Mapanda’s own village consists of only eight bamboo huts, built close to a tall palm-tree; in the centre of the huts is a raised platform, on which the grass-woven granaries of the community are kept. Beneath, in the shade, lay idle inhabitants, and from it were hung the grass petticoats and jangling beads which they use in their dances. I entered one of the huts on all-fours for inspection, and as I was engaged in so doing a terrified woman inside tore down the frail wall and made a hurried exit at the other side. I am told by those outside that the effect was most ludicrous. No wonder these dusky beauties are somewhat afraid of the white man, as hitherto they have dealt only with the Portuguese, who pride themselves on amalgamating well with the natives. In choosing a wife the Portuguese is not at all particular as to colour, nor is he a monogamist, as he would have to be in his far-off country. This we discovered for ourselves at Neves Ferreira, the Portuguese settlement on the Pungwe, about six miles below Mapanda’s, where, beneath tall bananas and refreshing shade, the authorities of that nation pass a life of Oriental luxury which somewhat scandalises the strait-laced Briton. There are several little kraals on the island belonging to the sons and relatives of Mapanda, all built on the same lines, and in visiting which we made ourselves insufferably thirsty, so that a good drink of Kaffir beer, or, as the Portuguese call it, ‘millet wine,’ was highly acceptable. It is much more potent than the beer they make up country, and if it were not for the husks therein, and general nature of fermented porridge it presents, one might fancy it champagne. Here, too, they make palm wine, tapping all the neighbouring palm-trees for the sap, which is highly intoxicating, and of by no means a disagreeable flavour. At Mapanda’s we bade farewell to our donkeys and our cart and our conductor, Meredith, who had been with us and served us faithfully ever since we left Kimberley, ten long months before. He returned to Fort Salisbury with the cart, and wrote to inform us of the miseries of his journey owing to the rains, which brought fever, and the demise of the donkeys before the end of the journey. The voyage from Mapanda’s to the sea at Beira would be indescribably monotonous were it not for a few interesting features afforded by the stream itself. The tide here comes up with a remarkably strong bore, or wall-like wave, reminding one of the same phenomenon in the Severn at home. We heard it murmuring in the distance like the soughing of a rising wind; as it approached us the roar grew very loud, and finally the wave floated our stranded steamer almost in an instant.