The Mandare root is here called Nyumbo, when cooked it has a slight degree of bitterness with it which cultivation may remove.  Mica schist crowned some of the heights on the watershed, then gneiss, and now, as we descend further, we have igneous rocks of more recent eruption, porphyry and gneiss, with hornblende.  A good deal of ferruginous conglomerate, with holes in it, covers many spots; when broken, it looks like yellow haematite, with black linings to the holes:  this is probably the ore used in former times by the smiths, of whose existence we now find still more evidence than further east.

31st July, 1866.—­I had presented Pezimba with a cloth, so he cooked for us handsomely last night, and this morning desired us to wait a little as he had not yet sufficient meal made to present:  we waited and got a generous present.

It was decidedly milder here than at Mataka’s, and we had a clear sky.  In our morning’s march we passed the last of the population, and went on through a fine well-watered fruitful country, to sleep near a mountain called Mtewire, by a stream called Msapo.  A very large Arab slave-party was close by our encampment, and I wished to speak to them; but as soon as they knew of our being near they set off in a pathless course across country, and were six days in the wilderness.[17]

1st August, 1866.—­We saw the encampment of another Arab party.  It consisted of ten pens, each of which, from the number of fires it contained, may have held from eighty to a hundred slaves.  The people of the country magnified the numbers, saying that they would reach from this to Mataka’s; but from all I can learn, I think that from 300 to 800 slaves is the commoner gang.  This second party went across country very early this morning.  We saw the fire-sticks which the slaves had borne with them.  The fear they feel is altogether the effect of the English name, for we have done nothing to cause their alarm.

2nd August, 1866.—­There was something very cheering to me in the sight at our encampment of yellow grass and trees dotted over it, as in the Bechuana country.  The birds were singing merrily too, inspired by the cold, which was 47 deg., and by the vicinity of some population.  Gum-copal trees and bushes grow here as well as all over the country; but gum is never dug for, probably because the trees were never large enough to yield the fossil gum.  Marks of smiths are very abundant and some furnaces are still standing.  Much cultivation must formerly have been where now all is jungle.

We arrived at Mbanga, a village embowered in trees, chiefly of the euphorbia, so common in the Manganja country further south.  Kandulo, the headman, had gone to drink beer at another village, but sent orders to give a hut and to cook for us.  We remained next day.  Took lunars.