After a few minutes’ distant conversation, the Wavuma approached us, and we were enabled to purchase fuel for cooking, making a liberal payment. We hoped they would be induced to sell us food also, not that we were really in need of it, but because it furnished us with another motive for continuing our intercourse, and enlarged our opportunities for studying their nature and habits, and obtaining names for the localities around. We had numerous visitors, who appeared to be fine, manly, well-made fellows, but nothing would induce them to bring the smallest quantity of food for sale. We therefore resignedly forbore from troubling them, but inspected them with as much interest as they inspected us. They were evidently people with abundant self-confidence, from the cool complacency with which they regarded us. Their canoes were beautiful specimens, and descriptions and pictures of them will be given hereafter. The shores were bold, irregular in outline, and clothed with a luxuriance of vegetation and many tall trees, between which were seen the banana groves, their pale green colour strongly contrasting with the darker tints of the forest foliage. The night that followed was wild. At sunset the temperature fell to 70° Fahr., and the wind was charged with a cold drizzle. Being in rather an exposed position, we moved our anchorage near the mouth of the Munulu river, and not a minute too soon, for the wind increased to a gale; and the gale, heralded by a short-lived squall, brought hailstones with it. Preparing to pass the night here, we covered the boat with a sail, under which the sailors slept, though the watch, frequently relieved, was obliged to maintain a strict look-out. Throughout the long hours of darkness, the gale maintained its force; the boat pitched and groaned, and the rain fell in torrents; the seas frequently tossed capfuls of water into us, so that, under such circumstances, we enjoyed no rest. _March 27._—By morning the gale had subsided, and the heavy, sluggish waves were slumbering. After waiting to cook our morning meal, and assisting the restoration of animal heat with draughts of Liebig’s extract liquefied, we resumed our journey along the southern coast of Uvuma about 8 A.M.