Guided by our host, we went along the Looembe westwards till we reached the bridge (rather a rickety affair), which, when the water is low may be used as a weir.  The Looembe main stream is 66 feet wide, 6 feet deep, with at least 200 feet of flood beyond it.  The water was knee deep on the bridge, but clear; the flooded part beyond was waist deep and the water flowing fast.

All the people are now transplanting tobacco from the spaces under the eaves of the huts into the fields.  It seems unable to bear the greater heat of summer:  they plant also a kind of liranda, proper for the cold weather.  We thought that we were conferring a boon in giving peas, but we found them generally propagated all over the country already, and in the cold time too.  We went along the Diola River to an old hut and made a fire; thence across country to another river, called Loendawe, 6 feet wide, and 9 feet deep.

10th March, 1867.—­I have been ill of fever ever since we left Moamba’s; every step I take jars in the chest, and I am very weak; I can scarcely keep up the march, though formerly I was always first, and had to hold in my pace not to leave the people altogether.  I have a constant singing in the ears, and can scarcely hear the loud tick of the chronometers.  The appetite is good, but we have no proper food, chiefly maere meal or beans, or mapemba or ground-nuts, rarely a fowl.

The country is full of hopo-hedges, but the animals are harassed, and we never see them.

11th March, 1867..—­Detained by a set-in rain.  Marks on masses of dolomite elicited the information that a party of Londa smiths came once to this smelting ground and erected their works here.  We saw an old iron furnace, and masses of haematite, which seems to have been the ore universally used.

12th March, 1867.—­Rain held us back for some time, but we soon reached Chibue, a stockaded village.  Like them all, it is situated by a stream, with a dense clump of trees on the waterside of some species of mangrove.  They attain large size, have soft wood, and succulent leaves; the roots intertwine in the mud, and one has to watch that he does not step where no roots exist, otherwise he sinks up to the thigh.  In a village the people feel that we are on their property, and crowd upon us inconveniently; but outside, where we usually erect our sheds, no such feeling exists, we are each on a level, and they don’t take liberties.

The Balungu are marked by three or four little knobs on the temples, and the lobes of the ears are distended by a piece of wood, which is ornamented with beads; bands of beads go across the forehead and hold up the hair.

Chibue’s village is at the source of the Lokwena, which goes N. and N.E.; a long range of low hills is on our N.E., which are the Mambwe, or part of them.  The Chambeze rises in them, but further south.  Here the Lokwena, round whose source we came on starting this morning to avoid wet feet, and all others north and west of this, go to the Lofu or Lobu, and into Liemba Lake.  Those from the hills on our right go east into the Loanzu and so into the Lake.