After I had been a few days here I had a fit of insensibility, which shows the power of fever without medicine.  I found myself floundering outside my hut and unable to get in; I tried to lift myself from my back by laying hold of two posts at the entrance, but when I got nearly upright I let them go, and fell back heavily on my head on a box.  The boys had seen the wretched state I was in, and hung a blanket at the entrance of the hut, that no stranger might see my helplessness; some hours elapsed before I could recognize where I was.

As for these Balungu, as they are called, they have a fear of us, they do not understand our objects, and they keep aloof.  They promise everything and do nothing; but for my excessive weakness we should go on, but we wait for a recovery of strength.

As people they are greatly reduced in numbers by the Mazitu, who carried off very large numbers of the women, boys, girls, and children.  They train or like to see the young men arrayed as Mazitu, but it would be more profitable if they kept them to agriculture.  They are all excessively polite.  The clapping of hands on meeting is something excessive, and then the string of salutations that accompany it would please the most fastidious Frenchman.  It implies real politeness, for in marching with them they always remove branches out of the path, and indicate stones or stumps in it carefully to a stranger, yet we cannot prevail on them to lend carriers to examine the Lake or to sell goats, of which, however, they have very few, and all on one island.

The Lake discharges its water north-westward or rather nor-north-westwards.  We observe weeds going in that direction, and as the Lonzua, the Kowe, the Kapata, the Luaze, the Kalambwe, flow into it near the east end, and the Lovu or Lofubu, or Lofu, from the south-west near the end it must find an exit for so much water.  All these rivers rise in or near the Mambwe country, in lat. 10 deg.  S., where, too, the Chambeze rises.  Liemba is said to remain of about the same size as we go north-west, but this we shall see for ourselves.

Elephants come all about us.  One was breaking trees close by.  I fired into his ear without effect:  I am too weak to hold the gun steadily.

30th April, 1867.—­We begin our return march from Liemba.  Slept at a village on the Lake, and went on next day to Pambete, where we first touched it.  I notice that here the people pound tobacco-leaves in a mortar after they have undergone partial fermentation by lying in the sun, then they put the mass in the sun to dry for use.

The reason why no palm-oil trees grow further east than Pambete is said to be the stony soil there, and this seems a valid one, for it loves rich loamy meadows.