he Over Power
to finish my work.

_12th April, 1873._--Cross the Muanakazi. It is about 100 or 130 yards
broad, and deep. Great loss of _ai mua_ made me so weak I could hardly
walk, but tottered along nearly two hours, and then lay down quite
done. Cooked coffee--our last--and went on, but in an hour I was
compelled to lie down. Very unwilling to be carried, but on being
pressed I allowed the men to help me along by relays to Chinama, where
there is much cultivation. We camped in a garden of dura.

_13th April, 1873._--Found that we had slept on the right bank of the
Lolotikila, a sluggish, marshy-looking river, very winding, but here
going about south-west. The country is all so very flat that the rivers
down here are of necessity tortuous. Fish and other food abundant, and
the people civil and reasonable. They usually partake largely of the
character of the chief, and this one, Gondochite, is polite. The sky is
clearing, and the S.E. wind is the lower stratum now. It is the dry
season well begun. Seventy-three inches is a higher rainfall than has
been observed anywhere else, even in northern Manyuema; it was lower by
inches than here far south on the watershed. In fact, this is the very
heaviest rainfall known in these latitudes; between fifty and sixty is
the maximum.

One sees interminable grassy prairies with lines of trees, occupying
quarters of miles in breadth, and these give way to bouga or prairie
again. The bouga is flooded annually, but its vegetation consists of dry
land grasses. Other bouga extend out from the Lake up to forty miles,
and are known by aquatic vegetation, such as lotus, papyrus, arums,
rushes of different species, and many kinds of purely aquatic subaqueous
plants which send up their flowers only to fructify in the sun, and then
sink to ripen one bunch after another. Others, with great
cabbage-looking leaves, seem to remain always at the bottom. The young
of fish swarm, and bob in and out from the leaves. A species of soft
moss grows on most plants, and seems to be good fodder for fishes,
fitted by hooked or turned-up noses to guide it into their maws.

One species of fish has the lower jaw turned down into a hook, which
enables the animal to hold its mouth close to the plant, as it glides up
or down, sucking in all the soft pulpy food. The superabundance of
gelatinous nutriment makes these swarmers increase in bulk with
extraordinary rapidity, and the food supply of the people is plente