We were travelling too fast, they said; in fact, they were startled, and before they recovered their surprise, we were obliged to depart.

We suspected that Muazi had sent them orders to refuse us food, that we might thus be prevented from going into the depopulated district; but this may have been mere suspicion, the result of our own uncharitable feelings.
We spent one night at Machambwe's village, and another at Chimbuzi's.

It is seldom that we can find the headman on first entering a village.

He gets out of the way till he has heard all about the strangers, or he is actually out in the fields looking after his farms.

We once thought that when the headman came in from a visit of inspection, with his spear, bow and arrows, they had been all taken up for the occasion, and that he had all the while been hidden in some hut slily watching till he heard that the strangers might be trusted; but on listening to the details given by these men of the appearances of the crops at different parts, and the astonishing minuteness of the speakers' topography, we were persuaded that in some cases we were wrong, and felt rather humiliated.