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Their captain said that they could not stand against the fire of the guns and had determined to abandon the town and make the best fight they could upon the ridge. A little later the rest of the Mazitu came, driving before them all the non-combatants who remained in the town. With these was King Bausi, in a terrible state of excitement.
A fear which I could not define caused me to press forward as fast as possible; for the last twenty-four hours I have scarcely stopped to eat or sleep. When I got into the Mazitu country this morning I found the kraals empty, except for some women and girls, who knew me again, and threw these flowers over me.
They at length reached a region which had hitherto escaped, where the people welcomed them with the greatest cordiality, and were willing to spare the small amount of food they had remaining for themselves. But even here news of war soon reached them, and they found that a tribe of Zulus, the Mazitu, were ravaging the country, and that the inhabitants were only safe within their stockades.
Some of the natives show a love of country quite surprising. We saw fugitives on the mountains, in the north of the lake, who were persisting in clinging to the haunts of their boyhood and youth, in spite of starvation and the continual danger of being put to death by the Mazitu. A few miles below the lakelet is the last of the great slave-crossings.
He told Musa that all the country in front was full of Mazitu; that forty-four Arabs and their followers had been killed by them at Kasungu, and he only escaped. Musa and all the Johanna men now declared that they would go no farther. Musa said, "No good country that; I want to go back to Johanna to see my father and mother and son." I took him to Marenga, and asked the chief about the Mazitu.
Some of the Mazitu, who were great thieves, stole those dead fowls, Baas. After this, Baas, I thought it best not to use that sugar in the coffee, and later on Bena told me that it was deadly poison. Well, Baas, it came into my mind that if I could make that great snake swallow enough of this poison, he, too, might die.
We reached Kinisusa's, below Mount Mulundini, of Kirk's range. The chief was absent, but he was sent for immediately: his town has much increased since I saw it last. 29th September, 1866. Another Arab passed last night, with the tale that his slaves had all been taken from him by the Mazitu.
We reached Silubi's village, on the base of a rocky detached hill. No food to be had; all taken by Mazitu, so Silubi gave me some Masuko fruit instead. They find that they can keep the Mazitu off by going up a rocky eminence, and hurling stones and arrows down on the invaders: they can defend themselves also by stockades, and these are becoming very general.
An influence would be exerted over an enormous area of country, for the Mazitu about the north end of the Lake will not allow slave-traders to pass round that way through their country. They would be most efficient allies to the English, and might themselves be benefited by more intercourse.
Countless numbers of them were killed, while the pick of the population passed under the slave yoke, and those of them who survived, vanished in ships to unknown lands. Thus it came about that the slavers were obliged to go further afield and even to conduct their raids upon the borders of the territory of the great Mazitu people, the inland race of Zulu origin of whom I have spoken.
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