Next morning our guides went only about a mile, and then told us they would return home.  I expected this when paying them beforehand, in accordance with the entreaties of the Makololo, who are rather ignorant of the world.  Very energetic remonstrances were addressed to the guides, but they slipped off one by one in the thick forest through which we were passing, and I was glad to hear my companions coming to the conclusion that, as we were now in parts visited by traders, we did not require the guides, whose chief use had been to prevent misapprehension of our objects in the minds of the villagers.  The country was somewhat more undulating now than it had been, and several fine small streams flowed in deep woody dells.  The trees are very tall and straight, and the forests gloomy and damp; the ground in these solitudes is quite covered with yellow and brown mosses, and light-colored lichens clothe all the trees.  The soil is extremely fertile, being generally a black loam covered with a thick crop of tall grasses.  We passed several villages too.  The head man of a large one scolded us well for passing, when he intended to give us food.  Where slave-traders have been in the habit of coming, they present food, then demand three or four times its value as a custom.  We were now rather glad to get past villages without intercourse with the inhabitants.

We were traveling W.N.W., and all the rivulets we here crossed had a northerly course, and were reported to fall into the Kasai or Loke; most of them had the peculiar boggy banks of the country.  As we were now in the alleged latitude of the Coanza, I was much astonished at the entire absence of any knowledge of that river among the natives of this quarter.  But I was then ignorant of the fact that the Coanza rises considerably to the west of this, and has a comparatively short course from its source to the sea.

The famous Dr. Lacerda seems to have labored under the same mistake as myself, for he recommended the government of Angola to establish a chain of forts along the banks of that river, with a view to communication with the opposite coast.  As a chain of forts along its course would lead southward instead of eastward, we may infer that the geographical data within reach of that eminent man were no better than those according to which I had directed my course to the Coanza where it does not exist.

26Th.  We spent Sunday on the banks of the Quilo or Kweelo, here a stream of about ten yards wide.  It runs in a deep glen, the sides of which are almost five hundred yards of slope, and rocky, the rocks being hardened calcareous tufa lying on clay shale and sandstone below, with a capping of ferruginous conglomerate.  The scenery would have been very pleasing, but fever took away much of the joy of life, and severe daily intermittents rendered me very weak and always glad to recline.