The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868Livingstone, David
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The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868
Livingstone, David
Africa, Central -- Description and travel
All the people are now transplanting tobacco from the spaces under the
eaves of the huts into the fields. It seems unable to bear the greater
heat of summer: they plant also a kind of liranda, proper for the cold
weather. We thought that we were conferring a boon in giving peas, but
we found them generally propagated all over the country already, and
in the cold time too. We went along the Diola River to an old hut and
made a fire; thence across country to another river, called Loendawe,
6 feet wide, and 9 feet deep.
_10th March, 1867._--I have been ill of fever ever since we left
Moamba's; every step I take jars in the chest, and I am very weak; I
can scarcely keep up the march, though formerly I was always first,
and had to hold in my pace not to leave the people altogether. I have
a constant singing in the ears, and can scarcely hear the loud tick
of the chronometers. The appetite is good, but we have no proper food,
chiefly maere meal or beans, or mapemba or ground-nuts, rarely a fowl.
The country is full of hopo-hedges, but the animals are harassed, and
we never see them.
_11th March, 1867._.--Detained by a set-in rain. Marks on masses of
dolomite elicited the information that a party of Londa smiths came
once to this smelting ground and erected their works here. We saw an
old iron furnace, and masses of haematite, which seems to have been
the ore universally used.
_12th March, 1867._--Rain held us back for some time, but we soon
reached Chibue, a stockaded village. Like them all, it is situated by
a stream, with a dense clump of trees on the waterside of some species
of mangrove. They attain large size, have soft wood, and succulent
leaves; the roots intertwine in the mud, and one has to watch that he
does not step where no roots exist, otherwise he sinks up to the
thigh. In a village the people feel that we are on their property, and
crowd upon us inconveniently; but outside, where we usually erect our
sheds, no such feeling exists, we are each on a level, and they don't
take liberties.
The Balungu are marked by three or four little knobs on the temples,
and the lobes of the ears are distended by a piece of wood, which is
ornamented with beads; bands of beads go across the forehead and hold
up the hair.
Chibue's village is at the source of the Lokwena, which goes N. and
N.E.; a long range of low hills is on our N.E., which are the Mambwe,
or part of them. The Chambeze rises in them, but further south. Here
the Lokwena, round whose source we came on starting this morning to
avoid wet feet, and all others north and west of this, go to the Lofu
or Lobu, and into Liemba Lake. Those from the hills on our right go
east into the Loanzu and so into the Lake.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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