198 FATE OF AFRICAN EMPIRES. Chap. IX. 



telling him that we had a long- journey before us, and needed 

 it to kill game for ourselves. — " He too must obtain meat for 

 himself and people, for they sometimes suffered from hunger." 

 He then got sulky, and his people refused to sell food except 

 at extravagant prices. Knowing that we had nothing to eat, 

 they felt sure of starving us into compliance. But two of our 

 young men, having gone off at sunrise, shot a fine waterbuck, 

 and down came the provision market to the lowest figure; 

 they even became eager to sell, but our men were angry with 

 them for trying compulsion, and would not buy. Black greed 

 had outwitted itself, as happens often with white cupidity ; and 

 not only here did the traits of Africans remind us of Anglo- 

 Saxons elsewhere : the notoriously ready world-wide dispo- 

 sition to take an unfair advantage of a man's necessities 

 shows that the same mean motives are pretty widely dif- 

 fused among all races. It may not be granted that the same 

 blood flows in all veins, or that all have descended from the 

 same stock ; but the traveller has no doubt that, practically, 

 the white rogue and black are men and brothers. 



Pangola is the child or vassal of Mpende. Sandia and 

 Mpende are the only independent chiefs from Kebrabasa to 

 Zumbo, and belong to the tribe Manganja. The country 

 north of the mountains here in sight from the Zambesi is 

 called Senga, and its inhabitants Asenga, or Basenga, but all 

 appear to be of the same family as the rest of the Man- 

 ganja and Maravi. Formerly all the Manganja were 

 united under the government of their great Chief, Undi, 

 whose Empire extended from Lake Shirwa to the Biver 

 Loangwa ; but after Undi's death it fell to pieces, and a 

 large portion of it on the Zambesi was absorbed by their 

 powerful southern neighbours the Banyai. This has been 

 the inevitable fate of every African Empire from time imme- 



