_13th June, 1866._--Makoloya brought his wife and a little corn, and says that his father told him that there is a God, but nothing more. The marks on their foreheads and bodies are meant only to give beauty in the dance, they seem a sort of heraldic ornament, for they can at once tell by his tattoo to what tribe or portion of tribe a man belongs. The tattoo or tembo of the Matambwe and Upper Makonde very much resembles the drawings of the old Egyptians; wavy lines, such as the ancients made to signify water, trees and gardens enclosed in squares, seem to have been meant of old for the inhabitants who lived on the Rovuma, and cultivated also, the son takes the tattoo of his father, and thus it has been perpetuated, though the meaning now appears lost. The Makoa have the half or nearly full moon, but it is, they say, all for ornament. Some blue stuff is rubbed into the cuts (I am told it is charcoal), and the ornament shows brightly in persons of light complexion, who by the bye are common. The Makonde and Matambwe file their front teeth to points; the Machinga, a Waiyan tribe, leave two points on the sides of the front teeth, and knock out one of the middle incisors above and below. [Illustration: Machinga and Waiyan Teeth.] _14th June, 1866._--I am now as much dependent on carriers as if I had never bought a beast of burden--but this is poor stuff to fill a journal with. We started off to Metaba to see if the chief there would lend some men. The headman, Kitwanga, went a long way to convoy us; then turned, saying he was going to get men for Musa next day. We passed near the base of the rounded masses Ngozo and Mekanga, and think, from a near inspection, that they are over 2000 feet above the plain, possibly 3000 feet, and nearly bare, with only the peculiar grassy plant on some parts which are not too perpendicular. The people are said to have stores of grain on them, and on one the chief said there is water; he knows of no stone buildings of the olden time in the country. We passed many masses of ferruginous conglomerate, and I noticed that most of the gneiss dips westwards. The striae seem as if the rock had been partially molten: at times the strike is north and south, at others east and west; when we come to what may have been its surface, it is as if the striae had been stirred with a rod while soft. We slept at a point of the Rovuma, above a cataract where a reach of comparatively still water, from 150 to 200 yards wide, allows a school of hippopotami to live: when the river becomes fordable in many places, as it is said to do in August and September, they must find it difficult to exist.