five hundred fowls, or feed with meal and fowls seven thousand persons for one day, giving each a fowl and 5 lbs. of meal.  When food is purchased here with either salt or coarse calico, four persons can be well fed with animal and vegetable food at the rate of one penny a day.  The chief vegetable food is the manioc and lotsa meal.  These contain a very large proportion of starch, and, when eaten alone for any length of time produce most distressing heartburn.  As we ourselves experienced in coming north, they also cause a weakness of vision, which occurs in the case of animals fed on pure gluten or amylaceous matter only.  I now discovered that when these starchy substances are eaten along with a proportion of ground-nuts, which contain a considerable quantity of oil, no injurious effects follow.

While on the way to Cabango we saw fresh tracks of elands, the first we had observed in this country.  A poor little slave girl, being ill, turned aside in the path, and, though we waited all the next day making search for her, she was lost.  She was tall and slender for her age, as if of too quick growth, and probably, unable to bear the fatigue of the march, lay down and slept in the forest, then, waking in the dark, went farther and farther astray.  The treatment of the slaves witnessed by my men certainly did not raise slaveholders in their estimation.  Their usual exclamation was “Ga ba na pelu” (They have no heart); and they added, with reference to the slaves, “Why do they let them?” as if they thought that the slaves had the natural right to rid the world of such heartless creatures, and ought to do it.  The uneasiness of the trader was continually showing itself, and, upon the whole, he had reason to be on the alert both day and night.  The carriers perpetually stole the goods intrusted to their care, and he could not openly accuse them, lest they should plunder him of all, and leave him quite in the lurch.  He could only hope to manage them after getting all the remaining goods safely into a house in Cabango; he might then deduct something from their pay for what they had purloined on the way.

Cabango (lat. 9d 31’ S., long. 20d 31’ or 32’ E.) is the dwelling-place of Muanzanza, one of Matiamvo’s subordinate chiefs.  His village consists of about two hundred huts and ten or twelve square houses, constructed of poles with grass interwoven.  The latter are occupied by half-caste Portuguese from Ambaca, agents for the Cassange traders.  The cold in the mornings was now severe to the feelings, the thermometer ranging from 58 Deg. to 60 Deg., though, when protected, sometimes standing as high as 64 Deg. at six A.M.  When the sun is well up, the thermometer in the shade rises to 80 Deg., and in the evenings it is about 78 Deg.