Chap. XIV. MINUTE TOPOGRAPHY. 381 



but refused to sell us any food. We were travelling too 

 fast, they said; in fact, they were startled, and "before 

 they recovered their surprise, we were obliged to depart. 

 We suspected that Muazi had sent them orders to refuse 

 us food, that we might thus be prevented from going into 

 the depopulated district; but this may have been mere 

 suspicion, the result of our own uncharitable feelings. 



We spent one night at Machambwe's village, and 

 another at Chimbuzi's. It is seldom that we can find 

 the headman on first entering a village. He gets out of 

 the way till he has heard all about the strangers, or he is 

 actually out in the fields looking after his farms. We 

 once thought that when the headman came in from a 

 visit of inspection, with his spear, bow and arrows, they 

 had been all taken up for the occasion, and that he had all 

 the while been hidden in some hut slily watching till he 

 heard that the strangers might be trusted ; but on listen- 

 ing to the details given by these men of the appearances 

 of the crops at different parts, and the astonishing minute- 

 ness of the speakers' topography, we were persuaded that 

 in some cases we were wrong, and felt rather humiliated. 

 Every knoll, hill, mountain, and every peak on a range 

 has a name ; and so has every watercourse, dell, and 

 plain. In fact, every feature and portion of the country 

 is so minutely distinguished by appropriate names, that it 

 would take a lifetime to decipher their meaning. It is 

 not the want, but the superabundance of names that mis- 

 leads travellers, and the terms used are so multifarious 

 that good scholars will at times scarcely know more than 

 the subject of conversation. Though it is a little apart 

 from the topic of the attention which the headmen pay to 

 agriculture, yet it may be here mentioned, while speaking 

 of the fulness of the language, that we have heard about a 

 score of words to indicate different varieties of gait — one 

 walks leaning forward, or backward, swaying from side to 



