The presents which, following the custom of the country, we gave to every headman, where we either spent a night or a longer period, varied from four to eight yards of calico.  We had some Manchester cloths made in imitation of the native manufactured robes of the West Coast, each worth five or six shillings.  To the more important of the chiefs, for calico we substituted one of these strong gaudy dresses, iron spoons, a knife, needles, a tin dish, or pannikin, and found these presents to be valued more than three times their value in cloth would have been.  Eight or ten shillings’ worth gave abundant satisfaction to the greediest; but this is to be understood as the prime cost of the articles, and a trader would sometimes have estimated similar generosity as equal to from 30 to 50 pounds.  In some cases the presents we gave exceeded the value of what was received in return; in others the excess of generosity was on the native side.

We never asked for leave to pass through the country; we simply told where we were going, and asked for guides; if they were refused, or if they demanded payment beforehand, we requested to be put into the beginning of the path, and said that we were sorry we could not agree about the guides, and usually they and we started together.  Greater care would be required on entering the Mazitu or Zulu country, for there the Government extends over very large districts, while among the Manganja each little district is independent of every other.  The people here have not adopted the exacting system of the Banyai, or of the people whose country was traversed by Speke and Grant.

In our way back from Chinsamba’s to Chembi’s and from his village to Nkwinda’s, and thence to Katosa’s, we only saw the people working in their gardens, near to the stockades.  These strongholds were strengthened with branches of acacias, covered with strong hooked thorns; and were all crowded with people.  The air was now clearer than when we went north, and we could see the hills of Kirk’s Range five or six miles to the west of our path.  The sun struck very hot, and the men felt it most in their feet.  Every one who could get a bit of goatskin made it into a pair of sandals.

While sitting at Nkwinda’s, a man behind the court hedge-wall said, with great apparent glee, that an Arab slaving party on the other side of the confluence of the Shire and Lake were “giving readily two fathoms of calico for a boy, and two and a half for a girl; never saw trade so brisk, no haggling at all.”  This party was purchasing for the supply of the ocean slave-trade.  One of the evils of this traffic is that it profits by every calamity that happens in a country.  The slave-trader naturally reaps advantage from every disorder, and though in the present case some lives may have been saved that otherwise would have perished, as a rule he intensifies hatreds, and aggravates wars between the tribes, because the more they fight and vanquish each other the richer