Temperature at 6 A.M. 61°; feels cold. Winds blow regularly from the east; if it changes to N.W. brings a thick mantle of cold grey clouds. A typhoon did great damage at Zanzibar, wrecking ships and destroying cocoa-nuts, carafu, and all fruits: happened five days after Seyed Burghash's return from Mecca. At the Loangwa of Zumbo we came to a party of hereditary hippopotamus hunters, called Makembwé or Akombwé. They follow no other occupation, but when their game is getting scanty at one spot they remove to some other part of the Loangwa, Zambesi, or Shiré, and build temporary huts on an island, where their women cultivate patches: the flesh of the animals they kill is eagerly exchanged by the more settled people for grain. They are not stingy, and are everywhere welcome guests. I never heard of any fraud in dealing, or that they had been guilty of an outrage on the poorest: their chief characteristic is their courage. Their hunting is the bravest thing I ever saw. Each canoe is manned by two men; they are long light craft, scarcely half an inch in thickness, about eighteen inches beam, and from eighteen to twenty feet long. They are formed for speed, and shaped somewhat like our racing boats. Each man uses a broad short paddle, and as they guide the canoe slowly down stream to a sleeping hippopotamus not a single ripple is raised on the smooth water; they look as if holding in their breath, and communicate by signs only. As they come near the prey the harpooner in the bow lays down his paddle and rises slowly up, and there he stands erect, motionless, and eager, with the long-handled weapon poised at arm's length above his head, till coming close to the beast he plunges it with all his might in towards the heart. During this exciting feat he has to keep his balance exactly. His neighbour in the stern at once backs his paddle, the harpooner sits down, seizes his paddle, and backs too to escape: the animal surprised and wounded seldom returns the attack at this stage of the hunt. The next stage, however, is full of danger.