548 NKOMA— THE BUA. Chap. XXVII. 



Makololo, had already acquired a fair knowledge of the 

 Manganja dialect, and proved a good medium of communi- 

 cation. To our ears the tongue of the Matumboka seemed 

 more fully developed than that of the same tribe, Manganja 

 or Wanyassa, further south. The verb, for instance, shows 

 the passive and past tenses here, while, among tribes in con- 

 tact with foreigners on the Zambesi, these distinctions are 

 seldom noticed. Our new companions were trading in to- 

 bacco, and had collected quantities of the round balls, about 

 the size of nine-pounder shot, into which it is formed. One 

 of them owned a woman, whose child had been sold that 

 morning for tobacco. The mother followed him, weeping 

 silently, for hours along the way we went ; she seemed to be 

 well known, for, at several hamlets, the women spoke to 

 her with evident sympathy ; we could do nothing to alleviate 

 her sorrow — the child would be kept until some slave-trader 

 passed, and then sold for calico. The different cases of slave- 

 trading observed by us are mentioned, in order to give a 

 fair idea of its details. 



We spent the first night, after leaving the slave route, 

 at the village of Nkoma, among a section of Manganja, 

 called Machewa, or Macheba, whose district extends to the 

 Bua. Nkoma might be called an agricultural smith, for he 

 had a smelting furnace, and abundance of grain and goats, 

 with which he showed much more generosity than we had 

 met with on the slave route. On the 5th October, we came 

 to the Bua, which has here quite as rocky a bed as where we 

 crossed it lower down. Mount Ngalla was on our right, and 

 several hills on our left ; the country generally is undulating 

 and covered with scraggy trees, many of which seemed pol- 

 larded, from having been cut down to make clearings for 

 hunting. Everywhere we came upon people in their gardens, 

 busily preparing for the approaching rains. The men were 



