We Therefore Started Back On Our Old Route, And,
After Three Hours' March, Found Some Babisa In A Village Who Promised
To Lead Us To Chinsamba.
We meet with these keen traders everywhere.
They are easily known by
a line of horizontal cicatrices, each half an inch long, down the
middle of the forehead and chin. They often wear the hair collected
in a mass on the upper and back part of the head, while it is all
shaven off the forehead and temples. The Babisa and Waiau or Ajawa
heads have more of the round bullet-shape than those of the Manganja,
indicating a marked difference in character; the former people being
great traders and travellers, the latter being attached to home and
agriculture. The Manganja usually intrust their ivory to the Babisa
to be sold at the Coast, and complain that the returns made never
come up to the high prices which they hear so much about before it is
sent. In fact, by the time the Babisa return, the expenses of the
journey, in which they often spend a month or two at a place where
food abounds, usually eat up all the profits.
Our new companions were trading in tobacco, and had collected
quantities of the round balls, about the size of nine pounder shot,
into which it is formed. One of them owned a woman, whose child had
been sold that morning for tobacco. The mother followed him, weeping
silently, for hours along the way we went; she seemed to be well
known, for at several hamlets, the women spoke to her with evident
sympathy; we could do nothing to alleviate her sorrow - the child
would be kept until some slave-trader passed, and then sold for
calico. The different cases of slave-trading observed by us are
mentioned, in order to give a fair idea of its details.
We spent the first night, after leaving the slave route, at the
village of Nkoma, among a section of Manganja, called Machewa, or
Macheba, whose district extends to the Bua.
The next village at which we slept was also that of a Manganja smith.
It was a beautiful spot, shaded with tall euphorbia-trees. The
people at first fled, but after a short time returned, and ordered us
off to a stockade of Babisa, about a mile distant. We preferred to
remain in the smooth shady spot outside the hamlet, to being pent up
in a treeless stockade. Twenty or thirty men came dropping in, all
fully armed with bows and arrows, some of them were at least six feet
four in height, yet these giants were not ashamed to say, "We thought
that you were Mazitu, and, being afraid, ran away." Their orders to
us were evidently inspired by terror, and so must the refusal of the
headman to receive a cloth, or lend us a hut have been; but as we
never had the opportunity of realizing what feelings a successful
invasion would produce, we did not know whether to blame them or not.
The headman, a tall old smith, with an enormous, well-made knife of
his own workmanship, came quietly round, and, inspecting the shelter,
which, from there being abundance of long grass and bushes near, our
men put up for us in half an hour, gradually changed his tactics,
and, in the evening, presented us with a huge pot of porridge and a
deliciously well-cooked fowl, and made an apology for having been so
rude to strangers, and a lamentation that he had been so foolish as
to refuse the fine cloth we had offered. Another cloth was of course
presented, and we had the pleasure of parting good friends next day.
Our guide, who belonged to the stockade near to which we had slept,
declined to risk himself further than his home. While waiting to
hire another, Masiko attempted to purchase a goat, and had nearly
concluded the bargain, when the wife of the would-be seller came
forward, and said to her husband, "You appear as if you were
unmarried; selling a goat without consulting your wife; what an
insult to a woman! What sort of man are you?" Masiko urged the man,
saying, "Let us conclude the bargain, and never mind her;" but he
being better instructed, replied, "No, I have raised a host against
myself already," and refused.
We now pushed on to the east, so as to get down to the shores of the
Lake, and into the parts where we were known. The country was
beautiful, well wooded, and undulating, but the villages were all
deserted; and the flight of the people seemed to have been quite
recent, for the grain was standing in the corn-safes untouched. The
tobacco, though ripe, remained uncut in the gardens, and the whole
country was painfully quiet: the oppressive stillness quite unbroken
by the singing of birds, or the shrill calls of women watching their
corn.
On passing a beautiful village, called Bangwe, surrounded by shady
trees, and placed in a valley among mountains, we were admiring the
beauty of the situation, when some of the much dreaded Mazitu, with
their shields, ran out of the hamlet, from which we were a mile
distant. They began to scream to their companions to give us chase.
Without quickening our pace we walked on, and soon were in a wood,
through which the footpath we were following led. The first
intimation we had of the approaching Mazitu was given by the Johanna
man, Zachariah, who always lagged behind, running up, screaming as if
for his life. The bundles were all put in one place to be defended;
and Masiko and Dr. Livingstone walked a few paces back to meet the
coming foe. Masiko knelt down anxious to fire, but was ordered not
to do so. For a second or two dusky forms appeared among the trees,
and the Mazitu were asked, in their own tongue, "What do you want?"
Masiko adding, "What do you say?" No answer was given, but the dark
shade in the forest vanished.
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