skin or mat spread for the purpose. This is perhaps the most
primitive form of mill, and anterior to that in oriental countries, where
two women grind at one mill, and may have been that used by Sarah of old
when she entertained the Angels.

On 2nd October we applied to Muazi for guides to take us straight down to
Chinsamba's at Mosapo, and thus cut off an angle, which we should
otherwise make, by going back to Kota-kota Bay. He replied that his
people knew the short way to Chinsamba's that we desired to go, but that
they all were afraid to venture there, on account of the Zulus, or
Mazitu. We therefore started back on our old route, and, after three
hours' march, found some Babisa in a village who promised to lead us to
Chinsamba.

We meet with these keen traders everywhere. They are easily known by a
line of horizontal cicatrices, each half an inch long, down the middle of
the forehead and chin. They often wear the hair collected in a mass on
the upper and back part of the head, while it is all shaven off the
forehead and temples. The Babisa and Waiau or Ajawa heads have more of
the round bullet-shape than those of the Manganja, indicating a marked
difference in character; the former people being great traders and
travellers, the latter being attached to home and agriculture. The
Manganja usually intrust their ivory to the Babisa to be sold at the
Coast, and complain that the returns made never come up to the high
prices which they hear so much about before it is sent. In fact, by the
time the Babisa return, the expenses of the journey, in which they often
spend a month or two at a place where food abounds, usually eat up all
the profits.

Our new companions were trading in tobacco, and had collected quantities
of the round balls, about the size of nine pounder shot, into which it is
formed. One of them owned a woman, whose child had been sold that
morning for tobacco. The mother followed him, weeping silently, for
hours along the way we went; she seemed to be well known, for at several
hamlets, the women spoke to her with evident sympathy; we could do
nothing to alleviate her sorrow--the child would be kept until some slave-
trader passed, and then sold for calico. The different cases of slave-
trading observed by us are mentioned, in order to give a fair idea of its
details.

We spent the first night, after leaving the slave route, at the village
of Nkoma, among a section of Manganja, called Machewa,