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

Leaving the vessel opposite Chibisa’s village, Drs. Livingstone and Kirk and a number of the Makololo started on foot for Lake Shirwa.  They travelled in a northerly direction over a mountainous country.  The people were far from being well-disposed to them, and some of their guides tried to mislead them, and could not be trusted.  Masakasa, a Makololo headman, overheard some remarks which satisfied him that the guide was leading them into trouble.  He was quiet till they reached a lonely spot, when he came up to Dr. Livingstone, and said, “That fellow is bad, he is taking us into mischief; my spear is sharp, and there is no one here; shall I cast him into the long grass?”  Had the Doctor given the slightest token of assent, or even kept silence, never more would any one have been led by that guide, for in a twinkling he would have been where “the wicked cease from troubling.”  It was afterwards found that in this case there was no treachery at all, but a want of knowledge on their part of the language and of the country.  They asked to be led to “Nyanja Mukulu,” or Great Lake, meaning, by this, Lake Shirwa; and the guide took them round a terribly rough piece of mountainous country, gradually edging away towards a long marsh, which from the numbers of those animals we had seen there we had called the Elephant Marsh, but which was really the place known to him by the name “Nyanja Mukulu,” or Great Lake.  Nyanja or Nyanza means, generally, a marsh, lake, river, or even a mere rivulet.

The party pushed on at last without guides, or only with crazy ones; for, oddly enough, they were often under great obligations to the madmen of the different villages: one of these honoured them, as they slept in the open air, by dancing and singing at their feet the whole night.  These poor fellows sympathized with the explorers, probably in the belief that they belonged to their own class; and, uninfluenced by the general opinion of their countrymen, they really pitied, and took kindly to the strangers, and often guided them faithfully from place to place, when no sane man could be hired for love or money.

The bearing of the Manganja at this time was very independent; a striking contrast to the cringing attitude they afterwards assumed, when the cruel scourge of slave-hunting passed over their country.  Signals were given from the different villages by means of drums, and notes of defiance and intimidation were sounded in the travellers’ ears by day; and occasionally they were kept awake the whole night, in expectation of an instant attack.  Drs. Livingstone and Kirk were desirous that nothing should occur to make the natives regard them as enemies; Masakasa, on the other hand, was anxious to show what he could do in the way of fighting them.

The perseverance of the party was finally crowned with success; for on the 18th of April they discovered Lake Shirwa, a considerable body of bitter water, containing leeches, fish, crocodiles, and hippopotami.  From having probably no outlet, the water is slightly brackish, and it appears to be deep, with islands like hills rising out of it.  Their point of view was at the base of Mount Pirimiti or Mopeu-peu, on its S.S.W. side.  Thence the prospect northwards ended in a sea horizon with two small islands in the distance—a larger one, resembling a hill-top and covered with trees, rose more in the foreground.  Ranges of hills appeared on the east; and on the west stood Mount Chikala, which seems to be connected with the great mountain-mass called Zomba.

The shore, near which they spent two nights, was covered with reeds and papyrus.  Wishing to obtain the latitude by the natural horizon, they waded into the water some distance towards what was reported to be a sandbank, but were so assaulted by leeches, they were fain to retreat; and a woman told them that in enticing them into the water the men only wanted to kill them.  The information gathered was that this lake was nothing in size compared to another in the north, from which it is separated by only a tongue of land.  The northern end of Shirwa has not been seen, though it has been passed; the length of the lake may probably be 60 or 80 miles, and about 20 broad.  The height above the sea is 1800 feet, and the taste of the water is like a weak solution of Epsom salts.  The country around is very beautiful, and clothed with rich vegetation; and the waves, at the time they were there breaking and foaming over a rock on the south-eastern side, added to the beauty of the picture.  Exceedingly lofty mountains, perhaps 8000 feet above the sea-level, stand near the eastern shore.  When their lofty steep-sided summits appear, some above, some below the clouds, the scene is grand.  This range is called Milanjé; on the west stands Mount Zomba, 7000 feet in height, and some twenty miles long.

Their object being rather to gain the confidence of the people by degrees than to explore, they considered that they had advanced far enough into the country for one trip; and believing that they could secure their end by a repetition of their visit, as they had done on the Shiré, they decided to return to the vessel at Dakanamoio island; but, instead of returning by the way they came, they passed down southwards close by Mount Chiradzuru, among the relatives of Chibisa, and thence by the pass Zedi, down to the Shiré.  The Kroomen had, while we were away, cut a good supply of wood for steaming, and we soon proceeded down the river.

The steamer reached Tette on the 23rd of June, and, after undergoing repairs, proceeded to the Kongoné to receive provisions from one of H.M. cruisers.  We had been very abundantly supplied with first-rate stores, but were unfortunate enough to lose a considerable portion of them, and had now to bear the privation as best we could.  On the way down, we purchased a few gigantic cabbages and pumpkins at a native village below Mazaro.  Our dinners had usually consisted of but a single course; but we were surprised the next day by our black cook from Sierra Leone bearing in a second course.  “What have you got there?” was asked in wonder.  “A tart, sir.”  “A tart! of what is it made?”  “Of cabbage, sir.”  As we had no sugar, and could not “make believe,” as in the days of boyhood, we did not enjoy the feast that Tom’s genius had prepared.  Her Majesty’s brig “Persian,” Lieutenant Saumarez commanding, called on her way to the Cape; and, though somewhat short of provisions herself, generously gave us all she could spare.  We now parted with our Kroomen, as, from their inability to march, we could not use them in our land journeys.  A crew was picked out from the Makololo, who, besides being good travellers, could cut wood, work the ship, and required only native food.

While at the Kongoné it was found necessary to beach the steamer for repairs.  She was built of a newly invented sort of steel plates, only a sixteenth of an inch in thickness, patented, but unfortunately never tried before.  To build an exploring ship of untried material was a mistake.  Some chemical action on this preparation of steel caused a minute hole; from this point, branches like lichens, or the little ragged stars we sometimes see in thawing ice, radiated in all directions.  Small holes went through wherever a bend occurred in these branches.  The bottom very soon became like a sieve, completely full of minute holes, which leaked perpetually.  The engineer stopped the larger ones, but the vessel was no sooner afloat, than new ones broke out.  The first news of a morning was commonly the unpleasant announcement of another leak in the forward compartment, or in the middle, which was worse still.

Frequent showers fell on our way up the Zambesi, in the beginning of August.  On the 8th we had upwards of three inches of rain, which large quantity, more than falls in any single rainy day during the season at Tette, we owed to being near the sea.  Sometimes the cabin was nearly flooded; for, in addition to the leakage from below, rain poured through the roof, and an umbrella had to be used whenever we wished to write: the mode of coupling the compartments, too, was a new one, and the action of the hinder compartment on the middle one pumped up the water of the river, and sent it in streams over the floor and lockers, where lay the cushions which did double duty as chairs and beds.  In trying to form an opinion of the climate, it must be recollected that much of the fever, from which we suffered, was caused by sleeping on these wet cushions.  Many of the botanical specimens, laboriously collected and carefully prepared by Dr. Kirk, were destroyed, or double work imposed, by their accidentally falling into wet places in the cabin.

About the middle of August, after cutting wood at Shamoara, we again steamed up the Shiré, with the intention of becoming better acquainted with the people, and making another and longer journey on foot to the north of Lake Shirwa, in search of Lake Nyassa, of which we had already received some information, under the name Nyinyesi (the stars).  The Shiré is much narrower than the Zambesi, but deeper, and more easily navigated.  It drains a low and exceedingly fertile valley of from fifteen to twenty miles in breadth.  Ranges of wooded hills bound this valley on both sides.  For the first twenty miles the hills on the left bank are close to the river; then comes Morambala, a detached mountain 500 yards from the river’s brink, which rises, with steep sides on the west, to 4000 feet in height, and is about seven miles in length.  It is wooded up to the very top, and very beautiful.  The southern end, seen from a distance, has a fine gradual slope, and looks as if it might be of easy ascent; but the side which faces the Shiré is steep and rocky, especially in the upper half.  A small village peeps out about halfway up the mountain; it has a pure and bracing atmosphere; and is perched above mosquito range.  The people on the summit have a very different climate and vegetation from those of the plains; but they have to spend a great portion of their existence amidst white fleecy clouds, which, in the rainy season, rest daily on the top of their favourite mountain.  We were kindly treated by these mountaineers on our first ascent; before our second they were nearly all swept away by Mariano.  Dr. Kirk found upwards of thirty species of ferns on this and other mountains, and even good-sized tree-ferns; though scarcely a single kind is to be met with on the plains.  Lemon and orange trees grew wild, and pineapples had been planted by the people.  Many large hornbills, hawks, monkeys, antelopes, and rhinoceroses found a home and food among the great trees round its base.  A hot fountain boils up on the plain near the north end.  It bubbles out of the earth, clear as crystal, at two points, or eyes, a few yards apart from each other, and sends off a fine flowing stream of hot water.  The temperature was found to be 174 degrees Fahr., and it boiled an egg in about the usual time.  Our guide threw in a small branch to show us how speedily the Madsé-awíra (boiling water) could kill the leaves.  Unlucky lizards and insects did not seem to understand the nature of a hot-spring, as many of their remains were lying at the bottom.  A large beetle had alighted on the water, and been killed before it had time to fold its wings.  An incrustation, smelling of sulphur, has been deposited by the water on the stones.  About a hundred feet from the eye of the fountain the mud is as hot as can be borne by the body.  In taking a bath there, it makes the skin perfectly clean, and none of the mud adheres: it is strange that the Portuguese do not resort to it for the numerous cutaneous diseases with which they are so often afflicted.

A few clumps of the palm and acacia trees appear west of Morambala, on the rich plain forming the tongue of land between the rivers Shiré and Zambesi.  This is a good place for all sorts of game.  The Zambesi canoe-men were afraid to sleep on it from the idea of lions being there; they preferred to pass the night on an island.  Some black men, who accompanied us as volunteer workmen from Shupanga, called out one evening that a lion stood on the bank.  It was very dark, and we could only see two sparkling lights, said to be the lion’s eyes looking at us; for here, as elsewhere, they have a theory that the lion’s eyes always flash fire at night.  Not being fireflies—as they did not move when a shot was fired in their direction—they were probably glowworms.

Beyond Morambala the Shiré comes winding through an extensive marsh.  For many miles to the north a broad sea of fresh green grass extends, and is so level, that it might be used for taking the meridian altitude of the sun.  Ten or fifteen miles north of Morambala, stands the dome-shaped mountain Makanga, or Chi-kanda; several others with granitic-looking peaks stretch away to the north, and form the eastern boundary of the valley; another range, but of metamorphic rocks, commencing opposite Senna, bounds the valley on the west.  After streaming through a portion of this marsh, we came to a broad belt of palm and other trees, crossing the fine plain on the right bank.  Marks of large game were abundant.  Elephants had been feeding on the palm nuts, which have a pleasant fruity taste, and are used as food by man.  Two pythons were observed coiled together among the branches of a large tree, and were both shot.  The larger of the two, a female, was ten feet long.  They are harmless, and said to be good eating.  The Makololo having set fire to the grass where they were cutting wood, a solitary buffalo rushed out of the conflagration, and made a furious charge at an active young fellow named Mantlanyané.  Never did his fleet limbs serve him better than during the few seconds of his fearful flight before the maddened animal.  When he reached the bank, and sprang into the river, the infuriated beast was scarcely six feet behind him.  Towards evening, after the day’s labour in wood-cutting was over, some of the men went fishing.  They followed the common African custom of agitating the water, by giving it a few sharp strokes with the top of the fishing-rod, immediately after throwing in the line, to attract the attention of the fish to the bait.  Having caught nothing, the reason assigned was the same as would have been given in England under like circumstances, namely, that “the wind made the fish cold, and they would not bite.”  Many gardens of maize, pumpkins, and tobacco, fringed the marshy banks as we went on.  They belong to natives of the hills, who come down in the dry season, and raise a crop on parts at other times flooded.  While the crops are growing, large quantities of fish are caught, chiefly Clarias capensis, and Mugil Africanus; they are dried for sale or future consumption.

As we ascended, we passed a deep stream about thirty yards wide, flowing in from a body of open water several miles broad.  Numbers of men were busy at different parts of it, filling their canoes with the lotus root, called Nyika, which, when boiled or roasted, resembles our chestnuts, and is extensively used in Africa as food.  Out of this lagoon, and by this stream, the chief part of the duckweed of the Shiré flows.  The lagoon itself is called Nyanja ea Motopé (Lake of Mud).  It is also named Nyanja Pangono (Little Lake), while the elephant marsh goes by the name of Nyanja Mukulu (Great Lake).  It is evident from the shore line still to be observed on the adjacent hills, that in ancient times these were really lakes, and the traditional names thus preserved are only another evidence of the general desiccation which Africa has undergone.

CHAPTER III

The Steamer in difficulties—Elephant hunting—Arrival at Chibisa’s—Search for Lake Nyassa—The Manganja country—Weavers and smelters—Lake Pamalombé.

Late in the afternoon of the first day’s steaming, after we left the wooding-place, we called at the village of Chikanda-Kadzé, a female chief, to purchase rice for our men; but we were now in the blissful region where time is absolutely of no account, and where men may sit down and rest themselves when tired; so they requested us to wait till next day, and they would then sell us some food.  As our forty black men, however, had nothing to cook for supper, we were obliged to steam on to reach a village a few miles above.  When we meet those who care not whether we purchase or let it alone, or who think men ought only to be in a hurry when fleeing from an enemy, our ideas about time being money, and the power of the purse, receives a shock.  The state of eager competition, which in England wears out both mind and body, and makes life bitter, is here happily unknown.  The cultivated spots are mere dots compared to the broad fields of rich soil which is never either grazed or tilled.  Pity that the plenty in store for all, from our Father’s bountiful hands, is not enjoyed by more.

The wretched little steamer could not carry all the hands we needed; so, to lighten her, we put some into the boats and towed them astern.  In the dark, one of the boats was capsized; but all in it, except one poor fellow who could not swim, were picked up.  His loss threw a gloom over us all, and added to the chagrin we often felt at having been so ill-served in our sorry craft.

Next day we arrived at the village of Mboma (16 degrees 56 minutes 30 seconds S.), where the people raised large quantities of rice, and were eager traders; the rice was sold at wonderfully low rates, and we could not purchase a tithe of the food brought for sale.

A native minstrel serenaded us in the evening, playing several quaint tunes on a species of one stringed fiddle, accompanied by wild, but not unmusical songs.  He told the Makololo that he intended to play all night to induce us to give him a present.  The nights being cold, the thermometer falling to 47 degrees, with occasional fogs, he was asked if he was not afraid of perishing from cold; but, with the genuine spirit of an Italian organ-grinder, he replied, “Oh, no; I shall spend the night with my white comrades in the big canoe; I have often heard of the white men, but have never seen them till now, and I must sing and play well to them.”  A small piece of cloth, however, bought him off, and he moved away in good humour.  The water of the river was 70 degrees at sunrise, which was 23 degrees warmer than the air at the same time, and this caused fogs, which rose like steam off the river.  When this is the case cold bathing in the mornings at this time of the year is improper, for, instead of a glow on coming out, one is apt to get a chill; the air being so much colder than the water.

A range of hills, commencing opposite Senna, comes to within two or three miles of Mboma village, and then runs in a north-westerly direction; the principal hill is named Malawé; a number of villages stand on its tree-covered sides, and coal is found cropping out in the rocks.  The country improves as we ascend, the rich valley becoming less swampy, and adorned with a number of trees.

Both banks are dotted with hippopotamus traps, over every track which these animals have made in going up out of the water to graze.  The hippopotamus feeds on grass alone, and, where there is any danger, only at night.  Its enormous lips act like a mowing-machine, and form a path of short-cropped grass as it feeds.  We never saw it eat aquatic plants or reeds.  The tusks seem weapons of both offence and defence.  The hippopotamus trap consists of a beam five or six feet long, armed with a spear-head or hard-wood spike, covered with poison, and suspended to a forked pole by a cord, which, coming down to the path, is held by a catch, to be set free when the beast treads on it.  Being wary brutes, they are still very numerous.  One got frightened by the ship, as she was steaming close to the bank.  In its eager hurry to escape it rushed on shore, and ran directly under a trap, when down came the heavy beam on its back, driving the poisoned spear-head a foot deep into its flesh.  In its agony it plunged back into the river, to die in a few hours, and afterwards furnished a feast for the natives.  The poison on the spear-head does not affect the meat, except the part around the wound, and that is thrown away.  In some places the descending beam is weighted with heavy stones, but here the hard heavy wood is sufficient.

“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 Tingané, 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 Tingané’s villages.  His people were friendly enough with us now, and covered the banks with a variety of articles for sale.  The majestic mountain, Chipironé, 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 Milanjé 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 Milanjé mountains, and flows to the S.W., to join the Shiré some distance above Tingané’s.  A short way beyond the Ruo lies the Elephant marsh, or Nyanja Mukulu, which is frequented by vast herds of these animals.  We believe that we counted eight hundred elephants in sight at once.  In the choice of such a strong hold, they have shown their usual sagacity, for no hunter can get near them through the swamps.  They now keep far from the steamer; but, when she first came up, we steamed into the midst of a herd, and some were shot from the ship’s deck.  A single lesson was sufficient to teach them that the steamer was a thing to be avoided; and at the first glimpse they are now off two or three miles to the midst of the marsh, which is furrowed in every direction by wandering branches of the Shiré.  A fine young elephant was here caught alive, as he was climbing up the bank to follow his retreating dam.  When laid hold of, he screamed with so much energy that, to escape a visit from the enraged mother, we steamed off, and dragged him through the water by the proboscis.  As the men were holding his trunk over the gunwale, Monga, a brave Makololo elephant-hunter, rushed aft, and drew his knife across it in a sort of frenzy peculiar to the chase.  The wound was skilfully sewn up, and the young animal soon became quite tame, but, unfortunately the breathing prevented the cut from healing, and he died in a few days from loss of blood.  Had he lived, and had we been able to bring him home, he would have been the first African elephant ever seen in England.  The African male elephant is from ten to a little over eleven feet in height, and differs from the Asiatic species more particularly in the convex shape of his forehead, and the enormous size of his ears.  In Asia many of the males, and all the females, are without tusks, but in Africa both sexes are provided with these weapons.  The enamel in the molar teeth is arranged differently in the two species.  By an admirable provision, new teeth constantly come up at the part where in man the wisdom teeth appear, and these push the others along, and out at the front end of the jaws, thus keeping the molars sound by renewal, till the animal attains a very great age.  The tusks of animals from dry rocky countries are very munch more dense and heavier than those from wet and marshy districts, but the latter attain much the larger size.