2o 6 WHITE-BREASTED CORMORANTS. Chap. IX. 



trees ; but some of the Manganja were busy hoeing the 

 ground and planting the little corn they had brought 

 with them. The effects of hunger were already visible on 

 those whose food had been seized or burned by the Ajawa 

 and Portuguese slave-traders. The spokesman or prime 

 minister of one of the chiefs, named Kalofijere, was a 

 humpbacked dwarf, a fluent speaker, who tried hard to 

 make us go over and drive off the Ajawa ; but he could 

 not deny that by selling people Kalofijere had invited 

 these slave-hunters to the country. This is the second 

 humpbacked dwarf we have found occupying the like 

 important post, the other was the prime minister of a 

 Batonga chief on the Zambesi. 



As we sailed along, we disturbed many white-breasted 

 cormorants ; we had seen the same species fishing between 

 the cataracts. Here, with many other wild-fowls, they 

 find subsistence on the smooth water by night, and sit 

 sleepily on trees and in the reeds by day. Many hippopo- 

 tami were seen in the river, and one of them stretched its 

 wide jaws, as if to swallow the whole stern of the boat, close 

 to Dr. Kirk's back ; the animal was so near that, in opening 

 its mouth, it lashed a quantity of water on to the stem- 

 sheets, but did no damage. To avoid large marauding 

 parties of Ajawa, on the left bank of the Shire, we con- 

 tinued on the right, or western side, with our land party, 

 along the shore of the small lake Pamalombe. This 

 lakelet is ten or twelve miles in length, and five or six 

 broad. It is nearly surrounded by a broad belt of papyrus, 

 so dense that we could scarcely find an opening to the 

 shore. The plants, ten or twelve feet high, grew so 

 closely together that air was excluded, and so much 

 sulphuretted hydrogen gas evolved that by one night's 

 exposure the bottom of the boat was blackened. Myriads 

 of mosquitoes showed, as probably they always do, the 

 presence of malaria. 



