the past two years. It was the 25th of April, 1860, before we reached
Tette; here also the crops were luxuriant, and the people said that they
had not had such abundance since 1856, the year when Dr. Livingstone came
down the river. It is astonishing to any one who has seen the works for
irrigation in other countries, as at the Cape and in Egypt, that no
attempt has ever been made to lead out the water either of the Zambesi or
any of its tributaries; no machinery has ever been used to raise it even
from the stream, but droughts and starvations are endured, as if they
were inevitable dispensations of Providence, incapable of being
mitigated.

Feeling in honour bound to return with those who had been the faithful
companions of Dr. Livingstone, in 1856, and to whose guardianship and
services was due the accomplishment of a journey which all the Portuguese
at Tette had previously pronounced impossible, the requisite steps were
taken to convey them to their homes.

We laid the ship alongside of the island Kanyimbe, opposite Tette; and,
before starting for the country of the Makololo, obtained a small plot of
land, to form a garden for the two English sailors who were to remain in
charge during our absence. We furnished them with a supply of seeds, and
they set to work with such zeal, that they certainly merited success.
Their first attempt at African horticulture met with failure from a most
unexpected source; every seed was dug up and the inside of it eaten by
mice. "Yes," said an old native, next morning, on seeing the husks,
"that is what happens this month; for it is the mouse month, and the seed
should have been sown last mouth, when I sowed mine." The sailors,
however, sowed more next day; and, being determined to outwit the mice,
they this time covered the beds over with grass. The onions, with other
seeds of plants cultivated by the Portuguese, are usually planted in the
beginning of April, in order to have the advantage of the cold season;
the wheat a little later, for the same reason. If sown at the beginning
of the rainy season in November, it runs, as before remarked, entirely to
straw; but as the rains are nearly over in May, advantage is taken of low-
lying patches, which have been flooded by the river. A hole is made in
the mud with a hoe, a few seeds dropped in, and the earth shoved back
with the foot. If not favoured with certain misty showers, which, lower
down the river, are simply fogs, water is