23rd April, 1866.—­When we marched this morning we passed the spot where an animal had been burned in the fire, and on enquiry I found that it is the custom when a leopard is killed to take off the skin and consume the carcase thus, because the Makonde do not eat it.  The reason they gave for not eating flesh which is freely eaten by other tribes, is that the leopard devours men; this shows the opposite of an inclination to cannibalism.

All the rocks we had seen showed that the plateau consists of grey sandstone, capped by a ferruginous sandy conglomerate.  We now came to blocks of silicified wood lying on the surface; it is so like recent wood, that no one who has not handled it would conceive it to be stone and not wood:  the outer surface preserves the grain or woody fibre, the inner is generally silica.

Buffaloes bitten by tsetse again show no bad effects from it:  one mule is, however, dull and out of health; I thought that this might be the effect of the bite till I found that his back was so strained that he could not stoop to drink, and could only eat the tops of the grasses.  An ox would have been ill in two days after the biting on the 7th.

A carrier stole a shirt, and went off unsuspected; when the loss was ascertained, the man’s companions tracked him with Ben Ali by night, got him in his hut, and then collected the headmen of the village, who fined him about four times the value of what had been stolen.  They came back in the morning without seeming to think that they had done aught to be commended; this was the only case of theft we had noticed, and the treatment showed a natural sense of justice.

24th April, 1866.—­We had showers occasionally, but at night all the men were under cover of screens.  The fevers were speedily cured; no day was lost by sickness, but we could not march more than a few miles, owing to the slowness of the sepoys; they are a heavy drag on us, and of no possible use, except when acting as sentries at night.

When in the way between Kendany and Rovuma, I observed a plant here, called Mandare, the root of which is in taste and appearance like a waxy potato; I saw it once before at the falls below the Barotse Valley, in the middle of the continent; it had been brought there by an emigrant, who led out the water for irrigation, and it still maintained its place in the soil.  Would this not prove valuable in the soil of India?  I find that it is not cultivated further up the country of the Makonde, but I shall get Ali to secure some for Bombay.

25th April, 1866.—­A serpent bit Jack, our dog, above the eye, the upper eyelid swelled very much, but no other symptoms appeared, and next day all swelling was gone; the serpent was either harmless, or the quantity of poison injected very small.  The pace of the camels is distressingly slow, and it suits the sepoys to make it still slower than natural by sitting down to smoke and eat.  The grass is high and ground under it damp and steamy.