the empire remains.  This, which may be considered as the normal state of African society, gives rise to frequent and desolating wars, and the people long in vain for a power able to make all dwell in peace.  In this light a European colony would be considered by the natives as an inestimable boon to inter-tropical Africa.  Thousands of industrious natives would gladly settle around it, and engage in that peaceful pursuit of agriculture and trade of which they are so fond; and, undistracted by wars or rumors of wars, might listen to the purifying and ennobling truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  The Manganja on the Zambesi, like their countrymen on the Shire, are fond of agriculture; and, in addition to the usual varieties of food, cultivate tobacco and cotton in quantities more than equal to their wants.  To the question, ‘Would they work for Europeans?’ an affirmative answer may be given; if the Europeans belong to the class which can pay a reasonable price for labor, and not to that of adventurers who want employment for themselves.  All were particularly well clothed from Sandia’s to Pangola’s; and it was noticed that all the cloth was of native manufacture, the product of their own looms.  In Senga a great deal of iron is obtained from the ore, and manufactured very cleverly."[68]

The above is a fair description of the internecine wars that have been carried on between the tribes in Africa, back “to a time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.”  In a preceding chapter we gave quite an extended account of four Negro empires.  We call attention here to the villages of these people, and shall allow writers who have paid much attention to this subject to give their impressions.  Speaking of a village of the Aviia tribe called Mandji, Du Chaillu says,—­

“It was the dirtiest village I had yet seen in Africa, and the inhabitants appeared to me of a degraded class of Negroes.  The shape and arrangement of the village were quite different from any thing I had seen before.  The place was in the form of a quadrangle, with an open space in the middle not more than ten yards square; and the huts, arranged in a continuous row on two sides, were not more than eight feet high from the ground to the roof.  The doors were only four feet high, and of about the same width, with sticks placed across on the inside, one above the other, to bar the entrance.  The place for the fire was in the middle of the principal room, on each side of which was a little dark chamber; and on the floor was an orala, or stage, to smoke meat upon.  In the middle of the yard was a hole dug in the ground for the reception of offal, from which a disgusting smell arose, the wretched inhabitants being too lazy or obtuse to guard against this by covering it with earth.

“The houses were built of a framework of poles, covered with the bark of trees, and roofed with leaves.  In the middle of the village stood the public shed, or palaver-house,—­a