f)30 AFRICA AND ITS EXPLORATION 
( )ver two years and eight months ago we departed from 
the shores of the Eastern Ocean, and they ask ns for 
rum ! 
Yet they were not insolent, but unfeeling ; they were 
not rude, but steely selfish. We conversed with them 
sociably enough, and obtained encouragement. A strong 
healthy man would reach Embomma in three days. 
Three days ! Only three days off from food — from 
comforts — luxuries even ! Ah me ! 
The next day, when morning was greying, we lifted 
our weakened limbs for another march. And such a 
march ! — the path all thickly strewn with splinters of 
suet-coloured quartz, which increased the fatigue and 
pain. Idle old men and the three mothers, with their 
young infants born at the cataracts of Massassa and 
Zinga, and another near the market town of Manyanga, 
in the month of June, suffered greatly. Then might be 
seen that affection for one another which appealed to 
my sympathies, and endeared them to me still more. 
Two of the younger men assisted each of the old, and 
the husbands and fathers lifted their infants on their 
shoulders and tenderly led their wives along. 
Up and down the desolate and sad land wound the 
poor, hungry caravan. Bleached whiteness of ripest 
grass, grey rock-piles here and there, looming up solemn 
and sad in their greyness, a thin grove of trees now and 
then visible on the heights and in the hollows — such 
were the scenes that with every uplift of a ridge or 
rising crest of a hill met our hungry eyes. Eight miles 
our strength enabled us to make, and then we camped 
in the middle of an uninhabited valley, where we were 
supplied with water from the pools which we discovered 
in the course of a dried-up stream. 
Our march on the third day was a continuation of 
the scenes of the day preceding until about ten o’clock, 
when we arrived at the summit of a grassy and scrub- 
covered ridge, which we followed until three in the 
afternoon. The van then appeared before the miserable 
settlement of Nsanda, or, as it is sometimes called, 
Banza (town) N’sanda N’sanga. Marching through the 
