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

Although the hills confine the Zambesi within a narrow channel for a number of miles, there are no rapids beyond those near the entrance.  The river is smooth and apparently very deep.  Only one single human being was seen in the gorge, the country being too rough for culture.  Some rocks in the water, near the outlet of Kariba, at a distance look like a fort; and such large masses dislocated, bent, and even twisted to a remarkable degree, at once attest some tremendous upheaving and convulsive action of nature, which probably caused Kebrabasa, Kariba, and the Victoria Falls to assume their present forms; it took place after the formation of the coal, that mineral having then been tilted up.  We have probably nothing equal to it in the present quiet operations of nature.

On emerging we pitched our camp by a small stream, the Pendelé, a few miles below the gorge.  The Palabi mountain stands on the western side of the lower end of the Kariba strait; the range to which it belongs crosses the river, and runs to the south-east.  Chikumbula, a hospitable old headman, under Nchomokela, the paramount chief of a large district, whom we did not see, brought us next morning a great basket of meal, and four fowls, with some beer, and a cake of salt, “to make it taste good.”  Chikumbula said that the elephants plagued them, by eating up the cotton-plants; but his people seem to be well off.

A few days before we came, they caught three buffaloes in pitfalls in one night, and, unable to eat them all, left one to rot.  During the night the wind changed and blew from the dead buffalo to our sleeping-place; and a hungry lion, not at all dainty in his food, stirred up the putrid mass, and growled and gloated over his feast, to the disturbance of our slumbers.  Game of all kinds is in most extraordinary abundance, especially from this point to below the Kafué, and so it is on Moselekatsó’s side, where there are no inhabitants.  The drought drives all the game to the river to drink.  An hour’s walk on the right bank, morning or evening, reveals a country swarming with wild animals: vast herds of pallahs, many waterbucks, koodoos, buffaloes, wild pigs, elands, zebras, and monkeys appear; francolins, guinea-fowls, and myriads of turtledoves attract the eye in the covers, with the fresh spoor of elephants and rhinoceroses, which had been at the river during the night.  Every few miles we came upon a school of hippopotami, asleep on some shallow sandbank; their bodies, nearly all out of the water, appeared like masses of black rock in the river.  When these animals are hunted much, they become proportionably wary, but here no hunter ever troubles them, and they repose in security, always however taking the precaution of sleeping just above the deep channel, into which they can plunge when alarmed.  When a shot is fired into a sleeping herd, all start up on their feet, and stare with peculiar stolid looks of hippopotamic surprise, and wait for another shot before dashing into deep water.  A few miles below Chikumbula’s we saw a white hippopotamus in a herd.  Our men had never seen one like it before.  It was of a pinkish white, exactly like the colour of the Albino.  It seemed to be the father of a number of others, for there were many marked with large light patches.  The so-called white elephant is just such a pinkish Albino as this hippopotamus.  A few miles above Kariba we observed that, in two small hamlets, many of the inhabitants had a similar affection of the skin.  The same influence appeared to have affected man and beast.  A dark coloured hippopotamus stood alone, as if expelled from the herd, and bit the water, shaking his head from side to side in a most frantic manner.  When the female has twins, she is said to kill one of them.

We touched at the beautiful tree-covered island of Kalabi, opposite where Tuba-mokoro lectured the lion in our way up.  The ancestors of the people who now inhabit this island possessed cattle.  The tsetse has taken possession of the country since “the beeves were lifted.”  No one knows where these insects breed; at a certain season all disappear, and as suddenly come back, no one knows whence.  The natives are such close observers of nature, that their ignorance in this case surprised us.  A solitary hippopotamus had selected the little bay in which we landed, and where the women drew water, for his dwelling-place.  Pretty little lizards, with light blue and red tails, run among the rocks, catching flies and other insects.  These harmless—though to new-comers repulsive—creatures sometimes perform good service to man, by eating great numbers of the destructive white ants.

At noon on the 24th October, we found Sequasha in a village below the Kafué, with the main body of his people.  He said that 210 elephants had been killed during his trip; many of his men being excellent hunters.  The numbers of animals we saw renders this possible.  He reported that, after reaching the Kafué, he went northwards into the country of the Zulus, whose ancestors formerly migrated from the south and set up a sort of Republican form of government.  Sequasha is the greatest Portuguese traveller we ever became acquainted with, and he boasts that he is able to speak a dozen different dialects; yet, unfortunately, he can give but a very meagre account of the countries and people he has seen, and his statements are not very much to be relied on.  But considering the influence among which he has been reared, and the want of the means of education at Tette, it is a wonder that he possesses the good traits that he sometimes exhibits.  Among his wares were several cheap American clocks; a useless investment rather, for a part of Africa where no one cares for the artificial measurement of time.  These clocks got him into trouble among the Banyai: he set them all agoing in the presence of a chief, who became frightened at the strange sounds they made, and looked upon them as so many witchcraft agencies at work to bring all manner of evils upon himself and his people.  Sequasha, it was decided, had been guilty of a milando, or crime, and he had to pay a heavy fine of cloth and beads for his exhibition.  He alluded to our having heard that he had killed Mpangwé, and he denied having actually done so; but in his absence his name had got mixed up in the affair, in consequence of his slaves, while drinking beer one night with Namakusuru, the man who succeeded Mpangwé, saying that they would kill the chief for him.  His partner had not thought of this when we saw him on the way up, for he tried to excuse the murder, by saying that now they had put the right man into the chieftainship.

After three hours’ sail, on the morning of the 29th, the river was narrowed again by the mountains of Mburuma, called Karivua, into one channel, and another rapid dimly appeared.  It was formed by two currents guided by rocks to the centre.  In going down it, the men sent by Sekeletu behaved very nobly.  The canoes entered without previous survey, and the huge jobbling waves of mid-current began at once to fill them.  With great presence of mind, and without a moment’s hesitation, two men lightened each by jumping overboard; they then ordered a Botoka man to do the same, as “the white men must be saved.”  “I cannot swim,” said the Batoka.  “Jump out, then, and hold on to the canoe;” which he instantly did.  Swimming alongside, they guided the swamping canoes down the swift current to the foot of the rapid, and then ran them ashore to bale them out.  A boat could have passed down safely, but our canoes were not a foot above the water at the gunwales.

Thanks to the bravery of these poor fellows, nothing was lost, although everything was well soaked.  This rapid is nearly opposite the west end of the Mburuma mountains or Karivua.  Another soon begins below it.  They are said to be all smoothed over when the river rises.  The canoes had to be unloaded at this the worst rapid, and the goods carried about a hundred yards.  By taking the time in which a piece of stick floated past 100 feet, we found the current to be running six knots, by far the greatest velocity noted in the river.  As the men were bringing the last canoe down close to the shore, the stern swung round into the current, and all except one man let go, rather than be dragged off.  He clung to the bow, and was swept out into the middle of the stream.  Having held on when he ought to have let go, he next put his life in jeopardy by letting go when he ought to have held on; and was in a few seconds swallowed up by a fearful whirlpool.  His comrades launched out a canoe below, and caught him as he rose the third time to the surface, and saved him, though much exhausted and very cold.

The scenery of this pass reminded us of Kebrabasa, although it is much inferior.  A band of the same black shining glaze runs along the rocks about two feet from the water’s edge.  There was not a blade of grass on some of the hills, it being the end of the usual dry season succeeding a previous severe drought; yet the hill-sides were dotted over with beautiful green trees.  A few antelopes were seen on the rugged slopes, where some people too appeared lying down, taking a cup of beer.  The Karivua narrows are about thirty miles in length.  They end at the mountain Roganora.  Two rocks, twelve or fifteen feet above the water at the time we were there, may in flood be covered and dangerous.  Our chief danger was the wind, a very slight ripple being sufficient to swamp canoes.

CHAPTER IX

The waterbuck—Disaster in Kebrabasa rapids—The “Ma Robert” founders—Arrival of the “Pioneer” and Bishop Mackenzie’s party—Portuguese slave-trade—Interference and liberation.

We arrived at Zumbo, at the mouth of the Loangwa, on the 1st of November.  The water being scarcely up to the knee, our land party waded this river with ease.  A buffalo was shot on an island opposite Pangola’s, the ball lodging in the spleen.  It was found to have been wounded in the same organ previously, for an iron bullet was imbedded in it, and the wound entirely healed.  A great deal of the plant Pistia stratiotes was seen floating in the river.  Many people inhabit the right bank about this part, yet the game is very abundant.

As we were taking our breakfast on the morning of the 2nd, the Mambo Kazai, of whom we knew nothing, and his men came with their muskets and large powder-horns to levy a fine, and obtain payment for the wood we used in cooking.  But on our replying to his demand that we were English, “Oh! are you?” he said; “I thought you were Bazungu (Portuguese).  They are the people I take payments from:” and he apologized for his mistake.  Bazungu, or Azungu, is a term applied to all foreigners of a light colour, and to Arabs; even to trading slaves if clothed; it probably means foreigners, or visitors,—from zunga, to visit or wander,—and the Portuguese were the only foreigners these men had ever seen.  As we had no desire to pass for people of that nation—quite the contrary—we usually made a broad line of demarcation by saying that we were English, and the English neither bought, sold, nor held black people as slaves, but wished to put a stop to the slave-trade altogether.

We called upon our friend, Mpendé, in passing.  He provided a hut for us, with new mats spread on the floor.  Having told him that we were hurrying on because the rains were near, “Are they near?” eagerly inquired an old counsellor, “and are we to have plenty of rain this year?”  We could only say that it was about the usual time for the rains to commence; and that there were the usual indications in great abundance of clouds floating westwards, but that we knew nothing more than they did themselves.

The hippopotami are more wary here than higher up, as the natives hunt them with guns.  Having shot one on a shallow sandbank, our men undertook to bring it over to the left bank, in order to cut it up with greater ease.  It was a fine fat one, and all rejoiced in the hope of eating the fat for butter, with our hard dry cakes of native meal.  Our cook was sent over to cut a choice piece for dinner, but returned with the astonishing intelligence that the carcass was gone.  They had been hoodwinked, and were very much ashamed of themselves.  A number of Banyai came to assist in rolling it ashore, and asserted that it was all shallow water.  They rolled it over and over towards the land, and, finding the rope we had made fast to it, as they said, an encumbrance, it was unloosed.  All were shouting and talking as loud as they could bawl, when suddenly our expected feast plumped into a deep hole, as the Banyai intended it should do.  When sinking, all the Makololo jumped in after it.  One caught frantically at the tail; another grasped a foot; a third seized the hip; “but, by Sebituanè, it would go down in spite of all that we could do.”  Instead of a fat hippopotamus we had only a lean fowl for dinner, and were glad enough to get even that.  The hippopotamus, however, floated during the night, and was found about a mile below.  The Banyai then assembled on the bank, and disputed our right to the beast: “It might have been shot by somebody else.”  Our men took a little of it and then left it, rather than come into collision with them.

A fine waterbuck was shot in the Kakololé narrows, at Mount Manyereré; it dropped beside the creek where it was feeding; an enormous crocodile, that had been watching it at the moment, seized and dragged it into the water, which was not very deep.  The mortally wounded animal made a desperate plunge, and hauling the crocodile several yards tore itself out of the hideous jaws.  To escape the hunter, the waterbuck jumped into the river, and was swimming across, when another crocodile gave chase, but a ball soon sent it to the bottom.  The waterbuck swam a little longer, the fine head dropped, the body turned over, and one of the canoes dragged it ashore.  Below Kakololé, and still at the base of Manyereré mountain, several coal-seams, not noticed on our ascent, were now seen to crop out on the right bank of the Zambesi.

Chitora, of Chicova, treated us with his former hospitality.  Our men were all much pleased with his kindness, and certainly did not look upon it as a proof of weakness.  They meant to return his friendliness when they came this way on a marauding expedition to eat the sheep of the Banyai, for insulting them in the affair of the hippopotamus; they would then send word to Chitora not to run away, for they, being his friends, would do such a good-hearted man no harm.

We entered Kebrabasa rapids, at the east end of Chicova, in the canoes, and went down a number of miles, until the river narrowed into a groove of fifty or sixty yards wide, of which we have already spoken in describing the flood-bed and channel of low water.  The navigation then became difficult and dangerous.  A fifteen feet fall of the water in our absence had developed many cataracts.  Two of our canoes passed safely down a narrow channel, which, bifurcating, had an ugly whirlpool at the rocky partition between the two branches, the deep hole in the whirls at times opening and then shutting.  The Doctor’s canoe came next, and seemed to be drifting broadside into the open vortex, in spite of the utmost exertions of the paddlers.  The rest were expecting to have to pull to the rescue; the men saying, “Look where these people are going!—look, look!”—when a loud crash burst on our ears.  Dr. Kirk’s canoe was dashed on a projection of the perpendicular rocks, by a sudden and mysterious boiling up of the river, which occurs at irregular intervals.  Dr. Kirk was seen resisting the sucking-down action of the water, which must have been fifteen fathoms deep, and raising himself by his arms on to the ledge, while his steersman, holding on to the same rocks, saved the canoe; but nearly all its contents were swept away down the stream.  Dr. Livingstone’s canoe, meanwhile, which had distracted the men’s attention, was saved by the cavity in the whirlpool filling up as the frightful eddy was reached.  A few of the things in Dr. Kirk’s canoe were left; but all that was valuable, including a chronometer, a barometer, and, to our great sorrow, his notes of the journey and botanical drawings of the fruit-trees of the interior, perished.

We now left the river, and proceeded on foot, sorry that we had not done so the day before.  The men were thoroughly frightened, they had never seen such perilous navigation.  They would carry all the loads, rather than risk Kebrabasa any longer; but the fatigue of a day’s march over the hot rocks and burning sand changed their tune before night; and then they regretted having left the canoes; they thought they should have dragged them past the dangerous places, and then launched them again.  One of the two donkeys died from exhaustion near the Luia.  Though the men eat zebras and quaggas, blood relations of the donkey, they were shocked at the idea of eating the ass; “it would be like eating man himself, because the donkey lives with man, and is his bosom companion.”  We met two large trading parties of Tette slaves on their way to Zumbo, leading, to be sold for ivory, a number of Manganja women, with ropes round their necks, and all made fast to one long rope.

Panzo, the headman of the village east of Kebrabasa, received us with great kindness.  After the usual salutation he went up the hill, and, in a loud voice, called across the valley to the women of several hamlets to cook supper for us.  About eight in the evening he returned, followed by a procession of women, bringing the food.  There were eight dishes of nsima, or porridge, six of different sorts of very good wild vegetables, with dishes of beans and fowls; all deliciously well cooked, and scrupulously clean.  The wooden dishes were nearly as white as the meal itself: food also was brought for our men.  Ripe mangoes, which usually indicate the vicinity of the Portuguese, were found on the 21st November; and we reached Tette early on the 23rd, having been absent a little over six months.

The two English sailors, left in charge of the steamer, were well, had behaved well, and had enjoyed excellent health all the time we were away.  Their farm had been a failure.  We left a few sheep, to be slaughtered when they wished for fresh meat, and two dozen fowls.  Purchasing more, they soon had double the number of the latter, and anticipated a good supply of eggs; but they also bought two monkeys, and they ate all the eggs.  A hippopotamus came up one night, and laid waste their vegetable garden; the sheep broke into their cotton patch, when it was in flower, and ate it all, except the stems; then the crocodiles carried off the sheep, and the natives stole the fowls.  Nor were they more successful as gun-smiths: a Portuguese trader, having an exalted opinion of the ingenuity of English sailors, showed them a double-barrelled rifle, and inquired if they could put on the browning, which had rusted off.  “I think I knows how,” said one, whose father was a blacksmith, “it’s very easy; you have only to put the barrels in the fire.”  A great fire of wood was made on shore, and the unlucky barrels put over it, to secure the handsome rifle colour.  To Jack’s utter amazement the barrels came asunder.  To get out of the scrape, his companion and he stuck the pieces together with resin, and sent it to the owner, with the message, “It was all they could do for it, and they would not charge him anything for the job!”  They had also invented an original mode of settling a bargain; having ascertained the market price of provisions, they paid that, but no more.  If the traders refused to leave the ship till the price was increased, a chameleon, of which the natives have a mortal dread, was brought out of the cabin; and the moment the natives saw the creature, they at once sprang overboard.  The chameleon settled every dispute in a twinkling.

But besides their good-humoured intercourse, they showed humanity worthy of English sailors.  A terrible scream roused them up one night, and they pushed off in a boat to the rescue.  A crocodile had caught a woman, and was dragging her across a shallow sandbank.  Just as they came up to her, she gave a fearful shriek: the horrid reptile had snapped off her leg at the knee.  They took her on board, bandaged the limb as well as they could, and, not thinking of any better way of showing their sympathy, gave her a glass of rum, and carried her to a hut in the village.  Next morning they found the bandages torn off, and the unfortunate creature left to die.  “I believe,” remarked Rowe, one of the sailors, “her master was angry with us for saving her life, seeing as how she had lost her leg.”

The Zambesi being unusually low, we remained at Tette till it rose a little, and then left on the 3rd of December for the Kongoné.  It was hard work to keep the vessel afloat; indeed, we never expected her to remain above water.  New leaks broke out every day; the engine pump gave way; the bridge broke down; three compartments filled at night; except the cabin and front compartment all was flooded; and in a few days we were assured by Rowe that “she can’t be worse than she is, sir.”  He and Hutchins had spent much of their time, while we were away, in patching her bottom, puddling it with clay, and shoring it, and it was chiefly to please them that we again attempted to make use of her.  We had long been fully convinced that the steel plates were thoroughly unsuitable.  On the morning of the 21st the uncomfortable “Asthmatic” grounded on a sandbank and filled.  She could neither be emptied nor got off.  The river rose during the night, and all that was visible of the worn-out craft next day was about six feet of her two masts.  Most of the property we had on board was saved; and we spent the Christmas of 1860 encamped on the island of Chimba.  Canoes were sent for from Senna; and we reached it on the 27th, to be again hospitably entertained by our friend, Senhor Ferrão.

We reached the Kongoné on the 4th of January, 1861.  A flagstaff and a Custom-house had been erected during our absence; a hut, also, for a black lance-corporal and three privates.  By the kind permission of the lance-corporal, who came to see us as soon as he had got into his trousers and shirt, we took up our quarters in the Custom-house, which, like the other buildings, is a small square floorless hut of mangrove stakes overlaid with reeds.  The soldiers complained of hunger, they had nothing to eat but a little mapira, and were making palm wine to deaden their cravings.  While waiting for a ship, we had leisure to read the newspapers and periodicals we found in the mail which was waiting our arrival at Tette.  Several were a year and a half old.

Our provisions began to run short; and towards the end of the month there was nothing left but a little bad biscuit and a few ounces of sugar.  Coffee and tea were expended, but scarcely missed, as our sailors discovered a pretty good substitute in roasted mapira.  Fresh meat was obtained in abundance from our antelope preserves on the large island made by a creek between the Kongoné and East Luabo.

In this focus of decaying vegetation, nothing is so much to be dreaded as inactivity.  We had, therefore, to find what exercise and amusement we could, when hunting was not required, in peering about in the fetid swamps; to have gone mooning about, in listless idleness, would have ensured fever in its worst form, and probably with fatal results.

A curious little blenny-fish swarms in the numerous creeks which intersect the mangrove topes.  When alarmed, it hurries across the surface of the water in a series of leaps.  It may be considered amphibious, as it lives as much out of the water as in it, and its most busy time is during low water.  Then it appears on the sand or mud, near the little pools left by the retiring tide; it raises itself on its pectoral fins into something of a standing attitude, and with its large projecting eyes keeps a sharp look-out for the light-coloured fly, on which it feeds.  Should the fly alight at too great a distance for even a second leap, the blenny moves slowly towards it like a cat to its prey, or like a jumping spider; and, as soon as it gets within two or three inches of the insect, by a sudden spring contrives to pop its underset mouth directly over the unlucky victim.  He is, moreover, a pugnacious little fellow; and rather prolonged fights may be observed between him and his brethren.  One, in fleeing from an apparent danger, jumped into a pool a foot square, which the other evidently regarded as his by right of prior discovery; in a twinkling the owner, with eyes flashing fury, and with dorsal fin bristling up in rage, dashed at the intruding foe.  The fight waxed furious, no tempest in a teapot ever equalled the storm of that miniature sea.  The warriors were now in the water, and anon out of it, for the battle raged on sea and shore.  They struck hard, they bit each other; until, becoming exhausted, they seized each other by the jaws like two bull-dogs, then paused for breath, and at it again as fiercely as before, until the combat ended by the precipitate retreat of the invader.