liberally with maize, ground-nuts, and
corn. Monze gave us a goat and a fowl, and appeared highly satisfied
with a present of some handkerchiefs I had got in my supplies left at
the island. Being of printed cotton, they excited great admiration; and
when I put a gaudy-colored one as a shawl about his child, he said that
he would send for all his people to make a dance about it. In telling
them that my object was to open up a path whereby they might, by getting
merchandise for ivory, avoid the guilt of selling their children, I
asked Monze, with about 150 of his men, if they would like a white man
to live among them and teach them. All expressed high satisfaction at
the prospect of the white man and his path: they would protect both him
and his property. I asked the question, because it would be of great
importance to have stations in this healthy region, whither agents
oppressed by sickness might retire, and which would serve, moreover, as
part of a chain of communication between the interior and the coast. The
answer does not mean much more than what I know, by other means, to be
the case--that a white man OF GOOD SENSE would be welcome and safe in
all these parts. By uprightness, and laying himself out for the good of
the people, he would be known all over the country as a BENEFACTOR of
the race. None desire Christian instruction, for of it they have
no idea. But the people are now humbled by the scourgings they have
received, and seem to be in a favorable state for the reception of the
Gospel. The gradual restoration of their former prosperity in cattle,
simultaneously with instruction, would operate beneficially upon their
minds. The language is a dialect of the other negro languages in the
great valley; and as many of the Batoka living under the Makololo
understand both it and the Sichuana, missionaries could soon acquire it
through that medium.

Monze had never been visited by any white man, but had seen black native
traders, who, he said, came for ivory, not for slaves. He had heard
of white men passing far to the east of him to Cazembe, referring, no
doubt, to Pereira, Lacerda, and others, who have visited that chief.

The streams in this part are not perennial; I did not observe one
suitable for the purpose of irrigation. There is but little wood; here
and there you see large single trees, or small clumps of evergreens, but
the abundance of maize and ground-nuts we met with shows that more rain
falls than in t