LETTER FROM DR. LIVINGSTONE. 387 



1866. " It has been quite impossible to send a letter coastwise ever since we 

 left the Rovuma. The Arab slave-traders take to their heels as soon as they 

 hear that the English are on the road. I am a perfect bugbear to them. 

 Eight parties thus skedaddled, and last of all my Johanna men, frightened out 

 of their wits by stories told them by a member of a ninth party who had 

 been plundered of his slaves, walked off and left me to face the terrible 

 Mazitu with nine Nassick boys. The fear which the English name has 

 struck into the slave-traders has thus been an inconvenience. I could not go 

 round the north end of the lake for fear that my Johanna men, at sight of 

 danger, would do then what they actually did at the southern end ; and the 

 owner of two dhows now on the lake kept them out of sight, lest I should 

 burn them as slavers, and I could not cross in the middle." Rounding the 

 southern end he got up to Kirk's range, and among Manganja not yet made 

 slave-sellers. " This was a great treat, for, like all who have not been con- 

 taminated by that blight, they were very kind ; and, having been worried 

 enough by unwilling sepoy and cowardly Johanna men, I followed my bent 

 by easy marches, among friendly, generous people, to whom I tried to im- 

 part some new ideas in return for their hospitality. The country is elevated 

 and the climate cool. One of the wonders told of us in successive villages 

 was that we slept without fires. The boys having blankets did not need fire, 

 while the inhabitants being scantily clad, have their huts plastered inside and 

 out, and even use moss to make them comfortable. Our progress since has 

 been slow from other and less agreeable causes. Some parts have been de- 

 nuded of food by marauding Mazitu or Zulus ; we have been fain to avoid 

 them, and gone zigzag. Once we nearly walked into the hands of a party, 

 and several times we have been detained by rumours of the enemy in front. 



"January, 1867. — I mention several causes of delay; I must add the 

 rainy season is more potent than all, except hunger. In passing through the 

 Babisa country we found that food was not to be had. The Babisa are great 

 slave-traders, and have in consequence little industry. This seems to be the 

 chief cause of their having no food to spare. The rains, too, are more 

 copious than I ever saw them anywhere in Africa ; but we shall get on in 

 time. February 1. — I am in Bemba or Loemba, and at the chief man's place, 

 which has three stockades around it, and a deep dry ditch round the inner 

 one. He seems a fine fellow, and gave us a cow to slaughter on our arrival 

 yesterday. We are going to hold a Christmas feast of it to-morrow, as I 

 promised the boys a blow out when we came to a place of plenty. We have 

 had precious hard bines ; and I would not complain if it had not been for 

 gnawing hunger for many a day, and our bones sticking through as if they 

 would burst the skin. When we were in a part where game abounded, I 

 filled the pot with a first-rate rifle given me by Captain Warter, but else- 

 where we had but very short rations of a species of millet called macre, which 



