388 TOBACCO TRADERS. Chap. XIV- 



are easily known by a line of horizontal cicatrices, each 

 half an inch long, down the middle of the forehead and 

 chin. They often wear the hair collected in a mass on the 

 upper and back part of the head, while it is all shaven off 

 the forehead and temples. The Babisa and Waian or 

 Ajawa heads have more of the round bullet-shape than 

 those of the Manganja, indicating a marked difference in 

 character ; the former people being great traders and 

 travellers, the latter being attached to home and agri- 

 culture. The Manganja usually intrust their ivory to the 

 Babisa to be sold at the Coast, and complain that the returns 

 made never come up to the high prices which they hear 

 so much about before it is sent. In fact, by the time the 

 Babisa return, the expenses of the journey, in which they 

 often spend a month or two at a place where food abounds, 

 usually eat up all the profits. 



Our new companions were trading in tobacco, 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 sj)oke 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. 



The next village at which we slept was also that of a 

 Manganja smith. It was a beautiful spot, shaded with tall 

 euphorbia-trees. The people at first fled, but after a short 

 time returned, and ordered us off to a stockade of Babisa, 



