Makanjela, a Waiyau chief about a third of the way from Mtende’s to Mataka, has lost the friendship of all his neighbours by kidnapping and selling their people; if any of Mataka’s people are found in the district between Makanjela and Moembe, they are considered fair game and sold.  Makanjela’s people cannot piss Mataka to go to the Manganja, so they do what they can by kidnapping and plundering all who fall into their hands.

When I employed two of Mataka’s people to go back on the 14th with food to the havildar and sepoys, they went a little way and relieved some, but would not venture as far as the Luatize, for fear of losing their liberty by Makanjela’s people.  I could not get the people of the country to go back; nor could I ask the Nassick boys, who had been threatened by the sepoys with assassination,—­and it was the same with the Johanna men, because, though Mahometans, the sepoys had called them Caffirs, &c., and they all declared, “We are ready to do anything for you, but we will do nothing for these Hindis.”  I sent back a sepoy, giving him provisions; he sat down in the first village, ate all the food, and returned.

An immense tract of country lies uninhabited.  To the north-east of Moembe we have at least fifty miles of as fine land as can be seen anywhere, still bearing all the marks of having once supported a prodigious iron-smelting and grain-growing population.  The clay pipes which are put on the nozzles of their bellows and inserted into the furnace are met with everywhere—­often vitrified.  Then the ridges on which they planted maize, beans, cassava, and sorghum, and which they find necessary to drain off the too abundant moisture of the rains, still remain unlevelled to attest the industry of the former inhabitants; the soil being clayey, resists for a long time the influence of the weather.  These ridges are very regular, for in crossing the old fields, as the path often compels us to do, one foot treads regularly on the ridge, and the other in the hollow, for a considerable distance.  Pieces of broken pots, with their rims ornamented with very good imitations of basket-work, attest that the lady potters of old followed the example given them by their still more ancient mothers,—­their designs are rude, but better than we can make them without referring to the original.

[Illustration:  Imitation of basket-work in Pottery.]

No want of water has here acted to drive the people away, as has been the case further south.  It is a perpetual succession of ridge and valley, with a running stream or oozing bog, where ridge is separated from ridge:  the ridges become steeper and narrower as we approach Mataka’s.

I counted fifteen running burns of from one to ten yards wide in one day’s march of about six hours; being in a hilly or rather mountainous region, they flow rapidly and have plenty of water-power.  In July any mere torrent ceases to flow, but these were brawling burns with water too cold (61 deg.) for us to bathe in whose pores were all open by the relaxing regions nearer the coast.  The sound, so un-African, of gushing water dashing over rocks was quite familiar to our ears.