; they are busy, and men
and other animals are active in the same way.

I am rather perplexed how to proceed. Some Arabs seem determined to go
westwards as soon as they can make it up with Nsama, whilst others
distrust him. One man will send his people to pick up what ivory they
can, but he himself will retire to the Usango country. Nsama is
expected to-day or to-morrow. It would be such a saving of time and
fatigue for us to go due west rather than south, and then west, but I
feel great hesitation as to setting out on the circuitous route.
Several Arabs came from the Liemba side yesterday; one had sailed on
Tanganyika, and described the winds there as very baffling, but no one
of them has a clear idea of the Lake. They described the lower part as
a "sea," and thought it different from Tanganyika.

Close observation of the natives of Ulungu makes me believe them to
be extremely polite. The mode of salutation among relatives is to
place the hands round each other's chests kneeling, they then clap
their hands close to the ground. Some more abject individuals kiss the
soil before a chief; the generality kneel only, with the fore-arms
close to the ground, and the head bowed down to them, saying, "O
Ajadla chiusa, Mari a bwino." The Usanga say, "Aje senga." The
clapping of hands to superiors, and even equals, is in some villages a
perpetually recurring sound. Aged persons are usually saluted: how
this extreme deference to each other could have arisen, I cannot
conceive; it does not seem to be fear of each other that elicits it.
Even the chiefs inspire no fear, and those cruel old platitudes about
governing savages by fear seem unknown, yet governed they certainly
are, and upon the whole very well. The people were not very willing to
go to punish Nsama's breach of public law, yet, on the decision of the
chiefs, they went, and came back, one with a wooden stool, another
with a mat, a third with a calabash of ground-nuts or some dried meat,
a hoe, or a bow--poor, poor pay for a fortnight's hard work hunting
fugitives and burning villages.

_16th June, 1867._--News came to-day that an Arab party in the
south-west, in Lunda, lost about forty people by the small-pox
("ndue"), and that the people there, having heard of the disturbance
with Nsama, fled from the Arabs, and would sell neither ivory nor
food: this looks like another obstacle to our progress thither.

_17th-19th June, 1867._--Hamees went to meet the party from the