376 MUAZI IN KASUNGU. Chap. XIV. 



the case, tlie long grass is all burned off, the tribe attacked 

 are as helpless as a wooden ship, possessing only signal 

 guns, would be before an iron-clad steamer. The time of 

 year selected for this kind of warfare is nearly always 

 that in which the grass is actually burnt off, or is so dry 

 as readily to take fire. The dry grass in Africa looks 

 more like ripe English wheat late in the autumn, than 

 anything else we can compare it to. Let us imagine an 

 English village standing in a field of this sort, bounded 

 only by the horizon, and enemies setting fire to a line of a 

 mile or two, by running along with bunches of burning 

 straw in their hands, touching here and there the inflam- 

 mable material, — the wind blowing towards the doomed 

 village — the inhabitants with only one or two old muskets, 

 but ten to one no powder, — the long line of flames, leaping 

 thirty feet into the air with dense masses of black smoke 

 — and pieces of charred grass falling down in showers. 

 Would not the stoutest English villager, armed only with 

 the bow and arrow against the enemy's musket, quail at 

 the idea of breaking through that wall of fire ? When at 

 a distance, we once saw a scene like this, and had the 

 charred grass, literally as thick as flakes of black snow, 

 falling around us, there was no difficulty in understanding 

 the secret of the slave-trader's power. 



On the 21st of September, we arrived at the village of 

 the chief Muasi, or Muazi ; it is surrounded by a stockade, 

 and embowered in very tall euphorbia-trees ; their height, 

 thirty or forty feet, shows that it has been inhabited for 

 at least one generation. A visitation of disease or death 

 causes the headmen to change the site of their villages, 

 and plant new hedges ; but, though Muazi has suffered 

 from the attacks of the Mazitu, he has evidently clung to 

 his birthplace. The village is situated about two miles 

 south-west of a high hill called Kasungu, which gives the 

 name to a district extending to the Loangwa of the 



