good time coming when “ man and man the world o’er, shall
brothers he for all that.” One small redeeming consideration
in all this misery could not but be felt; these ills were
inflicted by heathen Mazitu, and not by, or for, those who
say to Him who is higher than the highest, “We believe
that thou shalt come to be our Judge.”
We crossed the Mokole, rested at Chitanda, and then left
the Lake, and struck away N.W. to Chinsamba’s. Our companions,
who were so much oppressed by the rarefied air of
the plateau, still showed signs of exhaustion, though now-
only 1300 feet above the sea, and did not recover flesh and
spirits till we again entered the Lower Shire Yalley, which is
of so small ah altitude, that, without simultaneous observations
with the barometer there and on the sea-coast, the
difference would not be appreciable.
On a large plain on which we spent one night, we had
the company of eighty tobacco traders on their way from
Kasungu to Chinsamba’s. The Mazitu had attacked and
killed two of them, near the spot where the Zulus fled
from us without answering our questions. The traders were
now so frightened that, instead of making a straight course
with us, they set off by night to follow the shores of the Lake
to Tsenga, and then turn west. I t is the sight of shields, or
guns that inspires terror. The bowmen feel perfectly helpless
when the enemy comes with even the small protection
the skin shield affords, or attacks them in the open field
with guns. They may shoot a few arrows, but they are such
poor shots that ten to one if they hit. The only thing that
makes the arrow formidable is the poison; for if the poisoned
barb goes in nothing can save the wounded. A bow is in use
in the lower end of Lake Nyassa, but is more common in
the Maravi country, from six to eight inches broad, which
is intended to be used as a shield as well as a bow; but we
never saw one with the mark on it of an enemy’s arrow. It
certainly is no match for the Zulu shield, which is between
four and five feet long, of an oval shape, and about two feet
broad. So great is the terror this shield inspires that we
Maravi Bow.
sometimes doubted whether the Mazitu here were Zulus at
all, and suspected that the. people of the country took advantage
of that fear, and,, assuming shields, pretended to
belong to that nation.
On the 11th October we arrived at the stockade of
Chinsamba in Mosapo, and had reason to be very well
satisfied with his kindness. A parafîïn candle was in his
eyes the height of luxury, and the ability to make a light
instantaneously by a lucifer match, a marvel that struck him
with wonder. He brought all his relatives in different
groups to see the strange sights,—instantaneous fire-making,
. and a light, without the annoyance of having fire and smoke
in the middle of the floor. When they wish to look for
anything in the dark, a wisp of dried grass is lighted. Our'
books, too, were objects of admiration. The idea that enters
their minds is that books are our instruments of divination.
Theirs are bits of wood, horn, and knuckle-bones of different
animals, or the scales of the Manis, which, according to the
way they alight when thrown on the ground, indicate which
way the diviner is to answer the inquiries which have been
put to him. The sextant and artificial horizon—the w.eight
of the mercury—called by our men “ foreign water,” were all
pondered over with the same kind of interest that we should
take for the first time in any new and wonderful thing. In