duplicity is perhaps with them reckoned rather as a virtue; generosity in sharing any good fortune-in halving the last crust, or what would correspond in the African menu to that proverbial item is so universal and usual as not to demand any notice among themselves. Almost every man, --and par excellence every chief-is at once an inveterate beggar, and ludicrously arrogant and haughty. How then can I describe to you in a brief compass such a paradox of human character? In religion they believe, I am told, for the most part in the spirits of their ancestors, and in a vague Mlungu or" Unknown God," who, they apparently think, takes as little notice of them as they do of him. Their religion makes them intensely conservative, and is thus greatly opposed to the introduction of newer and better methods. They are excessively superstitious, believing in magic and necromancy, and the efficacy of spells and charms of witchcraft and augury. The test of the oola, and the ordeal of mwavi poison, are their ultimate methods-the one for augury, and the other for the detection of supposed crime or witchcraft.

Their arts are very simple. They work in iron, and produce the sole agricultural implement which they have-the hoe. This and the axe are their only utensils. Both fit to the handle by a spike passing through the wood (which is made thicker to receive it at the point through which it passes). As in most primitive nations, all the art of embellishment and of form is spent on their weapons of war, the spear and the shield. The former vary much in shape and design, and are often most artistically and beautifully made. Sometimes they are furnished with

barbs, which make a cruel wound, and are not extricable from the body. They are thrown from the hand at a tolerable distance with great force and accuracy, and are well balanced, and ornamented with brass and copper wire. The shield of the Angoni is a large oval of hide, like that of their ancestors the Zulus. The Wankonde tribes carry a wooden shield covered with skin, long and very narrow, curving round like a tube, inside which the arm just fits. It is generally not more than some seven or eight inches across. In wood they also do some rude ornamental work, especially in the manufacture of their pipes. Rough carvings of crocodiles and lizards appear on their benches and seats, and the long spoons are often curiously wrought. All work is done out of one block or piece; they have no knowledge of welding metals, or dovetailing, sawing, or joining wood. Their dwellings, for the most part, show little skill or design, and are beehive-shaped huts lined with mud. The tribes at the north end of the lake, however, are a singular exception. Their huts show architectural design of no mean order. They are circular, the uprights leaning outwards considerably, and composed of stout bamboos cut and notched, so as to present a curiously varied and striking effect. The interstices are filled with lumps of sunburnt clay, slaped like French rolls. The thatch is conical, high, beautifully made, and the door tolerably high and wide. The floor is raised, and the whole interior plastered smoothly, and kept scrupulously clean. The villages are embowered in huge groves of banana-trees, and the whole surroundings are a model of cleanliness. They cure skins by hand-rubbing, and use those of

small animals-especially monkeys and wild cats-for tobacco-bags and for dress. Those of goats, &c., are used as bags to contain flour. The skin is taken off in one piece, drawn over the head, but they have apparently no idea of combining and sewing them. Their grain is prepared first by pounding with long heavy poles in a hollowed wooden cavity, and then ground on a flat stone with a circular one by hand. The grain is stored in large basket-shaped granaries, raised from the ground, plastered with mud, and thatched. They make earthenware vessels to cook their food, while the hollow gourd serves as drinking-cup and vessel to contain water, milk, or beer. In the working of fibre they are very clever, making rope from the size of a ship's cable to that of small twine out of the inner bark of the fig and other trees, and of plantain fibre, and plaiting the strands with great regularity and neatness. Of the plantain fibre they also make very artistic mats of great durability in wear. Baskets are woven so closely as to be capable of containing water, and of ornamental design and shape, prompted probably by the graceful natural curves of the bottle-shaped gourds.

The field labour is mostly left to the women-the hoeing, weeding, and reaping of the fields, and the pounding and preparing of the grain and flour. Various grains are cultivated, principally maize (virombo), millet (mperi and mpemba), and dhal; also edible roots, especially sweet - potato (Batata edulis), manioc, casava, and yams. The usual food is a porridge made from Indian corn or millet flour, or the dried and powdered roots of the casava. This is made by one of a large party in a huge earthenware bowl, and is to our

palates extremely tasteless, gritty, and only half-cooked. Squatted round this wood fire you may watch your porters or your boat's crew, at their merry meal, their time divided between shouts of laughter at some simple joke, slapping their backs and legs to kill the innumerable mosquitoes, and stuffing enormous chunks of the unwholesome-looking porridge into their capacious mouths. They generally manage to procure some seasoning to eat with this piece de resistance. This may be a remnant of meat saved from the last carnival of flesh, and already probably in the last stages of dissolution; or a few dried fish bartered from a passing fisherman, and smelling scarcely less strong · or the dried fish-spawn which the Atonga collect in millions at Bandawé and dry in the sun; or a few handfuls of the yellow peas of the dhal plant; or the "flycake" so peculiar to the country. This latter is made from the kungu fly, a small midge of microscopic proportions, which flies in den-e black clouds about the lake. When one of these flights comes ashore, the trees are instantly grey with the fly, and the air is thick as a mist, Women and children flock from the villages with baskets, into which they sweep the flies, and shake them from the boughs. How many millions it must take to form a cubic inch of fly-cake is a calculation too enormous to attempt! These, and other even less delectable seasonings help to make the thick tasteless mass of meal and water more palatable to the savage fancy. The banana also forms a main staple of food. It is usually gathered green and roasted in its skin in the hot embers, and is also made into flour. The cattle-producing tribes live largely on milk.

The dress of the natives, where they have come in contact with Europeans, consists of a piece of calico (4 yds. X 1 yd.) tid rund the body under the armpits, or over the shoulder, and reaching to the ground. They eagerly adopt European clothes of any kind, especially shirts, and will work for them as payment in lieu of calico. The natural dress of the tribes towards the south of the lake is a piece of bark-cloth around the loins; but at the north the men are in puris naturalibus, while the full dress of the ladies is often of no greater dimensions than an ordinary necktie. Full dress among the northern Wankonde, therefore, consists in the distinctive brass ring round the waist (in which is sometimes hung a small monkey or cat skin), a good deal of tattooing-which is performed by raising the skin in little lumps or pimples in various patterns and a number of armlets or bracelets, with perhaps a few feathers in the woolly hair. The Atonga are somewhat more dressed, and are much addicted to personal adornment. The men often wear huge ivory armlets extending from the hand almost to the elbow; the women adopt the hideous pelele, -a ring inserted in a slit in the upper lip (like a metal eyelet in a batch of papers), and gradually enlarged till the lip stands out at right angles to the plane of the face vertical pieces of wood, or straws, are also inserted in the lip, and stand upright in front of the nose; while heavy necklaces of blue beads complete the fascinations of an Atonga belle's toilet. The children are very bright, precocious, and clever.

:

sometimes two or three deep. These are lashed together with bands of reeds, and plastered with mud to the height of several feet from the ground, and festooned with thorns above; the ground in front is also frequently strewn with thorns. Often a second, and even a third line of defence completes the fortification.

Such is a very brief sketch of these people taken as a whole. Were I to attempt to describe the specialities of the several chief tribes, either in character, physiognomy, artistic skill or social advancement, I would very far exceed the limits of my space. I have described them as generous, brave to a certain point, not wanting in certain rude efforts at social advancement, merry, and easily pleased. What, then, for all these ages has checked the advancement of these people, and left them centuries behind the tribes of India, of China, and of Asia? The reasons are many, and too complex to examine here. Let us content ourselves with one.

At the present day the great bar to social progress is the insecurity to life and property. The savage lives from hand to mouth. The weaker tribes care not to plant trees or build good houses, not knowing whether they and their posterity shall get the benefit. Those still less strong dare hardly to cultivate a field lest the enemy reap the produce. Moreover, through the length and breadth of the land the slave-trader, with his calico and presents to the powerful, and his gun and powder and slave-stick for the weak, has for a thousand years carried desolation. Yet even more dreaded is the tyranny of the strong tribesnotably at present the Angoni and Magwangwara, of Zulu origin— who, descending like a whirlwind

on an unsuspecting village (perhaps fifty miles from their camp), with their fierce and unearthly cries, and their weird war-dress of feathers and skins and paint, strike terror and panic into their victims, even before they have raised the cruel spear to slay man, woman, and child. For to these fighting tribes, and to all who aspire to any independence in the land, the coming of the dry season, and the burning of the grass, is the signal anxiously awaited for going on the war-path,-just as you or I might go to the seaside. Arabs and Angoni, and a host of minor tyrants, are then let loose over the land. Each petty tribe goes for one weaker than itself.

"Greater fleas have lesser fleas upon

their legs to bite 'em ; Lesser fleas have lesser fleas,-and so ad infinitum.

Lever's clever couplet holds good for the poor African savage. If, then, we wish to benefit Africadisregarding for the moment the benefits which may accrue to our own pocket and trade in the process-the first step is to introduce some settled law and order. The establishment of each mis-ion station has been singularly productive of this result. At Blantyre the Southern Angoni raids were turned aside, and expended their force elsewhere, at the carnest mediation of Mr Scott. At Bandawe the Atonga have been free from the same enemies for years past, solely on account of Dr Laws's influence, end the promise he had won from Mombera, a promise that chief respected with Zulu fidelity, in spite of the urgent remonstrances of his councillors. If encouragement were given to the extension of British influence in Nyassaland, and the influential promoters of the "British South African Com

pany" were supported in their plans north of the Zambesi, capital would come into the country, and the responsibility of maintaining peace and order would devolve on those who have put forward these proposals. But our Government must be firm in its opposition to German and Portuguese claims, in a country where neither of these nations has any right, either by discovery, exploration, or residence, to warrant its claim to be the suzerain power. All we ask is that this country, so long the sphere of heroic missionary effort, shall be declared to be beyond the sphere of influence of any nation but England. There will be no lack then of pioneers to open it up, and establish a police force which shall restrain the lawless tribes within their

tories.

own terri

As regards the other element of discord, the Arab slave-dealer. His is an influence for evil which works by subtle means, sowing dissension between tribes, throwing oil on the angry flames of savage arrogance and impetuosity. Thus he foments war, and reaps the benefits by securing, for a small consideration of calico, the women and boys captured by the victors. This curse has overshadowed the land for a thousand years.

On the north, the south, the east, and the west, light is now breaking in on the Dark Continent, and Britain is the foremost, as ever, in the task. It is almost the last of the great unknown lands, and it has fallen to our century and ourselves to open up the vast area of this huge continent, between one-fourth and one fifth of the superficial area of land in our planet. To me it seems a great matter and a great opportunity. Shall posterity look back with scorn on opportunities wasted, on

duties shirked, on empire and commercial extension thrust into our hands and thrown aside by us for our rivals to take? Love of adventure and daring still lives in the British race. We look back on the records of the Elizabethan age, and as boys we sighed for those times of mighty sea-kings, of golden Eldorados in America, Mexico, Peru and California, of Indian pagodas and fabulous isles of the sea; and around us to-day the same drama is enacting, the same opportunities offer, and we heed them not. There is ample evidence that these lands yield gold and other lucrative metals; their vegetable and animal products are rich; the country is not burdened with an over-population as was India; and above all, the moral duty devolves on us of supporting the men we have allowed to go and work in these countriesof checking this scandal to civilisation, the slave-trade, which can only be put down by an era of law and order, wielded by an all-potential power. But we are careless alike of the higher duties, and of national ambition and commercial profit. Careless of the

“Ill-used race of men that plough the

soil,

vantage to our Indian empire, the opening up of a country like Nyassaland for Indian emigration would relieve the population of that country; and I firmly believe that the introduction of the primitive modes of Indian agriculture would be the first and most important good we could confer on the African savage. At present he has no utensil except the hoe. The adaptation of the bullock to agriculture, the crude Indian plough, the introduction of a rough irrigation system, the field well, and the oil-pre-s; of certain Indian cereals, of many food and timber trees, of the cotton-plant, linseed, flax, and indigo. All these are just adapted-the former to the low stage of (social) development of the people, the latter to the climate.

With these would come the money currency, supplanting savage barter; and rudimentary education in counting and writing, even now spreading widely under mission influence and teaching.

Already I have overstepped the due limits of my space. One word on a separate subject, and I have done. In S. lat 10°, close to the northern end of Lake Nyassa, and on its western shore, is a little station named Karonga. The slavers found it a thorn in their

side, and endeavoured to destroy it and its brave defenders. Six men, with a few natives, held it against enormous odds, though escape was at first easy. Consul O'Neill was the leading spirit in this defence.

These men were the "heroes" of this little campaign against slave-trade agression; I joined later, and gave what assistance I could. We had again and again given these slavers terribly severe lessons, and when I left they were in great straits. I went to make further arrange