112 REASONING WITH A LION. CHAP. IV. 



quiet way lie expostulated with him on the impropriety 

 of such conduct to strangers, who had never injured him. 

 "We were travelling peaceably through the country 

 back to our own chief. We never killed people, nor stole 

 anything. The buffalo meat was ours, not his, and it did 

 not become a great chief like him to be prowling round 

 in the dark, trying, like a hyena, to steal the meat of 

 strangers. He might go and hunt for himself, as there 

 was plenty of game in the forest." The Pondoro, being 

 deaf to reason, and only roaring the louder, the men 

 became angry, and threatened to send a ball through him 

 if he did not go away. They snatched up their guns to 

 shoot him, but he prudently kept in the dark, outside the 

 luminous circle made by our camp fires, and there they 

 did not like to venture. A little strychnine was put into 

 a piece of meat, and thrown to him, when he soon departed, 

 and we heard no more of the majestic sneaker. 



The Kebrabasa people were now plumper and in better 

 condition than on our former visits ; the harvest had been 

 abundant ; they had plenty to eat and drink, and they 

 were enjoying life as much as ever they could. At 

 Defwe's village, near where the ship lay on her first 

 ascent, we found two Mfumos or headmen, the son and 

 son-in-law of the former chief. A sister's son has much 

 more chance of succeeding to a chieftainship than the 

 chiefs own offspring, it being unquestionable that the 

 sister's child has the family blood. The men are all 

 marked across the nose and up the middle of the forehead 

 with short horizontal bars or cicatrices ; and a single brass 

 earring of two or three inches diameter, like the ancient 

 Egyptian, is worn by the men. Some wear the hair long 

 like the ancient Assyrians and Egyptians, and a few have 

 eyes with the downward and inward slant of the Chinese. 



After fording the rapid Luia, we left our former path 

 on the banks of the Zambesi, and struck off in a N.W. 



