852 LIFE OF DAVID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



that he should come and live under him. Thus he soon had thirteen huts 

 beside his own, which in Mwera land is a respectable village. The Matam- 

 bwes, on the lower or middle Rovuma, are almost overwhelmed by refugees 

 — Grindos, Dondes, Yaos, and Makuas, but their language asserts itself as the 

 common medium of communication. Near the mouth of the Rovuma lie the 

 Makondes, pressed upon by the Makuas from the south, with Machemba, like 

 a cancer, in their midst. 



" Old traders say that the road from Kilwa to the Nyassa used to lie 

 entirely through an inhabited country, where food of all sorts was fabulously 

 abundant. East of Kilwa lay the Gindos, and south of them the Mweras ; 

 east of both these the Dondes, and then on the lower Rovuma Matambwes ; 

 and on the upper, and along the lake, Yaos; south and east of the lake, 

 Nyassas, and east of them again the Bisas, who were ardent traders, and used 

 to send down caravans of their own to Kilwa. The great disturbers of this 

 state of things were the Maviti, or Mazitu, a Zulu army sent on an unsuccess- 

 ful expedition, which instead of returning to be decimated, went north and 

 found a new home round the north end of the Nyassa, whence they plundered 

 and burnt in all directions, even sending an army against Kilwa itself, and 

 for the time stopping all trade. 



" The coast trade itself in anything like its present dimensions seems to 

 be scarcely twenty years old, corresponding in fact to the growth of Zanzibar 

 as a centre of commerce. Yet it must have been once of great extent, or Kilwa 

 could not have been the important city which the Portuguese found it. In the 

 Yao language there are a few words which point to old commercial relations 

 with the coast, especially the name for coast people, which is merely the 

 Arab name for Christians ; this seems to show that at the coming of the Portu- 

 guese there was Arab influence enough among the Yaos to give them an Arab 

 name. The trade died in their hands, and only in our own days is returning 

 to its former importance. The same conclusion may be drawn from the vague 

 acknowledgment of one God by all the nations between the great lakes and 

 the sea. This is just the remnant of Mohammedan teaching, which might be 

 expected to survive, when that teaching was first forcibly suppressed at the 

 fountain head by a professed Christianity, and then allowed to wither away 

 into f orgetfulness, nothing really remaining except a distaste for visible idols. 

 It is only on the young men of the present generation that Mohammedanism 

 is beginning to exert a powerful influence, and this just in proportion as they 

 are struggling into some kind of civilisation. It is therefore much more felt 

 by the principal Yao chiefs than by the smaller, or, by the less advanced 

 Mweras. 



" The harvest is ripe, where are the reapers ? 



" Edward Steere, Missionary Biskojj. 



" Zanzibar, Lent, 1876." 



