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Chimseia, Chimsaka, Mtarika, Mtendé, Makanjela, Mataka, and all the chiefs and people in our route to the Lake, are Waiyau, or Waiau. On the southern slope down to the river there are many oozing springs and damp spots where rice has been sown and reaped. The adjacent land has yielded large crops of sorghum, congo-beans, and pumpkins. Successive crowds of people came to gaze.
16th June, 1866. We heard very sombre accounts of the country in front: four or five days to Mtarika, and then ten days through jungle to Mataka's town: little food at Mtarika's, but plenty with Mataka, who is near the Lake.
I told him that I should have liked some of the Nassick boys to remain and teach this and other things, but they might be afraid to venture lest they should be sold again. The men who listened never heard such decided protests against selling each other into slavery before! Mataka has been an active hand in slave wars himself, though now he wishes to settle down in quiet.
I replied, "Ivory," he rejoined, "Would slaves not be a good speculation?" I replied that, "if he took slaves there for sale, they would put him in prison." The idea of the great Mataka in "chokee" made him wince, and the laugh turned for once against him. He said that as all the people from the coast crowd to him, they ought to give him something handsome for being here to supply their wants.
We had now passed through, at the narrowest part, the hundred miles of depopulated country, of which about seventy are on the N.E. of Mataka. The native accounts differ as to the cause. Some say slave wars, and assert that the Makoa from the vicinity of Mozambique played an important part in them; others say famine; others that the people have moved to and beyond Nyassa.
Makanjela, a Waiyau chief about a third of the way from Mtendé's to Mataka, has lost the friendship of all his neighbours by kidnapping and selling their people; if any of Mataka's people are found in the district between Makanjela and Moembé, they are considered fair game and sold.
As our volunteers did not come at 8 A.M., I set off to see the cause, and after an hour of perpetual up and down march, as I descended the steep slope which overlooks the first gardens, I saw my friends start up at the apparition they were comfortably cooking porridge for themselves! I sent men of Mataka back with food to the stragglers behind and came on to his town.
I suggested that he might come after he had married a wife, but I fear very much that unless some European would settle, none of these Nassick boys will come to this country. It would be decidedly better if they were taught agriculture in the simplest form, as the Indian. Mataka would have liked to put his oxen to use, but Abraham could not help him with that.
Mataka kept us waiting some time in the verandah of his large square house, and then made his appearance, smiling with his good-natured face. He is about sixty years of age, dressed as an Arab, and if we may judge from the laughter with which his remarks were always greeted, somewhat humorous. He had never seen any but Arabs before.
Lake rivers. Mukaté's. Lake Pamalombé. Mponda's. A slave gang. Wikatani discovers his relatives and remains. 28th July, 1866. We proposed to start to-day, but Mataka said that he was not ready yet: the flour had to be ground, and he had given us no meat. He had sent plenty of cooked food almost every day.
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