Besides making many friends among the Portuguese gentlemen, we found that our landlord’s black servants began to take to us very much. They seemed to wish to go to Blantyre in a body. Of course we endeavoured to dissuade them from leaving their master, and took pains to explain both to him and to themselves that we did not want them at all. But one boy Lasertha whose father lived at a great distance up the Quilimane river, took the matter in his own hands. He disappeared about a week before we started, and one day after we had forgotten all about him, he and his father came to us, and it was arranged that Lasertha should join our party. _From Quilimane to Mazaro._ It was the afternoon of the 18th of June before we started from Quilimane. We were taken up the river in small boats, propelled by paddles. A grass awning was put up to defend us from the rays of the sun. The sides of the river being lined for many yards with deep layers of mud, we had to be carried to and from the boats on the shoulders of the negroes who were liable to fall, and we therefore made the journey as seldom as possible. When we came to the place where we were to pass the night, the boats were pushed towards the side of the river, till grounded on the mud. As we suffered from thirst, we tried most eagerly to procure drinking water—but none could be found. At this wretched spot there had once been a village, but its inhabitants had run away on account of lions, and their well had dried up. The river was quite salt, but the natives dug a hole with their hands and feet in the dirty mud at the side and procured some water which we had to use for cooking. In those days we possessed a big black kettle which served as a tea pot: it was sometimes my duty to empty this vessel and I can testify that there was often fully an inch of mud in the bottom after our tea had been poured off!