[49] It seems almost too ridiculous to believe that we have here the exact equivalent of the schoolboy's demonstrative "Do you see any green in my eye?" nevertheless it looks wonderfully like it!--ED. CHAPTER VIII. Chitapangwa's parting oath. Course laid for Lake Tanganyika. Moamba's village. Another watershed. The Babemba tribe. Ill with fever. Threatening attitude of Chibue's people. Continued illness. Reaches cliffs overhanging Lake Liemba. Extreme beauty of the scene. Dangerous fit of insensibility. Leaves the Lake. Pernambuco cotton. Rumours of war between Arabs and Nsama. Reaches Chitimba's village. Presents Sultan's letter to principal Arab Harnees. The war in Itawa. Geography of the Arabs. Ivory traders and slave-dealers. Appeal to the Koran. Gleans intelligence of the Wasongo to the eastward, and their chief, Merere. Harnees sets out against Nsama. Tedious sojourn. Departure for Ponda. Native cupping. _20th February, 1867._--I told the chief before starting that my heart was sore, because he was not sending me away so cordially as I liked. He at once ordered men to start with us, and gave me a brass knife with ivory sheath, which he had long worn, as a memorial. He explained that we ought to go north as, if we made easting, we should ultimately be obliged to turn west, and all our cloth would be expended ere we reached the Lake Tanganyika; he took a piece of clay off the ground and rubbed it on his tongue as an oath that what he said was true, and came along with us to see that all was right; and so we parted. We soon ascended the plateau, which encloses with its edge the village and stream of Molemba. Wild pigs are abundant, and there are marks of former cultivation. A short march brought us to an ooze, surrounded by hedges, game-traps, and pitfalls, where, as we are stiff and weak, we spend the night. Rocks abound of the same dolomite kind as on the ridge further south, between the Loangwa and Chambeze, covered, like them, with lichens, orchids, euphorbias, and upland vegetation, hard-leaved acacias, rhododendrons, masukos. The gum-copal tree, when perforated by a grub, exudes from branches no thicker than one's arm, masses of soft, gluey-looking gum, brownish yellow, and light grey, as much as would fill a soup-plate. It seems to yield this gum only in the rainy season, and now all the trees are full of sap and gum.