wrinkles; flat nose, somewhat of the Assyrian shape; a big mouth and lean body.  He complained of the Machinga (a Waiyau tribe north of him and the Rovuma) stealing his people.  Lat. of village, 11 deg. 22’ 49” S. The river being about 2’ north, still shows that it makes a trend to the north after we pass Ngomano.  Makochera has been an elephant hunter.  Few acknowledge as a reason for slaving that sowing and spinning cotton for clothing is painful.  I waited some days for the Nassick boys, who are behind, though we could not buy any food except at enormous prices and long distances off.

7th June, 1866.—­The havildar and two sepoys came up with Abraham, but Richard, a Nassick boy, is still behind from weakness.  I sent three off to help him with the only cordials we could muster.  The sepoys sometimes profess inability to come on, but it is unwillingness to encounter hardship:  I must move on whether they come or not, for we cannot obtain food here.  I sent the sepoys some cloth, and on the 8th proposed to start, but every particle of food had been devoured the night before, so we despatched two parties to scour the country round, and give any price rather than want.

I could not prevail on Makochera to give me a specimen of poetry; he was afraid, neither he nor his forefathers had ever seen an Englishman.  He thought that God was not good because He killed so many people.  Dr. Roscher must have travelled as an Arab if he came this way, for he was not known.[10]

9th June, 1866.—­We now left and marched through the same sort of forest, gradually ascending in altitude as we went west, then we came to huge masses of granite, or syenite, with flakes peeling off.  They are covered with a plant with grassy-looking leaves and rough stalk which strips into portions similar to what are put round candles as ornaments.  It makes these hills look light grey, with patches of black rock at the more perpendicular parts; the same at about ten miles off look dark blue.  The ground is often hard and stony, but all covered over with grass and plants:  looking down at it, the grass is in tufts, and like that on the Kalahari desert.  Trees show uplands.  One tree of which bark cloth is made, pterocarpus, is abundant.  Timber-trees appear here and there, but for the most part the growth is stunted, and few are higher than thirty feet.  We spent the night by a hill of the usual rounded form, called Njengo.  The Rovuma comes close by, but leaves us again to wind among similar great masses.  Lat. 11 deg. 20’ 05” S.

10th June, 1866.—­A very heavy march through the same kind of country, no human habitation appearing; we passed a dead body—­recently, it was said, starved to death.  The large tract between Makochera’s and our next station at Ngozo hill is without any perennial stream; water is found often by digging in the sand streams which we several times crossed; sometimes it was a trickling rill, but I suspect that at other seasons all is dry,