Tshikumbu, however, did not cease his evil courses, though hi brother, Tshingomanji, apparently contented himself with the terr tory he had carved out of Tshipoka's country, and settled down o it in peace. Europeans attempting to pass through Tshikumbu town on their way to the coast were stopped, maltreated, and robbe by Tshikumbu. Mr. Buchanan in this way suffered at his bands one occasion. Later on, and not very long ago, an Englishma named Pidder was seized by Tshikumbu (merely because he cou not afford to pay the present demanded), flogged, and put in t stocks. Mr. Fred. Moir, of the African Lakes Company, g together a force of Europeans and natives and marched to t relief of Mr. Pidder. Tshikumbu stopped their approach f awhile by threatening to cut Mr. Pidder's head off. Fortunatel however, through the assistance of some friendly natives, Mr. Pidd succeeded in freeing himself and in escaping.

I should not, however, have moved so promptly against Tshikumb had he not begun to threaten the lives of some English planters wi had settled in or near his country by his permission.

I believed their position to be critical, so I dispatched on th 17th July (the day after my arrival at Tshiromo) Captain Cec Maguire (commanding the Indian contingent of the British Centr Africa Police) with fifty Indian soldiers, and Mr. Hugh C. Marsha (Police officer at the Ruo) to Tshikumbu's country to make inquirie into these complaints, and, if possible, arrive at an understandin with Tshikumbu on the question of slavery.

They reached Tshikumbu's town on the 21st July, but unfor tunately found that Tshikumbu had made up his mind to fight, fo the expeditionary party were received in a hostile manner and repeatedly attacked. Tshikumbu himself, after wounding a sch soldier (Tabha Singh, 32nd Pioneers) in the neck, managed t escape. The town, however, was captured, and subsequent's Tshikumbu's forces were again defeated, and finally dispersed or the 22nd. The pursuit of Tshikumbu proving fruitless, Capta: Maguire devoted himself to effecting a settlement of the country which should prove peaceful and permanent. Tshikumbu's peop were told that they might return to their towns and remain there unmolested if they abstained from all further hostile proceeding, which invitation they speedily accepted. A large number of slav were found in Tshikumbu's chief town, and were informed by Captain Maguire that they were now free. Only three of the. however, were actually released by him and sent back to their hote in Tshipoka's country, the bulk of the slaves preferring to rem and settle in Tshikumbu's country on the assurance that they were now free.

Tshingomanji, Tshikumbu's brother, bore a fairly good characte:

ng the European settlers on Milanji, but unfortunately he had ed Tshikumbu, in a quite unprovoked manner, in attacking our es on the 21st July. Consequently he had to be dealt with as enemy. He fortunately stayed further hostile proceedings by rendering himself unconditionally as a prisoner. He agreed to a fine of eight small tusks of ivory (about 507. in value), and to ae down to Tshiromo to give in his submission to me as Repretative of Her Majesty. I subsequently reinstated him in his ritory under certain conditions, which have been forwarded to ur Lordship for sanction and approval, and I have further recogzed him as sole Chief in Tshikumbu's stead over the little Yao rincipality (carved out of Tshipoka's territory) on Milanji.

Captain Maguire was much helped in the final settlement of fairs in the Milanji district by Mr. Hugh C. Marshall and r. William Scott, of the Church of Scotland Mission. Unforinately, in the second attack in Tshikumbu's town a house elonging to the Church of Scotland Mission was accidentally arat, having been set fire to by some native allies of ours who did ot know that it belonged to the Mission, the house not differing materially in appearance from a native dwelling, and not having been occupied for some time by a white man. My attention, however, having been drawn to the circumstance by the head of the Mission at Blantyre, I inquired into the matter, and eventually paid the Mission 157. in compensation for the damage done.

As far as I can ascertain, there was but little loss on the enemy's de in the various skirmishes and attacks on Milanji. Only two cead bodies were seen. Tshikumbu, however, was severely wounded before he disappeared, and it is not known whether he recovered. He has never been heard of any more. On our side only one soldier was wounded (Tabha Sing, 32nd Pioneers). He was shot through the side of the neck, but soon recovered, and has since been on active service. But the fatigue, cold, and want of food (for, unfortunately, the rear party leaving Tshiromo after the main body with most of the food supply took the wrong road, and did not reach Milanji) told severely on the health of the expeditionary party. Captain Maguire and Mr. Marshall both had severe attacks of fever, and one Sikh soldier (Juwala Singh, of the 32nd Pioneers) died about three weeks after the Milanji expedition from an affection of the heart, brought on, no doubt, by severe exertions in mountainclimbing. This, I am thankful to say, has hitherto been the only death which has occurred among the 218 negroes, white men, and Judiaus attached to my administration.

The result of Captain Maguire's expedition to Milanji has been • Deducted from the amount realized by Tshikumbu's and Tshingomanji's ivory (637. 48.).

entirely satisfactory. Tshikumbu has been heard of no more, and Tshingomanji's and Tshipoka's people have settled down quietly and industriously to their agricultural work. The Church of Scotland Mission has commenced rebuilding at Tshikumbu's old town, and, it addition, has applied for the lease of a site of land at the top o Milanji, on Government ground, where they can build a sanatoriun in a climate which is that of the temperate regions all the yea round. Other European settlers and coffee-planters have come t Milanji to acquire estates for the cultivation of coffee, and whil encouraging the advent of European enterprise and capital to th utmost in these undeveloped lands, too long abandoned to the slave raids, devastations, and forest burnings of internecine negro wars, have taken ample precautions to safeguard native interests and t secure to the natives not only the land they now occupy, but suffi cient reservations of territory to meet that increase in their popula tion which will, I trust, be found to follow the establishment o peace and security for their persons and property.

I might add that Milanji Mountain is over 9,000 feet in heigh (approximately 9,300 feet), and is a great, broken plateau with nearly precipitous sides, except where the accumulated débri washed down by the numerous torrents has formed a kind of gently sloping rampart round the base. It is the highest land in South Central Africa between the Drakensberg Mountains of Natal and Rungwa, near the north end of Lake Nyasa, or, if Mount Rungwa prove, as it may, a few feet lower, then between Natal and Kilimanjaro. The mountain-mass or range of Milanji is about 12 miles long by 8 miles broad, and is wholly within the limits of the British Protectorate. The plateau at the top is nearly 40 square miles in extent, has an average elevation of 6,000 feet, a temperate climate, and is admirably suited for the establishment of a European colony, the more so as, owing to the cold, it is without a single negro inhabitant, and is only visited at times by natives of Tshipoka's country, who go up there to obtain salt by the burning of certain grasses.

Mr. Alexander Whyte was dispatched by me to examine the fauna and flora of Mount Milanji, and I append the Report wit which he has furnished me.

Captain Sclater,† R.E., is now engaged in surveying Milan assisted by Mr. Henchman, C.E., and a road is being constructed thither from Tshiromo at the junction of the Ruo and the Shiré.

A naturalist and scientific horticulturist, sent out at the expense of the British South Africa Company to work under my instructions, and to make a thorough investigation into the natural history of British Central Africa.

+ Holding rank as Captain in the British Central Africa Police; Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers.

Having sufficiently dealt with Tshikumbu and stopped slaveiding in the Milanji district, I resolved to turu my attention to e slave-raids in the vicinity of Lakes Nyasa and Shirwa. Here rain it was the Yao Chiefs who did the slave-raiding, though the il was accentuated by the presence of Arab and Wa-Swahili ave-traders, or ivory merchants wanting slave porters, who often rompted the raids and civil wars by which the slaves were btained.

Mr. Acting Consul Buchanan, in a despatch dated the 13th July, 1891, had brought to my notice that Makanjira, the most notorious slave-raider on Lake Nyasa, was again in a state of maleficent activity, and was engaged, in conjunction with his ally, Kazembe of Rifu, in raiding the south-west shore of Lake Nyasa. Against Makanjira also we had other grave causes of complaint. He had repeatedly seized and carried off boats from the Universities' Mission Stations on the east shore of the lake, and had on one occasion murdered a head boatman belonging to the Mission; all this without the slightest provocation whatsoever. Moreover, when in 1888 Acting Consul Buchanan and the Rev. W. P. Johnson had gone in the Mission steamer to see Makanjira, and had landed unsuspectingly at his town to have (as they thought) a friendly conference with him, he had stripped them naked (an Arab standing by tossed Mr. Johnson back his shirt), and had flogged Mr. Buchanan on the beach. Everything they possessed was taken from them, including a valuable gold watch of Mr. Buchanan's. Their lives were only spared under a heavy ransom, sent from the Mission steamer, and paid in cloth, beads, candles, soap, and paint for Makanjira's daughters.

Makanjira had ever since taken a high rank on the lake as having most outrageously insulted the Queen's Representative without receiving any punishment for his misdeeds from the British Government. He had therefore taken advantage of his supposed immunity (he thought we were afraid to tackle him) to ravage the south-western shores of the lake and carry off the people into slavery. My attention having been repeatedly called by members of the Universities' Mission, agents of the African Lakes Company, and latterly by Acting Consul Buchanan, to the barbarities Makanjira

was

perpetrating, I had at different times, to wit, the 2nd January, 1890, the 26th April, 1890, and the 19th July, 1891, written to Makanjira warning him that punishment would certainly be inflicted on him of an exemplary kind if he did not cease slave-raiding and trading, restore to the Universities' Mission their boats which he had stolen, and make amends by the payment of a fine of ten tusks of ivory, and the sending a written apology for the insult offered to Acting Consul Buchanan. To these letters no auswers were received,

except verbal messages of a defiant character, which may or may not have been the invention of intermediaries.

Whilst I was preparing at Zomba, in the month of September last, for an expedition against Makanjira, a deputation arrived from the Angoni Chief Tshikusi, or rather, I should explain, from Tshikusi's heir, for Tshikusi himself, the great Angoni Chief who was visited by Mr. Montagu Kerr in 1882, by Consul Hawes in 1886, and who had concluded a Treaty (placing himself under British protection) with Mr. Alfred Sharpe in 1890, was dead.* His son, who had quietly succeeded him and had assumed the name of Tshikusi, wished to inform me of the fact and declare his allegiance to the Queen. He further sent to crave protection against Mponda, the powerful Yao Chief on the Upper Shiré, who bad taken advantage of the interregnum in Angoniland to make a raid across the borders, destroy six villages, and capture many people. Almost simultaneously there came in some of my Swahili police (whom I had sent to Lake Nyasa to report on what was going on), and these men brought me the news that war had broken out again between Mponda and the Makandanji clan for no other reason apparently than a desire to catch each other's people and sell them as slaves. So I decided to pause first of all at Mponda's, and try to settle the quarrels of this Upper Shiré district before proceeding to Makanjira's.

I started from Zomba on the 30th September with Captain Cecil Maguire (Commandant of Indian contingent British Central Africa Police), Dr. Sorabji Boyce, the Parsee surgeon to the Indian contingent, and sixty-eight Sepoys from the Haiderabad Lancers, and the 32nd and 23rd Sikh Pioneers. I also had with me ten of the Zanzibari police lent me by the Sultan of Zanzibar, and a few Makua from Mozambique. After five days spent in waiting for the arrival of two barges of the African Lakes Company at Mpimbi (our Zomba "port" on the Upper Shiré), we loaded the said barges with most of our baggage and a few of our men, and proceeded to march up the left (east) bank of the Shiré towards the lake. Passing through the rich, well-cultivated country of Liwonde, our reception was decidedly "reserved," and Liwonde's people would sell us no food, and often refused to give any information, or even return an answer when questioned about the road or the names of towns. The fact is, through Liwonde's land passes one of the great slave-routes of Africa. From the Angoni countries west of the Shire and Lake Nyasa the Arab, Swahili, and Yao caravans proceed to Ibo, Angoche (Ngoshi), and Quilimane across the Shire,

He died in the beginning of August or end of July in the present year (1891).