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Updated: June 27, 2025
It consisted of ten pens, each of which, from the number of fires it contained, may have held from eighty to a hundred slaves. The people of the country magnified the numbers, saying that they would reach from this to Mataka's; but from all I can learn, I think that from 300 to 800 slaves is the commoner gang. This second party went across country very early this morning.
He is a smith, or rather a nothing, for unless he could smelt iron he would be entirely without materials to work with. 14th-28th July, 1866. One day, calling at Mataka's, I found as usual a large crowd of idlers, who always respond with a laugh to everything he utters as wit. He asked, if he went to Bombay what ought he to take to secure some gold?
I counted fifteen running streams in one day: they are at the bottom of the valley which separates the ridges. We got to the brow of a ridge about an hour from Mataka's first gardens, and all were so tired that we remained to sleep; but we first invited volunteers to go on and buy food, and bring it back early next morning: they had to be pressed to do this duty. 14th July, 1866.
In Mataka's vicinity, N.E., there is a perfect brush of streams flowing to that river: one forms a lake in its course, and the sources of the Rovuma lie in the same region. After leaving Mataka's we crossed a good-sized one flowing to Loendi, and, the day after leaving Pezimba's, another going to the Chiringa or Lochiringa, which is a tributary of the Rovuma. 6th August, 1866.
We hurried on as fast as we could to the Luatizé, our last stage before getting to Mataka's; this stream is rapid, about forty yards wide, waist deep, with many podostemons on the bottom. The country gets more and more undulating and is covered with masses of green foliage, chiefly Masuko trees, which have large hard leaves. There are hippopotami further down the river on its way to the Loendi.
When the people there were carried off by Mataka's people, Jumbé seized their stores of grain, and now has no post to which he can go there. The Loangwa Arabs give an awful account of Jumbé's murders and selling the people, but one cannot take it all in; at the mildest it must have been bad.
The headman here, Mokalaosé, is a real Manganja, and he and all his people exhibit the greater darkness of colour consequent on being in a warm moist climate; he is very friendly, and presented millet, porridge, cassava, and hippopotamus meat boiled and asked if I liked milk, as he had some of Mataka's cattle here.
It is a perpetual succession of ridge and valley, with a running stream or oozing bog, where ridge is separated from ridge: the ridges become steeper and narrower as we approach Mataka's. I counted fifteen running burns of from one to ten yards wide in one day's march of about six hours; being in a hilly or rather mountainous region, they flow rapidly and have plenty of water-power.
Map making; but my energies were sorely taxed by the lazy sepoys, and I was usually quite tired out at night. Some men have come down from Mataka's, and report the arrival of an Englishman with cattle for me, "he has two eyes behind as well as two in front:" this is enough of news for awhile! Mokalaosé has his little afflictions, and he tells me of them.
We left for Mtendé, who is the last chief before we enter on a good eight days' march to Mataka's; we might have gone to Kandulo's, who is near the Rovuma, and more to the north, but all are so well supplied with everything by slave-traders that we have difficulty in getting provisions at all. Mataka has plenty of all kinds of food.
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