When He Decided To
Settle At Magomero, It Was Thought Desirable, To Prevent The Country
From Being Depopulated, To Visit The Ajawa Chief, And To Try And
Persuade Him To Give Up His Slaving And Kidnapping Courses, And Turn
The Energies Of His People To Peaceful Pursuits.
On the morning of the 22nd we were informed that the Ajawa were near,
and were burning a village a few miles off.
Leaving the rescued
slaves, we moved off to seek an interview with these scourges of the
country. On our way we met crowds of Manganja fleeing from the war
in front. These poor fugitives from the slave hunt had, as usual, to
leave all the food they possessed, except the little they could carry
on their heads. We passed field after field of Indian corn or beans,
standing ripe for harvesting, but the owners were away. The villages
were all deserted: one where we breakfasted two years before, and
saw a number of men peacefully weaving cloth, and, among ourselves,
called it the "Paisley of the hills," was burnt; the stores of corn
were poured out in cartloads, and scattered all over the plain, and
all along the paths, neither conquerors nor conquered having been
able to convey it away. About two o'clock we saw the smoke of
burning villages, and heard triumphant shouts, mingled with the wail
of the Manganja women, lamenting over their slain. The Bishop then
engaged us in fervent prayer; and, on rising from our knees, we saw a
long line of Ajawa warriors, with their captives, coming round the
hill-side. The first of the returning conquerors were entering their
own village below, and we heard women welcoming them back with
"lillilooings." The Ajawa headman left the path on seeing us, and
stood on an anthill to obtain a complete view of our party. We
called out that we had come to have an interview with them, but some
of the Manganja who followed us shouted "Our Chibisa is come:"
Chibisa being well known as a great conjurer and general. The Ajawa
ran off yelling and screaming, "Nkondo! Nkondo!" (War! War!) We
heard the words of the Manganja, but they did not strike us at the
moment as neutralizing all our assertions of peace. The captives
threw down their loads on the path, and fled to the hills: and a
large body of armed men came running up from the village, and in a
few seconds they were all around us, though mostly concealed by the
projecting rocks and long grass. In vain we protested that we had
not come to fight, but to talk with them. They would not listen,
having, as we remembered afterwards, good reason, in the cry of "Our
Chibisa." Flushed with recent victory over three villages, and
confident of an easy triumph over a mere handful of men, they began
to shoot their poisoned arrows, sending them with great force upwards
of a hundred yards, and wounding one of our followers through the
arm. Our retiring slowly up the ascent from the village only made
them more eager to prevent our escape; and, in the belief that this
retreat was evidence of fear, they closed upon us in bloodthirsty
fury. Some came within fifty yards, dancing hideously; others having
quite surrounded us, and availing themselves of the rocks and long
grass hard by, were intent on cutting us off, while others made off
with their women and a large body of slaves. Four were armed with
muskets, and we were obliged in self-defence to return their fire and
drive them off. When they saw the range of rifles, they very soon
desisted, and ran away; but some shouted to us from the hills the
consoling intimation, that they would follow, and kill us where we
slept. Only two of the captives escaped to us, but probably most of
those made prisoners that day fled elsewhere in the confusion. We
returned to the village which we had left in the morning, after a
hungry, fatiguing, and most unpleasant day.
Though we could not blame ourselves for the course we had followed,
we felt sorry for what had happened. It was the first time we had
ever been attacked by the natives or come into collision with them;
though we had always taken it for granted that we might be called
upon to act in self-defence, we were on this occasion less prepared
than usual, no game having been expected here. The men had only a
single round of cartridge each; their leader had no revolver, and the
rifle he usually fired with was left at the ship to save it from the
damp of the season. Had we known better the effect of slavery and
murder on the temper of these bloodthirsty marauders, we should have
tried messages and presents before going near them.
The old chief, Chinsunse, came on a visit to us next day, and pressed
the Bishop to come and live with him. "Chigunda," he said, "is but a
child, and the Bishop ought to live with the father rather than with
the child." But the old man's object was so evidently to have the
Mission as a shield against the Ajawa, that his invitation was
declined. While begging us to drive away the marauders, that he
might live in peace, he adopted the stratagem of causing a number of
his men to rush into the village, in breathless haste, with the news
that the Ajawa were close upon us. And having been reminded that we
never fought, unless attacked, as we were the day before, and that we
had come among them for the purpose of promoting peace, and of
teaching them to worship the Supreme, to give up selling His
children, and to cultivate other objects for barter than each other,
he replied, in a huff, "Then I am dead already."
The Bishop, feeling, as most Englishmen would, at the prospect of the
people now in his charge being swept off into slavery by hordes of
men-stealers, proposed to go at once to the rescue of the captive
Manganja, and drive the marauding Ajawa out of the country.
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