380 LIFE OF DAVID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



return of the party, and these were strengthened by the addition of Buckley, 

 the seaman, after the party had passed the cataracts, and put the Search 

 together, and launched her on the Shire once more. The passage of the 

 cataracts was accomplished in four days, during which time they came in con- 

 tact with very few natives. They had nearly all been swept away — killed or dis- 

 persed by the slave parties. Nothing was left to show where a teeming and 

 happy population had existed only a few years before save the ruins of their 

 huts, and the skeletons of the slain bleaching in the sun and rain. 



The natives they encountered were in dread of an attack from the Mazitu 

 or the Ajawa. The former were ravaging the country to the eastward of the 

 Shire and Lake Nyassa, and the latter were devastating the country to the 

 west. The toil of the journey was very severe on account of the heat, and 

 nothing but the abundance of animal food provided by Mr. Faulkner's gun 

 «ould have induced the natives to maintain the rate of travel they accom- 

 plished. The country they passed through, if difficult of travel, was magnifi- 

 cent. On the second day they passed a waterfall known as Tenzani, which 

 Mr. Young says, as a waterfall, " is worth going from England to see. Of 

 great height, even at this time of the year, the volume of water which pours 

 through its zig-zag channel, and then over a sheer cliff, is magnificent. What 

 a spectacle it must be in the rainy season, when the flood rises certainly a 

 hundred feet in the gorge at Patamanga, and pours through a narrow cleft I 

 It must be one of the sights of the world. We were able to notice that there 

 is this extraordinary increase in the flood when the rains come, by roots and 

 debris left fully the height I have named above the ordinary level. Most 

 singularly we discovered, perched up at a great elevation, an English oar, 

 rotten and worm-eaten. The readers of the ' Zambesi and its Tributaries ' 

 will recollect the occasion of Dr. Livingstone losing his boat, oars, and gear 

 in 1863, amongst these cataracts. This was a relic of the accident which the 

 flood had placed in its own niche to commemorate some of the difficulties of 

 the explorer's life." 



While putting the boat together, on the 29th of August, the party were 

 informed by some natives that a white man had been seen some time ago in 

 Pamalombi, a small lake on the Shire, not far below its outlet from Nyassa. 

 This traveller had a dog with him, and he had left there to go further in 

 a westerly direction ! What could this mean ? Launching the Search on the 

 Shire, they started for Lake Nyassa, the natives coming to the shore in hun- 

 dreds to gaze upon them, and warn them of the bloodthirsty Mazitu who, 

 they said, were in front. These reports being reiterated at every stopping 

 place, even the courage of the Makololo failed, and it was with great difficulty 

 they could be got to go forward. On one occasion an immense concourse of 

 spectators stood waiting their approach upon the right bank of the river. 

 Most of them were armed with spears and bow and arrows, and seemed deter- 



