CHAPTER XIV. 



Start for Linyanti. — Cutting up an Elephant. — The "go-naked" Tribe. — The 

 Victoria Falls. — They find Sekeletu Til. — Leave SesheJce. — Arrive at Kongone. 



AS Livingstone felt bound in honour to revisit Sekeletu and take back the 

 men who had accompanied him from that chief in his wanderings, 

 together with the merchandise he had purchased for his use with the tusks 

 entrusted to him, the party started from Tete for Linyanti, on the 15th of 

 May, leaving ten English sailors in charge of the ship until their return. As 

 many of the men had taken up with slave women they did not leave with 

 much good will, and before the party had reached Kebrabasa Rapids, thirty 

 of them had deserted. Before starting, Livingstone had paid them in cloth, 

 &c, for their services in the expedition, being anxious that they should make 

 as good an appearance as possible when they reached Linyanti. Many of 

 them had earned a good deal during their stay at Tete, while Dr. Livingstone 

 was absent in England ; but as they unfortunately picked up a good many of 

 ;he evil habits of the natives round Tete, they had squandered all they pos- 

 sessed. It is painful to think that these unsophisticated sons of nature 

 should have come so far to see and meet civilized people with such results. 

 Not only were the slave and half-caste population drunken and immoral, but 

 the Portuguese merchants with few exceptions were no better. 



A merchant at Tete sent three of his men with the party to convey a 

 present for Sekeletu, two other merchants sent him a couple of donkeys, 

 and Major Sicard sent them men to assist them on their return, when, of 

 course, their attendants would be reduced, should the Makololo men elect to 

 remain, and no one volunteer to accompany them on their return down the 

 river. In order to escape the exactions of the Banyai tribes, the party pro- 

 ceeded up the left bank of the river. At several of the villages, on their way 

 up the Zambesi valley, they saw and conversed with pondoros, as men are 

 called who pretend to be able to change themselves into a lion or other animal. 

 Strangely enough, this power appeared to be believed in by the people ; even 

 the wife of the pondoro, during the period when he retires into the forests to 

 change his shape, leaving food for him in a hut in the forest prepared for 

 him, the change to the brute form apparently not destroying or altering the 

 human appetite. These excursions usually last until the pondoro has dis- 

 covered some animal just slain by a lion, when he returns to his village and 



