It was the 25th of April, 1860, before we reached Tette; here also the crops were luxuriant, and the people said that they had not had such abundance since 1856, the year when Dr.Livingstone came down the river.

It is astonishing to any one who has seen the works for irrigation in other countries, as at the Cape and in Egypt, that no attempt has ever been made to lead out the water either of the Zambesi or any of its tributaries; no machinery has ever been used to raise it even from the stream, but droughts and starvations are endured, as if they were inevitable dispensations of Providence, incapable of being mitigated.
Feeling in honour bound to return with those who had been the faithful companions of Dr.Livingstone, in 1856, and to whose guardianship and services was due the accomplishment of a journey which all the Portuguese at Tette had previously pronounced impossible, the requisite steps were taken to convey them to their homes.
We laid the ship alongside of the island Kanyimbe, opposite Tette; and, before starting for the country of the Makololo, obtained a small plot of land, to form a garden for the two English sailors who were to remain in charge during our absence.

We furnished them with a supply of seeds, and they set to work with such zeal, that they certainly merited success.
Their first attempt at African horticulture met with failure from a most unexpected source; every seed was dug up and the inside of it eaten by mice.

"Yes," said an old native, next morning, on seeing the husks, "that is what happens this month; for it is the mouse month, and the seed should have been sown last mouth, when I sowed mine." The sailors, however, sowed more next day; and, being determined to outwit the mice, they this time covered the beds over with grass.

The onions, with other seeds of plants cultivated by the Portuguese, are usually planted in the beginning of April, in order to have the advantage of the cold season; the wheat a little later, for the same reason.