They dislike the idea of guilt being attached to them for having sold
many who have lost their lives on their way down to the sea-coast. We
had a long visit from Mtarika next day; he gave us meal, and meat of
wild hog, with a salad made of bean-leaves. A wretched Swaheli Arab,
ill with rheumatism, came for aid, and got a cloth. They all profess
to me to be buying ivory only.

_5th July, 1866._--We left for Mtendé, who is the last chief before
we enter on a good eight days' march to Mataka's; we might have gone
to Kandulo's, who is near the Rovuma, and more to the north, but all
are so well supplied with everything by slave-traders that we have
difficulty in getting provisions at all. Mataka has plenty of all
kinds of food. On the way we passed the burnt bones of a person Avho
was accused of having eaten human flesh; he had been poisoned, or, as
they said, killed by poison (muave?), and then burned. His clothes
were hung, up on trees by the wayside as a warning to others. The
country was covered with scraggy forest, but so undulating that one
could often see all around from the crest of the waves. Great mountain
masses appear in the south and south-west. It feels cold, and the sky
is often overcast.

_6th July, 1866._--I took lunars yesterday, after which Mtendé invited
us to eat at his house where he had provided a large mess of rice
porridge and bean-leaves as a relish. He says that many Arabs pass him
and many of them die in their journeys. He knows no deaf or dumb
person in the country. He says that he cuts the throats of all animals
to be eaten, and does not touch lion or hyaena.

_7th July, 1866._--We got men from Mtendé to carry loads and show the