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Two months after this the lake was visited by Dr Roscher, who was unaware of Dr Livingstone's and Dr Kirk's discovery; unhappily he was murdered on his road back towards the Rovuma.
He was loud in his protestations against this, and strongly recommended the port of Mikindany, as quite near to Rovuma, Nyassa, and the country I wished to visit, besides being a good landing-place, and the finest port on the coast. Thither we went, and on the same evening landed all our animals in Mikindany bay, which lies only twenty-five miles N. of Rovuma. The Penguin then left.
One merchant at Tette, with whom we were well acquainted, sent into the interior three hundred Manganja women to be sold for ivory, and another sent a hundred and fifty. Arrival of H.M.S. "Gorgon" Dr. Livingstone's new steamer and Mrs. Livingstone Death of Mrs. Livingstone Voyage to Johanna and the Rovuma An attack upon the "Pioneer's" boats.
The rains are expected here when the Pleiades appear in the east soon after sunset; they go by the same name here as further south Lemila or the "hoeings." In the route along the Rovuma, we pass among people who are so well supplied with white calico by the slave-trade from Kilwa, that it is quite a drug in the market: we cannot get food for it.
We now began to descend the northern slope down to the Rovuma, and a glimpse could occasionally be had of the country; it seemed covered with great masses of dark green forest, but the undulations occasionally looked like hills, and here and there a Sterculia had put on yellow foliage in anticipation of the coming winter.
A poor little girl was left in one of the huts from being too weak to walk, probably an orphan. The Arab slave-traders flee from the path as soon as they hear of our approach. The Rovuma is from 56 to 80 yards wide here. No food to be had for either love or money.
Under the care of Doctor Barclay the stragglers soon recovered sufficiently to give a coherent account of their misadventures. They were the observer and pilot of one of the seaplanes attached to the Rovuma column, their base being close to a large sheet of water formed by the inundation of the river. Out reconnoitring they had discovered a party of Huns and had bombed them very effectually.
In 1871 consequently two years ago a French traveler set out, under the auspices of the Paris Geographical Society, with the intention of crossing Africa from the west to the east. His point of departure was precisely the mouth of the Congo. His point of arrival would be as near as possible to Cape Deldago, at the mouths of the Rovuma, whose course he would descend.
An Arab, they said, once built a boat above the rapids, and sent it down full of slaves; but it was broken to pieces in these upper narrows. Many still maintained that the Rovuma came from Nyassa, and that it is very narrow as it issues out of the lake.
An Arab party, hearing of our approach, took a circuitous route among the mountains to avoid coming in contact with us. In travelling to Pezimba's we had commenced our western descent to the Lake, for we were now lower than Magola's by 300 feet. We crossed many rivulets and the Lochesi, a good-sized stream. The watershed parts some streams for Loendi and some for Rovuma.