The Makololo were eager to travel fast, because they wanted to be back in time to hoe their fields before the rains, and also because their wives needed looking after.
In going in the first instance N.E.from the uppermost Cataract, we followed in a measure the great bend of the river towards the foot of Mount Zomba.

Here we had a view of its most imposing side, the west, with the plateau some 3000 feet high, stretching away to its south, and Mounts Chiradzuru and Mochiru towering aloft to the sky.

From that goodly highland station, it was once hoped by the noble Mackenzie, who, for largeness of heart and loving disposition, really deserved to be called the "Bishop of Central Africa," that light and liberty would spread to all the interior.

We still think it may be a centre for civilizing influences; for any one descending from these cool heights, and stepping into a boat on the Upper Shire, can sail three hundred miles without a check into the heart of Africa.
We passed through a tract of country covered with mopane trees, where the hard baked soil refused to let the usual thick crops of grass grow; and here we came upon very many tracks of buffaloes, elephants, antelopes, and the spoor of one lion.

An ox we drove along with us, as provision for the way, was sorely bitten by the tsetse.