Went northwards, wading across two miles of flooded flats on to which the Clarias Capensis, a species of siluris, comes to forage out of the river.  We had the Likindazi, a sedgy stream, with hippopotami, on our right.  Slept in forest without seeing anyone.  Then next day we met with a party who had come from their village to look for us.  We were now in Lobemba, but these villagers had nothing but hopes of plenty at Chitapangwa’s.  This village had half a mile of ooze and sludgy marsh in front of it, and a stockade as usual.  We observed that the people had great fear of animals at night, and shut the gates carefully, of even temporary villages.  When at Molemba (Chitapangwa’s village) afterwards, two men were killed by a lion, and great fear of crocodiles was expressed by our canoe-man at the Chambeze, when one washed in the margin of that river.  There was evidence of abundance of game, elephants, and buffaloes, but we saw none.

29th January, 1867.—­When near our next stage end we were shown where lightning had struck; it ran down a gum-copal tree without damaging it, then ten yards horizontally, and dividing there into two streams it went up an anthill; the withered grass showed its course very plainly, and next day (31st), on the banks of the Mabula, we saw a dry tree which had been struck; large splinters had been riven off and thrown a distance of sixty yards in one direction and thirty yards in another:  only a stump was left, and patches of withered grass where it had gone horizontally.

30th January, 1867.—­Northwards through almost trackless dripping forests and across oozing bogs.

31st January, 1867.—­Through forest, but gardens of larger size than in Lobisa now appear.  A man offered a thick bar of copper for sale, a foot by three inches.  The hard-leafed acacia and mohempi abound.  The valleys, with the oozes, have a species of grass, having pink seed-stalks and yellow seeds:  this is very pretty.  At midday we came to the Lopiri, the rivulet which waters Chitapanga’s stockade, and soon after found that his village has a triple stockade, the inner being defended also by a deep broad ditch and hedge of a solanaceous thorny shrub.  It is about 200 yards broad and 500 long.  The huts not planted very closely.

The rivulets were all making for the Chambeze.  They contain no fish, except very small ones—­probably fry.  On the other, or western side of the ridge, near which “Malemba” is situated, fish abound worth catching.

[Illustration:  Chitapangwa]

Chitapangwa, or Motoka, as he is also called, sent to inquire if we wanted an audience.  “We must take something in our hands the first time we came before so great a man.”  Being tired from marching, I replied, “Not till the evening,” and sent notice at 5 P.M. of my coming.  We passed through the inner stockade, and then on to an enormous hut, where sat Chitapangwa, with three drummers and