taken. The thieves, I observed, kept up a succession of jokes with
Chuma and Wikatani and when the latter was enjoying them, gaping to
the sky, they were busy putting the things of which he had charge
under their cloths! I spoke to the chief, and he got the three first
articles back for me.

A great deal if not all the lawlessness of this quarter is the result
of the slave-trade, for the Arabs buy whoever is brought to them and
in a country covered with forest as this is, kidnapping can be
prosecuted with the greatest ease; elsewhere the people are honest,
and have a regard for justice.

_1st July, 1866._--As we approach Mtarika's place, the country becomes
more mountainous and the land sloping for a mile down to the south
bank of the Rovuma supports a large population. Some were making new
gardens by cutting down trees and piling the branches for burning;
others had stored tip large quantities of grain and were moving it to
a new locality, but they were all so well supplied with calico
(Merikano) that they would not look at ours: the market was in fact
glutted by slavers from (Quiloa) Kilwa. On asking why people were seen
tied to trees to die as we had seen them, they gave the usual answer
that the Arabs tie them thus and leave them to perish, because they
are vexed, when the slaves can walk no further, that they have lost
their money by them. The path is almost strewed with slave-sticks, and
though the people denied it, I suspect that they make a practice of
following slave caravans and cutting off the sticks from those who
fall out in the march, and thus stealing them. By selling them again
they get the quantities of cloth we see. Some asked for gaudy prints,
of which we had none, because we knew that the general taste of the
Africans of the Interior is for strength rather than show in what they