_12th December, 1866._--Across an undulating forest country north we got a man to show us the way, if a pathless forest can so be called. We used a game-path as long as it ran north, but left it when it deviated, and rested under a baobab-tree with a marabou's nest--a bundle of sticks on a branch; the young ones uttered a hard chuck, chuck, when the old ones flew over them. A sun-bird, with bright scarlet throat and breast, had its nest on another branch, it was formed like the weaver's nest, but without a tube. I observed the dam picking out insects from the bark and leaves of the baobab, keeping on the wing the while: it would thus appear to be insectivorous as well as a honey-bibber. Much spoor of elands, zebras, gnus, kamas, pallahs, buffaloes, reed-bucks, with tsetse, their parasites. _13th December, 1866._--Reached the Tokosusi, which is said to rise at Nombe Rume, about twenty yards wide and knee deep, swollen by the rains: it had left a cake of black tenacious mud on its banks. Here I got a pallah antelope, and a very strange flower called "katende," which was a whorl of seventy-two flowers sprung from a flat, round root; but it cannot be described. Our guide would have crossed the Tokosusi, which was running north-west to join the Loangwa, and then gone to that river; but always when we have any difficulty the "lazies" exhibit themselves. We had no grain; and three remained behind spending four hours at what we did in an hour and a quarter. Our guide became tired and turned, not before securing another; but he would not go over the Loangwa; no one likes to go out of his own country: he would go westwards to Maranda's, and nowhere else. A "set-in" rain came on after dark, and we went on through slush, the trees sending down heavier drops than the showers as we neared the Loangwa; we forded several deep gullies, all flowing north or north-west into it. The paths were running with water, and when we emerged from the large Mopane Forest, we came on the plain of excessively adhesive mud, on which Maranda's stronghold stands on the left bank of Loangwa, here a good-sized river. The people were all afraid of us, and we were mortified to find that food is scarce. The Mazitu have been here three times, and the fear they have inspired, though they were successfully repelled, has prevented agricultural operations from being carried on. _Mem._--A flake of reed is often used in surgical operations among the natives, as being sharper than their knives. FOOTNOTES: [34] A cloth means two yards of unbleached calico. [35] Chuma remembers part of the words of her song to be as follows:-- Kowe! kowe! n'andambwi, M'vula leru, korole ko okwe, Waie, ona, kordi, mvula! He cannot translate it as it is pure Manganja, but with the exception of the first line--which relates to a little song-bird with a beautiful note, it is a mere reiteration "rain will surely come to-day."--ED. CHAPTER VII.