They whittled away right manfully, taking an axe when any trees had to be cut.  Their pay, arranged beforehand, was to be one yard of calico per day:  this is not much, seeing we are still so near the sea-coast.  Climbers and young trees melted before them like a cloud before the sun!  Many more would have worked than we employed, but we used the precaution of taking the names of those engaged.  The tall men became exhausted soonest, while the shorter men worked vigorously still—­but a couple of days’ hard work seemed to tell on the best of them.  It is doubtful if any but meat-eating people can stand long-continued labour without exhaustion:  the Chinese may be an exception.  When French navvies were first employed they could not do a tithe of the work of our English ones; but when the French were fed in the same style as the English, they performed equally well.  Here the Makonde have rarely the chance of a good feed of meat:  it is only when one of them is fortunate enough to spear a wild hog or an antelope that they know this luxury; if a fowl is eaten they get but a taste of it with their porridge.

13th April, 1866.—­We now began to descend the northern slope down to the Rovuma, and a glimpse could occasionally be had of the country; it seemed covered with great masses of dark green forest, but the undulations occasionally looked like hills, and here and there a Sterculia had put on yellow foliage in anticipation of the coming winter.  More frequently our vision was circumscribed to a few yards till our merry woodcutters made for us the pleasant scene of a long vista fit for camels to pass:  as a whole, the jungle would have made the authors of the natty little hints to travellers smile at their own productions, good enough, perhaps, where one has an open country with trees and hills; by which to take bearings, estimate distances, see that one point is on the same latitude, another on the same longitude with such another, and all to be laid down fair and square with protractor and compass, but so long as we remained within the vegetation, that is fed by the moisture from the Indian Ocean, the steamy, smothering air, and dank, rank, luxuriant vegetation made me feel, like it, struggling for existence,—­and no more capable of taking bearings than if I had been in a hogshead and observing through the bunghole!

An old Monyinko headman presented a goat and asked if the sepoys wished to cut its throat:  the Johannees, being of a different sect of Mahometans, wanted to cut it in some other way than their Indian co-religionists:  then ensued a fierce dispute as to who was of the right sort of Moslem!  It was interesting to see that not Christians alone, but other nations feel keenly on religious subjects.

I saw rocks of grey sandstone (like that which overlies coal) and the Rovuma in the distance.  Didi is the name of a village whose headsman, Chombokea, is said to be a doctor; all the headmen pretend or are really doctors; however one, Fundindomba, came after me for medicine for himself.