His people refused to sell their fowls for our splendid prints and drab cloths.  They had probably been taken in with gaudy-patterned sham prints before.  They preferred a very cheap, plain, blue stuff of which they had experience.  A great quantity of excellent honey is collected all along the river, by bark hives being placed for the bees on the high trees on both banks.  Large pots of it, very good and clear, were offered in exchange for a very little cloth.  No wax was brought for sale; there being no market for this commodity, it is probably thrown away as useless.

At Michi we lose the tableland which, up to this point, bounds the view on both sides of the river, as it were, with ranges of flat-topped hills, 600 or 800 feet high; and to this plateau a level fertile plain succeeds, on which stand detached granite hills.  That portion of the tableland on the right bank seems to bend away to the south, still preserving the appearance of a hill range.  The height opposite extends a few miles further west, and then branches off in a northerly direction.  A few small pieces of coal were picked up on the sandbanks, showing that this useful mineral exists on the Rovuma, or on some of its tributaries:  the natives know that it will burn.  At the lakelet Chidia, we noticed the same sandstone rock, with fossil wood on it, which we have on the Zambesi, and knew to be a sure evidence of coal beneath.  We mentioned this at the time to Captain Gardner, and our finding coal now seemed a verification of what we then said; the coal-field probably extends from the Zambesi to the Rovuma, if not beyond it.  Some of the rocks lower down have the permanent water-line three feet above the present height of the water.

A few miles west of the Makoa of Matingula, we came again among the Makonde, but now of good repute.  War and slavery have driven them to seek refuge on the sand-banks.  A venerable-looking old man hailed us as we passed, and asked us if we were going by without speaking.  We landed, and he laid down his gun and came to us; he was accompanied by his brother, who shook hands with every one in the boat, as he had seen people do at Kilwa.  “Then you have seen white men before?” we said.  “Yes,” replied the polite African, “but never people of your quality.”  These men were very black, and wore but little clothing.  A young woman, dressed in the highest style of Makonde fashion, punting as dexterously as a man could, brought a canoe full of girls to see us.  She wore an ornamental head-dress of red beads tied to her hair on one side of her head, a necklace of fine beads of various colours, two bright figured brass bracelets on her left arm, and scarcely a farthing’s worth of cloth, though it was at its cheapest.