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. We have so often, in travelling, heard of war in front,
that we paid little attention to the assertion of Chembi, that the
whole country to the N.W. was in flight before these Mazitu, under a
chief with the rather formidable name of Mowhiriwhiri; we therefore
resolved to go on to Chinsamba's, still further in the same
direction, and hear what he said about it.
The only instrument of husbandry here is the short-handled hoe; and
about Tette the labour of tilling the soil, as represented in the
woodcut, is performed entirely by female slaves.
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