“She is leaking worse than ever forward, sir, and there is a foot of water in the hold,” was our first salutation on the morning of the 20th.  But we have become accustomed to these things now; the cabin-floor is always wet, and one is obliged to mop up the water many times a day, giving some countenance to the native idea that Englishmen live in or on the water, and have no houses but ships.  The cabin is now a favourite breeding-place for mosquitoes, and we have to support both the ship-bred and shore-bred bloodsuckers, of which several species show us their irritating attentions.  A large brown sort, called by the Portuguese mansos (tame), flies straight to its victim, and goes to work at once, as though it were an invited guest.  Some of the small kinds carry uncommonly sharp lancets, and very potent poison.  “What would these insects eat, if we did not pass this way?” becomes a natural question.

The juices of plants, and decaying vegetable matter in the mud, probably form the natural food of mosquitoes, and blood is not necessary for their existence.  They appear so commonly at malarious spots, that their presence may be taken as a hint to man to be off to more healthy localities.  None appear on the high lands.  On the low lands they swarm in myriads.  The females alone are furnished with the biting apparatus, and their number appears to be out of all proportion in excess of the males.  At anchor, on a still evening, they were excessively annoying; and the sooner we took refuge under our mosquito curtains, the better.  The miserable and sleepless night that only one mosquito inside the curtain can cause, is so well known, and has been so often described, that it is needless to describe it here.  One soon learns, from experience, that to beat out the curtains thoroughly before entering them, so that not one of these pests can possibly be harboured within, is the only safeguard against such severe trials to one’s tranquillity and temper.

A few miles above Mboma we came again to the village (16 degrees 44 minutes 30 seconds S.) of the chief Tingane, the beat of whose war-drums can speedily muster some hundreds of armed men.  The bows and poisoned arrows here are of superior workmanship to those below.  Mariano’s slave-hunting parties stood in great awe of these barbed arrows, and long kept aloof from Tingane’s villages.  His people were friendly enough with us now, and covered the banks with a variety of articles for sale.  The majestic mountain, Chipirone, to which we have given the name of Mount Clarendon, now looms in sight, and further to the N.W. the southern end of the grand Milanje range rises in the form of an unfinished sphinx looking down on Lake Shirwa.  The Ruo (16 degrees 31 minutes 0 seconds S.) is said to have its source in the Milanje mountains, and flows to the S.W., to join the Shire some distance above Tingane’s.  A short way beyond the Ruo lies the Elephant marsh, or Nyanja Mukulu, which is frequented by vast herds