We Were Detained By Continuous Rains Several Days At This Island.
The Clouds Rested Upon The Tops Of The Hills
As they came from the eastward,
and then poured down plenteous showers on the valleys below.
As soon as we
Could move, Tomba Nyama, the head man of the island,
volunteered the loan of a canoe to cross a small river, called the Chongwe,
which we found to be about fifty or sixty yards broad and flooded.
All this part of the country was well known to Sekwebu,
and he informed us that, when he passed through it as a boy,
the inhabitants possessed abundance of cattle, and there were no tsetse.
The existence of the insect now shows that it may return
in company with the larger game. The vegetation along the bank
was exceedingly rank, and the bushes so tangled that it was difficult
to get on. The paths had been made by the wild animals alone,
for the general pathway of the people is the river, in their canoes.
We usually followed the footpaths of the game, and of these there was no lack.
Buffaloes, zebras, pallahs, and waterbucks abound, and there is also
a great abundance of wild pigs, koodoos, and the black antelope.
We got one buffalo as he was rolling himself in a pool of mud.
He had a large piece of skin torn off his flank, it was believed
by an alligator.
We were struck by the fact that, as soon as we came between
the ranges of hills which flank the Zambesi, the rains felt warm.
At sunrise the thermometer stood at from 82 Deg. to 86 Deg.;
at midday, in the coolest shade, namely, in my little tent,
under a shady tree, at 96 Deg. to 98 Deg.; and at sunset it was 86 Deg.
This is different from any thing we experienced in the interior,
for these rains always bring down the mercury to 72 Deg. or even 68 Deg.
There, too, we found a small black coleopterous insect,
which stung like the mosquito, but injected less poison;
it puts us in mind of that insect, which does not exist
in the high lands we had left.
JANUARY 6TH, 1856. Each village we passed furnished us with
a couple of men to take us on to the next. They were useful in showing us
the parts least covered with jungle. When we came near a village,
we saw men, women, and children employed in weeding their gardens,
they being great agriculturists. Most of the men are muscular,
and have large plowman hands. Their color is the same admixture,
from very dark to light olive, that we saw in Londa. Though all have
thick lips and flat noses, only the more degraded of the population
possess the ugly negro physiognomy. They mark themselves by a line
of little raised cicatrices, each of which is a quarter of an inch long;
they extend from the tip of the nose to the root of the hair on the forehead.
It is remarkable that I never met with an Albino in crossing Africa,
though, from accounts published by the Portuguese, I was led to expect
that they were held in favor as doctors by certain chiefs.
I saw several in the south:
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