in this direction.  When looking at these skulls, I remarked to Moyara that many of them were those of mere boys.  He assented readily, and pointed them out as such.  I asked why his father had killed boys.  “To show his fierceness,” was the answer.  “Is it fierceness to kill boys?” “Yes; they had no business here.”  When I told him that this probably would insure his own death if the Matebele came again, he replied, “When I hear of their coming I shall hide the bones.”  He was evidently proud of these trophies of his father’s ferocity, and I was assured by other Batoka that few strangers ever returned from a visit to this quarter.  If a man wished to curry favor with a Batoka chief, he ascertained when a stranger was about to leave, and waylaid him at a distance from the town, and when he brought his head back to the chief, it was mounted as a trophy, the different chiefs vieing with each other as to which should mount the greatest number of skulls in his village.

If, as has been asserted, the Portuguese ever had a chain of trading stations across the country from Caconda to Tete, it must have passed through these people; but the total ignorance of the Zambesi flowing from north to south in the centre of the country, and the want of knowledge of the astonishing falls of Victoria, which excite the wonder of even the natives, together with the absence of any tradition of such a chain of stations, compel me to believe that they existed only on paper.  This conviction is strengthened by the fact that when a late attempt was made to claim the honor of crossing the continent for the Portuguese, the only proof advanced was the journey of two black traders formerly mentioned, adorned with the name of “Portuguese”.  If a chain of stations had existed, a few hundred names of the same sort might easily have been brought forward; and such is the love of barter among all the central Africans, that, had there existed a market for ivory, its value would have become known, and even that on the graves of the chiefs would not have been safe.

When about to leave Moyara on the 25th, he brought a root which, when pounded and sprinkled over the oxen, is believed to disgust the tsetse, so that it flies off without sucking the blood.  He promised to show me the plant or tree if I would give him an ox; but, as we were traveling, and could not afford the time required for the experiment, so as not to be cheated (as I had too often been by my medical friends), I deferred the investigation till I returned.  It is probably but an evanescent remedy, and capable of rendering the cattle safe during one night only.  Moyara is now quite a dependent of the Makololo, and my new party, not being thoroughly drilled, forced him to carry a tusk for them.  When I relieved him, he poured forth a shower of thanks at being allowed to go back to sleep beneath his skulls.