Here crowds of men and women were observed to perform
their ablutions daily in the stream that ran past their villages; and
this we have observed elsewhere to be a common custom with both
Manganja and Ajawa.
Before we started on the morning of the 1st September, Katosa sent an
enormous calabash of beer, containing at least three gallons, and
then came and wished us to "stop a day and eat with him." On
explaining to him the reasons for our haste, he said that he was in
the way by which travellers usually passed, he never stopped them in
their journeys, but would like to look at us for a day. On our
promising to rest a little with him on our return, he gave us about
two pecks of rice, and three guides to conduct us to a subordinate
female chief, Nkwinda, living on the borders of the Lake in front.
The Ajawa, from having taken slaves down to Quillimane and
Mosambique, knew more of us than Katosa did. Their muskets were
carefully polished, and never out of these slaver's hands for a
moment, though in the chiefs presence. We naturally felt
apprehensive that we should never see Katosa again. A migratory
afflatus seems to have come over the Ajawa tribes. Wars among
themselves, for the supply of the Coast slave-trade, are said to have
first set them in motion. The usual way in which they have advanced
among the Manganja has been by slave-trading in a friendly way.
Then, professing to wish to live as subjects, they have been welcomed
as guests, and the Manganja, being great agriculturists, have been
able to support considerable bodies of these visitors for a time.
When the provisions became scarce, the guests began to steal from the
fields; quarrels arose in consequence, and, the Ajawa having
firearms, their hosts got the worst of it, and were expelled from
village after village, and out of their own country. The Manganja
were quite as bad in regard to slave-trading as the Ajawa, but had
less enterprise, and were much more fond of the home pursuits of
spinning, weaving, smelting iron, and cultivating the soil, than of
foreign travel. The Ajawa had little of a mechanical turn, and not
much love for agriculture, but were very keen traders and travellers.
This party seemed to us to be in the first or friendly stage of
intercourse with Katosa; and, as we afterwards found, he was fully
alive to the danger.
Our course was shaped towards the N.W., and we traversed a large
fertile tract of rich soil extensively cultivated, but dotted with
many gigantic thorny acacias which had proved too large for the
little axes of the cultivators. After leaving Nkwinda, the first
village we spent a night at in the district Ngabi was that of Chembi,
and it had a stockade around it. The Azitu or Mazitu were said to be
ravaging the country to the west of us, and no one was safe except in
a stockade.
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