As we row past close to their base, we look up to admire the cliffy heights rising in terraces one above another; each terrace-ledge is marked by a thin line of scrubby bush. Beyond Kateye, the grey front of the paternal Kapembwa looms up with an extraordinary height and massive grandeur. From Kapembwa to Polombwé Cape the plateau merges in a cliff-crowned wall 1500 feet above the lake. The cliff itself is probably 200 feet high, rising above a slope bristling with great rocks half hidden by the verdure of trees, bush, and grass. Yet the natives cultivate some part, and their fields were seen far up the steep ascending slopes. [Illustration: KAPEMBWA.] _July 6._—On the 6th we left the neighbourhood of Polombwé, at a place called Umisepa, and rowed round into the Rufuvu river. This river is about 400 yards wide, and retains that width for about three miles—flowing with a current of a knot an hour, and between lofty wood-clothed mountains—and then broadens out into a lake-like expanse nearly a mile wide. From the right or south bank of the river, a plain slopes gradually to the grand cliffy walls of Kapembwa. From here to Liendé village, where we camped, our course lay east-south-east. Here, as elsewhere, the water has encroached upon the soil, and has flooded a large portion of land formerly devoted to tillage. It is a populous spot, indeed the most populous we had seen since leaving Ujiji. Our reception by the people was most cordial, and I was not sorry to become acquainted with such gentle creatures. Not one angry word or insolent look was exchanged, but they visited us with the greatest confidence, and a lively interest for barter. We obtained such abundance of provisions here that we might have cruised for a month without having to call at any native port. The chief, Kiumeh, or Chiuma-Nanga, who lives at Mkigusa village, was visited with all due ceremony, and proved a most kindly old man. I gladly rewarded him for his small presents of food, and separated from him with feelings of attachment. Livingstone, who was here in May 1867, writes of this plain and river as follows:— “We came to a village about 2′ west of the confluence. The village has a meadow about four miles wide, in which buffaloes disport themselves, but they are very wild, and hide in the gigantic grasses. The Lofu—or Lofubu (Rufuvu)—is a quarter of a mile wide, but higher up 300 yards.” Between the 6th of July, 1876, and May 1867, that is, in nine years’ time, the river Rufuvu has encroached upon the “meadow” which Livingstone saw by over a thousand yards!