CHAPTER 17.
Leave Shinte--Manioc Gardens--Mode of preparing the poisonous kind--Its general Use--Presents of Food--Punctiliousness of the Balonda-- Their Idols and Superstition--Dress of the Balonda--Villages beyond Lonaje--Cazembe--Our Guides and the Makololo--Night Rains--Inquiries for English cotton Goods--Intemese's Fiction--Visit from an old Man--Theft--Industry of our Guide--Loss of Pontoon--Plains covered with Water--Affection of the Balonda for their Mothers--A Night on an Island--The Grass on the Plains--Source of the Rivers--Loan of the Roofs of Huts--A Halt--Fertility of the Country through which the Lokalueje flows--Omnivorous Fish--Natives' Mode of catching them-- The Village of a Half-brother of Katema, his Speech and Present--Our Guide's Perversity--Mozenkwa's pleasant Home and Family--Clear Water of the flooded Rivers--A Messenger from Katema--Quendende's Village: his Kindness--Crop of Wool--Meet People from the Town of Matiamvo--Fireside Talk--Matiamvo's Character and Conduct--Presentation at Katema's Court: his Present, good Sense, and Appearance--Interview on the following Day--Cattle--A Feast and a Makololo Dance--Arrest of a Fugitive-- Dignified old Courtier--Katema's lax Government--Cold Wind from the North--Canaries and other singing Birds--Spiders, their Nests and Webs--Lake Dilolo--Tradition--Sagacity of Ants.
26TH.

Leaving Shinte, with eight of his men to aid in carrying our luggage, we passed, in a northerly direction, down the lovely valley on which the town stands, then went a little to the west through pretty open forest, and slept at a village of Balonda.

In the morning we had a fine range of green hills, called Saloisho, on our right, and were informed that they were rather thickly inhabited by the people of Shinte, who worked in iron, the ore of which abounds in these hills.
The country through which we passed possessed the same general character of flatness and forest that we noticed before.

The soil is dark, with a tinge of red--in some places it might be called red--and appeared very fertile.

Every valley contained villages of twenty or thirty huts, with gardens of manioc, which here is looked upon as the staff of life.