Nature and Art, April 1, 1867.] 
THE FATE OF DB. LIVINGSTONE. 
121 
as relics ; but the statement that the body bore but one 
wound favours the inference that, from some cause, they 
had not indulged in the barbarous gratification of mutilating 
their victim. 
In one instance of the massacre of a peaceful village by a 
band of Matabili, while Mr. Chapman and I were returning 
from the Zambesi, the two or three survivors, who had 
escaped through being absent, told us that at nightfall 
they not only approached the Matabili army, but actually 
came near enough to talk to them, having full confidence 
that they could escape before men starting suddenly from 
the blazing camp-fires could become sufficiently accustomed 
to the darkness to see them as they fled. 
Still later, when crossing the desert at the end of the 
rainy season, the anticipated drying up of the scanty pools 
obliged us to push the oxen across the intervening spaces 
at a rate which the Damaras, enfeebled by recent fever, 
could not keep up with. We could not send them in advance 
till a track had been marked by the passage of the wagons ; 
and the convalescents, attended by a number of healthy 
men, were allowed to follow at their own pace while we 
waited for them at each successive water. The country was, 
at that time, full of the edible roots on which they chiefly 
live ; and, faring well as they came along, they were in no 
hurry to overtake us. At length, they failed to come up to 
us ; but, anticipating no danger, we left food for them at 
each halting-place, and on reaching the B5-tlet-le river, 
Chapman paid the headmen of the villages in advance for 
supplies to be furnished as they came up. Henry Chapman 
joined us at the Lake Ngami, and a wagon with provisions 
was immediately sent back to their assistance ; but, alas ! 
only two men and two women were found alive. They, 
being a little in advance of the rest, had slept separately, 
and returning in the morning had found their unfortunate 
country people lying murdered at their bivouac. A party of 
marauding Matabili had penetrated into the country we had 
deemed perfectly secure from them, and eighteen or twenty 
men and women of our little party had become their victims. 
In terror and bewilderment the survivors resumed their 
journey, when the murderers, revisiting the scene of 
slaughter and finding fresh foot-prints, followed and robbed 
them of their little ornaments ; but satiated apparently with 
blood, allowed them to depart, charging them to tell Chap- 
man who it was that had killed his people. 
These Matabili, who, under the despotic chief, Moscle- 
katse, have for more than thirty years been the scourge and 
terror of the native tribes to the south of the Zambesi, are 
of the same stock as the Mazite, or Amazitu, mentioned by 
Dr. Kirk. Both arc offsets of the Asiazulu, or Zulus, 
occupying the country of Natal ; and it would be interesting 
at some other opportunity to consider, in connection with the 
southward migration of the Kafir tribes — pressed onward, 
probably, by the progress of the Arabs in their rear, — this 
reflux of the Zulus to the North. The Mazite crossed the 
Zambesi near Shupanga, perhaps ten or fifteen years ago, 
and spreading the terror of their name by indiscriminate 
massacre as they passsed northward, settled, at last, in the 
country to the west of Lake Nyassa, in latitude between 
11° and 12° south. Mr. Horace Waller, who was one of the 
mission under Bishop Mackenzie, tells me that during the 
war the Mazite took part with the Ajawa, and that some of 
their shields were found either on the field or in the huts 
they abandoned. 
If the Mazite have in reality committed the crime, as we 
have too much reason to fear, the cause of their hostility 
to Dr. Livingstone may be traced to his endeavours to 
suppress the slave trade. It will be remembered that in 
January, 1861, the Oxford and Cambridge mission reached 
the mouth of the Zambesi, and were met by Doctor Living- 
stone, who acted as their guide and adviser. A short trip 
was made to the Kovuma, a river to the northward, but 
the party returned to the Zambesi, and in the steamer 
Pioneer commenced the ascent of its tributary the Shire 
(or Sheeree). Here intelligence was received of the recent 
passage of various gangs of slaves, and another gang, bound 
to Tette, arrived soon after Dr. Livingstone had reached the 
village. The black drivers took to flight as soon as they 
saw the faces of the English, and the captives contrasted 
in astonishment the humanity of their liberators with 
the brutality they had hitherto experienced, and these 
people eighty-four in number became the nucleus of the 
intended mission village. Other parties were followed up ; 
the drivers, many of them agents for Portuguese in Tette, 
were detained, but eventually escaped, and a collision took 
place with the Ajawa tribe, who were returning in triumph 
with a long string of Manganja captives. 
The mission was . settled among the Manganja tribe, ^vho, 
after the departure of Dr. Livingstone, appealed to Bishop 
Mackenzie to assist them against the continued raids of the 
Ajawa. At first he declined, but at length, moved by the 
natural feelings of humanity, consented, with the full appro- 
bation of his colleagues. I do not pretend to decide whether 
it be wrong for a clergyman to engage in war; but if he erred, 
he, as well as the Doctor, in the liberation of the slaves, did 
so on the right side ; and I fancy that few Englishmen 
placed in the same circumstances would have done otherwise. 
The Bishop, in his journal for August 27th, 1861, states, as 
his reason for consenting to lead the Manganja force, that 
they were attacked by marauding and murdering parties of 
Ajawa, who were constantly burning their villages, slaying 
their men, and carrying off captives to bo sold to traders 
from Tette. At the same time, he says that the Manganja 
were nearly as bad ; and using this opportunity he stipu- 
lated that, in return for his services, they should cease to 
sell their own people or encourage slave traders amongst 
them. He says that on the 13th, with the unanimous con- 
sent of his party, he proceeded to meet the enemy, and, 
appointing Waller to command in the actual fight, went un- 
armed with him to seek a parley with the opposing chiefs. 
The attempt failed; but in the succeeding battles the Ajawa 
were defeated, and among the spoils were found shields of 
the Mazite, who had joined them. The Manganja, in spite 
of the efforts of the English, behaved in victory as savages 
will, and violated their agreement by killing or retaining in 
captivity a number of women and children ; in consequence 
of which, the Bishop refused again to lead them, though in 
the following January (1862), he was compelled to punish 
a petty chief who had attacked a party sent to explore a 
path T>y which to bring up the ladies, who had arrived at 
the Zambesi with the intention of joining the Mission. The 
unfortunate death of Bishop Mackenzie and Mr. Burrup, 
in consequence of hardship and exposure, took place soon 
afterwards. 
Dr. Livingstone and his expedition had meanwhile ex- 
plored Lake Nyassa and its western shore ; and in about 
11° 40' S. he fell in with a few Mazite, who, failing in their 
attempt to terrify him, became themselves alarmed and fled, 
though others gave much trouble both to the land party and to 
Dr. Kirk, who was at that time in charge of the boat. The 
country around was desolated by these savages, and strewed 
with the skeletons of their victims. The fountain-head of 
the slave trade seemed to be there. Two Arabs had built 
a dhow upon the lake, and were running her, crowded with 
slaves, regularly across it ; and it is said that 1,900 from 
this locality pass annually the custom-house at the Arab 
port of Zanzibar, exclusive of any sold to the Portuguese. 
On the melancholy events which led to the abandonment of 
the Mission, the prostration of most of the party by fever, 
the death of Mrs. Livingstone (herself the daughter of 
Moffatt the missionary pioneer), and of the accomplished 
young geologist, Bicliard Thornton (induced by the hard- 
ships of a journey undertaken to procure animal food for 
his perishing friends), and on other sad details, I have not 
space to dwell. My object in citing the foregoing facts has 
been to show the possible cause of the hostility of the 
Mazite ; and they afford, I think, sufficient evidence that a 
feud not likely to be forgotten already existed between the 
Mazite and the English, even if the predatory habits of the 
former were not sufficient to incite them to attack the weak 
and overburdened party "with which Dr. Livingstone (tra- 
velling from the east coast, and having already passed the 
northern end of Lake Nyassa) was traversing the borders of 
their country. It is not improbable, too, that their hostility 
would be fostered by persons interested in. the continuance 
of the inhuman traffic he so strenuously endeavoured to 
suppress. For the majority of the real Portuguese whom I 
