The party were in the country of the Man-gnaja, a tribe of negroes who were continually harried by the fiercer and more powerful neighbour-tribe of Ajawa, great slave-catchers, who supplied the slave- hunters who came out from Tette to collect their human droves.

These were mostly Arabs, with some Portuguese admixture; and the blacks, after being disposed of in the market at Tette, were usually shipped off to supply the demand in Arabia and Egypt, where, to tell the truth, their lot was a far easier one than befell the slaves of the West, the toilers among sugar and cotton.
A crusade against slave-catching could not be carried on without, at least, a show of force; and, this granted, a further difficulty presented itself, in the fact that, out of the scanty number of white men, one was a bishop and two were priests of the English Church, and one a Presbyterian minister.

In all former cases, the missionaries had freely ventured themselves, using no means of self-defence, and marking the difference between themselves and others by the absence of all weapons.
But, in those places, it was self-defence that was given up; here the point was, whether to deliver the captive, or, by silence, to acquiesce in the wrong done to him; and if his rescue were attempted, it was in vain, unless the clergy assisted; and thus it was that the mission party did not march so much as men of peace as deliverers of the captive and breakers of the yoke.

The captives had no power of returning home, and chose to remain with their deliverers; and the next day the party reached a negro village, called Chibisa's, after the chief who had ruled it at the time of Dr.Livingstone's first visit.

He was now dead, but his successor, Chigunda, begged the white men to remain, to protect him from the Ajawa, who were only five or ten miles off, and from whom an attack was expected.
It was decided to forestall it by marching towards them.