The rains ceased on the 14th, and the waters of the Shire fell, even more rapidly than they had risen.  A shoal, twenty miles below Chibisa’s, checked our further progress, and we lay there five weary weeks, till the permanent rise of the river took place.  During this detention, with a large marsh on each side, the first death occurred in the Expedition which had now been three-and-a-half years in the country.  The carpenter’s mate, a fine healthy young man, was seized with fever.  The usual remedies had no effect; he died suddenly while we were at evening prayers, and was buried on shore.  He came out in the “Pioneer,” and, with the exception of a slight touch of fever at the mouth of the Rovuma, had enjoyed perfect health all the time he had been with us.  The Portuguese are of opinion that the European who has immunity from this disease for any length of time after he enters the country is more likely to be cut off by it when it does come, than the man who has it frequently at first.

The rains became pretty general towards the close of December, and the Shire was in flood in the beginning of January, 1862.  At our wooding-place, a mile above the Ruo, the water was three feet higher than it was when we were here in June; and on the night of the 6th it rose eighteen inches more, and swept down an immense amount of brushwood and logs which swarmed with beetles and the two kinds of shells which are common all over the African continent.  Natives in canoes were busy spearing fish in the meadows and creeks, and appeared to be taking them in great numbers.  Spur-winged geese, and others of the knob-nosed species, took advantage of the low gardens being flooded, and came to pilfer the beans.  As we passed the Ruo, on the 7th, and saw nothing of the Bishop, we concluded that he had heard from his surgeon of our detention, and had deferred his journey.  He arrived there five days after, on the 12th.

After paying our Senna men, as they wished to go home, we landed them here.  All were keen traders, and had invested largely in native iron-hoes, axes, and ornaments.  Many of the hoes and spears had been taken from the slaving parties whose captives we liberated; for on these occasions our Senna friends were always uncommonly zealous and active.  The remainder had been purchased with the old clothes we had given them and their store of hippopotamus meat:  they had no fear of losing them, or of being punished for aiding us.  The system, in which they had been trained, had eradicated the idea of personal responsibility from their minds.  The Portuguese slaveholders would blame the English alone, they said; they were our servants at the time.  No white man on board could purchase so cheaply as these men could.  Many a time had their eloquence persuaded a native trader to sell for a bit of dirty worn cloth things for which he had, but a little before, refused twice the amount of clean new calico.  “Scissors” being troubled with a cough at night, received a present of a quilted coverlet, which had seen a good deal of service.  A few days afterwards, a good chance of investing in hoes offering itself, he ripped off both sides, tore them into a dozen pieces, and purchased about a dozen hoes with them.