458 
NATIVE AFRICAN POETS. 
must have been persons of ability — one of them had dug a 
canal, by which he protected his herds from invasiou. 
In travelling from the Kaftie to the Zungwe, several 
villages were often passed in a day’s march; and the party 
was treated with such hospitality, that their course resem- 
bled a triumphal procession. The people are largely 
engaged in agriculture. For hours the line of march was 
through unbroken fields of mapira, or native corn, which 
were cultivated with the hoe. Owing to the ravages of the 
Weevil, all the corn raised has to be consumed in the same 
year, and hence great quantities of it are made into beer. 
The beer these Batoka, or Bawe brew, is not the sour and 
intoxicating boala or pombe found among other tribes, but 
a sweet and nutritive drink, slightly acid. 
Among the Africans, as among every people, men of 
ability occasionally appear ; but the want of any method 
of writing prevents the recording of their wisdom. They 
have poets too, who sing their chants in blank verse. 
Oae such was attached to the expedition, fie composed, 
and sung his songs extempore, being never at a loss for a 
word, and accompanied himself upon a native instrument 
called the Gansa, a wind instrument played with keys. 
On the lower bank of the Zambesi, during the winter 
months large quantities of tobacco are raised, and the peo- 
ple are the most inveterate smokers. Their tobacco is very 
strong, and very cheap, and they swallow the smoke ; 
taking a whiff, puffing out the first of it, and swallowing 
the rest — the real essence, they say, of the tobacco. 
The people above Kariba had never before been visited 
by foreigners. On the 4th of August, the party reached 
Moachemba, the first of the Batoka villages which now owe 
allegiance to Sekeletu, and could see with the naked eye, in 
the great valley spread out before them, the columns of 
vapor rising from the Victoria Falls, though upwards of 
twenty miles distant. The party was detained the whole 
of the next day by the sickness of Charles Livingstone. 
On the 8th he was better, and on the 9th the party 
inarched to the Great Falls. 
