TAKING A RIDE.

demands for tribute. Another, who had quarreled with one of Livingstone's attendants, waylaid and fired upon the party. Livingstone, who was ill of a fever, staggered up to the chief, revolver in hand. The sight of the six mouths of that convenient implement gaping at his breast wrought an instant revolution in his martial ideas; he fell into a fit of trembling, protesting that he had just come to have a quiet talk, and wanted only peace.

These Bashinje have more of the low negro character and physiognomy than any tribe encountered by Livingstone. Their color is a dirty black; they have low foreheads and flat noses, artificially enlarged by sticks run through the septum, and file their teeth down to a point. A little further to the south the complexion of the natives is much lighter, and their features are strikingly like those depicted upon the Egyptian monuments, the resemblance being still further increased by some of their modes of wearing the hair. Livingstone indeed affirms that the Egyptian paintings and sculptures present the best type of the general physiognomy of the central tribes.

The return journey was still slower than the advance had been; and it was not till late in the summer of 1855 that they reached the villages of the Makolo

ropean clothes and a gun apiece, in addition | lo, having been absent more than eighteen to their own purchases. months. They were received as men risen from the dead, for the diviners had declared that they had perished long ago. The returned adventurers were the lions of the day. They strutted around in their gay European

In the Bashinje country he again encountered hostile demonstrations. One chief, who came riding into the camp upon the shoulders of an attendant, was especially annoying in his

HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

suits, with their guns over their shoulders, | every thing else having been expended during to the abounding admiration of the women their long journey.

and children, calling themselves Livingstone's said; "we have not gone in vain, you have "braves," who had gone over the whole world, opened a path for us." "But never mind," they turning back only when there was no more land. To be sure they returned about as poor as they went, for their gun and their one suit of red and white cotton were all that they had saved,

happiness. Some of their wives, like those of There was one serious drawback from their the companions of Ulysses of old, wearied by their long absence, had married other hus

kololo name for the cataract, Mosi oa tunye— "Smoke sounds there!"-for which Livingstone, with questionable taste, proposes to substitute the name of "Victoria Falls-a change which we trust the world will not sanction.

bands. They took this misfortune much to | heart. "Wives," said one of the bereaved husbands, "are as plenty as grass-I can get another; but," he added bitterly, "if I had that fellow I would slit his ears for him." Livingstone did the best he could for them. He induced the chiefs to compel the men who had taken the only wife of any one to give her up to her former husband. Those and they were the majority-who had still a number left, he consoled by telling them that they had quite as many as was good for them--more than he himself had. So, undeterred by this single untoward result of their experiment, the adventurers one and all set about gathering ivory for anoth-which constitutes the present Lake Ngami. er adventure to the west.

Livingstone had satisfied himself that the great River Leeambye, up which he had paddled so many miles on his way to the west, was identical with the Zambesi, which he had discovered four years previously. The two names are indeed the same, both meaning simply "The River," in different dialects spoken on its banks. This great river is an object of wonder to the natives. They have a song which runs,

"The Leeambye! Nobody knows

Whence it comes, and whither it goes." Livingstone had pursued it far up toward its source, and knew whence it came; and now he resolved to follow it down to the sea, trusting that it would furnish a water communication into the very heart of the continent.

son.

It was now October-the close of the hot seaThe thermometer stood at 100° in the shade; in the sun it sometimes rose to 130°. During the day the people kept close in their huts, guzzling a kind of beer called boyola, and seeming to enjoy the copious perspiration which it induces. As evening set in the dance began, which was kept up in the moonlight till long after midnight. Sekeletu, proud of his new uniform, and pleased with the prospect of trade which had been opened, entertained Livingstone hospitably, and promised to fit him out for his eastern journey as soon as the rains had commenced, and somewhat cooled the burning soil. He set out early in November, the chief with a large body of retainers accompanying him as far as the Falls of Mosioatunye, the most remarkable piece of natural scenery in all Africa, which no European had ever seen or heard of. The Zambesi, here a thousand yards broad, seems all at once to lose itself in the earth. It tumbles into a fissure in the hard basaltic rock, running at a right-angle with the course of the stream, and prolonged for thirty miles through the hills. This fissure, hardly eighty feet broad, with sides perfectly perpendicular, is fully a hundred feet in depth down to the surface of the water, which shows like a white thread at its bottom. The noise made by the descent of such a mass of water into this seething abyss is heard for miles, and five distinct columns of vapor rise like pillars of smoke to an enormous height. Hence the Ma

From these falls the country gradually ascends toward the east, the river finding its way by this deep fissure through the hills. Every thing shows that this whole region, for hundreds of miles, was once the bed of an immense freshwater lake. By some convulsion of nature, occurring at a period geologically recent, this fissure was formed, and through it the lake was drained, with the exception of its deepest part,

Similar indications exist of the former existence of other immense bodies of water, which have in like manner been drained by fissures through the surrounding elevations, leaving shallow lakes at the lowest points. Such are, undoubtedly, Tsad at the north, Ngami at the south, Dilolo at the west, and Taganyika and Nyanja, of which we have only vague reports, at the east. This great lake region of former days seems to have extended 2500 miles from north to south, with an average breadth, from east to west, of 600 or 700 miles.

The true theory of the African continent is, that it consists of a well-watered trough, surrounded on all sides by an elevated rim, composed in part of mountain ranges, and in part of high sandy deserts. Livingstone, who had wrought out this theory from his own personal observations, was almost disappointed when, on returning to England, he found that the same theory had been announced on purely geological grounds by Sir Roderick Murchison, the same philosopher who had averred that gold must exist in Australia, long before the first diggings had been discovered there.

Sekeletu had commissioned Livingstone, when he reached his own country, to purchase for him a sugar-mill, a good rifle, different kinds of clothing, brass wire, beads, and, in a word, "any other beautiful thing he might see," furnishing him with a considerable quantity of ivory to pay for them. Their way lay through the country of the Batoka, a fierce tribe who had a few years before attempted "to eat up" Sebituane, with ill success, for he dispersed them and took away their cattle. Their country, once populous, is now almost desolate. At one of their ruined villages Livingstone saw five-and-forty human skulls bleaching upon stakes stuck in the ground. In the old times the chiefs used to vie with each other as to whose village should be ornamented with the greatest number of these ghastly trophies; and a skull was the most acceptable present from any one who wished to curry favor with a chief. The Batoka have an odd custom of knocking out the front teeth from the upper jaw. The lower ones, relieved from the attrition and pressure of the upper, grow long and protruding, forcing the lower lip out in a hideous manner. They say that they wish their mouths to be like

those of oxen, and not like those of zebras. | wear a little clothing, but the men disdain even No young Batoka female can lay any claim to being a belle until she has thus acquired an "ox-mouth." "Look at the great teeth!" is the disparaging criticism made upon those who neglect to remove their incisors. The women

the paradisiacal fig-leaf, and go about in a state of absolute nudity. Livingstone told them that he should come back some day with his family, when none of them must come near without at least putting on a bunch of grass. They thought

it a capital joke. Their mode of salutation is to fling themselves flat on their backs, and roll from side to side, slapping the outside of their naked thighs.

terrupted by three buffaloes who came dashing through their ranks. Livingstone's ox set off at a furious gallop. Looking back, he saw one of his men flung up into the air by a toss from The country abounds with game. Buffaloes one of the beasts, who had carried him on his and zebras by the hundred grazed on the open horns for twenty yards before giving the final spaces. At one time their procession was in-pitch. The fellow came down flat on his face, VOL. XVI.-No. 93.-X