How I Found Livingstone Travels, Adventures And Discoveries In Central Africa Including Four Months Residence With Dr. Livingstone By Sir Henry M. Stanley
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On The 20th, Leaving Our Camp, Which Lay Between The Stream And
The Conical Hill Above Mentioned, And Surmounting A Low Ridge Which
Sloped From The Base Of The Hill-Cone, We Were Greeted With Another
Picturesque View, Of Cones And Scarped Mountains, Which Heaved
Upward In All Directions.
A march of nearly five hours through
this picturesque country brought us to the Mpokwa River, one of
the tributaries of the Rungwa, and to a village lately deserted
by the Wazavira.
The huts were almost all intact, precisely as
they were left by their former inhabitants. In the gardens were
yet found vegetables, which, after living so long on meat, were
most grateful to us. On the branches of trees still rested the
Lares and Penates of the Wazavira, in the shape of large and
exceedingly well-made earthen pots.
In the neighbouring river one of my men succeeded, in few minutes,
in catching sixty fish of the silurus species the hand alone. A
number of birds hovered about stream , such as the white-headed
fish-eagle and the kingfisher, enormous, snowy spoonbills, ibis,
martins, &c. This river issued from a mountain clump eight miles
or so north of the village of Mpokwa, and comes flowing down a narrow
thread of water, sinuously winding amongst tall reeds and dense
brakes on either side-the home of hundreds of antelopes and buffaloes.
South of Mpokwa, the valley broadens, and the mountains deflect
eastward and westward, and beyond this point commences the plain
known as the Rikwa, which, during the Masika is inundated, but which,
in the dry season, presents the same bleached aspect that plains in
Africa generally do when the grass has ripened.
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