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The Lokhopa, for instance, was asserted by all the men at Moamba's to flow into Lokholu, and then into a river going to Liemba, but a young wife of Moamba, who seemed very intelligent, maintained that Lokhopa and Lokholu went to the Chambezé; I therefore put it down thus.
Our man from Moamba here refused to go further, and we were put on the wrong track by the headman wading through three marshes, each at least half a mile broad. The people of the first village we came to shut their gates on us, then came running after us; but we declined to enter their village: it is a way of showing their independence. We made our sheds on a height in spite of their protests.
It is probably a watershed between streams going to the Chambezé and those that go to the northern rivers. We have the Locopa, Loömbé, Nikéléngé, then Lofubu or Lovu; the last goes north into Liembe, but accounts are very confused. The Chambezé rises in the Mambivé country, which is north-east of Moamba, but near to it.
The level plateaus between the rivers, both east and west of the Moamba, across which we traveled, were less woody than the river glens. The trees on them are scraggy and wide apart. There are also large open grass-covered spaces, with scarcely even a bush. On these rather dreary intervals between the rivers it was impossible not to be painfully struck with the absence of all animal life.
On coming into his hut I stated that I had given him four times the value of his cow, but if he thought otherwise, let us take the four cloths to his brother Moamba, and if he said that I had not given enough, I would buy a cow and send it back. This he did not relish at all. "Oh, great Englishman! why should we refer a dispute to an inferior. I am the great chief of all this country.
He does not like this, but it is true; he would not have entered a village of Casembe or Moamba or Chikumbi as he did Chapi's man's village: the people here are simply men of more metal than he imagined, and his folly in beginning a war in which, if possible, his slaves will slip through his hands is apparent to all, even to himself.
The country through which we were travelling was covered with a cindery-looking volcanic tufa, and might be called "Katakaumena." The description we received of the Moamba Falls seemed to promise something grand.
Our return path was much nearer the Zambesi than that of our ascent, in fact, as near as the rough country would allow, but we left it twice before we reached Sinamane's, in order to see Kalunda and a Fall called Moomba, or Moamba.
We encamped on the Meningu's right bank in forest, sending word to Moamba that we meant to do so. He sent a deputation, first of all his young men, to bring us; then old men, and lastly he came himself with about sixty followers.
I had a long talk with Moamba, a big, stout, public-house-looking person, with a slight outward cast in his left eye, but intelligent and hearty. I presented him with a cloth; and he gave me as much maëre meal as a man could carry, with a large basket of ground-nuts.
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