As a chain of forts along its course would lead
southward instead of eastward, we may infer that the geographical data
within reach of that eminent man were no better than those according to which
I had directed my course to the Coanza where it does not exist.
26TH. We spent Sunday on the banks of the Quilo or Kweelo,
here a stream of about ten yards wide. It runs in a deep glen,
the sides of which are almost five hundred yards of slope,
and rocky, the rocks being hardened calcareous tufa lying on
clay shale and sandstone below, with a capping of ferruginous conglomerate.
The scenery would have been very pleasing, but fever took away
much of the joy of life, and severe daily intermittents rendered me
very weak and always glad to recline.
As we were now in the slave-market, it struck me that the sense of insecurity
felt by the natives might account for the circumstance that those
who have been sold as slaves and freed again, when questioned,
profess to like the new state better than their primitive one.
They lived on rich, fertile plains, which seldom inspire that love of country
which the mountains do.
