JOURNEY FROM KASONGO TO BENGUELA. GG9 



closed in, throwing their spears at us. I then fired two or three shots close 

 to some of the natives, set fire to one of the huts in the place, and told the 

 chief that if he did not take his men off I would burn the village down. 

 They had already burned our camp. On this he said that, if we went away 

 from the village, we should go unmolested. 



" At every slip of jungle the natives closed in upon us, shooting, and 

 we had two or three men wounded ; but it was next to useless returning the 

 fire, as we could not see them, and, being short of ammunition, I was afraid 

 of wasting it. At sunset we arrived close to a village called Kamatete (which 

 I afterwards re-named Fort Dinah, in memory of the goat), and I told the 

 guide to say that we wanted to be friends and to camp there. Their only 

 answer was a volley of arrows. As we were unable to stop out in the night 

 in the jungle with all these fellows round us, I called out to my men to fol- 

 low me and storm the village. Four men followed me ; the rest, except one 

 or two men with Bombay, who was told to look after the stores, ran away. 

 Luckily the natives ran the other way. When we got into the village I 

 burned all the huts down but four, and my men, coming up, set to work to 

 make a fortification. Here we remained five days. We were being con- 

 stantly shot at, and some men wounded. We were fortunately close to water 

 and plantations of cassava, so that we were well supplied with food and drink. 

 The guide told me we must shoot some of the natives before we could get 

 out of our prison, and at last I was forced to use my gun. The report of my 

 heavy rifle they soon learned to respect. At the end of five days we made 

 peace, they having been frightened by some of their people being killed and 

 wounded. The natives, after the fight was over, offered an indemnity, which, 

 however, I did not accept ; but we exchanged presents as a token of friend- 

 ship. The result of these various interruptions was, that I had to content 

 myself with a distant view of the lake. 



" The fourth section of the journey was from Kasongo capital to the west 

 Coast at Benguela. We passed nearly along the watershed between the Zam- 

 besi and the Congo until we arrived at the basin of the Kwanga. I arrived 

 at Benguela on the 4th of November. At the first camp we were delayed by 

 people going to look for their runaway slaves. The next morning, when I 

 was ready to start, a message came, ' No march. Kwarumba is coming up 

 with his slaves.' Kwarumba arrived that afternoon with a string of fifty or 

 sixty wretched women, carrying heavy loads of plunder, and some of them 

 with babies in their arms ; these women represented as many as forty or fifty 

 villages destroyed and ruined, most of the male inhabitants having been killed, 

 and the rest driven away into the jungle, to find what subsistence they could, 

 or die of starvation. I have no doubt these fifty or sixty slaves represented 

 upwards of five hundred people, either killed in defending their homes, or who 

 had died of starvation afterwards, besides a large number rendered homeless. 



