pe the whole at once, in
a splendid book of travels.

The chief of the village near the confluence of the Lake and River Shire,
an old man, called Mosauka, hearing that we were sitting under a tree,
came and kindly invited us to his village. He took us to a magnificent
banyan-tree, of which he seemed proud. The roots had been trained down
to the ground into the form of a gigantic arm-chair, without the seat.
Four of us slept in the space betwixt its arms. Mosauka brought us a
present of a goat and basket of meal "to comfort our hearts." He told us
that a large slave party, led by Arabs, were encamped close by. They had
been up to Cazembe's country the past year, and were on their way back,
with plenty of slaves, ivory, and malachite. In a few minutes half a
dozen of the leaders came over to see us. They were armed with long
muskets, and, to our mind, were a villanous-looking lot. They evidently
thought the same of us, for they offered several young children for sale,
but, when told that we were English, showed signs of fear, and decamped
during the night. On our return to the Kongone, we found that H.M.S.
"Lynx" had caught some of these very slaves in a dhow; for a woman told
us she first saw us at Mosauka's, and that the Arabs had fled for fear of
an _uncanny_ sort of Basungu.

This is one of the great slave-paths from the interior, others cross the
Shire a little below, and some on the lake itself. We might have
released these slaves but did not know what to do with them afterwards.
On meeting men, led in slave-sticks, the Doctor had to bear the
reproaches of the Makololo, who never slave, "Ay, you call us bad, but
are we yellow-hearted, like these fellows--why won't you let us choke
them?" To liberate and leave them, would have done but little good, as
the people of the surrounding villages would soon have seized them, and
have sold them again into slavery. The Manganja chiefs sell their own
people, for we met Ajawa and slave-dealers in several highland villages,
who had certainly been encouraged to come among them for slaves. The
chiefs always seemed ashamed of the traffic, and tried to excuse
themselves. "We do not sell many, and only those who have committed
crimes." As a rule the regular trade is supplied by the low and criminal
classes, and hence the ugliness of slaves. Others are probably sold
besides criminals, as on the accusation of witchcraft. Friendless
orphans also sometimes disappear su