Mtuyu is the easternmost settlement of the country of Uzura. On arrival we perceived that all their women were absent, and naturally enquired what had become of them. They replied, in pathetic strains, “Oh, they are all dead, all cut off, every one. It was the small-pox!” We sympathised with them, of course, because of such a terrible loss, and attempted to express our concern. But one of our enterprising people, while endeavouring to search out a good market for his cowries, discovered several dozen of the women in a wooded ravine! [Illustration: KITETÉ THE CHIEF OF MPUNGU. ] Skirting the range of hills which bounds the Luama valley on the north, we marched to Mpungu, which is fifteen miles west of Mtuyu. Kiteté, its chief, is remarkable for a plaited beard twenty inches long, decorated at the tips with a number of blue glass beads. His hair was also trussed up on the crown of his head in a shapely mass. His brother possessed a beard six inches long; there were half-a-dozen others with beards of three or four inches long. Kiteté’s symbol of royalty was a huge truncheon, or Hercules club, blackened and hardened by fire. His village was neat, and the architecture of the huts peculiar, as the picture at foot shows. The Luama valley at Uzura at this season presents a waving extent of grass-grown downs, and while crossing over the higher swells of land, we enjoyed uninterrupted views of thirty or forty miles to the west and south. From Mpungu we travelled through an interesting country (a distance of four miles), and suddenly from the crest of a low ridge saw the confluence of the Luama with the majestic Lualaba. The former appeared to have a breadth of 400 yards at the mouth; the latter was about 1400 yards wide, a broad river of a pale grey colour, winding slowly from south and by east. We hailed its appearance with shouts of joy, and rested on the spot to enjoy the view. Across the river, beyond a tawny, grassy stretch towards the south-south-west, is Mount Kijima; about 1000 feet above the valley, to the south-south-east, across the Luama, runs the Luhye-ya ridge; from its base the plain slopes to the swift Luama. In the bed of the great river are two or three small islands, green with the verdure of trees and sedge. I likened it even here to the Mississippi, as it appears before the impetuous, full-volumed Missouri pours its rusty-brown water into it. A secret rapture filled my soul as I gazed upon the majestic stream. The great mystery that for all these centuries Nature had kept hidden away from the world of science was waiting to be solved. For two hundred and twenty miles I had followed one of the sources of the Livingstone to the confluence, and now before me lay the superb river itself! My task was to follow it to the Ocean. [Illustration: NATIVE HOUSES AT MTUYU.] CHAPTER IV.