o nothing for these Hindis." I sent
back a sepoy, giving him provisions; he sat down in the first village,
ate all the food, and returned.

An immense tract of country lies uninhabited. To the north-east of
Moembe we have at least fifty miles of as fine land as can be seen
anywhere, still bearing all the marks of having once supported a
prodigious iron-smelting and grain-growing population. The clay pipes
which are put on the nozzles of their bellows and inserted into the
furnace are met with everywhere--often vitrified. Then the ridges on
which they planted maize, beans, cassava, and sorghum, and which they
find necessary to drain off the too abundant moisture of the rains,
still remain unlevelled to attest the industry of the former
inhabitants; the soil being clayey, resists for a long time the
influence of the weather. These ridges are very regular, for in
crossing the old fields, as the path often compels us to do, one foot
treads regularly on the ridge, and the other in the hollow, for a
considerable distance. Pieces of broken pots, with their rims
ornamented with very good imitations of basket-work, attest that the
lady potters of old followed the example given them by their still
more ancient mothers,--their designs are rude, but better than we can
make them without referring to the original.

[Illustration: Imitation of basket-work in Pottery.]

No want of water has here acted to drive the people away, as has been
the case further south. It is a perpetual succession of ridge and
valley, with a running stream or oozing bog, where ridge is separated
from ridge: the ridges become steeper and narrower as we approach
Mataka's.

I counted fifteen running burns of from one to ten yards wide in one
day's march of about six hours; being in a hilly or rather mountainous
region, they flow rapidly and have plenty of water-power. In July any
mere torrent ceases to flow, but these were brawling burns with water
too cold (61 deg.) for us to bathe in whose pores were all open by the
relaxing regions nearer the coast. The sound, so un-African, of
gushing water dashing over rocks was quite familiar to our ears.

This district, which rises up west of Mataka's to 3400 feet above the
sea, catches a great deal of the moisture brought up by the easterly
winds. Many of the trees are covered with lichens. While here we had
cold southerly breezes, and a sky so overcast every day after 10 A.M.,
that we could take no astronomical ob