1SG8.] BOUND FOR LAKE BEMBA AT LAST. 303 



ment. Kapika's wife had an ornament of the end of a shell 

 called the cone ; it was borrowed and she came away with 

 it in her hair : the owner, without making any effort to 

 recover it, seized one of Kapika's daughters as a pledge 

 that Kapika would exert himself to get it back ! 



[At last the tedious delay came to an end and we must 

 now follow the Doctor on his way south to discover Lake 

 Bemba.] 



11th June. — Crossed the Mbereze, ten yards broad and 

 thigh deep, ascending a range of low hills of hardened 

 sandstone, covered, as the country generally is, with forest. 

 Our course S.E. and S.S.E. Then descended into a densely- 

 wooded valley, having a rivulet four yards wide and knee 

 deep. Buffaloes and elephants very numerous. 



12th June. — We crossed the Mbereze again twice ; then 

 a very deep narrow rivulet, and stopped at another in a 

 mass of trees, where we spend the night, and killing an ox 

 remained next day to eat it. When at Kanengwa a small 

 party of men came past, shouting as if they had done some- 

 thing of importance : on going to them, I found that two of 

 them carried a lion slung to a pole. It was a small mane- 

 less variety, called " the lion of Nijassi" or long grass. It 

 had killed a man and they killed it. They had its mouth 

 carefully strapped, and the paws tied across its chest, 

 and were taking it to Casembe. Nyassi means long grass, 

 such as towers overhead, and is as thick in the stalk as a 

 goose-quill, and is erroneously applied to Nyassa. Other 

 lions — Thambwe, Karanio, Simba, are said to stand 5 feet 

 high, and some higher : this seemed about 3 feet high, but 

 it was too dark to measure it. 



13th June. — The Arabs distinguish the Suaheli, or Arabs 

 of mixed African blood, by the absence of beard and 

 whiskers : these are usually small and stunted in the 

 Suaheli. 



