As it was necessary to leave most of my men at this place, Major Sicard gave them a portion of land on which to cultivate their own food, generously supplying them with corn in the mean time.  He also said that my young men might go and hunt elephants in company with his servants, and purchase goods with both the ivory and dried meat, in order that they might have something to take with them on their return to Sekeletu.  The men were delighted with his liberality, and soon sixty or seventy of them set off to engage in this enterprise.  There was no calico to be had at this time in Tete, but the commandant handsomely furnished my men with clothing.  I was in a state of want myself, and, though I pressed him to take payment in ivory for both myself and men, he refused all recompense.  I shall ever remember his kindness with deep gratitude.  He has written me, since my arrival in England, that my men had killed four elephants in the course of two months after my departure.

On the day of my arrival I was visited by all the gentlemen of the village, both white and colored, including the padre.  Not one of them had any idea as to where the source of the Zambesi lay.  They sent for the best traveled natives, but none of them knew the river even as far as Kansala.  The father of one of the rebels who had been fighting against them had been a great traveler to the southwest, and had even heard of our visit to Lake Ngami; but he was equally ignorant with all the others that the Zambesi flowed in the centre of the country.  They had, however, more knowledge of the country to the north of Tete than I had.  One man, who had gone to Cazembe with Major Monteiro, stated that he had seen the Luapura or Loapula flowing past the town of that chieftain into the Luameji or Leeambye, but imagined that it found its way, somehow or other, into Angola.  The fact that sometimes rivers were seen to flow like this toward the centre of the country, led geographers to the supposition that inner Africa was composed of elevated sandy plains, into which rivers ran and were lost.  One of the gentlemen present, Senhor Candido, had visited a lake 45 days to the N.N.W. of Tete, which is probably the Lake Maravi of geographers, as in going thither they pass through the people of that name.  The inhabitants of its southern coast are named Shiva; those on the north, Mujao; and they call the lake Nyanja or Nyanje, which simply means a large water, or bed of a large river.  A high mountain stands in the middle of it, called Murombo or Murombola, which is inhabited by people who have much cattle.  He stated that he crossed the Nyanja at a narrow part, and was 36 hours in the passage.  The canoes were punted the whole way, and, if we take the rate about two miles per hour, it may be sixty or seventy miles in breadth.  The country all round was composed of level plains covered with grass, and, indeed, in going thither they traveled seven or eight days without wood, and cooked their food with grass and stalks of