Chap. II. CHARACTER OF CHIBISA. 53 



when only a few yards from the expected feast, down 

 they went to the bottom like a stone, without touching 

 the boat. 



In the middle of March of the same year (1859), we 

 started again for a second trip on the Shire. The natives 

 were now friendly, and readily sold us rice, fowls, and 

 corn. We entered into amicable relations with the chief, 

 Chibisa, whose village was about ten miles below the 

 cataract. He had sent two men on our first visit to invite 

 us to drink beer; but the steamer was such a terrible 

 apparition to them, that, after shouting the invitation, 

 they jumped ashore, and left their canoe to drift down 

 the stream. Chibisa was a remarkably shrewd man, the 

 very image, save his dark hue, of one of our most 

 celebrated London actors,* and the most intelligent chief, 

 by far, in this quarter. A great deal of fighting had 

 fallen to his lot, he said ; but it was always others who 

 began ; he was invariably in the right, and they alone 

 were to blame. He was moreover a firm believer in the 

 divine right of kings. He was an ordinary man, he said, 

 when his father died, and left him the chieftainship ; but 

 directly he succeeded to the high office, he was conscious 

 of power passing into his head, and down his back; he 

 felt it enter, and knew that he was a chief, clothed with 

 authority, and possessed of wisdom ; and people then 

 began to fear and reverence him. He mentioned this, as 

 one would a fact of natural history, any doubt being quite 

 out of the question. His people, too, believed in him, 

 for they bathed in the river without the slightest fear of 

 crocodiles, the chief having placed a powerful medicine 

 there, which protected them from the bite of these terrible 

 reptiles. 



Leaving the vessel opposite Chibisa's village, Drs. 



* The late Mr. Kobson. 



