not exceed four miles in a straight line, and that we found more than
enough to be pleasant.

The state of insecurity in which the Badema tribe live is indicated by
the habit of hiding their provisions in the hills, and keeping only a
small quantity in their huts; they strip a particular species of tree of
its bitter bark, to which both mice and monkeys are known to have an
antipathy, and, turning the bark inside out, sew it into cylindrical
vessels for their grain, and bury them in holes and in crags on the
wooded hill-sides. By this means, should a marauding party plunder their
huts, they save a supply of corn. They "could give us no information,
and they had no food; Chisaka's men had robbed them a few weeks before."

"Never mind," said our native Portuguese, "they will sell you plenty when
you return, they are afraid of you now, as yet they do not know who you
are." We slept under trees in the open air, and suffered no
inconvenience from either mosquitoes or dew: and no prowling wild beast
troubled us; though one evening, while we were here, a native sitting
with some others on the opposite bank was killed by a leopard.

One of the Tette slaves, who wished to be considered a great traveller,
gave us, as we sat by our evening fire, an interesting account of a
strange race of men whom he had seen in the interior; they were only
three feet high, and had horns growing out of their heads; they lived in
a large town and had plenty of food. The Makololo pooh-poohed this
story, and roundly told the narrator that he was telling a downright lie.
"_We_ come from the interior," cried out a tall fellow, measuring some
six feet four, "are _we_ dwarfs? have _we_ horns on our heads?" and thus
they laughed the fellow to scorn. But he still stoutly maintained that
he had seen these little people, and had actually been in their town;