We are on the northern brim (or north-western rather) of the great Loangwa Valley we lately crossed:  the rain coming from the east strikes it, and is deposited both above and below, while much of the valley itself is not yet well wetted.  Here all the grasses have run up to seed, and yet they are not more than two feet or so in the seed-stalks.  The pasturage is very fine.  The people employ these continuous or set-in rains for hunting the elephant, which gets bogged, and sinks in from fifteen to eighteen inches in soft mud, then even he, the strong one, feels it difficult to escape.[44]

5th January, 1867.—­Still storm-stayed.  We shall be off as soon as we get a fair day and these heavy rains cease.

6th January, 1867.—­After service two men came and said that they were going to Lobemba, and would guide us to Motuna’s village; another came a day or two ago, but he had such a villainous look we all shrank from him.  These men’s faces pleased us, but they did not turn out all we expected, for they guided us away westwards without a path:  it was a drizzling rain, and this made us averse to striking off in the forest without them.  No inhabitants now except at wide intervals, and no animals either.  In the afternoon we came to a deep ravine full of gigantic timber trees and bamboos, with the Mavoche River at the bottom.  The dampness had caused the growth of lichens all over the trees, and the steep descent was so slippery that two boys fell, and he who carried the chronometers, twice:  this was a misfortune, as it altered the rates, as was seen by the first comparison of them together in the evening.  No food at Motuna’s village, yet the headman tried to extort two fathoms of calico on the ground that he was owner of the country:  we offered to go out of his village and make our own sheds on “God’s land,” that is, where it is uncultivated, rather than have any words about it:  he then begged us to stay.  A very high mountain called Chikokwe appeared W.S.W. from this village; the people who live on it are called Matumba; this part is named Lokumbi, but whatever the name, all the people are Babisa, the dependants of the Babemba, reduced by their own slaving habits to a miserable jungly state.  They feed much on wild fruits, roots, and leaves; and yet are generally plump.  They use a wooden hoe for sowing their maere, it is a sort of V-shaped implement, made from a branch with another springing out of it, about an inch in diameter at the sharp point, and with it they claw the soil after scattering the seed; about a dozen young men were so employed in the usual small patches as we passed in the morning.