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

By day the canoe-men are accustomed to keep close under the river’s bank from fear of the hippopotami; by night, however, they keep in the middle of the stream, as then those animals are usually close to the bank on their way to their grazing grounds.  Our progress was considerably impeded by the high winds, which at this season of the year begin about eight in the morning, and blow strongly up the river all day.  The canoes were poor leaky affairs, and so low in parts of the gunwale, that the paddlers were afraid to follow the channel when it crossed the river, lest the waves might swamp us.  A rough sea is dreaded by all these inland canoe-men; but though timid, they are by no means unskilful at their work.  The ocean rather astonished them afterwards; and also the admirable way that the Nyassa men managed their canoes on a rough lake, and even amongst the breakers, where no small boat could possibly live.

On the night of the 17th we slept on the left bank of the Majeelé, after having had all the men ferried across.  An ox was slaughtered, and not an ounce of it was left next morning.  Our two young Makololo companions, Maloka and Ramakukané, having never travelled before, naturally clung to some of the luxuries they had been accustomed to at home.  When they lay down to sleep, their servants were called to spread their blankets over their august persons, not forgetting their feet.  This seems to be the duty of the Makololo wife to her husband, and strangers sometimes receive the honour.  One of our party, having wandered, slept at the village of Nambowé.  When he laid down, to his surprise two of Nambowé’s wives came at once, and carefully and kindly spread his kaross over him.

A beautiful silvery fish with reddish fins, called Ngwesi, is very abundant in the river; large ones weigh fifteen or twenty pounds each.  Its teeth are exposed, and so arranged that, when they meet, the edges cut a hook like nippers.  The Ngwesi seems to be a very ravenous fish.  It often gulps down the Konokono, a fish armed with serrated bones more than an inch in length in the pectoral and dorsal fins, which, fitting into a notch at the roots, can be put by the fish on full cock or straight out,—they cannot be folded down, without its will, and even break in resisting.  The name “Konokono,” elbow-elbow, is given it from a resemblance its extended fins are supposed to bear to a man’s elbows stuck out from his body.  It often performs the little trick of cocking its fins in the stomach of the Ngwesi, and, the elbows piercing its enemy’s sides, he is frequently found floating dead.  The fin bones seem to have an acrid secretion on them, for the wound they make is excessively painful.  The Konokono barks distinctly when landed with the hook.  Our canoe-men invariably picked up every dead fish they saw on the surface of the water, however far gone.  An unfragrant odour was no objection; the fish was boiled and eaten, and the water drunk as soup.  It is a curious fact that many of the Africans keep fish as we do woodcocks, until they are extremely offensive, before they consider them fit to eat.  Our paddlers informed us on our way down that iguanas lay their eggs in July and August, and crocodiles in September.  The eggs remain a month or two under the sand where they are laid, and the young come out when the rains have fairly commenced.  The canoe-men were quite positive that crocodiles frequently stun men by striking them with their tails, and then squat on them till they are drowned.  We once caught a young crocodile, which certainly did use its tail to inflict sharp blows, and led us to conclude that the native opinion is correct.  They believed also that, if a person shuts the beast’s eyes, it lets go its hold.  Crocodiles have been known to unite and kill a large one of their own species and eat it.  Some fishermen throw the bones of the fish into the river but in most of the fishing villages there are heaps of them in various places.  The villagers can walk over them without getting them into their feet; but the Makololo, from having softer soles, are unable to do so.  The explanation offered was, that the fishermen have a medicine against fish-bones, but that they will not reveal it to the Makololo.

We spent a night on Mparira island, which is four miles long and about one mile broad.  Mokompa, the headman, was away hunting elephants.  His wife sent for him on our arrival, and he returned next morning before we left.  Taking advantage of the long-continued drought, he had set fire to the reeds between the Chobé and Zambesi, in such a manner as to drive the game out at one corner, where his men laid in wait with their spears.  He had killed five elephants and three buffaloes, wounding several others which escaped.

On our land party coming up, we were told that the oxen were bitten by the tsetse: they could see a great difference in their looks.  One was already eaten, and they now wished to slaughter another.  A third fell into a buffalo-pit next day, so our stock was soon reduced.

The Batoka chief, Moshobotwané, again treated us with his usual hospitality, giving us an ox, some meal, and milk.  We took another view of the grand Mosi-oa-tunya, and planted a quantity of seeds in the garden on the island; but, as no one will renew the hedge, the hippopotami will, doubtless, soon destroy what we planted.  Mashotlané assisted us.  So much power was allowed to this under-chief, that he appeared as if he had cast off the authority of Sekeletu altogether.  He did not show much courtesy to his messengers; instead of giving them food, as is customary, he took the meat out of a pot in their presence, and handed it to his own followers.  This may have been because Sekeletu’s men bore an order to him to remove to Linyanti.  He had not only insulted Baldwin, but had also driven away the Griqua traders; but this may all end in nothing.  Some of the natives here, and at Sesheké, know a few of the low tricks of more civilized traders.  A pot of milk was brought to us one evening, which was more indebted to the Zambesi than to any cow.  Baskets of fine-looking white meal, elsewhere, had occasionally the lower half filled with bran.  Eggs are always a perilous investment.  The native idea of a good egg differs as widely from our own as is possible on such a trifling subject.  An egg is eaten here with apparent relish, though an embryo chick be inside.

We left Mosi-oa-tunya on the 27th, and slept close to the village of Bakwini.  It is built on a ridge of loose red soil, which produces great crops of mapira and ground-nuts; many magnificent mosibe-trees stand near the village.  Machimisi, the headman of the village, possesses a herd of cattle and a large heart; he kept us company for a couple of days to guide us on our way.

We had heard a good deal of a stronghold some miles below the Falls, called Kalunda.  Our return path was much nearer the Zambesi than that of our ascent,—in fact, as near as the rough country would allow,—but we left it twice before we reached Sinamané’s, in order to see Kalunda and a Fall called Moömba, or Moamba.  The Makololo had once dispossessed the Batoka of Kalunda, but we could not see the fissure, or whatever it is, that rendered it a place of security, as it was on the southern bank.  The crack of the Great Falls was here continued: the rocks are the same as further up, but perhaps less weather-worn—and now partially stratified in great thick masses.  The country through which we were travelling was covered with a cindery-looking volcanic tufa, and might be called “Katakaumena.”

The description we received of the Moamba Falls seemed to promise something grand.  They were said to send up “smoke” in the wet season, like Mosi-oa-tunya; but when we looked down into the cleft, in which the dark-green narrow river still rolls, we saw, about 800 or 1000 feet below us, what, after Mosi-oa-tunya, seemed two insignificant cataracts.  It was evident that Pitsané, observing our delight at the Victoria Falls, wished to increase our pleasure by a second wonder.  One Mosi-oa-tunya, however, is quite enough for a continent.

We had now an opportunity of seeing more of the Batoka, than we had on the highland route to our north.  They did not wait till the evening before offering food to the strangers.  The aged wife of the headman of a hamlet, where we rested at midday, at once kindled a fire, and put on the cooking-pot to make porridge.  Both men and women are to be distinguished by greater roundness of feature than the other natives, and the custom of knocking out the upper front teeth gives at once a distinctive character to the face.  Their colour attests the greater altitude of the country in which many of them formerly lived.  Some, however, are as dark as the Bashubia and Barotsé of the great valley to their west, in which stands Sesheké, formerly the capital of the Balui, or Bashubia.

The assertion may seem strange, yet it is none the less true, that in all the tribes we have visited we never saw a really black person.  Different shades of brown prevail, and often with a bright bronze tint, which no painter, except Mr. Angus, seems able to catch.  Those who inhabit elevated, dry situations, and who are not obliged to work much in the sun, are frequently of a light warm brown, “dark but comely.”  Darkness of colour is probably partly caused by the sun, and partly by something in the climate or soil which we do not yet know.  We see something of the same sort in trout and other fish which take their colour from the ponds or streams in which they live.  The members of our party were much less embrowned by free exposure to the sun for years than Dr. Livingstone and his family were by passing once from Kuruman to Cape Town, a journey which occupied only a couple of months.

We encamped on the Kalomo, on the 1st of October, and found the weather very much warmer than when we crossed this stream in August.  At 3 p.m. the thermometer, four feet from the ground, was 101 degrees in the shade; the wet bulb only 61 degrees: a difference of 40 degrees.  Yet, notwithstanding this extreme dryness of the atmosphere, without a drop of rain having fallen for months, and scarcely any dew, many of the shrubs and trees were putting forth fresh leaves of various hues, while others made a profuse display of lovely blossoms.

Two old and very savage buffaloes were shot for our companions on the 3rd October.  Our Volunteers may feel an interest in knowing that balls sometimes have but little effect: one buffalo fell, on receiving a Jacob’s shell; it was hit again twice, and lost a large amount of blood; and yet it sprang up, and charged a native, who, by great agility, had just time to climb a tree, before the maddened beast struck it, battering-ram fashion, hard enough almost to have split both head and tree.  It paused a few seconds—drew back several paces—glared up at the man—and then dashed at the tree again and again, as if determined to shake him out of it.  It took two more Jacob’s shells, and five other large solid rifle-balls to finish the beast at last.  These old surly buffaloes had been wandering about in a sort of miserable fellowship; their skins were diseased and scabby, as if leprous, and their horns atrophied or worn down to stumps—the first was killed outright, by one Jacob’s shell, the second died hard.  There is so much difference in the tenacity of life in wounded animals of the same species, that the inquiry is suggested where the seat of life can be?—We have seen a buffalo live long enough, after a large bullet had passed right through the heart, to allow firm adherent clots to be formed in the two holes.

One day’s journey above Sinamané’s, a mass of mountain called Gorongué, or Golongwé, is said to cross the river, and the rent through which the river passes is, by native report, quite fearful to behold.  The country round it is so rocky, that our companions dreaded the fatigue, and were not much to blame, if, as is probably the case, the way be worse than that over which we travelled.  As we trudged along over the black slag-like rocks, the almost leafless trees affording no shade, the heat was quite as great as Europeans could bear.  It was 102 degrees in the shade, and a thermometer placed under the tongue or armpit showed that our blood was 99.5 degrees, or 1.5 degrees hotter than that of the natives, which stood at 98 degrees.  Our shoes, however, enable us to pass over the hot burning soil better than they can.  Many of those who wear sandals have corns on the sides of the feet, and on the heels, where the straps pass.  We have seen instances, too, where neither sandals nor shoes were worn, of corns on the soles of the feet.  It is, moreover, not at all uncommon to see toes cocked up, as if pressed out of their proper places; at home, we should have unhesitatingly ascribed this to the vicious fashions perversely followed by our shoemakers.

On the 5th, after crossing some hills, we rested at the village of Simariango.  The bellows of the blacksmith here were somewhat different from the common goatskin bags, and more like those seen in Madagascar.  They consisted of two wooden vessels, like a lady’s bandbox of small dimensions, the upper ends of which were covered with leather, and looked something like the heads of drums, except that the leather bagged in the centre.  They were fitted with long nozzles, through which the air was driven by working the loose covering of the tops up and down by means of a small piece of wood attached to their centres.  The blacksmith said that tin was obtained from a people in the north, called Marendi, and that he had made it into bracelets; we had never heard before of tin being found in the country.

Our course then lay down the bed of a rivulet, called Mapatizia, in which there was much calc spar, with calcareous schist, and then the Tette grey sandstone, which usually overlies coal.  On the 6th we arrived at the islet Chilombé, belonging to Sinamané, where the Zambesi runs broad and smooth again, and were well received by Sinamané himself.  Never was Sunday more welcome to the weary than this, the last we were to spend with our convoy.

We now saw many good-looking young men and women.  The dresses of the ladies are identical with those of Nubian women in Upper Egypt.  To a belt on the waist a great number of strings are attached to hang all round the person.  These fringes are about six or eight inches long.  The matrons wear in addition a skin cut like the tails of the coatee formerly worn by our dragoons.  The younger girls wear the waist-belt exhibited in the woodcut, ornamented with shells, and have the fringes only in front.  Marauding parties of Batoka, calling themselves Makololo, have for some time had a wholesome dread of Sinamané’s “long spears.”  Before going to Tette our Batoka friend, Masakasa, was one of a party that came to steal some of the young women; but Sinamané, to their utter astonishment, attacked them so furiously that the survivors barely escaped with their lives.  Masakasa had to flee so fast that he threw away his shield, his spear, and his clothes, and returned home a wiser and a sadder man.

Sinamané’s people cultivate large quantities of tobacco, which they manufacture into balls for the Makololo market.  Twenty balls, weighing about three-quarters of a pound each, are sold for a hoe.  The tobacco is planted on low moist spots on the banks of the Zambesi; and was in flower at the time we were there, in October.  Sinamane’s people appear to have abundance of food, and are all in good condition.  He could sell us only two of his canoes; but lent us three more to carry us as far as Moemba’s, where he thought others might be purchased.  They were manned by his own canoe-men, who were to bring them back.  The river is about 250 yards wide, and flows serenely between high banks towards the North-east.  Below Sinamané’s the banks are often worn down fifty feet, and composed of shingle and gravel of igneous rocks, sometimes set in a ferruginous matrix.  The bottom is all gravel and shingle, how formed we cannot imagine, unless in pot-holes in the deep fissure above.  The bottom above the Falls, save a few rocks close by them, is generally sandy or of soft tufa.  Every damp spot is covered with maize, pumpkins, water-melons, tobacco, and hemp.  There is a pretty numerous Batoka population on both sides of the river.  As we sailed slowly down, the people saluted us from the banks, by clapping their hands.  A headman even hailed us, and brought a generous present of corn and pumpkins.

Moemba owns a rich island, called Mosanga, a mile in length, on which his village stands.  He has the reputation of being a brave warrior, and is certainly a great talker; but he gave us strangers something better than a stream of words.  We received a handsome present of corn, and the fattest goat we had ever seen; it resembled mutton.  His people were as liberal as their chief.  They brought two large baskets of corn, and a lot of tobacco, as a sort of general contribution to the travellers.  One of Sinamané’s canoe-men, after trying to get his pay, deserted here, and went back before the stipulated time, with the story, that the Englishman had stolen the canoes.  Shortly after sunrise next morning, Sinamané came into the village with fifty of his “long spears,” evidently determined to retake his property by force; he saw at a glance that his man had deceived him.  Moemba rallied him for coming on a wildgoose chase.  “Here are your canoes left with me, your men have all been paid, and the Englishmen are now asking me to sell my canoes.”  Sinamané said little to us; only observing that he had been deceived by his follower.  A single remark of his chief’s caused the foolish fellow to leave suddenly, evidently much frightened and crestfallen.  Sinamané had been very kind to us, and, as he was looking on when we gave our present to Moemba, we made him also an additional offering of some beads, and parted good friends.  Moemba, having heard that we had called the people of Sinamané together to tell them about our Saviour’s mission to man, and to pray with them, associated the idea of Sunday with the meeting, and, before anything of the sort was proposed, came and asked that he and his people might be “sundayed” as well as his neighbours; and be given a little seed wheat, and fruit-tree seeds; with which request of course we very willingly complied.  The idea of praying direct to the Supreme Being, though not quite new to all, seems to strike their minds so forcibly that it will not be forgotten.  Sinamané said that he prayed to God, Morungo, and made drink-offerings to him.  Though he had heard of us, he had never seen white men before.

Beautiful crowned cranes, named from their note “ma-wang,” were seen daily, and were beginning to pair.  Large flocks of spur-winged geese, or machikwe, were common.  This goose is said to lay her eggs in March.  We saw also pairs of Egyptian geese, as well as a few of the knob-nosed, or, as they are called in India, combed geese.  When the Egyptian geese, as at the present time, have young, the goslings keep so steadily in the wake of their mother, that they look as if they were a part of her tail; and both parents, when on land, simulate lameness quite as well as our plovers, to draw off pursuers.  The ostrich also adopts the lapwing fashion, but no quadrupeds do: they show fight to defend their young instead.  In some places the steep banks were dotted with the holes which lead into the nests of bee-eaters.  These birds came out in hundreds as we passed.  When the red-breasted species settle on the trees, they give them the appearance of being covered with red foliage.

On the morning of the 12th October we passed through a wild, hilly country, with fine wooded scenery on both sides, but thinly inhabited.  The largest trees were usually thorny acacias, of great size and beautiful forms.  As we sailed by several villages without touching, the people became alarmed, and ran along the banks, spears in hand.  We employed one to go forward and tell Mpandé of our coming.  This allayed their fears, and we went ashore, and took breakfast near the large island with two villages on it, opposite the mouth of the Zungwé, where we had left the Zambesi on our way up.  Mpandé was sorry that he had no canoes of his own to sell, but he would lend us two.  He gave us cooked pumpkins and a water-melon.  His servant had lateral curvature of the spine.  We have often seen cases of humpback, but this was the only case of this kind of curvature we had met with.  Mpandé accompanied us himself in his own vessel, till we had an opportunity of purchasing a fine large canoe elsewhere.  We paid what was considered a large price for it: twelve strings of blue cut glass neck beads, an equal number of large blue ones of the size of marbles, and two yards of grey calico.  Had the beads been coarser, they would have been more valued, because such were in fashion.  Before concluding the bargain the owner said “his bowels yearned for his canoe, and we must give a little more to stop their yearning.”  This was irresistible.  The trading party of Sequasha, which we now met, had purchased ten large new canoes for six strings of cheap coarse white beads each, or their equivalent, four yards of calico, and had bought for the merest trifle ivory enough to load them all.  They were driving a trade in slaves also, which was something new in this part of Africa, and likely soon to change the character of the inhabitants.  These men had been living in clover, and were uncommonly fat and plump.  When sent to trade, slaves wisely never stint themselves of beer or anything else, which their master’s goods can buy.

The temperature of the Zambesi had increased 10 degrees since August, being now 80 degrees.  The air was as high as 96 degrees after sunset; and, the vicinity of the water being the coolest part, we usually made our beds close by the river’s brink, though there in danger of crocodiles.  Africa differs from India in the air always becoming cool and refreshing long before the sun returns, and there can be no doubt that we can in this country bear exposure to the sun, which would be fatal in India.  It is probably owing to the greater dryness of the African atmosphere that sunstroke is so rarely met with.  In twenty-two years Dr. Livingstone never met or heard of a single case, though the protective head-dresses of India are rarely seen.

When the water is nearly at its lowest, we occasionally meet with small rapids which are probably not in existence during the rest of the year.  Having slept opposite the rivulet Bume, which comes from the south, we passed the island of Nakansalo, and went down the rapids of the same name on the 17th, and came on the morning of the 19th to the more serious ones of Nakabelé, at the entrance to Kariba.  The Makololo guided the canoes admirably through the opening in the dyke.  When we entered the gorge we came on upwards of thirty hippopotami: a bank near the entrance stretches two-thirds across the narrowed river, and in the still place behind it they were swimming about.  Several were in the channel, and our canoe-men were afraid to venture down among them, because, as they affirm, there is commonly an ill-natured one in a herd, which takes a malignant pleasure in upsetting canoes.  Two or three boys on the rocks opposite amused themselves by throwing stones at the frightened animals, and hit several on the head.  It would have been no difficult matter to have shot the whole herd.  We fired a few shots to drive them off; the balls often glance off the skull, and no more harm is done than when a schoolboy gets a bloody nose; we killed one, which floated away down the rapid current, followed by a number of men on the bank.  A native called to us from the left bank, and said that a man on his side knew how to pray to the Kariba gods, and advised us to hire him to pray for our safety, while we were going down the rapids, or we should certainly all be drowned.  No one ever risked his life in Kariba without first paying the river-doctor, or priest, for his prayers.  Our men asked if there was a cataract in front, but he declined giving any information; they were not on his side of the river; if they would come over, then he might be able to tell them.  We crossed, but he went off to the village.  We then landed and walked over the hills to have a look at Karaba before trusting our canoes in it.  The current was strong, and there was broken water in some places, but the channel was nearly straight, and had no cataract, so we determined to risk it.  Our men visited the village while we were gone, and were treated to beer and tobacco.  The priest who knows how to pray to the god that rules the rapids followed us with several of his friends, and they were rather surprised to see us pass down in safety, without the aid of his intercession.  The natives who followed the dead hippopotamus caught it a couple of miles below, and, having made it fast to a rock, were sitting waiting for us on the bank beside the dead animal.  As there was a considerable current there, and the rocky banks were unfit for our beds, we took the hippopotamus in tow, telling the villagers to follow, and we would give them most of the meat.  The crocodiles tugged so hard at the carcass, that we were soon obliged to cast it adrift, to float down in the current, to avoid upsetting the canoe.  We had to go on so far before finding a suitable spot to spend the night in, that the natives concluded we did not intend to share the meat with them, and returned to the village.  We slept two nights at the place where the hippopotamus was cut up.  The crocodiles had a busy time of it in the dark, tearing away at what was left in the river, and thrashing the water furiously with their powerful tails.  The hills on both sides of Kariba are much like those of Kebrabasa, the strata tilted and twisted in every direction, with no level ground.