550 TOSSED BY A BUFFALO. 



came away voting unanimously that Cazembe was a great 

 bore. 



When we left the I^oangwa we thought we had got rid 

 of the hills ; but there are some behind Mazanzwe, 

 though five or six miles off from the river. Tsetse and 

 the mils had destroyed two riding oxen, and when the 

 little one that I now rode knocked up, I was forced to 

 march on foot. The bush being very dense and high, 

 we were going along among the trees, when three buffaloes, 

 which we had unconsciously passed above the wind, 

 thought that they were surrounded by men, and dashed 

 through our line. My ox set off at a gallop, and when 

 I could manage to glance back, I saw one of the men 

 up in the air about five feet above a buffalo, which was 

 tearing along with a stream of blood running down his 

 flank. When I got back to the poor fellow, I found that 

 he had lighted on his face, and, though he had been carried 

 on the horns of the buffalo about twenty yards before 

 getting the final toss, the skin was not pierced nor was 

 a bone broken. When the beasts appeared, he had thrown 

 down his load and stabbed one in the side. It turned 

 suddenly upon him, and, before he could use a tree for 

 defence, carried him off. We shampooed him well, and 

 then went on, and in about a week he was able to engage 

 in the hunt again. 



At Zumbo we had entered upon old grey sandstone, 

 with shingle in it, dipping generally towards the south, 

 and forming the bed of the river. The Zambesi is very 

 broad here, but contains many inhabited islands. We 

 slept opposite one on the 16th, called Shibanga. The 

 nights are warm, the temperature never falling below 

 8o° ; it was 9 1 ° even at sunset. One cannot cool the water 

 by a wet towel round the vessel, and we feel no pleasure 

 in drinking warm water, though the heat makes us imbibe 

 large quantities. We often noticed lumps of a froth- 

 like substance on the bushes as large as cricket-balls, 

 which we could not explain. 



On the morning of the 17th, we were pleased to see 

 a person coming from the island of Shibanga, with jacket 

 and hat on. He was quite black, but had come from the 

 Portuguese settlement at Tete or Nyungwe ; and now 

 for the first time we understood that the Portuguese 

 settlement was on the other bank of the river, and that 

 they had been fighting with the natives for the last two 



