CAMERON'S CAMP BURNT DOWN. 649 



place on the boundary between Kasongo's and Mata Yafa's kingdoms, some 

 time before Cameron's arrival at Kilemba, and as nothing had been heard of 

 them since, Kendele refused to start without them; so there was no leaving 

 till men had gone and brought them back. ;They did not return until the 

 27th of May, and in the meanwhile Coimbra (Kendele's second man) was off 

 on a slave-hunting expedition. On the 28th Cameron's camp was burnt down 

 by the carelessness of one of his men, and he very nearly lost his journals 

 and all he possessed. Owing, however, to the pluck and coolness of his ser- 

 vant Jumah, though the tent itself was burnt, everything of importance in- 

 side was saved. 



Two or three days after this, they started for Lunga Mandis, ten days 

 (short marches) south by west of Totela. Here they were detained nearly 

 three weeks, waiting for Coimbra. When he arrived, he came in driving a 

 string of fifty or sixty wretched women tied together with knotted cords, and 

 all heavily laden with plunder, and several with babies in their arms. These 

 poor creatures represented twenty or thirty villages burnt down, and a popula- 

 tion of two hundred and fifty to three hundred people utterly destroyed. 

 About three or four hundred more may have escaped to other villages. 

 There were now in the caravan upwards of fifteen hundred slaves, all of 

 them obtained by plunder and murder from a country which has only been 

 recently tapped to supply slaves for export. 



" This testimony of Cameron's as to the hardships and sufferings asso- 

 ciated with the slave trade is borne out by some remarks of Bishop Steere, 

 in his paper, entitled, " A Walk to the Nyassa Country." Speaking of his ar- 

 rival at the River Luatize, he says : — 



" When we got to the ford we found it a scene of the wildest confusion. 

 A place had been chosen where the stream is cut up by six or seven islets, with 

 narrow channels between. The water in some of these was nearly up to the 

 armpits, and ran so strongly that, except for the trees laid across to hold on 

 by, it would have been impossible to cross. Over and through these they 

 were bringing some two hundred slaves, many of them women and children, 

 and very many with forked sticks fastened to their necks. The noise and 

 tumult were beyond description. 



"Another day we met an oldish woman, with a slave stick still on her 

 neck, carrying a bag of cassava root, on her way to Mataka's, having escaped 

 from a caravan which had just turned out of our road to buy provisions, to which 

 she had been sold by Makanjila. One of our men cut off the slave stick, and 

 we gave her the best advice we could to avoid the caravan behind us. We 

 also met the sick man we had seen in the hut as we went up ; he said he had 

 found that his caravan had got on so far that he had better go back than try 

 to follow it. We offered him some food, but he said he did not want it. 



" In all we met nine caravans, five belonging to Yao chiefs, and four to 



