This district, which rises up west of Mataka’s to 3400 feet above the sea, catches a great deal of the moisture brought up by the easterly winds.  Many of the trees are covered with lichens.  While here we had cold southerly breezes, and a sky so overcast every day after 10 A.M., that we could take no astronomical observations:  even the latitude was too poor to be much depended on. 12 deg. 53’ S. may have been a few miles from this.

The cattle, rather a small breed, black and white in patches, and brown, with humps, give milk which is duly prized by these Waiyau.  The sheep are the large-tailed variety, and generally of a black colour.  Fowls and pigeons are the only other domestic animals we see, if we except the wretched village dogs which our-poodle had immense delight in chasing.

The Waiyau are far from a handsome race, but they are not the prognathous beings one sees on the West Coast either.  Their heads are of a round shape; compact foreheads, but not particularly receding; the alae nasi are flattened out; lips full, and with the women a small lip-ring just turns them up to give additional thickness.  Their style of beauty is exactly that which was in fashion when the stone deities were made in the caves of Elephanta and Kenora near Bombay.  A favourite mode of dressing the hair into little knobs, which was in fashion there, is more common in some tribes than in this.  The mouths of the women would not be so hideous with a small lip-ring if they did not file their teeth to points, but they seem strong and able for the work which falls to their lot.  The men are large, strong-boned fellows, and capable of enduring great fatigue, they undergo a rite which once distinguished the Jews about the age of puberty, and take a new name on the occasion; this was not introduced by the Arabs, whose advent is a recent event, and they speak of the time before they were inundated with European manufactures in exchange for slaves, as quite within their memory.

Young Mataka gave me a dish of peas, and usually brought something every time he made a visit, he seems a nice boy, and his father, in speaking of learning to read, said he and his companions could learn, but he himself was too old.  The soil seems very fertile, for the sweet potatoes become very large, and we bought two loads of them for three cubits and two needles; they quite exceeded 1 cwt.  The maize becomes very large too; one cob had 1600 seeds.  The abundance of water, the richness of soil, the available labour for building square houses, the coolness of the climate, make this nearly as desirable a residence as Magomero; but, alas! instead of three weeks’ easy sail up the Zambesi and Shire, we have spent four weary months in getting here:  I shall never cease bitterly to lament the abandonment of the Magomero mission.

Moaning seems a favourite way of spending the time with some sick folk.  For the sake of the warmth, I allowed a Nassick boy to sleep in my house; he and I had the same complaint, dysentery, and I was certainly worse than he, but did not moan, while he played at it as often as he was awake.  I told him that people moaned only when too ill to be sensible of what they were doing; the groaning ceased, though he became worse.