62 
BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA 
Following on the Portuguese expeditions at the end of the 18th century 
to Kazembe’s country, a great intercourse had sprung up between the Babisa 
tribe, which inhabits the district to the west of the great Luangwa River and 
the Zanzibar coast. The Babisa had acquired guns from the Portuguese, and, 
armed in this way, had asserted themselves effectually against tribes still armed 
with the bow and spear. They became an enterprising people and resolved 
to trade directly with the Coast. Not liking the Portuguese, however, they 
preferred to journey farther north, and trafficked with the Arabs of Zanzibar. 
About this time the Zanzibar Sultanate was increasing gradually in power. 
It was an appanage of the Imamate of Maskat (’Oman), and already the 
Maskat Arabs (who had replaced the Portuguese in all the trading settlements 
of Eastern Africa, between the Ruvuma River and Somaliland) had begun to 
push their slave and ivory trading enterprises into the interior of Eastern 
Africa, especially in the direction of Tanganyika. Attracted, however, by the 
accounts which the Babisa caravans gave of the fertile country in which they 
dwelt, and struck with the docility of the slaves brought down by the Babisa 
from the Nyasa countries, certain Arabs accompanied the Babisa caravans 
back to their place of origin, which was, as I have said, the countries lying to 
the west of the great Luangwa River. The route they followed was from ports 
like Kilwa on the East Coast to Lake Nyasa thence across Nyasa and south¬ 
west or due west to the Lubisa country. 
In the course of these journeys the Arabs became acquainted with that race 
of fine physical development and stubborn character, the Yao, who inhabit 
much of the high country lying between the Indian Ocean and Lake Nyasa. 
In the Yao they found willing confederates in the slave trade, and a people 
much inclined to Muhammadanism. Eventually the poor Babisa were attacked 
and enslaved by neighbouring tribes who had been armed by the Arabs, and 
their importance passed awav. The Arabs and Yao between them began to 
dominate Nyasaland. Now the inhabitants of the bulk of Nyasaland proper, 
with the exception of its north-west portion, belonged in the main to what may 
be called the A-nyanja stock. These people who are referred to by Portuguese 
of an earlier date as the Amaravi, and who are of the same race as the indigenous 
inhabitants of the Zambezi Valley between Tete and Sena and of the whole 
course of the Shire, are of a singularly docile and peaceful disposition, devoted 
to agriculture and timid in warfare—a race consequently that is always falling 
under the domination of more powerful and energetic tribes. Before what may 
be called the Yao invasion of the Shire Plighlands the Nyanja people had been 
oppressed by Zulu invaders coming from the south-west. The convulsions 
which had been taking place in Zululand in the early part of this century had 
resulted in a most curious recoil of the Zulu race on Central Africa. It is 
probably not many centuries since the forerunners of the Zulus swept down 
from Central Africa, from the region of the great lakes, across the Zambezi, 
into Southern Africa, driving themselves like a wedge through the earlier Bantu 
invaders, the ancestors of the Basuto-Bechuana, and further displacing and 
destroying the feebler Hottentot people. Now, however, with the Indian Ocean 
in front of them, and internal commotions and increase of population com¬ 
pelling them to find more space for settlement, sections of them began to turn 
their faces back towards the Zambezi. The foundations of the Matabele 1 
kingdom were laid, and band after band of Zulus crossed the Zambezi about 
1 Or Amandabele, as it ought to be written but that we English love inaccuracy in pronunciation 
.and spelling for its own sake. Matabele is the Se-chuana corruption of the Zulu “ Amandabele.'’ 
