Katema promised us the aid of some of his people as carriers, but his rule is not very stringent or efficient, for they refused to turn out for the work.  They were Balobale; and he remarked on their disobedience that, though he received them as fugitives, they did not feel grateful enough to obey, and if they continued rebellious he must drive them back whence they came; but there is little fear of that, as all the chiefs are excessively anxious to collect men in great numbers around them.  These Balobale would not go, though our guide Shakatwala ran after some of them with a drawn sword.  This degree of liberty to rebel was very striking to us, as it occurred in a country where people may be sold, and often are so disposed of when guilty of any crime; and we well knew that open disobedience like this among the Makololo would be punished with death without much ceremony.

On Sunday, the 19th, both I and several of our party were seized with fever, and I could do nothing but toss about in my little tent, with the thermometer above 90 Deg., though this was the beginning of winter, and my men made as much shade as possible by planting branches of trees all round and over it.  We have, for the first time in my experience in Africa, had a cold wind from the north.  All the winds from that quarter are hot, and those from the south are cold, but they seldom blow from either direction.

20Th.  We were glad to get away, though not on account of any scarcity of food; for my men, by giving small presents of meat as an earnest of their sincerity, formed many friendships with the people of Katema.  We went about four or five miles in a N.N.W. direction, then two in a westerly one, and came round the small end of Lake Dilolo.  It seemed, as far as we could at this time discern, to be like a river a quarter of a mile wide.  It is abundantly supplied with fish and hippopotami; the broad part, which we did not this time see, is about three miles wide, and the lake is almost seven or eight long.  If it be thought strange that I did not go a few miles to see the broad part, which, according to Katema, had never been visited by any of the traders, it must be remembered that in consequence of fever I had eaten nothing for two entire days, and, instead of sleep, the whole of the nights were employed in incessant drinking of water, and I was now so glad to get on in the journey and see some of my fellow fever-patients crawling along, that I could not brook the delay, which astronomical observations for accurately determining the geographical position of this most interesting spot would have occasioned.

We observed among the people of Katema a love for singing-birds.  One pretty little songster, named “cabazo”, a species of canary, is kept in very neatly made cages, having traps on the top to entice its still free companions.  On asking why they kept them in confinement, “Because they sing sweetly,” was the answer.  They feed them on the lotsa (’Pennisetum typhoideum’), of which great quantities are cultivated as food for man, and these canaries plague the gardeners here, very much in the same way as our sparrows do at home.