During, his enforced detention Mohamad's friends advised him to leave Casembe by force, offering to aid him with their men, but he always refused. His father was the first to open this country to trade with the Arabs, and all his expenses while so doing were borne by himself; but Mohamad seems to be a man of peace, and unwilling to break the appearance of friendship with the chiefs. He thinks that this Casembe poisoned his predecessor: he certainly killed his wife's mother, a queen, that she might be no obstacle to him in securing her daughter. We are waiting in company with a number of Wanyamwesi for the cessation of the rains, which have flooded the country between this and Tanganyika. If there were much slope this water would flow off: this makes me suspect that Tanganyika is not so low as Speke's measurement. The Arabs are positive that water flows from that Lake to the Victoria Nyanza, and assert that Dagara, the father of Rumanyika, was anxious to send canoes from his place to Ujiji, or, as some say, to dig a canal to Ujiji. The Wanyamwesi here support themselves by shooting buffaloes, at a place two days distant, and selling the meat for grain and cassava: no sooner is it known that an animal is killed, than the village women crowd in here, carrying their produce to exchange it for meat, which they prefer to beads or anything else. Their farinaceous food creates a great craving for flesh: were my shoes not done I would go in for buffaloes too. A man from the upper part of Tanganyika gives the same account of the river from Rusisi that Burton and Speke received when they went to its mouth. He says that the water of the Lake goes up some distance, but is met by Rusisi water, and driven back thereby. The Lake water, he adds, finds an exit northwards and eastwards by several small rivers which would admit small canoes only. They pour into Lake Chowambe--probably that discovered by Mr. Baker. This Chowambe is in Hundi, the country of cannibals, but the most enlightened informants leave the impression on the mind of groping in the dark: it may be all different when we come to see it. The fruit of the palm, which yields palm-oil, is first of all boiled, then pounded in a mortar, then put into hot or boiling water, and the oil skimmed off. The palm-oil is said to be very abundant at Ujiji, as much as 300 gallons being often brought into the bazaar for sale in one morning; the people buy it eagerly for cooking purposes. Mohamad says that the Island of Pemba, near Zanzibar, contains many of these palms, but the people are ignorant of the mode of separating the oil from the nut: they call the palm Nkoma at Casembe's, and Chikichi at Zanzibar.[60]