We
Had To Exercise The Greatest Care Lest Anything We Did Should Be
Misconstrued By The Crowds Who Watched Us.
After having made, in a
straight line, one hundred miles, although the windings of the river
had fully doubled
The distance, we found further progress with the
steamer arrested, in 15 degrees 55 minutes south, by magnificent
cataracts, which we called, "The Murchison," after one whose name has
already a world-wide fame, and whose generous kindness we can never
repay. The native name of that figured in the woodcut is Mamvira.
It is that at which the progress of the steamer was first stopped.
The angle of descent is much smaller than that of the five cataracts
above it; indeed, so small as compared with them, that after they
were discovered this was not included in the number.
A few days were spent here in the hope that there might be an
opportunity of taking observations for longitude, but it rained most
of the time, or the sky was overcast. It was deemed imprudent to
risk a land journey whilst the natives were so very suspicious as to
have a strong guard on the banks of the river night and day; the
weather also was unfavourable. After sending presents and messages
to two of the chiefs, we returned to Tette. In going down stream our
progress was rapid, as we were aided by the current. The hippopotami
never made a mistake, but got out of our way. The crocodiles, not so
wise, sometimes rushed with great velocity at us, thinking that we
were some huge animal swimming. They kept about a foot from the
surface, but made three well-defined ripples from the feet and body,
which marked their rapid progress; raising the head out of the water
when only a few yards from the expected feast, down they went to the
bottom like a stone, without touching the boat.
In the middle of March of the same year (1859), we started again for
a second trip on the Shire. The natives were now friendly, and
readily sold us rice, fowls, and corn. We entered into amicable
relations with the chief, Chibisa, whose village was about ten miles
below the cataract. He had sent two men on our first visit to invite
us to drink beer; but the steamer was such a terrible apparition to
them, that, after shouting the invitation, they jumped ashore, and
left their canoe to drift down the stream. Chibisa was a remarkably
shrewd man, the very image, save his dark hue, of one of our most
celebrated London actors, {2} and the most intelligent chief, by far,
in this quarter. A great deal of fighting had fallen to his lot, he
said; but it was always others who began; he was invariably in the
right, and they alone were to blame. He was moreover a firm believer
in the divine right of kings. He was an ordinary man, he said, when
his father died, and left him the chieftainship; but directly he
succeeded to the high office, he was conscious of power passing into
his head, and down his back; he felt it enter, and knew that he was a
chief, clothed with authority, and possessed of wisdom; and people
then began to fear and reverence him. He mentioned this, as one
would a fact of natural history, any doubt being quite out of the
question. His people, too, believed in him, for they bathed in the
river without the slightest fear of crocodiles, the chief having
placed a powerful medicine there, which protected them from the bite
of these terrible reptiles.
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.
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