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Lake Bangweolo. 
As we have mentioned, Livingstone came up northward from the 
end of Nyassa towards the close of 1866, and his route lay from figure 
32 (east longitude), at the foot of the map, to Mkewe. The people 
in this part were called Babisa (people of Bisa), an inferior-looking 
race, scattered and hunted by the Mazitu, their more warlike neigh- 
bours, who live on the high plateau west of Nyassa. Livingstone and 
his little company had a weary journey, for the poor Babisa were, 
like Israel in the time of Gideon, hiding away, with scarcely any food 
for themselves, and nothing to spare for the travellers, who had often 
to pass on wet and hungry. The Babisa seek to make up by craft 
and falsehood for their lack of valour. Occasionally they kill an 
elephant when it gets into boggy ground, but keep its flesh so long 
that Livingstone found great difficulty at times in partaking of it. In 
parts of the country the peculiar African bogs which Livingstone 
calls sponges are frequent ; but at one spot he thus writes : " We are 
uncertain when we shall come to a village, as the Babisa will not tell 
us where they are situated. In the evening we encamped beside a 
little rill, and made our shelters, but we had so little to eat that I 
dreamed the night long of dinners. ... I shall make this beautiful 
land known, which is an essential part of the process by which it will 
become the 'pleasant haunts of men.' It is impossible to describe 
its rich luxuriance, but most of it is running to waste through the 
slave trade and internal wars." 
At length, January 24th, 1867, he reached the spot marked Mkewe 
on Giraud's map ; but it appears then to have been called Moaba. 
An African town is almost always named after the ruling chief, and 
geography is rendered still more difficult by the fact that at his death 
his successor moves the town at least some distance. But we gather 
from the narratives of Livingstone and Giraud that both crossed the 
Chambeze about the same point. Livingstone found the river forty 
yards wide, but overflowing its banks for two miles, and several 
streams which ran into it made it appear still wider. After a few 
days he reached a town with a triple stockade around it, called Chita- 
pangwa, but by Giraud Ketimkuru, and as the latter chief died in 1883, 
it doubtless goes now by another name. It is, however, the position 
of one of the great chiefs of the Bemba country, and his rule extends 
to Bangweolo over both sides of the Chambeze. the Bisa people on 
the south being tributaries to the Babemba. 
This nation being a conquering people (like the Garenganze), 
Livingstone found food abundant among them, and trade was carried 
on from the east coast by Arabs, who said it only took them two 
months to reach the coast near Zanzibar. Livingstone sent thence 
some letters, promising an Arab about £1 for taking them, and they 
reached England. The situation of this town is 4700 feet above the 
sea — an important point as to temperature and health. Livingstone 
tried to explain to Chitapangwa something of the Book of books, and 
