Chap. XXIV. AJAWA MIGRATION. 497 



and Mosainbique, knew more of us than Katosa did. Their 

 muskets were carefully polished, and never out of these 

 slavers' hands for a moment, though in the Chief's presence. 

 "We naturally felt apprehensive that we should never see 

 Katosa again. A migratory afflatus seems to have come 

 over the Ajawa tribes. Wars among themselves, for the 

 supply of the Coast slave-trade, are said to have first set 

 them in motion. The usual way in which they have 

 advanced among the Manganja has been by slave-trading 

 in a friendly way. Then, professing to wish to live as 

 subjects, they have been welcomed as guests, and the Man- 

 ganja, being great agriculturists, have been able to support 

 considerable bodies of these visitors for a time. When the 

 provisions became scarce, the guests began to steal from the 

 fields ; quarrels arose in consequence, and, the Ajawa having 

 firearms, their hosts got the worst of it, and were expelled 

 from village after village, and out of their own country. 

 The Manganja were quite as bad in regard to slave-trading 

 as the Ajawa, but had less enterprise, and were much more 

 fond of the home pursuits of spinning, weaving, smelting 

 iron, and cultivating the soil, than of foreign travel. The 

 Ajawa had little of a mechanical turn, and not much love 

 for agriculture, but were very keen traders and travellers. 

 This party seemed to us to be in the first or friendly stage 

 of intercourse with Katosa ; and, as we afterwards found, he 

 was fully alive to the danger. 



Our course was shaped towards the N.W., and we traversed 

 a large fertile tract of rich soil extensively cultivated, but 

 dotted with many gigantic thorny acacias which had proved 

 too large for the little axes of the cultivators. After leav- 

 ing Nkwinda, the first village we spent a night at in the 

 district Ngabi was that of Chembi, and it had a stockade 

 around it. The Azitu or Mazitu were said to be ravaefino- 



2 K 



