They seem never to have been a warlike race; passing through their country, we once observed a large stone cairn, and our guide favoured us with the following account of it:—­“Once upon a time, our forefathers were going to fight another tribe, and here they halted and sat down.  After a long consultation, they came to the unanimous conclusion that, instead of proceeding to fight and kill their neighbours, and perhaps be killed themselves, it would be more like men to raise this heap of stones, as their protest against the wrong the other tribe had done them, which, having accomplished, they returned quietly home.”  Such men of peace could not stand before the Makololo, nor, of course, the more warlike Matebele, who coming afterwards, drove even their conquerors, the Makololo, out of the country.  Sebetuane, however, profiting by the tactics which he had learned of the Batoka, inveigled a large body of this new enemy on to another island, and after due starvation there overcame the whole.  A much greater army of “Moselekatse’s own” followed with canoes, but were now baffled by Sebetuane’s placing all his people and cattle on an island and so guarding it that none could approach.  Dispirited, famished, borne down by fever, they returned to the Falls, and all except five were cut off.

But though the Batoka appear never to have had much inclination to fight with men, they are decidedly brave hunters of buffaloes and elephants.  They go fearlessly close up to these formidable animals, and kill them with large spears.  The Banyai, who have long bullied all Portuguese traders, were amazed at the daring and bravery of the Batoka in coming at once to close quarters with the elephant; and Chisaka, a Portuguese rebel, having formerly induced a body of this tribe to settle with him, ravaged all the Portuguese villas around Tette.  They bear the name of Basimilongwe, and some of our men found relations among them.  Sininyane and Matenga also, two of our party, were once inveigled into a Portuguese expedition against Mariano, by the assertion that the Doctor had arrived and had sent for them to come down to Senna.  On finding that they were entrapped to fight, they left, after seeing an officer with a large number of Tette slaves killed.

The Batoka had attained somewhat civilized ideas, in planting and protecting various fruit and oil-seed yielding trees of the country.  No other tribe either plants or abstains from cutting down fruit trees, but here we saw some which had been planted in regular rows, and the trunks of which were quite two feet in diameter.  The grand old Mosibe, a tree yielding a bean with a thin red pellicle, said to be very fattening, had probably seen two hundred summers.  Dr. Kirk found that the Mosibe is peculiar, in being allied to a species met with only in the West Indies.  The Motsikiri, sometimes called Mafuta, yields a hard fat, and an oil which is exported from Inhambane.  It is said that two ancient Batoka travellers went down as far as the Loangwa, and finding the Macaa tree (jujube or zisyphus) in fruit, carried the seed all the way back to the great Falls, in order to plant them.  Two of these trees are still to be seen there, the only specimens of the kind in that region.