264 LIVINGSTONE'S LAST JOURNALS. [Chap. X. 



for ten years, turned into ridicule, and made the audience 

 laugh by telling how other Lunda chiefs had given me oxen 

 and sheep, while Casembe had only a poor little goat and 

 some fish to bestow. He insisted also that there were but 

 two sovereigns in the world, the Sultan of Zanzibar and 

 Victoria. When we went on a third occasion to bid 

 Casembe farewell, he was much less distant, and gave me- 

 the impression that I could soon become friends with him ; 

 but he has an ungainly look, and an outward squint in each 

 eye. A number of human skulls adorned the entrance to 

 his courtyard ; and great numbers of his principal men 

 having their ears cropped, and some with their hands 

 lopped off, showed his barbarous way of making his minis- 

 ters attentive and honest. I could not avoid indulging a 

 prejudice against him. 



The Portuguese visited Casembe long ago ; but as each 

 new Casembe builds a new town, it is not easy to fix on 

 the exact spot to which strangers came. The last seven 

 Casembes have had their towns within seven miles of the 

 present one. Dr. Lacerda, Governor of Tette, on the Zam- 

 besi, was the only visitor of scientific attainments, and he 

 died at the rivulet called Chungu, three or four miles from 

 this. The spot is called Nshinda, or Inchinda, which the 

 Portuguese wrote Lucenda or Ucenda. The latitude given 

 is nearly fifty miles wrong, but the natives say that he 

 lived only ten days after his arrival, and if, as is probable, 

 his mind was clouded with fever when he last observed, 

 those who have experienced what that is will readily excuse 

 any mistake he may have made. His object was to accom- 

 plish a much-desired project of the Portuguese to have an 

 overland communication between their eastern and western 

 possessions. This was never made by any of the Portu- 

 guese nation; but two black traders succeeded partially 

 with a part of the distance, crossing once from Cassange, in 

 Angola, to Tette on the Zambesi, and returning with a 



