 dripping forests and across oozing bogs. 



31st January. — Through forest, but gardens of larger 

 size than in Lobisa now appear. A man offered a thick 

 bar of copper for sale, a foot by three inches. The hard- 

 leafed acacia and mohempi abound. The valleys, with the 

 oozes, have a species of grass, having pink seed-stalks 

 and yellow seeds : this is very pretty. At midday we 

 came to the Lopiri, the rivulet which waters Chitapanga's 

 stockade, and soon after found that his village has a triple 

 stockade, the inner being defended also by a deep broad 

 ditch and hedge of a solanaceous thorny shrub. It is about 

 200 yards broad and 500 long. The huts not planted very 

 closely. 



The rivulets were all making for the Chambeze. They 

 contain no fish, except very small ones — probably fry. On 



