UP THE SHIRE. 
441 
«all his people together, in order that all might know what 
our objects were. 
The dialect here closely resembles that spoken at Senna 
and Tette. The delight of exploring a hitherto unexplored 
river, must be felt to be appreciated. After having ad- 
vanced, in a straight line, one hundred miles, though the 
wanderings of the course made the distance at least twice 
as much, further progress by the steamer was arrested, in 
15° 55' south, by magnificent cataracts, which were chris- 
tened “The Murchison,” after Sir Roderick Murchison. 
After remaining here a few days, hoping to take an obser- 
vation for longitude, but prevented by the cloudy weather, 
the expedition returned to Tette. 
In the middle of March (1859), a second expedition up 
the Shire started. The natives were now friendly. Ami- 
cable relations were formed with Chibisa, a ohief whose vil- 
lage was about ten miles below the cataract’. Chibisa was 
a remarkably shrewd man. A great deal of fighting had 
fallen to his lot, but he said he was always in the right, the 
other party always began it. lie was also a firm believer 
in the divine right of kings. He was an ordinary man, he 
said, when his father died and left him the chieftainship, 
but as soon as he succeeded to his high office, he was 
conscious of power passing into his head and down his 
back ; he felt it enter, and knew’ he was a chief, clothed 
with authority and possessed of wisdom, and people began 
to fear and reverence him. He mentioned this as a fact no 
more to be doubted than any other fact of natural history. 
Leaving the vessel opposite Chibisa’s village, I)r. Living- 
stone, with a party, started on foot for Lake Sbirwa, and 
travelled in a northerly direction, over a mountainous 
country. They had trouble with their guides, and finally 
pushed on without them, or with crazy ones, for, oddly 
enough, they were often under great obligations to the 
madmen of different villages. These poor fellows sympa- 
thized with the explorers, probably from the belief that 
they belonged to their own class, and, uninfluenced by the 
