7 6 
BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA 
once more took command at Ivaronga. Captain Lugard finally quitted Nyasa- 
land in the spring of 1889, finding it impossible to bring the Arab war to 
a conclusion without disciplined troops and efficient artillery. 
An attempt was made by Sir Charles Euan-Smith, Her Majesty’s Consul- 
General at Zanzibar, to induce the Sultan of that place to intervene, and to 
bring the war to a conclusion by compelling the Arabs to come to terms 
with the British. The Sultan accordingly dispatched an envoy, but he 
commanded very little weight in the councils of the Senga Arabs, who 
considered themselves quite independent of the Sultan’s authority. 
The consequences of this war with the Arabs, which was clearly known 
by the natives of Nyasaland to be a war for the suppression of the slave 
trade, aroused a good many expressions of ill-feeling against the English on 
the part of the Muhammadan Yao on the east coast of Lake Nyasa. Mr. 
John Buchanan, who had been Acting Consul since the departure on leave 
of Mr. Hawes, attempted to open up friendly relations with Makanjira, the 
Yao chief on the south-east coast of the lake. He paid him a visit with the 
Rev. W. P. Johnson, in the Mission steamer, the Charles Jansen. To their 
surprise, however, they had no sooner landed than they were seized, stripped 
of their clothes, and grossly maltreated They were imprisoned in huts, 
and Makanjira announced his intention of killing them, and would probably 
have done so, but for the persuasion of some Zanzibar Arabs, who represented 
that their deaths would certainly be avenged, and that the Sultan of Zanzibar 
would hold them—the intercessors—responsible, after what had occurred, if 
English subjects were killed in their presence, and without remonstrance on 
their part. Makanjira accordingly held his captives up to ransom. They 
were obliged to write to the engineer of their steamer, which- was in the 
offing, to send on shore an enormous supply of trade goods and ship’s 
stores. When these things arrived Makanjira released them, though he 
neither restored their clothes nor the personal property of which they had 
been robbed. Mr. Buchanan, the Acting Consul, had even been whipped 
with a chikote 1 by Makanjira’s orders—not severely, but just with two or 
three stripes to show his contempt for the British. 
After a little vacillation the Arabs of Tanganyika had decided not to join 
with their fellow countrymen in the war against the British, and indeed after 
a little more deliberation, that section under the orders of Tiputipu 2 had 
determined to protect the British missionaries on Lake Tanganyika from 
violence at the hands of any other Arabs who might, in consequence of their 
uprising against the Germans, have resolved to assassinate all Europeans 
in the interior. Likewise the Arab settlement at Ivotakota, which was under 
the third in succession of “Jumbes,” who continued to be the wall of the 
Sultan of Zanzibar, resolved to remain neutral. Generally speaking, it may 
be said that at this crisis the influence of the Sultan of Zanzibar was exercised 
strongly in favour of the British. Had he not compelled peace and a good 
understanding with them, all the Arabs of Central Africa would have gladly 
united in a war to drive us out of Lake Nyasa, and would have doubtless 
succeeded in doing so, as in those days owing to difficulties with the Portuguese, 
it was found very difficult to import supplies of guns and ammunition. 
The general situation in British Central Africa, before I was personally 
connected with its fortunes, was as follows. 
1 A whip of hippopotamus hide. 
2 Whom, of course, the British will call “ Tippoo-tib.” 
