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The Waiyau language differs very much from the Nyassa, and is exceedingly difficult to master: it holds good from the coast to Nyassa, but to the west of the Lake the Nyassa tongue is spoken over a vast tract. We shall see that more to the north the hump entirely disappears.
In the event of any mission coming into the country of Mataka, he will go there. I gave him paper to write to you, and, commending him to the chiefs, bade the poor boy farewell. I was sorry to part with him, but the Arabs tell the Waiyau chiefs that our object in liberating slaves is to make them our own and turn them to our religion.
This tribe, or rather the Machinga, now supersede the Manganja. We passed one village of the latter near this, a sad, tumble-down affair, while the Waiyau villages are very neat, with handsome straw or reed fences all around their huts. 24th September, 1866. We went only 2-1/2 miles to the village of Marenga, a very large one, situated at the eastern edge of the bottom of the heel of the Lake.
Charles Livingstone, discovered Lake Nyassa together. The sheep are of the black-haired variety: their tails grow to an enormous size. A rain which came from Nunkajowa, a Waiyau chief, on a former occasion, was found to have a tail weighing 11 lbs.; but for the journey, and two or three days short commons, an extra 2 or 3 lbs. of fat «would have been on it.
Certain it is, from the potsherds strewed over the country, and the still remaining ridges on which beans, sorghum, maize, and cassava, were planted, that the departed population was prodigious. The Waiyau, who are now in the country, came from the other side of the Rovuma, and they probably supplanted the Manganja, an operation which we see going on at the present day. 4th August, 1866.
The evils which we have seen the skulls, the ruined villages, the numbers who perish on the way to the coast and on the sea, the wholesale murders committed by the Waiyau to build up Arab villages elsewhere these things Mukaté often tried to turn off with a laugh, but our remarks are safely lodged in many hearts.
The two Waiyau, who joined us at Kandé's village, now deserted. They had been very faithful all the way, and took our part in every case.
Not many women wear the lip-ring: the example of the Waiyau has prevailed so far; but some of the young women have raised lines crossing each other on the arms, which must have cost great pain: they have also small cuts, covering in some cases the whole body. The Maravi or Manganja here may be said to be in their primitive state.
The Waiyau generally are still the most active agents the slave-traders have. The caravan leaders from Kilwa arrive at a Waiyau village, show the goods they have brought, are treated liberally by the elders, and told to wait and enjoy themselves, slaves enough to purchase all will be procured: then a foray is made against the Manganja, who have few or no guns.
This word would puzzle a German philologist, as being the origin of Nussewa, but the Waiyau pronounce it Loséwa, the Arabs Lusséwa, and Roscher's servant transformed the L and é into N and ee, hence Nusseewa. I rest content with Kingomango so far verifying the place at which he arrived two months after we had discovered Lake Nyassa.
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