206 LIVINGSTONE'S LAST JOURNALS. [Chap. VIII. 



good and loving Father of all may favour ine, and help 

 me to finish my work quickly and well. 



Temperature at 6 a.m. 61° ; feels cold. Winds blow 

 regularly from the east; if it changes to N.W. brings a 

 thick mantle of cold grey clouds. A typhoon did great 

 damage at Zanzibar, wrecking ships and destroying cocoa- 

 nuts, carafu, and all fruits : happened five days after Seyed 

 Burghash's return from Mecca. 



At the Loangwa of Zumbo we came to a party of 

 hereditary hippopotamus hunters, called Makombwe or 

 Akombwe. They follow no other occupation, but when 

 their game is getting scanty at one spot they remove to 

 some other part of the Loangwa, Zambesi, or Shire, and 

 build temporary huts on an island, where their women cul- 

 tivate patches : the flesh of the animals they kill is eagerly 

 exchanged by the more settled people for grain. They are 

 not stingy, and are everywhere welcome guests. I never 

 heard of any fraud in dealing, or that they had been guilty 

 of an outrage on the poorest : their chief characteristic is 

 their courage. Their hunting is the bravest thing I ever 

 saw. Each canoe is manned by two men ; they are long light 

 craft, scarcely half an inch in thickness, about eighteen inches 

 beam, and from eighteen to twenty feet long. They are formed 

 for speed, and shaped somewhat like our racing boats. Each 

 man uses a broad short paddle, and as they guide the canoe 

 slowly down stream to a sleeping hippopotamus not a single 

 ripple is raised on the smooth water ; they look as if holding 

 in their breath, and communicate by signs only. As they 

 come near the prey the harpooner in the bow lays down 

 his paddle and rises slowly up, and there he stands erect, 

 motionless, and eager, with the long-handled weapon poised 

 at arm's length above his head, till coming close to the 

 beast he plunges it with all his might in towards the heart. 

 During this exciting feat he has to keep his balance exactly. 

 His neighbour in the stern at once backs his paddle, the 



