These hippopotamus hunters form a separate people, called Akombwi, or Mapodzo, and rarely—­the women it is said never—­intermarry with any other tribe.  The reason for their keeping aloof from certain of the natives on the Zambesi is obvious enough, some having as great an abhorrence of hippopotamus meat as Mahomedans have of swine’s flesh.  Our pilot, Scissors, was one of this class; he would not even cook his food in a pot which had contained hippopotamus meat, preferring to go hungry till he could find another; and yet he traded eagerly in the animal’s tusks, and ate with great relish the flesh of the foul-feeding marabout.  These hunters go out frequently on long expeditions, taking in their canoes their wives and children, cooking-pots, and sleeping-mats.  When they reach a good game district, they erect temporary huts on the bank, and there dry the meat they have killed.  They are rather a comely-looking race, with very black smooth skins, and never disfigure themselves with the frightful ornaments of some of the other tribes.  The chief declined to sell a harpoon, because they could not now get the milola bark from the coast on account of Mariano’s war.  He expressed some doubts about our being children of the same Almighty Father, remarking that “they could not become white, let them wash ever so much.”  We made him a present of a bit of cloth, and he very generously gave us in return some fine fresh fish and Indian corn.

The heat of the weather steadily increases during this month (August), and foggy mornings are now rare.  A strong breeze ending in a gale blows up stream every night.  It came in the afternoon a few weeks ago, then later, and at present its arrival is near midnight; it makes our frail cabin-doors fly open before it, but continues only for a short time, and is succeeded by a dead calm.  Game becomes more abundant; near our wooding-places we see herds of zebras, both Burchell’s and the mountain variety, pallahs (Antelope melampus), waterbuck, and wild hogs, with the spoor of buffaloes and elephants.

Shiramba Dembe, on the right bank, is deserted; a few old iron guns show where a rebel stockade once stood; near the river above this, stands a magnificent Baobab hollowed out into a good-sized hut, with bark inside as well as without.  The old oaks in Sherwood Forest, when hollow, have the inside dead or rotten; but the Baobab, though stripped of its bark outside, and hollowed to a cavity inside, has the power of exuding new bark from its substance to both the outer and inner surfaces; so, a hut made like that in the oak called the “Forest Queen,” in Sherwood, would soon all be lined with bark.