with uneasy throbbing hearts, we breasted J
steep slope rough with rock, and from its summit
we looked abroad over a heaving, desolate, and
ungrateful land. The grass was tall and rine
and waved and rustled mournfully before the
upland breezes. Soon the road declined into a
valley, and we were hid in a deep fold, round
which rose the upland, here to the west shagged
with a thin forest, to the north with ghastly’
sere grass, out of which rose a few rocks, grey
and sad. On our left was furze, with scrub
At the bottom of this, sad and desolate, ran a
right crystal clear brook. Up again to the
summit we strove to gain the crest of a ridge
and then, down once more the tedious road
wound in crooked curves to the depth of another i
ravine, on the opposite side of which rose sharply
and steeply, to the wearying height of 1200 feet,
the range called Yangi-Yangi. At n a .m. we
m the van had gained the lofty summit, and
fifteen minutes afterwards we descried a settlement
and its cluster of palms. An hour afterwards
we were camped on a bit of level plateau
to the south of the villages of Ndambi Mbongo.
The chiefs appeared, dressed in scarlet military
coats of a past epoch. We asked for food for beads.
“ Cannot.” “ For wire? ” “We don’t want wire!”
^ For cowries? ” “Are we bushmen?” “ For cloth?”
You must wait three days for a market! If you
have got rum you can have plenty!!” Rum!
Heavens! Over two years and eight months
ago we departed from the shores of the Eastern
Ocean, and they ask us for rum!
Yet they were not insolent, but unfeeling; they
were not rude, but steely selfish. We conversed
with them sociably enough, and obtained encouragement.
A strong healthy man would
!reach Embomma in three days. Three days!
Only three days off from food—from comforts
I luxuries even! Ah me!
The next day, when morning was greying, we
[ lifted our weakened limbs for another march.
And such a march!— the path all thickly strewn
with splinters of suet-coloured quartz, which
increased the fatigue and pain. The old men
and the three mothers, with their young infants
born at the cataracts of Massassa and Zinga,
and another near the market-town of Manyanga,
in the month of June, suffered greatly; Then
might be seen that affection for one another
| which appealed to my sympathies, and endeared
them to me still more. Two of the younger
men assisted each of the old, and the husbands
and fathers lifted their infants on their shoulders
and tenderly led their wives along.
Up and down the desolate and sad land wound
the poor, hungry caravan. Bleached whiteness
of ripest grass, grey rock-piles here and there,
looming up solemn and sad in their greyness, a
thin grove of trees now and then visible on