10th August, 1866.—­I sent Seyed Majid’s letter up to Jumbe, but the messenger met some coast Arabs at the Loangwa, which may be seven miles from this, and they came back with him, haggling a deal about the fare, and then went off, saying that they would bring the dhow here for us.  Finding that they did not come, I sent Musa, who brought back word that they had taken the dhow away over to Jumbe at Kotakota, or, as they pronounce it, Ngotagota.  Very few of the coast Arabs can read; in words they are very polite, but truthfulness seems very little regarded.  I am resting myself and people—­working up journal, lunars, and altitudes—­but will either move south or go to the Arabs towards the north soon.

Mokalaose’s fears of the Waiyau will make him welcome Jumbe here, and then the Arab will some day have an opportunity of scattering his people as he has done those at Kotakota.  He has made Losewa too hot for himself.  When the people there were carried off by Mataka’s people, Jumbe seized their stores of grain, and now has no post to which he can go there.  The Loangwa Arabs give an awful account of Jumbe’s murders and selling the people, but one cannot take it all in; at the mildest it must have been bad.  This is all they ever do; they cannot form a state or independent kingdom:  slavery and the slave-trade are insuperable obstacles to any permanence inland; slaves can escape so easily, all therefore that the Arabs do is to collect as much money as they can by hook and by crook, and then leave the country.

We notice a bird called namtambwe, which sings very nicely with a strong voice after dark here at the Misinje confluence.

11th August, 1866.—­Two headmen came down country from villages where we slept, bringing us food, and asking how we are treated; they advise our going south to Mukate’s, where the Lake is narrow.

12th-14th August, 1866.—­Map making; but my energies were sorely taxed by the lazy sepoys, and I was usually quite tired out at night.  Some men have come down from Mataka’s, and report the arrival of an Englishman with cattle for me, “he has two eyes behind as well as two in front:”  this is enough of news for awhile!

Mokalaose has his little afflictions, and he tells me of them.  A wife ran away, I asked how many he had; he told me twenty in all:  I then thought he had nineteen too many.  He answered with the usual reason, “But who would cook for strangers if I had but one?”

We saw clouds of “kungu” gnats on the Lake; they are not eaten here.  An ungenerous traveller coming here with my statement in his hand, and finding the people denying all knowledge of how to catch and cook them, might say that I had been romancing in saying I had seen them made into cakes in the northern part of the Lake; when asking here about them, a stranger said, “They know how to use them in the north; we do not.”

Mokalaose thinks that the Arabs are afraid that I may take their dhows from them and go up to the north.  He and the other headmen think that the best way will be to go to Mukate’s in the south.  All the Arabs flee from me, the English name being in their minds inseparably connected with recapturing slavers:  they cannot conceive that I have any other object in view; they cannot read Seyed Majid’s letter.