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.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.On the West Coast a double-handled hoe is employed.Here the small hoe is seen in the hands of both men and women.In other parts of Africa a hoe with a handle four feet long is used, but the plough is quite unknown.
In illustration of the manner in which the native knowledge of agriculture strikes an honest intelligent observer, it may be mentioned that the first time good Bishop Mackenzie beheld how well the fields of the Manganja were cultivated on the hills, he remarked to Dr. Livingstone, then his fellow-traveller--"When telling the people in England what were my objects in going out to Africa, I stated that, among other things, I meant to teach these people agriculture; but I now see that they know far more about it than I
do."This, we take it, was an honest straightforward testimony, and we believe that every unprejudiced witness, who has an opportunity of forming an opinion of Africans who have never been debased by slavery, will rank them very much higher in the scale of intelligence, industry, and manhood, than others who know them only in a state of degradation.
On coming near Chinsamba's two stockades, on the banks of the Lintipe, we were told that the Mazitu had been repulsed there the day before, and we had evidence of the truth of the report of the attack in the sad sight of the bodies of the slain.The Zulus had taken off large numbers of women laden with corn; and, when driven back, had cut off the ears of a male prisoner, as a sort of credential that he had been with the Mazitu, and with grim humour sent him to tell Chinsamba "to take good care of the corn in the stockades, for they meant to return for it in a month or two."
Chinsamba's people were drumming with might and main on our arrival, to express their joy at their deliverance from the Mazitu.The drum is the chief instrument of music among the Manganja, and with it they express both their joy and grief.They excel in beating time.
Chinsamba called us into a very large hut, and presented us with a huge basket of beer.The glare of sunlight from which we had come enabled him, in diplomatic fashion, to have a good view of us before our eyes became enough accustomed to the dark inside to see him.He has a Jewish cast of countenance, or rather the ancient Assyrian face, as seen in the monuments brought to the British Museum by Mr.
Layard.This form of face is very common in this country, and leads to the belief that the true type of the negro is not that met on the West Coast, from which most people have derived their ideas of the African.
Chinsamba had many Abisa or Babisa in his stockade, and it was chiefly by the help of their muskets that he had repulsed the Mazitu:
These Babisa are great travellers and traders.
We liked Chinsamba very well, and found that he was decidedly opposed to our risking our lives by going further to the N.W.The Mazitu were believed to occupy all the hills in that direction, so we spent the 4th of September with him.
It is rather a minute thing to mention, and it will only be understood by those who have children of their own, but the cries of the little ones, in their infant sorrows, are the same in tone, at different ages, here as all over the world.We have been perpetually reminded of home and family by the wailings which were once familiar to parental ears and heart, and felt thankful that to the sorrows of childhood our children would never have superadded the heartrending woes of the slave-trade.
