ugh a fine well-watered fruitful country, to sleep near a
mountain called Mtewire, by a stream called Msapo. A very large Arab
slave-party was close by our encampment, and I wished to speak to
them; but as soon as they knew of our being near they set off in a
pathless course across country, and were six days in the
wilderness.[17]

_1st August, 1866._--We saw the encampment of another Arab party. It
consisted of ten pens, each of which, from the number of fires it
contained, may have held from eighty to a hundred slaves. The people
of the country magnified the numbers, saying that they would reach
from this to Mataka's; but from all I can learn, I think that from 300
to 800 slaves is the commoner gang. This second party went across
country very early this morning. We saw the fire-sticks which the
slaves had borne with them. The fear they feel is altogether the
effect of the English name, for we have done nothing to cause their
alarm.

_2nd August, 1866._--There was something very cheering to me in the
sight at our encampment of yellow grass and trees dotted over it, as
in the Bechuana country. The birds were singing merrily too, inspired
by the cold, which was 47 deg., and by the vicinity of some population.
Gum-copal trees and bushes grow here as well as all over the country;
but gum is never dug for, probably because the trees were never large
enough to yield the fossil gum. Marks of smiths are very abundant and
some furnaces are still standing. Much cultivation must formerly have
been where now all is jungle.

We arrived at Mbanga, a village embowered in trees, chiefly of the
euphorbia, so common in the Manganja country further south. Kandulo,
the headman, had gone to drink beer at another village, but sent
orders to give a hut and to cook for us. We remained next day. Took
lunars.

We had now passed through, at the narrowest part, the hundred miles of
depopulated country, of which about seventy are on the N.E. of Mataka.
The native accounts differ as to the cause. Some say slave wars, and
assert that the Makoa from the vicinity of Mozambique played an
important part in them; others say famine; others that the people have
moved to and beyond Nyassa.[18] 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