and grass, in colour, according to the season, green or yellow.  Many are between 2000 and 3000 feet high, with the sky line fringed with trees; the rocks show just sufficiently for one to observe their stratification, or their granitic form, and though not covered with dense masses of climbing plants, like those in moister eastern climates, there is still the idea conveyed that most of the steep sides are fertile, and none give the impression of that barrenness which, in northern mountains, suggests the idea that the bones of the world are sticking through its skin.

The villagers reported that we were on the footsteps of a Portuguese half-caste, who, at Senga, lately tried to purchase ivory, but, in consequence of his having murdered a chief near Zumbo and twenty of his men, the people declined to trade with him.  He threatened to take the ivory by force, if they would not sell it; but that same night the ivory and the women were spirited out of the village, and only a large body of armed men remained.  The trader, fearing that he might come off second best if it came to blows, immediately departed.  Chikwanitsela, or Sekuanangila, is the paramount chief of some fifty miles of the northern bank of the Zambesi in this locality.  He lives on the opposite, or southern side, and there his territory is still more extensive.  We sent him a present from Senga, and were informed by a messenger next morning that he had a cough and could not come over to see us.  “And has his present a cough too,” remarked one of our party, “that it does not come to us?  Is this the way your chief treats strangers, receives their present, and sends them no food in return?” Our men thought Chikwanitsela an uncommonly stingy fellow; but, as it was possible that some of them might yet wish to return this way, they did not like to scold him more than this, which was sufficiently to the point.

Men and women were busily engaged in preparing the ground for the November planting.  Large game was abundant; herds of elephants and buffaloes came down to the river in the night, but were a long way off by daylight.  They soon adopt this habit in places where they are hunted.

The plains we travel over are constantly varying in breadth, according as the furrowed and wooded hills approach or recede from the river.  On the southern side we see the hill Bungwe, and the long, level, wooded ridge Nyangombe, the first of a series bending from the S.E. to the N.W. past the Zambesi.  We shot an old pallah on the 16th, and found that the poor animal had been visited with more than the usual share of animal afflictions.  He was stone-blind in both eyes, had several tumours, and a broken leg, which showed no symptoms of ever having begun to heal.  Wild animals sometimes suffer a great deal from disease, and wearily drag on a miserable existence before relieved of it by some ravenous beast.  Once we drove off a maneless lion and lioness from a dead buffalo,