CHAP. IV. INHOSPITALITY OF THE MANGANJA. 93 



selves. " We do not sell many, and only those who have 

 committed crimes." As a rule the regular trade is supplied 

 by the low and criminal classes, and hence the ugliness of 

 slaves. Others are probably sold besides criminals, as on 

 the accusation of witchcraft. Friendless orphans also some- 

 times disappear suddenly, and no one inquires what has 

 become of them. The temptation to sell their people is 

 peculiarly great, as there is but little ivory on the hills, and 

 often the chief has nothing but human flesh with which 

 to buy foreign goods. The Ajawa offer cloth, brass rings, 

 pottery, and sometimes handsome young women, and agree 

 to take the trouble of carrying off by night all those whom 

 the chief may point out to them. They give four yards of 

 cotton cloth for a man, three for a woman, and two for a 

 boy or girl, to be taken to the Portuguese at Mozambique, 

 Iboe, and Quillimane. 



The Manganja were more suspicious and less hospitable 

 than the tribes on the Zambesi. They were slow to believe 

 that our object in coming into their country was really 

 what we professed it to be. They naturally judge us by 

 the motives which govern themselves. A chief in the 

 Upper Shire Valley, whose scared looks led our men to 

 christen him Kitlabolawa (I shall be killed), remarked 

 that parties had come before, with as plausible a story as 

 ours, and, after a few days, had jumped up and carried off 

 a number of his people as slaves. We were not allowed to 

 enter some of the villages in the valley, nor would the 

 inhabitants even sell us food ; Zimika's men, for instance, 

 stood at the entrance of the euphorbia hedge, and declared 

 we should not pass in. We sat down under a tree close by. 

 A young fellow made an angry oration, dancing from side 

 to side with his bow and poisoned arrows, and gesticulating 

 fiercely in our faces. He was stopped in the middle of his 

 harangue by an old man, who ordered him to sit down, and 

 not talk to strangers in that way ; he obeyed reluctantly, 



