CHAP. XVIII. SUCCESS OF THE EXPEDITION. 373 likewise giving all due weight to the assertions of the traders who have used strong language to express their injured feelings in being prevented from using the people as brutes, we must say that the conduct of England on the West Coast of late years deserves the world's admiration. Her generosity will appear grand in the eyes of posterity. Here, on the East Coast, we have the contrast. No trustworthy agents can be employed; no education has been imparted; and not even slave agents can be sent to a distance except on the promise of plunder and rapine. In the Mission we had now with us, we trusted that we saw the dawn of a better system for both Portuguese and natives than that which has been the bane of all progress for ages past. The Expedition, in spite of several adverse circumstances, was up to this point eminently successful in its objects. As will be afterward seen, we had opened a cotton-field, which, taking in the Shire and Lake Nyassa, was 400 miles in length. We had gained the confidence of the people wherever we had gone; and, supposing the Mission of the Universities to be only moderately successful, as all we had previously known of the desire of the natives to trade had been amply confirmed, a perfectly new era had commenced in a region much larger than the cotton-fields of the Southern States of America. We had, however, as will afterward be seen, arrived at the turning-point of our prosperous career, and soon came into contact with the Portuguese slave-trade; and let any one reflect on the injury that any country sustains, even by laws which only hamper trade and free commercial intercourse, and he may judge how utterly destructive to all prosperity that system must be, which not only fosters internecine wars, but renders the pursuit of agriculture perilous in times of peace. On at last reaching Chibisa's, we heard that there was war 374 POOR HAMLETS. CHAP. XVIII. in the Manganja country, and the slave-trade was going on briskly. A deputation from a chief near Mount Zomba had just passed on its way to Chibisa, who was in a distant village, to implore him to come himself, or send medicine, to drive off the Waiao, Waiau, or Ajawa, whose marauding parties were desolating the land. A large gang of recently enslaved Manganja crossed the river, on their way to Tette, a few days before we got the ship up. Chibisa's deputy was civil, and readily gave us permission to hire as many men to carry the bishop's goods up to the hills as were willing to go. With a suf ficient number, therefore, we started for the highlands on the 15th of July, to show the bishop the country, which, from its altitude and coolness, was most suitable for a station. Our first day's march was a long and fatiguing one. The few hamlets we passed were poor, and had no food for our men, and we were obliged to go on till 4 P.M., when we entered the small village of Chipindu. The inhabitants complained of hunger, and said they had no food to sell, and no hut for us to sleep in; but, if we would only go on a little farther, we should come to a village where they had plenty to eat; but we had traveled far enough, and determined to remain where we were. Before sunset as much food was brought as we cared to purchase, and, as it threatened to rain, huts were provided for the whole party. Next forenoon we halted at the village of our old friend Mbame, to obtain new carriers, because Chibisa's men, never before having been hired, and not having yet learned to trust us, did not choose to go farther. After resting a little, Mbame told us that a slave party on its way to Tette would presently pass through his village. "Shall we interfere?" we inquired of each other. We remembered that all our valuable private baggage was in Tette, which, if we freed the slaves, might, together with some government property, be destroyed in retali CHAP. XVIII. RETREAT OF SLAVE-HUNTERS. 377 ation; but this system of slave-hunters dogging us where previously they durst not venture, and, on pretense of being "our children," setting one tribe against another, to furnish themselves with slaves, would so inevitably thwart all the efforts, for which we had the sanction of the Portuguese government, that we resolved to run all risks, and put a stop, if possible, to the slave-trade, which had now followed on the footsteps of our discoveries. A few minutes after Mbame had spoken to us, the slave party, a long line of manacled men, women, and children, came wending their way round the hill and into the valley, on the side of which the village stood. The black drivers, armed with muskets, and bedecked with various articles of finery, marched jauntily in the front, middle, and rear of the line; some of them blowing exultant notes out of long tin horns. They seemed to feel that they were doing a very noble thing, and might proudly march with an air of triumph; but the instant the fellows caught a glimpse of the English, they darted off like mad into the forest—so fast, indeed, that we caught but a glimpse of their red caps and the soles of their feet. The chief of the party alone remained; and he, from being in front, had his hand tightly grasped by a Makololo! He proved to be a well-known slave of the late Commandant at Tette, and for some time our own attendant while there. On asking him how he obtained these captives, he replied, he had bought them; but on our inquiring of the people themselves, all, save four, said they had been captured in war. While this inquiry was going on, he bolted too. The captives knelt down, and, in their way of expressing thanks, clapped their hands with great energy. They were thus left entirely on our hands, and knives were soon busy at work cutting the women and children loose. It was more difficult to cut the men adrift, as each had his neck in the |