On Tuesday morning we went off quite early wishing to reach Mazaro. For the last week Mrs. Macdonald with the nurse and two children had been confined in a corner of an open boat where they had scarcely room to turn. When one remembers the intense heat of these days and nights, he will understand why we wished to press on. Soon we were on the broad Zambeze and within a district where the natives have been in contact with Europeans for nearly 400 years. If the Portuguese had only established schools and taught the natives to read, a great change would have been effected. But since the recall of the Jesuits, the Portuguese have not tried to christianize the natives, many of them believing that the negroes are not susceptible of improvement. Here most of the native huts are two storeys because of the floods in the rainy season. We were anxious to visit Shupanga house, but the boatmen were too afraid of the Zulus. As we were talking with reverence of Mrs. Livingstone, one of our party pointed towards her grave and said “Ah! they know all about it—ask what they say”. I remarked that unless we knew what Livingstone had been called by the natives in this district there was little chance of finding an answer without a long explanation. However my companion shouted to one of them, “Livingstone! Livingstone!” and pointed towards the house. At first the boatman was puzzled, he thought it was an order. But when the word was repeated he was bound to believe that it conveyed some information and he said ‘Yes!’ The great Doctor himself warns against the danger of receiving an African’s statement with confidence. He points out that the native has no conception that the truth or falsehood of his answer can be of the least importance, and just tells a stranger what he thinks will best please him. But another danger is that persons are apt to mistake for information what was never so intended. A learned gentleman sees a lizard and asks its name: the native replies ‘Kaya’ which means ‘I don’t know’. Down goes Kaya in the note-book as ‘the name of a green lizard!’ If an English traveller may ask near the birth-place of the author of Paradise Lost ‘where Milton was born,’ and be told by a countryman that a woman of that name once lived in the district, we need not blame an African for not knowing the name of Livingstone which is unpronounceable by him, and which he likely never heard (46.)