The different Casembes visited by the Portuguese seem to have varied much in character and otherwise.  Pereira, the first visitor, said (I quote from memory) that Casembe had 20,000 trained soldiers, watered his streets daily, and sacrificed twenty human victims every day.  I could hear nothing of human sacrifices now, and it is questionable if the present Casembe could bring a thousand stragglers into the field.  When he usurped power five years ago, his country was densely peopled; but he was so severe in his punishments—­cropping the ears, lopping off the hands, and other mutilations, selling the children for very slight offences, that his subjects gradually dispersed themselves in the neighbouring countries beyond his power.  This is the common mode by which tyranny is cured in parts like these, where fugitives are never returned.  The present Casembe is very poor.  When he had people who killed elephants he was too stingy to share the profits of the sale of the ivory with his subordinates.  The elephant hunters have either left him or neglect hunting, so he has now no tusks to sell to the Arab traders who come from Tanganyika.  Major Monteiro, the third Portuguese who visited Casembe, appears to have been badly treated by this man’s predecessor, and no other of his nation has ventured so far since.  They do not lose much by remaining away, for a little ivory and slaves are all that Casembe ever can have to sell.  About a month to the west of this the people of Katanga smelt copper-ore (malachite) into large bars shaped like the capital letter I. They may be met with of from 50 lbs. to 100 lbs., weight all over the country, and the inhabitants draw the copper into wire for armlets and leglets.  Gold is also found at Katanga, and specimens were lately sent to the Sultan of Zanzibar.

As we come down from the watershed towards Tanganyika we enter an area of the earth’s surface still disturbed by internal igneous action.  A hot fountain in the country of Nsama is often used to boil cassava and maize.  Earthquakes are by no means rare.  We experienced the shock of one while at Chitimba’s village, and they extend as far as Casembe’s.  I felt as if afloat, and as huts would not fall there was no sense of danger; some of them that happened at night set the fowls a cackling.  The most remarkable effect of this one was that it changed the rates of the chronometers; no rain fell after it.  No one had access to the chronometers but myself, and, as I never heard of this effect before, I may mention that one which lost with great regularity 1.5 sec. daily, lost 15 sec.; another; whose rate since leaving the coast was 15 sec., lost 40 sec.; and a third, which gained 6 sec. daily, stopped altogether.  Some of Nsama’s people ascribed