he inhabitants with only one or two
old muskets, but ten to one no powder,--the long line of flames, leaping
thirty feet into the air with dense masses of black smoke--and pieces of
charred grass falling down in showers. Would not the stoutest English
villager, armed only with the bow and arrow against the enemy's musket,
quail at the idea of breaking through that wall of fire? When at a
distance, we once saw a scene like this, and had the charred grass,
literally as thick as flakes of black snow, falling around us, there was
no difficulty in understanding the secret of the slave-trader's power.

On the 21st of September, we arrived at the village of the chief Muasi,
or Muazi; it is surrounded by a stockade, and embowered in very tall
euphorbia-trees; their height, thirty or forty feet, shows that it has
been inhabited for at least one generation. A visitation of disease or
death causes the headmen to change the site of their villages, and plant
new hedges; but, though Muazi has suffered from the attacks of the
Mazitu, he has evidently clung to his birthplace. The village is
situated about two miles south-west of a high hill called Kasungu, which
gives the name to a district extending to the Loangwa of the Maravi.
Several other detached granite hills have been shot up on the plain, and
many stockaded villages, all owing allegiance to Muazi, are scattered
over it.

On our arrival, the chief was sitting in the smooth shady place, called
Boalo, where all public business is transacted, with about two hundred
men and boys around him. We paid our guides with due ostentation.
Masiko, the tallest of our party, measured off the fathom of cloth agreed
upon, and made it appear as long as possible, by facing round to the
crowd, and cutting a few inches beyond what his outstretched arms could
reach, to show that there was no deception. This was by way of
advertisement. The people are mightily gratified at having a tall fellow
to measure the cloth for them. It pleases them even better than cutting
it by a tape-line--though very few men of six feet high can measure off
their own length with their outstretched arms. Here, where Arab traders
have been, the cubit called _mokono_, or elbow, begins to take the place
of the fathom in use further south. The measure is taken from the point
of the bent elbow to the end of the middle finger.

We found, on visiting Muazi on the following day, that he was as frank
and straightforward