356 LIFE OF DA VID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



they whittled away with their tomahawks with remarkable speed and skill. 

 But two days continuous hard labour was as much as they could stand. It is 

 questionable whether any people (except possibly the Chinese) who are not 

 meat-eaters can endure continuous labour of a kind that brings so many 

 muscles into violent action as this work did. French navvies could not com- 

 pete with the English until they were fed exactly like the latter. The 

 Makonde have only fowls, a few goats, and the chance of an occasional gorge 

 on the wild hog of the country. 



". . . Such rocks as we could see were undisturbed grey sandstone, 

 capped by ferruginous conglomerate. Upon this we often stumbled against 

 blocks of silicified wood, so like recent wood that any one would be unwilling 

 to believe at first sight they were stones. This is a sure indication of coal 

 being underneath, and pieces of it were met in the sands of the river. 



" When about ninety miles from the mouth of the Rovuma, the geologi- 

 cal structure changes, and with this change we have more open forest, thinner 

 vegetation, and grasses of more reasonable size. The chief rock is now 

 syenite, and patches of fine white dolomite lie upon it in spots. Granitic 

 masses have been shot up over the plain, which extends in front all the way 

 to Ngomano, the confluence of the Rovuma and the Loendi. In the drier 

 country we found that one of these inexplicable droughts had happened over 

 the north bank of the Rovuma, and a tribe of Mazitu, propably Zulus, had 

 come down like a swarm of locusts, and carried away all the food above 

 ground, as well as what was growing. I had now to make forced marches 

 with the Makonde in quest of provisions for my party, and am now with 

 Machumora, the chief at Ngomano, and by sending some twenty miles to the 

 south-west, I shall obtain succour for them. This is the point of confluence, 

 as the name Ngomano implies, of the Rovuma and the Loendi. The latter is 

 decidedly the parent stream, and comes from the south-west, where, in addi- 

 tion to some bold granitic peaks, dim outlines of distant highlands appear. 

 Even at that distance they raise the spirits, but possibly that is caused partly 

 by the fact that we are now about thirty miles beyond our former turning- 

 point, and on the threshold of the unknown. 



" I propose to make this my head-quarters till I have felt my way round 

 the north end of Lake Nyassa. If prospects are fair there I need not return, 

 but trust to another quarter for fresh supplies, but it is best to say little about 

 the future. Machumora is an intelligent man, and one well-known to be trust- 

 worthy. He is appealed to on all hands for his wise decisions, but he has not 

 much real power beyond what his personal character gives him. 



" The Makonde are all independent of each other, but they are not 

 devoid of a natural sense of justice. A carrier stole a shirt from one of my 

 men; our guide pursued him at niglj', seized him in his own house, and the 

 elders of his village made him pay about four times the value of the article 



