excessive dirtiness of the
Manganja, was erroneous. This trait was confined to the cool highlands.
Here crowds of men and women were observed to perform their ablutions
daily in the stream that ran past their villages; and this we have
observed elsewhere to be a common custom with both Manganja and Ajawa.

Before we started on the morning of the 1st September, Katosa sent an
enormous calabash of beer, containing at least three gallons, and then
came and wished us to "stop a day and eat with him." On explaining to
him the reasons for our haste, he said that he was in the way by which
travellers usually passed, he never stopped them in their journeys, but
would like to look at us for a day. On our promising to rest a little
with him on our return, he gave us about two pecks of rice, and three
guides to conduct us to a subordinate female chief, Nkwinda, living on
the borders of the Lake in front.

The Ajawa, from having taken slaves down to Quillimane and Mosambique,
knew more of us than Katosa did. Their muskets were carefully polished,
and never out of these slaver's hands for a moment, though in the chiefs
presence. We naturally felt apprehensive that we should never see Katosa
again. A migratory afflatus seems to have come over the Ajawa tribes.
Wars among themselves, for the supply of the Coast slave-trade, are said
to have first set them in motion. The usual way in which they have
advanced among the Manganja has been by slave-trading in a friendly way.
Then, professing to wish to live as subjects, they have been welcomed as
guests, and the Manganja, being great agriculturists, have been able to
support considerable bodies of these visitors for a time. When the
provisions became scarce, the guests began to steal from the fields;
quarrels arose in consequence, and, the Ajawa having firearms, their
hosts got the worst of it, and were expelled from village after village,
and out of their own country. The Manganja were quite as bad in regard
to slave-trading as the Ajawa, but had less enterprise, and were much
more fond of the home pursuits of spinning, weaving, smelting iron, and
cultivating the soil, than of foreign travel. The Ajawa had little of a
mechanical turn, and not much love for agriculture, but were very keen
traders and travellers. This party seemed to us to be in the first or
friendly stage of intercourse with Katosa; and, as we afterwards found,
he was fully alive to the danger.

Our course was