and no one joked or poked fun at them. We marched five hours through
forest and crossed three rivulets and much stagnant water which the sun
by the few rays he darts in cannot evaporate. We passed several huge
traps for elephants: they are constructed thus--a log of heavy wood,
about 20 feet long, has a hole at one end for a climbing plant to pass
through and suspend it, at the lower end a mortice is cut out of the
side, and a wooden lance about 2 inches broad by 1-1/2 thick, and about
4 feet long, is inserted firmly in the mortice; a latch down on the
ground, when touched by the animal's foot, lets the beam run down on to
his body, and the great weight of the wood drives in the lance and kills
the animal. I saw one lance which had accidentally fallen, and it had
gone into the stiff clay soil two feet.

_4th January, 1870._--- The villagers we passed were civil, but like
noisy children, all talked and gazed. When surrounded by 300 or 400,
some who have not been accustomed to the ways of wild men think that a
fight is imminent; but, poor things, no attack is thought of, if it does
not begin on our side. Many of Mohamad's people were dreadfully afraid
of being killed and eaten; one man out in search of ivory seemed to have
lost sight of his companions, for they saw him running with all his
might to a forest with no path in it; he was searched for for several
days, and was given up as a murdered man, a victim of the cannibal
Manyuema! On the seventh day after he lost his head, he was led into
camp by a headman, who not only found him wandering but fed and lodged
and restored him to his people.

[With reference to the above we may add that nothing can exceed the
terror in which cannibal nations are held by other African tribes. It
was common on the River Shiré to hear Manganja and Ajawa people speak of
tribes far away to the north who eat human bodies, and on every occasion