670 LIFE OF DAVID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



All these women were tied together round their waists with thick-knotted ropes, 

 and if they lagged on the march were unmercifully beaten. The Portuguese 

 half-castes and black traders are most brutal in the treatment of their slaves; 

 the Arabs, on the contrary, as a rule, treat them kindly. Slaves taken from 

 the centre of Africa like these do not, as a rule, reach the coast ; on the con- 

 trary, they are taken down to Sekilitu's country — where, owing to several 

 causes, the population is scanty, and slaves are in demand — and are sold for 

 ivory, which is afterwards brought to the coast, a caravan usually making a 

 journey towards the centre and then on to Sekilitu's country, and so on 

 alternately. 



"All this country was very beautiful, with hills and woods, and marvel- 

 lously fertile. Here we were beginning to rise out of the broad valley of the 

 Lualaba; and as we came to a height of about two thousand six hundred feet 

 above the sea, the oil- palm ceased to flourish. From this place we went on 

 through Ulunda, which name Mr. Cooley says means wilds or forests. After 

 Ulunda, we came into Lovate, and passed close to the sources of the Lubea and 

 the Zambesi ; beyond these we came to enormous plains, which, in the rainy 

 seasons, are covered with water about knee-deep, and this extends across 

 between the affluents of the Congo and the Zambesi. I passed across Dr. 

 Livingstone's original route from Sekilitu's to Loanda, and found that the 

 people still remembered him from the fact of his having had a riding-ox. We 

 arrived late at Kagnombe's, the chief of all Bihe. This town was the largest 

 I had seen in Africa, being four or five miles in circumference, but a large 

 portion of the interior was taken up by pens for pigs and cattle, and tobacco 

 grounds. There were also three gullies, in which were sources of streams 

 flowing to the Kokema. I had to present King Antonio, as he called himself, 

 with a gun, and a leopard skin which I had had spread out in the hut that 

 was given to me to sleep in. When the secretary, who could not write, called 

 to see me, I was told I must give him something, or else there would be trou- 

 ble. The next morning I went to see King Antonio, and first of all went into 

 a small outer court, the doors of which were guarded by men wearing red 

 waistcoats with white backs, whom he called his soldiers. Some were armed 

 with bows, and others with spears, and a few of them with old flint-lock mus- 

 kets. They only put down a stool for me to sit on, and brought in a largo 

 leather chair studded with brass nails for Kagnombe. On this I sent up to 

 my own hut to get my own chair to sit on. After a time King Antonio ar- 

 rived, dressed in a suit of black clothes and an old wide-awake hat, but with- 

 out any boots, and a Scotch plaid over his shoulders, and held up by a small 

 boy, and looking very drunk indeed. He first informed me that he was a 

 very great man, but that as he had heard I had been so long on the road he 

 did not want a great present, but I must remember him if ever I came back 

 there again. He also informed me that he was not the same as any of the 



