remedy pretty well, even though he had no fever. He had always been a friend to Sebituane; and, now that his son Sekeletu was in his place, Shinte was not merely a friend, but a father to him; and if a son asks a favor the father must give it. He was highly pleased with the large calabashes of clarified butter and fat which Sekeletu had sent him, and wished to detain Kolimbota, that he might send a present back to Sekeletu by his hands. This proposition we afterward discovered was Kolimbota's own, as he had heard sc much about the ferocity of the tribes through which we were to pass that he wished to save his skin. It will be seen farther on that he was the only one of our party who returned with a wound.

An incident which occurred while we were here may be mentioned, as of a character totally unknown in the south. Two children, of seven and eight years old, went out to collect firewood a short distance from their parents' home, which was a quarter of a mile from the village, and were kidnapped; the distracted parents could not find a trace of them. This happened so close to the town, where there are no beasts of prey, that we suspect some of the high men of Shinte's court were the guilty parties: they can sell them by night. The Mambari erect large huts of a square shape to stow these stolen ones in; they are well fed, but aired by night only. The frequent kidnapping from outlying hamlets explains the stockades we saw around them the parents have no redress, fcr even Shinte himself, seems fond of working in the dark. One night he sent for me, though I always stated I liked all my dealings to be aboveboard. When I came, he presented me with a slavegirl about ten years old: he said he had always been in the habit of presenting his visitors with a child. On my thanking him, and saying that I thought it wrong to take away children from their parents, that I wished him to give up this system altogether and trade in cattle, ivory, and bees' wax, he urged that she was "to be a child" to bring me water, and that a great man ought to have a

child for the purpose, yet I had none. As I replied that I bad four children, and should be very sorry if my chief wero to take my little girl and give her away, and that I would prefer this child to remain and carry water for her own mother, he thought I was dissatisfied with her size, and sent for one a head taller. After many explanations of our abhorrence of slavery, and how displeasing it must be to God to see his children selling one another and giving each other so much grief as this child's mother must feel, I declined her also. If I could have taken her into my family for the purpose of instruction, and then returned her as a free woman, according to a promise I should have made to the parents, I might have done so; but to take her away, and probably never be able to secure her return, would have produced no good effect on the minds of the Balonda; they would not then have seen evidence of our hatred to slavery, and the kind attentions of my friends would, as it almost always does in similar cases, have turned the poor thing's head.

Shinte was most anxious to see the pictures of the magic lantern; but fever had so weakening an effect, and I had such violent action of the heart, with buzzing in the ears, that I could not go for several days; when I did go for the purpose he had his principal men and the same crowd of court beauties near him as at the reception. The first picture exhibited was Abraham about to slaughter his son Isaac: it was shown as large as life, and the uplifted knife was in the act of striking the lad; the Balonda men remarked that the picture was much more like a god than the things of wood and clay they worshipped. I explained that this man was the first of a race to whom God had given the Bible we now held, and that among his children our Savior appeared. The ladies listened with silent awe; but, when I moved the slide, the uplifted dagger moving toward them, they thought it was to be sheathed in their bodies instead of Isaac's. "Mother! mother!" all shouted at once, and off they rushed, helter-skelter, tumbling pell.

M

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DELAY-HEAVY RAINS.

mell over each other, and over the little idol-huts and tobacco-bushes; we could not get one of them back again. Shinte, however, sat bravely through the whole, and afterward examined the instrument with interest. An explanation was always added after each time of showing its powers, so that no one should imagine there was aught supernatural in it; and had Mr. Murray, who kindly brought it from England, seen its popularity among both Makololo and Balonda, he would have been gratified with the direction his generosity then took. It was the only mode of instruction I was ever pressed to repeat. The people came long distances for the express purpose of seeing the objects and hearing the explanations.

One cannot get away quickly from these chiefs; they like to have the honor of strangers residing in their villages. Here we had an additional cause of delay in frequent rains: twenty-four hours never elapsed without heavy showers; every thing is affected by the dampness; surgical instruments become all rusty, clothing mildewed, and shoes mouldy; my little tent was now so rotten and so full of small holes that every smart shower caused a fine mist to descend on my blanket, and made me fain to cover the head with it. Heavy dews lay on every thing in the morning, even inside the tent; there is only a short time of sunshine in the afternoon, and even that is so interruptea by thunder-showers that we cannot dry our bedding.

The winds coming from the north always bring heavy clouds and rain; in the south, the only heavy rains noticed are those which come from the northeast or east. The thermometer falls as low as 72° when there is no sunshine, though, when the weather is fair, the protected thermometer generally rises as high as 82°, even in the mornings and evenings.

24th. We expected to have started to-day; but Sambanza, who had been sent off carly in the morning for guides, returned at mid-day without them, and drunk. As far as we could collect from his incoherent sentences, Shinte had said

FAREWELL TO SHINTE.

179

the rain was too heavy for our departure, and the guides still required time for preparation. Shinte himself was busy getting some meal ready for my use in the journey. As it rained nearly all day, it was no sacrifice to submit to his advice and remain. Sambanza staggered to Manenko's hut: she, however, who had never promised "to love, honor, and obey him," had not been "nursing her wrath to keep it warm;" so she coolly bundled him into the hut, and put him to bed.

As the last proof of friendship, Shinte came into my tent, though it could scarcely contain more than one person, looked at all the curiosities, the quicksilver, the lookingglass, books, hair-brushes, comb, watch, &c. &c., with the greatest interest; then, closing the tent, so that none of his own people might see the extravagance of which he was about to be guilty, he drew out from his clothing a string of beads and the end of a conical shell, which is considered, in regions far from the sea, of as great value as the Lord Mayor's badge is in London. He hung it round my neck, and said, "There, now you have a proof of my friendship."

My men informed me that these shells are so highly valued in this quarter, as evidences of distinction, that for two of them a slave might be bought, and five would be considered a handsome price for an elephant's tusk worth ten pounds. At our last interview old Shinte pointed out our principal guide, Intemése, a man about fifty, who was, he said, ordered to remain by us till we should reach the sea; that I had now left Sekeletu far behind, and must henceforth look to Shinte alone for aid, and that it would always be most cheerfully rendered. This was only a polite way of expressing his wishes for my success. the good words only of the guides which were to aid me from the next chief, Katema, on to the sea; they were to turn back on reaching him; but he gave a good supply of food for the journey before us, and, after mentioning as a reason for letting us go even now that no one could say

It was

that we had been driven away from the town, since we had been several days with him, he gave a most hearty salutation, and we parted with the wish that God might bless bim.

CHAPTER XVII.

DR. LIVINGSTONE PASSES THROUGH LONDA AND VISITS

KATEMA.

26th.-LEAVING Shinte, with eight of his men to aid in carrying our luggage, we passed, in a northerly direction, down the lovely valley on which the town stands, then went a little to the west through pretty open forest, and slept at a village of Balonda. In the morning we had a fine range of green hills, called Saloíisho, on our right, and were informed that they were rather thickly inhabited by the people of Shinte, who worked in iron, the ore of which abounds in these hills.

The country through which we passed possessed the same general character of flatness and forest that we noticed before The soil is dark with a tinge of red-in some places it might be called red-and appeared very fertile. Every valley contained villages of twenty or thirty huts, with gardens of manioc, which here is looked upon as the staff of life. Very little labor is required for its cultiva tion. The earth is drawn up into oblong beds, about three feet broad and one in height, and in these are planted pieces of the manioc-stalk, at four feet apart A crop of beans or groundnuts is sown between them, and when these are reaped the land around the manioc is cleared of weeds In from ten to eighteen months after planting, aocording to the quality of the soil, the roots are fit for food. There is no necessity for reaping soon, as the roots do Lot become bitter and dry until after three years. When a