A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries

Many of the African women are particular about the water they use for drinking and cooking, and prefer that which is filtered through sand.  To secure this, they scrape holes in the sandbanks beside the stream, and scoop up the water, which slowly filters through, rather than take it from the equally clear and limpid river.  This practice is common in the Zambesi, the Rovuma, and Lake Nyassa; and some of the Portuguese at Tette have adopted the native custom, and send canoes to a low island in the middle of the river for water.  Chitora’s people also obtained their supply from shallow wells in the sandy bed of a small rivulet close to the village.  The habit may have arisen from observing the unhealthiness of the main stream at certain seasons.  During nearly nine months in the year, ordure is deposited around countless villages along the thousands of miles drained by the Zambesi.  When the heavy rains come down, and sweep the vast fetid accumulation into the torrents, the water is polluted with filth; and, but for the precaution mentioned, the natives would prove themselves as little fastidious as those in London who drink the abomination poured into the Thames by Reading and Oxford.  It is no wonder that sailors suffered so much from fever after drinking African river water, before the present admirable system of condensing it was adopted in our navy.

The scent of man is excessively terrible to game of all kinds, much more so, probably, than the sight of him.  A herd of antelopes, a hundred yards off, gazed at us as we moved along the winding path, and timidly stood their ground until half our line had passed, but darted off the instant they “got the wind,” or caught the flavour of those who had gone by.  The sport is all up with the hunter who gets to the windward of the African beast, as it cannot stand even the distant aroma of the human race, so much dreaded by all wild animals.  Is this the fear and the dread of man, which the Almighty said to Noah was to be upon every beast of the field?  A lion may, while lying in wait for his prey, leap on a human being as he would on any other animal, save a rhinoceros or an elephant, that happened to pass; or a lioness, when she has cubs, might attack a man, who, passing “up the wind of her,” had unconsciously, by his scent, alarmed her for the safety of her whelps; or buffaloes, amid other animals, might rush at a line of travellers, in apprehension of being surrounded by them; but neither beast nor snake will, as a general rule, turn on man except when wounded, or by mistake.  If gorillas, unwounded, advance to do battle with him, and beat their breasts in defiance, they are an exception to all wild beasts known to us.  From the way an elephant runs at the first glance of man, it is inferred that this huge brute, though really king of beasts, would run even from a child.

Our two donkeys caused as much admiration as the three white men.  Great was the astonishment when one of the donkeys began to bray.  The timid jumped more than if a lion had roared beside them.  All were startled, and stared in mute amazement at the harsh-voiced one, till the last broken note was uttered; then, on being assured that nothing in particular was meant, they looked at each other, and burst into a loud laugh at their common surprise.  When one donkey stimulated the other to try his vocal powers, the interest felt by the startled visitors, must have equalled that of the Londoners, when they first crowded to see the famous hippopotamus.

We were now, when we crossed the boundary rivulet Nyamatarara, out of Chicova and amongst sandstone rocks, similar to those which prevail between Lupata and Kebrabasa.  In the latter gorge, as already mentioned, igneous and syenitic masses have been acted on by some great fiery convulsion of nature; the strata are thrown into a huddled heap of confusion.  The coal has of course disappeared in Kebrabasa, but is found again in Chicova.  Tette grey sandstone is common about Sinjéré, and wherever it is seen with fossil wood upon it, coal lies beneath; and here, as at Chicova, some seams crop out on the banks of the Zambesi.  Looking southwards, the country is open plain and woodland, with detached hills and mountains in the distance; but the latter are too far off, the natives say, for them to know their names.  The principal hills on our right, as we look up stream, are from six to twelve miles away, and occasionally they send down spurs to the river, with brooks flowing through their narrow valleys.  The banks of the Zambesi show two well-defined terraces; the first, or lowest, being usually narrow, and of great fertility, while the upper one is a dry grassy plain, a thorny jungle, or a mopane (Bauhinia) forest.  One of these plains, near the Kafué, is covered with the large stumps and trunks of a petrified forest.  We halted a couple of days by the fine stream Sinjéré, which comes from the Chiroby-roby hills, about eight miles to the north.  Many lumps of coal, brought down by the rapid current, lie in its channel.  The natives never seem to have discovered that coal would burn, and, when informed of the fact, shook their heads, smiled incredulously, and said “Kodi” (really), evidently regarding it as a mere traveller’s tale.  They were astounded to see it burning freely on our fire of wood.  They told us that plenty of it was seen among the hills; but, being long ago aware that we were now in an immense coalfield, we did not care to examine it further.

A dyke of black basaltic rock, called Kakololé, crosses the river near the mouth of the Sinjéré; but it has two open gateways in it of from sixty to eighty yards in breadth, and the channel is very deep.

On a shallow sandbank, under the dyke, lay a herd of hippopotami in fancied security.  The young ones were playing with each other like young puppies, climbing on the backs of their dams, trying to take hold of one another by the jaws and tumbling over into the water.  Mbia, one of the Makololo, waded across to within a dozen yards of the drowsy beasts, and shot the father of the herd; who, being very fat, soon floated, and was secured at the village below.  The headman of the village visited us while we were at breakfast.  He wore a black “ifé” wig and a printed shirt.  After a short silence he said to Masakasa, “You are with the white people, so why do you not tell them to give me a cloth?”  “We are strangers,” answered Masakasa, “why do you not bring us some food?”  He took the plain hint, and brought us two fowls, in order that we should not report that in passing him we got nothing to eat; and, as usual, we gave a cloth in return.  In reference to the hippopotamus he would make no demand, but said he would take what we chose to give him.  The men gorged themselves with meat for two days, and cut large quantities into long narrow strips, which they half-dried and half-roasted on wooden frames over the fire.  Much game is taken in this neighbourhood in pitfalls.  Sharp-pointed stakes are set in the bottom, on which the game tumbles and gets impaled.  The natives are careful to warn strangers of these traps, and also of the poisoned beams suspended on the tall trees for the purpose of killing elephants and hippopotami.  It is not difficult to detect the pitfalls after one’s attention has been called to them; but in places where they are careful to carry the earth off to a distance, and a person is not thinking of such things, a sudden descent of nine feet is an experience not easily forgotten by the traveller.  The sensations of one thus instantaneously swallowed up by the earth are peculiar.  A momentary suspension of consciousness is followed by the rustling sound of a shower of sand and dry grass, and the half-bewildered thought of where he is, and how he came into darkness.  Reason awakes to assure him that he must have come down through that small opening of daylight overhead, and that he is now where a hippopotamus ought to have been.  The descent of a hippopotamus pitfall is easy, but to get out again into the upper air is a work of labour.  The sides are smooth and treacherous, and the cross reeds, which support the covering, break in the attempt to get out by clutching them.  A cry from the depths is unheard by those around, and it is only by repeated and most desperate efforts that the buried alive can regain the upper world.  At Tette we are told of a white hunter, of unusually small stature, who plumped into a pit while stalking a guinea-fowl on a tree.  It was the labour of an entire forenoon to get out; and he was congratulating himself on his escape, and brushing off the clay from his clothes, when down he went into a second pit, which happened, as is often the case, to be close beside the first, and it was evening before he could work himself out of that.

Elephants and buffaloes seldom return to the river by the same path on two successive nights, they become so apprehensive of danger from this human art.  An old elephant will walk in advance of the herd, and uncover the pits with his trunk, that the others may see the openings and tread on firm ground.  Female elephants are generally the victims: more timid by nature than the males, and very motherly in their anxiety for their calves, they carry their trunks up, trying every breeze for fancied danger, which often in reality lies at their feet.  The tusker, fearing less, keeps his trunk down, and, warned in time by that exquisitely sensitive organ, takes heed to his ways.

Our camp on the Sinjéré stood under a wide-spreading wild fig-tree.  From the numbers of this family, of large size, dotted over the country, the fig or banyan species would seem to have been held sacred in Africa from the remotest times.  The soil teemed with white ants, whose clay tunnels, formed to screen them from the eyes of birds, thread over the ground, up the trunks of trees, and along the branches, from which the little architects clear away all rotten or dead wood.  Very often the exact shape of branches is left in tunnels on the ground and not a bit of the wood inside.  The first night we passed here these destructive insects ate through our grass-beds, and attacked our blankets, and certain large red-headed ones even bit our flesh.

On some days not a single white ant is to be seen abroad; and on others, and during certain hours, they appear out of doors in myriads, and work with extraordinary zeal and energy in carrying bits of dried grass down into their nests.  During these busy reaping-fits the lizards and birds have a good time of it, and enjoy a rich feast at the expense of thousands of hapless workmen; and when they swarm they are caught in countless numbers by the natives, and their roasted bodies are spoken of in an unctuous manner as resembling grains of soft rice fried in delicious fresh oil.

A strong marauding party of large black ants attacked a nest of white ones near the camp: as the contest took place beneath the surface, we could not see the order of the battle; but it soon became apparent that the blacks had gained the day, and sacked the white town, for they returned in triumph, bearing off the eggs, and choice bits of the bodies of the vanquished.  A gift, analogous to that of language, has not been withheld from ants: if part of their building is destroyed, an official is seen coming out to examine the damage; and, after a careful survey of the ruins, he chirrups a few clear and distinct notes, and a crowd of workers begin at once to repair the breach.  When the work is completed, another order is given, and the workmen retire, as will appear on removing the soft freshly-built portion.  We tried to sleep one rainy might in a native hut, but could not because of attacks by the fighting battalions of a very small species of formica, not more than one-sixteenth of an inch in length.  It soon became obvious that they were under regular discipline, and even attempting to carry out the skilful plans and stratagems of some eminent leader.  Our hands and necks were the first objects of attack.  Large bodies of these little pests were massed in silence round the point to be assaulted.  We could hear the sharp shrill word of command two or three times repeated, though until then we had not believed in the vocal power of an ant; the instant after we felt the storming hosts range over head and neck, biting the tender skin, clinging with a death-grip to the hair, and parting with their jaws rather than quit their hold.  On our lying down again in the hope of their having been driven off, no sooner was the light out, and all still, than the manoeuvre was repeated.  Clear and audible orders were issued, and the assault renewed.  It was as hard to sleep in that hut as in the trenches before Sebastopol.  The white ant, being a vegetable feeder, devours articles of vegetable origin only, and leather, which, by tanning, is imbued with a vegetable flavour.  “A man may be rich to-day and poor to-morrow, from the ravages of white ants,” said a Portuguese merchant.  “If he gets sick, and unable to look after his goods, his slaves neglect them, and they are soon destroyed by these insects.”  The reddish ant, in the west called drivers, crossed our path daily, in solid columns an inch wide, and never did the pugnacity of either man or beast exceed theirs.  It is a sufficient cause of war if you only approach them, even by accident.  Some turn out of the ranks and stand with open mandibles, or, charging with extended jaws, bite with savage ferocity.  When hunting, we lighted among them too often; while we were intent on the game, and without a thought of ants, they quietly covered us from head to foot, then all began to bite at the same instant; seizing a piece of the skin with their powerful pincers, they twisted themselves round with it, as if determined to tear it out.  Their bites are so terribly sharp that the bravest must run, and then strip to pick off those that still cling with their hooked jaws, as with steel forceps.  This kind abounds in damp places, and is usually met with on the banks of streams.  We have not heard of their actually killing any animal except the Python, and that only when gorged and quite lethargic, but they soon clear away any dead animal matter; this appears to be their principal food, and their use in the economy of nature is clearly in the scavenger line.

We started from the Sinjéré on the 12th of June, our men carrying with them bundles of hippopotamus meat for sale, and for future use.  We rested for breakfast opposite the Kakololé dyke, which confines the channel, west of the Manyeréré mountain.  A rogue monkey, the largest by far that we ever saw, and very fat and tame, walked off leisurely from a garden as we approached.  The monkey is a sacred animal in this region, and is never molested or killed, because the people believe devoutly that the souls of their ancestors now occupy these degraded forms, and anticipate that they themselves must, sooner or later, be transformed in like manner; a future as cheerless for the black as the spirit-rapper’s heaven is for the whites.  The gardens are separated from each other by a single row of small stones, a few handfuls of grass, or a slight furrow made by the hoe.  Some are enclosed by a reed fence of the flimsiest construction, yet sufficient to keep out the ever wary hippopotamus, who dreads a trap.  His extreme caution is taken advantage of by the women, who hang, as a miniature trap-beam, a kigelia fruit with a bit of stick in the end.  This protects the maize, of which he is excessively fond.

The quantity of hippopotamus meat eaten by our men made some of them ill, and our marches were necessarily short.  After three hours’ travel on the 13th, we spent the remainder of the day at the village of Chasiribera, on a rivulet flowing through a beautiful valley to the north, which is bounded by magnificent mountain-ranges.  Pinkwé, or Mbingwé, otherwise Moeu, forms the south-eastern angle of the range.  On the 16th June we were at the flourishing village of Senga, under the headman Manyamé, which lies at the foot of the mount Motemwa.  Nearly all the mountains in this country are covered with open forest 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 Bungwé, and the long, level, wooded ridge Nyangombé, 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, which had been in the last stage of a decline.  They had watched him staggering to the river to quench his thirst, and sprang on him as he was crawling up the bank.  One had caught him by the throat, and the other by his high projecting backbone, which was broken by the lion’s powerful fangs.  The struggle, if any, must have been short.  They had only eaten the intestines when we frightened them off.  It is curious that this is the part that wild animals always begin with, and that it is also the first choice of our men.  Were it not a wise arrangement that only the strongest males should continue the breed, one could hardly help pitying the solitary buffalo expelled from the herd for some physical blemish, or on account of the weakness of approaching old age.  Banished from female society, he naturally becomes morose and savage; the necessary watchfulness against enemies is now never shared by others; disgusted, he passes into a state of chronic war with all who enjoy life, and the sooner after his expulsion that he fills the lion’s or the wild-dog’s maw, the better for himself and for the peace of the country.

We encamped on the 20th of June at a spot where Dr. Livingstone, on his journey from the West to the East Coast, was formerly menaced by a chief named Mpendé.  No offence had been committed against him, but he had firearms, and, with the express object of showing his power, he threatened to attack the strangers.  Mpendé’s counsellors having, however, found out that Dr. Livingstone belonged to a tribe of whom they had heard that “they loved the black man and did not make slaves,” his conduct at once changed from enmity to kindness, and, as the place was one well selected for defence, it was perhaps quite as well for Mpendé that he decided as he did.  Three of his counsellors now visited us, and we gave them a handsome present for their chief, who came himself next morning and made us a present of a goat, a basket of boiled maize, and another of vetches.  A few miles above this the headman, Chilondo of Nyamasusa, apologized for not formerly lending us canoes.  “He was absent, and his children were to blame for not telling him when the Doctor passed; he did not refuse the canoes.”  The sight of our men, now armed with muskets, had a great effect.  Without any bullying, firearms command respect, and lead men to be reasonable who might otherwise feel disposed to be troublesome.  Nothing, however, our fracas with Mpendé excepted, could be more peaceful than our passage through this tract of country in 1856.  We then had nothing to excite the cupidity of the people, and the men maintained themselves, either by selling elephant’s meat, or by exhibiting feats of foreign dancing.  Most of the people were very generous and friendly; but the Banyai, nearer to Tette than this, stopped our march with a threatening war-dance.  One of our party, terrified at this, ran away, as we thought, insane, and could not, after a painful search of three days, be found.  The Banyai, evidently touched by our distress, allowed us to proceed.  Through a man we left on an island a little below Mpendé’s, we subsequently learned that poor Monaheng had fled thither, and had been murdered by the headman for no reason except that he was defenceless.  This headman had since become odious to his countrymen, and had been put to death by them.

On the 23rd of June we entered Pangola’s principal village, which is upwards of a mile from the river.  The ruins of a mud wall showed that a rude attempt had been made to imitate the Portuguese style of building.  We established ourselves under a stately wild fig-tree, round whose trunk witchcraft medicine had been tied, to protect from thieves the honey of the wild bees, which had their hive in one of the limbs.  This is a common device.  The charm, or the medicine, is purchased of the dice doctors, and consists of a strip of palm-leaf smeared with something, and adorned with a few bits of grass, wood, or roots.  It is tied round the tree, and is believed to have the power of inflicting disease and death on the thief who climbs over it.  Superstition is thus not without its uses in certain states of society; it prevents many crimes and misdemeanours, which would occur but for the salutary fear that it produces.

Pangola arrived, tipsy and talkative.—“We are friends, we are great friends; I have brought you a basket of green maize—here it is!”  We thanked him, and handed him two fathoms of cotton cloth, four times the market-value of his present.  No, he would not take so small a present; he wanted a double-barrelled rifle—one of Dixon’s best.  “We are friends, you know; we are all friends together.”  But although we were willing to admit that, we could not give him our best rifle, so he went off in high dudgeon.  Early next morning, as we were commencing Divine service, Pangola returned, sober.  We explained to him that we wished to worship God, and invited him to remain; he seemed frightened, and retired: but after service he again importuned us for the rifle.  It was of no use telling him that we had a long journey before us, and needed it to kill game for ourselves.—“He too must obtain meat for himself and people, for they sometimes suffered from hunger.”  He then got sulky, and his people refused to sell food except at extravagant prices.  Knowing that we had nothing to eat, they felt sure of starving us into compliance.  But two of our young men, having gone off at sunrise, shot a fine waterbuck, and down came the provision market to the lower figure; they even became eager to sell, but our men were angry with them for trying compulsion, and would not buy.  Black greed had outwitted itself, as happens often with white cupidity; and not only here did the traits of Africans remind us of Anglo-Saxons elsewhere: the notoriously ready world-wide disposition to take an unfair advantage of a man’s necessities shows that the same mean motives are pretty widely diffused among all races.  It may not be granted that the same blood flows in all veins, or that all have descended from the same stock; but the traveller has no doubt that, practically, the white rogue and black are men and brothers.