We rested at Pachoma; the headman offering a goat and beer, but I declined, and went on to Molomba.  Here Kauma’s carriers turned because a woman had died that morning as we left the village.  They asserted that had she died before we started not a man would have left:  this shows a reverence for death, for the woman was no relative of any of them.  The headman of Molomba was very poor but very liberal, cooking for us and presenting a goat:  another headman from a neighbouring village, a laughing, good-natured old man, named Chikala, brought beer and a fowl in the morning.  I asked him to go on with us to Mironga, it being important, as above-mentioned, to have the like of his kind in our company, and he consented.  We saw Mount Ngala in the distance, like a large sugar-loaf shot up in the air:  in our former route to Kasungu we passed north of it.

16th October, 1866.—­Crossed the rivulet Chikuyo going N. for the Lake, and Mironga being but one-and-a-half hour off, we went on to Chipanga:  this is the proper name of what on the Zambesi is corrupted into Shupanga.  The headman, a miserable hemp-consuming[31] leper, fled from us.  We were offered a miserable hut, which we refused, Chikala meanwhile went through the whole village seeking a better, which we ultimately found:  it was not in this chief to be generous, though Chikala did what he could in trying to indoctrinate him:  when I gave him a present he immediately proposed to sell a goat!  We get on pretty well however.

Zomha is in a range of hills to our west, called Zala nyama.  The Portuguese, in going to Casembe, went still further west than this.

Passing on we came to a smithy, and watched the founder at work drawing off slag from the bottom of his furnace.  He broke through the hardened slag by striking it with an iron instrument inserted in the end of a pole, when the material flowed out of the small hole left for the purpose in the bottom of the furnace.  The ore (probably the black oxide) was like sand, and was put in at the top of the furnace, mixed with charcoal.  Only one bellows was at work, formed out of a goatskin, and the blast was very poor.  Many of these furnaces, or their remains, are met with on knolls; those at work have a peculiarly tall hut built over them.

On the eastern edge of a valley lying north and south, with the Diampwe stream flowing along it, and the Dzala nyama range on the western side, are two villages screened by fine specimens of the Ficus Indica.  One of these is owned by the headman Theresa, and there we spent the night.  We made very short marches, for the sun is very powerful, and the soil baked hard, is sore on the feet:  no want of water, however, is felt, for we come to supplies every mile or two.

The people look very poor, having few or no beads; the ornaments being lines and cuttings on the skin.  They trust more to buaze than cotton.  I noticed but two cotton patches.  The women are decidedly plain; but monopolize all the buaze cloth.  Theresa was excessively liberal, and having informed us that Zomba lived some distance up the range and was not the principal man in these parts, we, to avoid climbing the hills, turned away to the north, in the direction of the paramount chief, Chisumpi, whom we found to be only traditionally great.