The agricultural class does not seem to be a servile one:  all cultivate, and the work is esteemed.  The chief was out at his garden when we arrived, and no disgrace is attached to the field labourer.  The slaves very likely do the chief part of the work, but all engage in it, and are proud of their skill.  Here a great deal of grain is raised, though nearly all the people are Waiyau or Machinga.  This is remarkable, as they have till lately been marauding and moving from place to place.  The Manganja possessed the large breed of humped cattle which fell into the hands of the Waiyau, and knew how to milk them.  Their present owners never milk them, and they have dwindled into a few instead of the thousands of former times.[23]

A lion killed a woman early yesterday morning, and ate most of her undisturbed.

It is getting very hot; the ground to the feet of the men “burns like fire” after noon, so we are now obliged to make short marches, and early in the morning chiefly.

Wikatani—­Bishop Mackenzie’s favourite boy—­met a brother here, and he finds that he has an elder brother and a sister at Kabinga’s.  The father who sold him into slavery is dead.  He wishes to stop with his relatives, and it will be well if he does.  Though he has not much to say, what he does advance against the slave-trade will have its weight, and it will all be in the way of preparation for better times and more light.

The elder brother was sent for, but had not arrived when it was necessary for us to leave Mponda’s on the Rivulet Ntemangokwe.  I therefore gave Wikatani some cloth, a flint gun instead of the percussion one he carried, some flints, paper to write upon, and commended him to Mponda’s care till his relatives arrived.  He has lately shown a good deal of levity, and perhaps it is best that he should have a touch of what the world is in reality.

[In a letter written about this time Dr. Livingstone, in speaking of Wikatani, says, “He met with a brother, and found that he had two brothers and one or two sisters living down at the western shore of Lake Pamelombe under Kabinga.  He thought that his relatives would not again sell him.  I had asked him if he wished to remain, and he at once said yes, so I did not attempt to dissuade him:  his excessive levity will perhaps be cooled by marriage.  I think he may do good by telling some of what he has seen and heard.  I asked him if he would obey an order from his chief to hunt the Manganja, and he said, ‘No.’  I hope he won’t.  In the event of any mission coming into the country of Mataka, he will go there.  I gave him paper to write to you,[24] and, commending him to the chiefs, bade the poor boy farewell.  I was sorry to part with him, but the Arabs tell the Waiyau chiefs that our object in liberating slaves is to make them our own and turn them to our religion.  I had declared to them, through Wikatani as interpreter, that they never became our slaves, and were at liberty to go back to their relatives if they liked; and now it was impossible to object to Wikatani going without stultifying my own statements.”  It is only necessary to repeat that Wikatani and Chuma had been liberated from the slavers by Dr. Livingstone and Bishop Mackenzie in 1861; they were mere children when set free.