his harvest becomes.  Where slaving and cattle are unknown the people live in peace.  As we sat leaning against that hedge, and listened to the harangue of the slave-trader’s agent, it glanced across our mind that this was a terrible world; the best in it unable, from conscious imperfections, to say to the worst “Stand by! for I am holier than thou.”  The slave-trader, imbued no doubt with certain kindly feelings, yet pursuing a calling which makes him a fair specimen of a human fiend, stands grouped with those by whom the slave-traders are employed, and with all the workers of sin and misery in more highly-favoured lands, an awful picture to the All-seing Eye.

We arrived at Katosa’s village on the 15th October, and found about thirty young men and boys in slave-sticks.  They had been bought by other agents of the Arab slavers, still on the east side of the Shire.  They were resting in the village, and their owners soon removed them.  The weight of the goree seemed very annoying when they tried to sleep.  This taming instrument is kept on, until the party has crossed several rivers and all hope of escape has vanished from the captive’s mind.

On explaining to Katosa the injury he was doing in selling his people as slaves, he assured us that those whom we had seen belonged to the Arabs, and added that he had far too few people already.  He said he had been living in peace at the lakelet Pamalombe; that the Ajawa, or Machinga, under Kainka and Karamba, and a body of Babisa, under Maonga, had induced him to ferry them over the Shire; that they had lived for a considerable time at his expense, and at last stole his sheep, which induced him to make his escape to the place where he now dwelt, and in this flight he had lost many of his people.  His account of the usual conduct of the Ajawa quite agrees with what these people have narrated themselves, and gives but a low idea of their moral tone.  They have repeatedly broken all the laws of hospitality by living for months on the bounty of the Manganja, and then, by a sudden uprising, overcoming their hosts, and killing or chasing them out of their inheritances.  The secret of their success is the possession of firearms.  There were several of these Ajawa here again, and on our arrival they proposed to Katosa that they should leave; but he replied that they need not be afraid of us.  They had red beads strung so thickly on their hair that at a little distance they appeared to have on red caps.  It is curious that the taste for red hair should be so general among the Africans here and further north; in the south black mica, called Sebilo, and even soot are used to deepen the colour of the hair; here many smear the head with red-ochre, others plait the inner bark of a tree stained red into it; and a red powder called Mukuru is employed, which some say is obtained from the ground, and others from the roots of a tree.