The Africans all beckon with the hand, to call a person, in a different way from what Europeans do.  The hand is held, as surgeons say, prone, or palm down, while we beckon with the hand held supine, or palm up:  it is quite natural in them, for the idea in their mind is to lay the hand on the person and draw him towards them.  If the person wished for is near, say forty yards off, the beckoner puts out his right hand on a level with his breast, and makes the motion of catching the other by shutting the fingers and drawing him to himself:  if the person is further off, this motion is exaggerated by lifting up the right hand as high as he can; he brings it down with a sweep towards the ground, the hand being still held prone as before.  In nodding assent they differ from us by lifting up the chin instead of bringing it down as we do.  This lifting up the chin looks natural after a short usage therewith, and is perhaps purely conventional, not natural, as the other seems to be.

16th November, 1868.—­I am tired out by waiting after finishing the Journal, and will go off to-morrow north.  Simon killed a zebra after I had taken the above resolution, and this supply of meat makes delay bearable, for besides flesh, of which I had none, we can buy all kinds of grain and pulse for the next few days.  The women of the adjacent villages crowd into this as soon as they hear of an animal killed, and sell all the produce of their plantations for meat.

17th November, 1868.—­It is said that on the road to the Great Salt Lake in America the bones and skulls of animals lie scattered everywhere, yet travellers are often put to great straits for fuel:  this, if true, is remarkable among a people so apt in turning everything to account as the Americans.  When we first steamed up the River Shire our fuel ran out in the elephant marsh, where no trees exist, and none could be reached without passing through many miles on either side of impassable swamp, covered with reeds, and intersected everywhere with deep branches of the river.  Coming to a spot where an elephant had been slaughtered, I at once took the bones on board, and these, with the bones of a second elephant, enabled us to steam briskly up to where wood abounded.  The Scythians, according to Herodotus, used the bones[68] of the animal sacrificed to boil the flesh, the Guachos of South America do the same when they have no fuel:  the ox thus boils himself.

18th November, 1868.—­A pretty little woman ran away from her husband, and came to “Mpamari.”  Her husband brought three hoes, a checked cloth, and two strings of large neck beads to redeem her; but this old fellow wants her for himself, and by native law he can keep her as his slave-wife.  Slave-owners make a bad neighbourhood, for the slaves, are always running away and the headmen are expected to restore the fugitives for a bit of cloth.  An old woman of Mpmari fled three times; she was caught yesterday,