1866.] A MARAUDING PARTY. 63- 



for I tell them that if they sell their fellows, they are- 

 like the man who holds the victim while the Arab performs- 

 the murder. 



Chenjewala blamed Machemba, a chief above him on 

 the Kovunia, for encouraging the slave-trade; I told him 

 I had travelled so much among them that I knew all the- 

 excuses they could make, each headman blamed some one- 

 else. 



" It would be better if you kept your people and cultivated 

 more largely," said I, " Oh, Machemba sends his men and 

 robs our gardens after we have cultivated," was the reply - 

 One man said that the Arabs who come and tempt them 

 with fine clothes are the cause of their selling: this was 

 childish, so I told them they would very soon have none to 

 sell : their country was becoming jungle, and all their people 

 who did not die in the road would be making gardens for 

 Arabs at Kilwa and elsewhere. 



28th June. — When we got about an hour from Chen- 

 jewala's we came to a party in the act of marauding ; the- 

 owners of the gardens made off for the other side of the 

 river, and waved to us to go against the people of Machemba,. 

 but we stood on a knoll with all our goods on the ground, 

 and waited to see how matters would turn out. Two of the 

 marauders came to us and said they had captured five people. 

 I suppose they took us for Arabs, as they addressed Musa. 

 They then took some green maize, and so did some of my 

 people, believing that as all was going, they who were really 

 starving might as well have a share. 



I went on a little way with the two marauders, and by the 

 footprints thought the whole party might amount to four 

 or five with guns ; the gardens and huts were all deserted. 

 A poor woman was sitting, cooking green maize, and one 

 of the men ordered her to follow him. I said to him, 

 " Let her alone, she is dying." " Yes," said he, " of hunger," 

 and went on without her. 



