soon as they heard a gun fired in anger, but instead of this we were
very nearly being cut off, and should have been but for our Banyamwezi
allies. It is fortunate that the attacking party had no success in
trying to get Mpweto and Karembwe to join them against us, or it would
have been more serious still.

_24th November, 1868._--The Imbozhwa, or Babemba rather, came early
this morning, and called on Mohamad to come out of his stockade if he
were a man who could fight, but the fence is now finished, and no one
seems willing to obey the taunting call: I have nothing to do with it,
but feel thankful that I was detained, and did not, with my few
attendants, fall into the hands of the justly infuriated Babemba. They
kept up the attack to-day, and some went out to them, fighting till
noon: when a man was killed and not carried off, the Wanyamwezi
brought his head and put it on a pole on the stockade--six heads were
thus placed. A fine young man was caught and brought in by the
Wanyamwezi, one stabbed him behind, another cut his forehead with an
axe, I called in vain to them not to kill him. As a last appeal, he
said to the crowd that surrounded him, "Don't kill me, and I shall
take you to where the women are." "You lie," said his enemies; "you
intend to take us where we may be shot by your friends;" and they
killed him. It was horrible: I protested loudly against any repetition
of this wickedness, and the more sensible agreed that prisoners ought
not to be killed, but the Banyamwezi are incensed against the Babemba
because of the women killed on the 22nd.

_25th November, 1868._--The Babemba kept off on the third day, and the
Arabs are thinking it will be a good thing if we get out of the
country unscathed. Men were sent off on the night of the 23rd to Syde
bin Habib for powder and help. Mohamad Bogharib is now unwilling to
take the onus of the war: he blames Mpamari, and Mpamari blames him; I
told Mohamad that the war was undoubtedly his work, inasmuch as Bin
Juma is his man, and he approved of his seizing the women.

He does not like this, but it is true; he would not have entered a
village of Casembe or Moamba or Chikumbi as he did Chapi's man's
village: the people here are simply men of more metal than he
imagined, and his folly in beginning a war in which, if possible, his
slaves will slip through his hands is apparent to all, even to
himself. Syde sent four barrels of gunpowder and ten men, who arrived
during las