valley of Mehambwé to spend Sunday, all glad that it had come round
again. Here some men came to our camp from Ndondé, who report that an
invasion of Mazitu had three months ago swept away all the food out of
the country, and they are now obliged to send in every direction for
provisions. When saluting, they catch each other's hands and say, "Ai!
Ai!" but the general mode (introduced, probably by the Arabs) is to
take hold of the right hand, and say, "Marhaba" (welcome).

A wall-eyed ill-looking fellow, who helped to urge on the attack on
our first visit in 1861, and the man to whom I gave cloth to prevent a
collision, came about us disguised in a jacket. I knew him well, but
said nothing to him.[7]

_23rd April, 1866._--When we marched this morning we passed the spot
where an animal had been burned in the fire, and on enquiry I found
that it is the custom when a leopard is killed to take off the skin
and consume the carcase thus, because the Makondé do not eat it. The
reason they gave for not eating flesh which is freely eaten by other
tribes, is that the leopard devours men; this shows the opposite of an
inclination to cannibalism.

All the rocks we had seen showed that the plateau consists of grey
sandstone, capped by a ferruginous sandy conglomerate. We now came to
blocks of silicified wood lying on the surface; it is so like recent
wood, that no one who has not handled it would conceive it to be
stone and not wood: the outer surface preserves the grain or woody
fibre, the inner is generally silica.

Buffaloes bitten by tsetse again show no bad effects from it: one mule
is, however, dull and out of health; I thought that this might be the