A little indigestible porridge, of scarcely any taste, is now my fare, and it makes me dream of better.
_27th December, 1866._--Our guide asked for his cloth to wear on the way, as it was wet and raining, and his bark cloth was a miserable covering.

I consented, and he bolted on the first opportunity; the forest being so dense he was soon out of reach of pursuit: he had been advised to this by Kavimba, and nothing else need have been expected.
We then followed the track of a travelling party of Babisa, but the grass springs up over the paths, and it was soon lost: the rain had fallen early in these parts, and the grass was all in seed.

In the afternoon we came to the hills in the north where Nyamazi rises, and went up the bed of a rivulet for some time, and then ascended out of the valley.

At the bottom of the ascent and in the rivulet the shingle stratum was sometimes fifty feet thick, then as we ascended we met mica schist tilted on edge, then grey gneiss, and last an igneous trap among quartz rocks, with a great deal of bright mica and talc in them.
On resting near the top of the first ascent two honey hunters came to us.

They were using the honey-guide as an aid, the bird came to us as they arrived, waited quietly during the half-hour they smoked and chatted, and then went on with them.[41] The tsetse flies, which were very numerous at the bottom, came up the ascent with us, but as we increased our altitude by another thousand feet they gradually dropped off and left us: only one remained in the evening, and he seemed out of spirits.