the beasts, birds, and insects are strange; the sky itself has a different colour, and the heavens at night glitter with novel constellations.

The upper course of the Zambesi, when the hill regions are reached, possesses scenery of a very striking character, made still more so by the variety and beauty of the birds :

The birds, from the novelty of their notes and plumage, arrest the attention of a traveller perhaps more than the peculiarities of the scenery. The dark woods resound with the lively and exultant song of the kinghunter (Halcyon striolata), as he sits perched on high among the trees. As the steamer moves on through the winding channel, a pretty little heron or bright kingfisher darts out in alarm from the edge of the bank, flies on ahead a short distance, and settles quietly down to be again frightened off in a few seconds as we approach. The magnificent fishhawk (Haliaetus vocifer) sits on the top of a mangrove-tree, digesting his morning meal, and is clearly unwilling to stir until the imminence of the danger compels him at last to spread his great wings for flight. The glossy ibis, acute of ear to a remarkable degree, hears from afar the unwonted sound of the paddles, and, springing from the mud where his family has been quietly feasting, is off, screaming out his loud, harsh, and defiant ha! ha ha! long before the danger is near.

The winter birds of passage, such as the yellow wagtail and blue arongo shrikes, have all gone, and other kinds have come; the brown kite with his piping like a boatswain's whistle, the spotted cuckoo with a call like "pula," and the roller and hornbill with their loud high notes, are occasionally distinctly heard, though generally this harsher music is half drowned in the volume of sweet sounds poured forth from many a throbbing throat, which makes an African Christmas seem like an English May. Some birds of the weaver kind have laid aside their winter garments of a sober brown, and appear in a gay summer dress of scarlet and jet black: others have passed from green to bright yellow with patches like black velvet. The brisk little cock whydah-bird with a pink bill, after assuming his summer garb of black and white, has graceful plumes attached to his new coat; his finery, as some believe, is to please at least seven hen birds with which he is said to live. Birds of song are not entirely confined to villages; but they have in Africa so often been observed to congregate around villages, as to produce the impression that song and beauty may have been intended to please the ear and eye of man, for it is only when we approach the haunts of men that we know that the time of the singing of birds is come. A red-throated black weaver bird comes in flocks a little later, wearing a long train of magnificent plumes, which seem to be greatly in his way when working for his dinner among the long grass. A goatsucker or night jar (Cometornis vexillarius), only ten inches long from head to tail, also attracts the eye in November by a couple of feathers twenty-six inches long in the middle of each wing, the ninth and tenth from the outside. They give a slow wavy motion

to

to the wings, and evidently retard his flight, for at other times he flies so quick that no boy could hit him with a stone. The natives can kill a hare by throwing a club, and make good running shots, but no one ever struck a night jar in common dress, though in the evening twilight they settle close to one's feet. What may be the object of the flight of the male bird being retarded we cannot tell. The males alone possess these feathers, and only for a time.'

The honey-guide is perhaps the most remarkable for its intelligence of all the African birds :

'How is it that every member of its family has learned that all men, white or black, are fond of honey! The instant the little fellow gets a glimpse of a man, he hastens to greet him with the hearty invitation to come to a bees'-hive and take some honey. He flies on in the proper direction, perches on a tree, and looks back to see if you are following; then on to another and another, until he guides you to the spot. If you do not accept his first invitation he follows you with pressing importunities, quite as anxious to lure the stranger to the bees'-hive as other birds are to draw him away from their own nests. Except while on the march, our men were sure to accept the invitation, and manifested the same by a peculiar responsive whistle, meaning, as they said, "All right, go ahead; we are coming." The bird never deceived them, but always guided them to a hive of bees, though some had but little honey in store.'

Equally remarkable in its intelligence is the bird that guards the buffalo and rhinoceros ::-

The grass is often so tall and dense that one could go close up to these animals quite unperceived; but the guardian bird, sitting on the beast, sees the approach of danger, flaps its wings and screams, which causes its bulky charge to rush off from a foe he has neither seen nor heard; for his reward the vigilant little watcher has the pick of the parasites of his fat friend.'

The Portuguese possess two stations or forts on the Zambesione at Senna, the other at Tette; but it appears that they hold both of these positions rather by sufferance than by the prestige of their name or by their power in Africa, for they are said to pay a species of black-mail in the form of presents of beads and brass wire to the neighbouring tribes for permission to reside in the country; nor do the commercial advantages of the Portuguese settlements appear to compensate the cost of their maintenance. The natural resources of the district are nevertheless very great. Indigo grows wild on the banks of the river. The streets of Tette are overgrown with the plant as with a weed. The sugar-cane thrives admirably almost in a wild state. Caoutchouc and columba-root are found in abundance. Iron ore is

Used extensively as a mordant for colours.

extensively

extensively worked by the natives, and excellent coal might be obtained in abundance, one seam which was seen cropping out on the banks of the river measuring twenty-five feet in thickness. At one period the produce of the gold-washings on the Zambesi was considerable, but its tributaries have never been 'prospected,' nor has any but the rudest machinery been yet used.

The most interesting portion of Dr. Livingstone's last expedition, after the discovery of the great Nyassa Lake, is the exploration of the river Shirè,* the great northern tributary of the Zambesi, which it joins at about a hundred miles from the sea. The Portuguese are said to have known nothing of this stream, nor, it is believed, was the Shirè ever before ascended by Europeans: certainly the existence of the lake Shirwa, situated not far from the river's bank, had never even been heard of by them. The natives here were entirely ignorant of the existence of white men; and on the first appearance of the exploring party, the men were excessively timid, the women fled into the huts and closed the doors, and even the hens took wing and left their chickens in dismay. After ascending the river for a hundred miles, the further progress of the party was arrested by cataracts, which Dr. Livingstone named after the President of the Royal Geographical Society; but it was not deemed prudent by the exploring party on their first visit to push their explorations beyond the Murchison Cataracts. A second excursion up the Shirè was made in 1859, when the natives were less alarmed, and Chibisa, the chief of the most important of the tribes, at once entered into friendly negotiations, evincing great intelligence, shrewdness and good feeling. He was a firm believer in the divine ordination of royalty. He was, he said, but a common man when his father died; but directly after he succeeded to his high office, he was conscious of power passing into his head and down his back; he felt it enter, and then he knew that he was a chief possessed of wisdom and clothed with authority.

Leaving their steamer, Drs. Livingstone and Kirk, with a party of natives, then proceeded on foot to the lake Shirwa, which they found to be a considerable body of bitter and slightly brackish water, abounding in fish, crocodiles, and hippopotami. This lake, surrounded by lofty mountains, has no outlet, although thirty miles in breadth and sixty in length. Its elevation above the sea was found to be about 1800 feet. It is separated from the great lake Nyassa by a spit of land, over

* Pronounced Shirrey.

which it is probable that the surplus water of the Shirwa runs during floods.

The river Shirè is narrower than the Zambesi, but deeper and more easily navigated, possessing a channel of not less than five feet at all seasons for a distance of two hundred miles from the sea. It drains an exceedingly fertile valley flanked by finely-wooded hills. The stream in some places runs like a mill-race with a water-power sufficient to turn all the mills in Great Britain. Nowhere in his travels did Dr. Livingstone observe so large an extent and so high a degree of cultivation. Maize, yams, hemp, pumpkins, sweet-potatoes, peas, sugar-cane, lemons, ginger, tobacco, and cotton abounded, and the capability of the country for the production of cotton can, he thinks, scarcely be exaggerated. From the samples sent to Manchester it has been pronounced to be of the finest quality, and 300 lbs. of clean cotton-wool were purchased for less than a penny per pound; and it appears that free labour is as easily to be procured as in any country in the world. The discovery of this rich and denselypeopled district, with its fine navigable river, is perhaps the most important of the results of Dr. Livingstone's enterprise. We have opened,' he says, in a despatch addressed to the Foreign Office, 'a cotton and sugar district of great and unknown extent, and which really seems to afford reasonable prospect of great commercial benefit to our own country; it presents facilities for commanding a large section of the slavemarket on the coast, and offers a fair hope of its suppression by lawful commerce.'

The basin of the Shirè is characterised by a series of terraces, the first being below the Murchison Falls, the second a plateau two thousand, and the third three thousand feet in altitude, it must therefore possess a considerable variety of climate, but cotton is extensively cultivated on all the terraces, and the population was everywhere observed to be engaged in picking, cleaning, or spinning it. As it is doubtful whether the cotton cultivation of the former Slave States of America will ever revive under a system of free labour, any addition to our knowledge of the districts where a material so essential for maintaining our manufacturing pre-eminence can be easily and cheaply produced becomes of the highest importance. The people have no cattle, but the quantity of wild animals is prodigious, and enormous herds of elephants roam over the marshes and plains.

It was on one of the elevated plateaux of the Shire valley that the enterprise known as the Universities' Mission had its first station, and here was the residence of England's first

missionary

missionary Bishop, the lamented Mackenzie. The remains of one of the most devoted of English Churchmen lie buried under the shade of one of the giants of the African forest and within a few yards of the rippling waters of the Shire. Taking a false estimate of the duties of his position, he unhappily gave an active armed support to a tribe which had been attacked by another for the purpose of reducing it to slavery, and he thus engaged in a native war, converting a religious mission, the object of which was simply to instruct and civilise by Christian precept and example, into an association for the forcible liberation of slaves. The country was, as it afterwards proved, altogether unsuited for a missionary experiment such as that projected by the Universities, being in a chronic state of warfare in consequence of the prevalence of the slavetrade; and the expedition was, after undergoing many privations and much suffering, very properly withdrawn some months after the lamented death of Bishop Mackenzie by fever and the loss of other valuable lives.

The discovery of the great Lake Nyassa would alone place Dr. Livingstone high in the rank of African explorers. It would have been first reached by Captain Burton if he had not been misled by erroneous information; for, having been told by some natives that the lake which he was directed by his instructions to seek was of inconsiderable dimensions, he altered his course from west to north-west, and thus came upon the Lake Tanganyika instead. The journey to the Nyassa was effected by an overland march of twenty days from the Shire. The southern end of the Nyassa extends to 14° 25' south latitude. The stay made at the lake on the first visit of the travellers was short; it was found to be in the very centre of a district which supplies the markets of the coast with slaves. A second visit to the lake was made in the following year. The length of the Nyassa was found to be two hundred miles and its breadth about fifty. It is liable to sudden and violent storms, in one of which the travellers were nearly shipwrecked. The difference of its level throughout the year is only three feet although it receives the waters of five rivers on its western side. The principal affluent is believed to be at its northern extremity.

Never before in Africa had the travellers seen anything like the dense population on the shores of the Nyassa. Towards the southern end there was observed an almost unbroken chain of villages, crowds assembled to gaze at the novel spectacle of a boat under sail, and whenever the party landed they were immediately surrounded by men, women, and children,

all