whilst the natives were so very suspicious as to have a strong guard on
the banks of the river night and day; the weather also was unfavourable.
After sending presents and messages to two of the chiefs, we returned to
Tette. In going down stream our progress was rapid, as we were aided by
the current. The hippopotami never made a mistake, but got out of our
way. The crocodiles, not so wise, sometimes rushed with great velocity
at us, thinking that we were some huge animal swimming. They kept about
a foot from the surface, but made three well-defined ripples from the
feet and body, which marked their rapid progress; raising the head out of
the water when only a few yards from the expected feast, down they went
to the bottom like a stone, without touching the boat.

In the middle of March of the same year (1859), we started again for a
second trip on the Shire. The natives were now friendly, and readily
sold us rice, fowls, and corn. We entered into amicable relations with
the chief, Chibisa, whose village was about ten miles below the cataract.
He had sent two men on our first visit to invite us to drink beer; but
the steamer was such a terrible apparition to them, that, after shouting
the invitation, they jumped ashore, and left their canoe to drift down
the stream. Chibisa was a remarkably shrewd man, the very image, save
his dark hue, of one of our most celebrated London actors, {2} and the
most intelligent chief, by far, in this quarter. A great deal of
fighting had fallen to his lot, he said; but it was always others who
began; he was invariably in the right, and they alone were to blame. He
was moreover a firm believer in the divine right of kings. He was an
ordinary man, he said, when his father died, and left him the
chieftainship; but directly he succeeded to the high office, he was
conscious of power passing into his head, and down his back; he felt it
enter, and knew that he was a chief, clothed with authority, and
possessed of wisdom; and people then began to fear and reverence him. He
mentioned this, as one would a fact of natural history, any doubt being
quite out of the question. His people, too, believed in him, for they
bathed in the river without the slightest fear of crocodiles, the chief
having placed a powerful medicine there, which protected them from the
bite of these terrible reptiles.

Leaving the vessel opposite Chibisa's village, Drs. Livingstone and Kirk
and a number of the Makolo