always hungry, and am
constantly dreaming of better food when I should be sleeping. Savoury
viands of former times come vividly up before the imagination, even in
my waking hours; this is rather odd as I am not a dreamer; indeed I
scarcely ever dream but when I am going to be ill or actually so.[43]

We are on the northern brim (or north-western rather) of the great
Loangwa Valley we lately crossed: the rain coming from the east
strikes it, and is deposited both above and below, while much of the
valley itself is not yet well wetted. Here all the grasses have run up
to seed, and yet they are not more than two feet or so in the
seed-stalks. The pasturage is very fine. The people employ these
continuous or _set-in_ rains for hunting the elephant, which gets
bogged, and sinks in from fifteen to eighteen inches in soft mud,
then even he, the strong one, feels it difficult to escape.[44]

_5th January, 1867._--Still storm-stayed. We shall be off as soon as
we get a fair day and these heavy rains cease.

_6th January, 1867._--After service two men came and said that they
were going to Lobemba, and would guide us to Motuna's village; another
came a day or two ago, but he had such a villainous look we all shrank
from him. These men's faces pleased us, but they did not turn out all
we expected, for they guided us away westwards without a path: it was
a drizzling rain, and this made us averse to striking off in the
forest without them. No inhabitants now except at wide intervals, and
no animals either. In the afternoon we came to a deep ravine full of
gigantic timber trees and bamboos, with the Mavoche River at the
bottom. The dampness had caused the growth of lichens all over the
trees, and the steep descent was so slippery that two boys fell, and
he who carried the chronometers, twice: this was a misfortune, as it
altered the rates, as was seen by the first comparison of them
together in the evening. No food at Motuna's village, yet the headman
tried to extort two fathoms of calico on the ground that he was owner
of the country: we offered to go out of his village and make our own
sheds on "God's land," that is, where it is uncultivated, rather than
have any words about it: he then begged us to stay. A very high
mountain called Chikokwe appeared W.S.W. from this village; the people
who live on it are called Matumba; this part is named Lokumbi, but
whatever the name, all the people are Babisa, the dependants of the
Babemba,