CHAP. I.

"COLONOS," OR SERFS.

23

lots), peas, a little cotton, and sugar-cane are also raised. It is said that English potatoes, when planted at Quillimane on soil resembling this, in the course of two years become in taste like sweet potatoes (Convolvulus batatas), and are like our potato frosted. The whole of the fertile region extending from the Kongone Canal to beyond Mazaro, some eighty miles in length and fifty in breadth, is admirably adapted for the growth of sugar-cane; and, were it in the hands of our friends at the Cape, would supply all Europe with sugar. The remarkably few people seen appeared to be tolerably well fed, but there was a shivering dearth of clothing among them; all were blacks, and nearly all Portuguese "colonos" or serfs. They manifested no fear of white men, and stood in groups on the bank gazing in astonishment at the steamers, especially at the "Pearl," which accompanied us thus far up the river. One old man who came on board remarked that never before had he seen any vessel so large as the "Pearl;" it was like a village; "was it made out of one tree?" All were eager traders, and soon came off to the ship in light, swift canoes, with every kind of fruit and food they possessed; a few brought honey and beeswax, which are found in quantities in the mangrove forests. As the ships steamed off, many anxious sellers ran along the bank, holding up fowls, baskets of rice and meal, and shouting "Malonda, Malonda," "things for sale," while others followed in canoes, which they sent through the water with great velocity by means of short, broad-bladed paddles.

The deep channel, or Qwete as the canoe-men call it, of the Zambesi is winding, and narrow when contrasted with the great breadth of the river itself. The river bottom appears to be a succession of immense submerged sand

24

DEEP CHANNEL OF RIVER.

CHAP. I.

banks, having, when the stream is low, from one to four feet of water on them. The main channel runs for some distance between the sand-bank and the river's bank, with a depth in the dry season varying from five to fifteen feet, and a current of nearly two knots an hour. It then turns and flows along the lower edge of the sand-bank in a diagonal direction across the river, and continues this process, winding from bank to bank repeatedly during the day's sail, making expert navigators on the ocean feel helplessly at sea on the river. On these crossings the channel is shallowest. It is, in general, pretty clearly defined. In calm weather there is a peculiar boiling up of its water from some action below. With a light breeze the Qwete assumes a characteristic ripple, and when the wind freshens and blows up the river, as it usually does from May to November, the waves on it are larger than those of other parts of the river, and a line of small breakers marks the edge of the shoalbank above.

Finding the "Pearl's" draught too great for that part of the river near the island of Simbo, where the branch called the Doto is given off to the Kongone on the right bank, and another named Chinde departs to the secret canal already mentioned on the left, the goods belonging to the expedition were taken out of her, and placed on one of the grassy islands about forty miles from the bar. The "Pearl" then left us, and we had to part with our good friends Duncan and Skead; the former to Ceylon, the latter to return to his duties as government surveyor at the Cape.

Of those who eventually did the work of the expedition the majority took a sober common-sense view of the enterprise in which we were engaged. Some remained on Ex

CHAP. I.

EXPEDITION ISLAND.

25

pedition Island from the 18th of June until the 13th of August, while the launch and pinnace were carrying the goods up to Shupanga and Senna. The country was in a state of war, our luggage was in danger, and several of our party were exposed to disease from inactivity in the malaria of the Delta. Here some had their first introduction to African life and African fever. Those alone were safe who were actively employed with the vessels, and of course, remembering the perilous position of their fellows, they strained every nerve to finish the work and take them away. This was the time, too, for the feeble-minded to make a demand for their Sundays of rest and full meal-hours, which even our crew of twelve Kroomen, though tampered with, had more sense and good feeling than to indorse. It is a pity that some people can not see that the true and honest discharge of the common duties of every-day life is Divine service.

The weather was delightful, with only an occasional shower or cold foggy morning. Those who remained on the isl and made the most of their time, taking meteorological and magnetical observations, and botanizing, so far as the dried vegetation would allow. No one seemed to place much reliance on the "official report" of two naval commanders, who now, after about a fortnight's experience in the Zambesi, solemnly declared it to be "more like an inland sea than a river, with a climate like that of Italy, and infinitely more healthy than any river on the West Coast;" but, by the leader's advice, each began to examine and to record his observations for himself, and did not take even his chief's previ ous experience as infallible.

Large columns of smoke rose daily from different points of the horizon, showing that the natives were burning off the immense crops of tall grass, here a nuisance, however valua

26

BURNING OFF THE GRASS.

CHAP. I.

ble elsewhere. A white cloud was often observed to rest on the head of the column, as if a current of hot damp air was sent up by the heat of the flames, and its moisture was condensed at the top. Rain did not follow, though theorists have imagined that in such cases it ought.

Large game, buffaloes, and zebras, were abundant abreast the island, but no men could be seen. On the main land, over on the right bank of the river, we were amused by the eccentric gyrations and evolutions of flocks of small seedeating birds, who in their flight wheeled into compact columns with such military precision as to give us the impression that they must be guided by a leader, and all directed by the same signal. Several other kinds of small birds now go in flocks, and, among others, the large Senegal swallow. The presence of this bird, being clearly in a state of migration from the North, while the common swallow of the country and the brown kite are away beyond the equator, leads to the conjecture that there may be a double migration, namely, of birds from torrid climates to the more temperate, as this now is, as well as from severe winters to sunny regions; but this could not be verified by such birds of passage as ourselves.

On reaching Mazaro, the mouth of a narrow creek which in floods communicates with the Quillimane River, we found that the Portuguese were at war with a half-caste named Mariano, alias Matakenya, from whom they had generally fled, and who, having built a stockade near the mouth of the Shire, owned all the country between that river and Mazaro. Mariano was best known by his native name Matakenya, which in their tongue means "trembling," or quivering as trees do in a storm. He was a keen slave-hunter, and kept a large number of men, well armed with muskets. It is an

CHAP. I..

ATROCITIES OF MARIANO.

27

entire mistake to suppose that the slave-trade is one of buying and selling alone, or that engagements can be made with laborers in Africa as they are in India; Mariano, like other Portuguese, had no labor to spare. He had been in the habit of sending out armed parties on slave hunting-forays among the helpless tribes to the northeast, and carrying down the kidnapped victims in chains to Quillimane, where they were sold by his brother-in-law Cruz Coimbra, and shipped as "Free emigrants" to the French island of Bourbon. So long as his robberies and murders were restricted to the natives at a distance, the authorities did not interfere; but his men, trained to deeds of violence and bloodshed in their slave forays, naturally began to practice on the people nearer at hand, though belonging to the Portuguese, and even in the village of Senna, under the guns of the fort. A gentleman of the highest standing told us that, while at dinner with his family, it was no uncommon event for a slave to rush into the room pursued by one of Mariano's men with spear in hand to murder him.

The atrocities of this villain, aptly termed by the late governor of Quillimane a "notorious robber and murderer," became at length intolerable. All the Portuguese spoke of him as a rare monster of inhumanity. It is unaccountable why half-castes, such as he, are so much more cruel than the Portuguese, but such is undoubtedly the case.

It was asserted that one of his favorite modes of creating an impression in the country, and making his name dreaded, was to spear his captives with his own hands. On one occasion he is reported to have thus killed forty poor wretches placed in a row before him. We did not at first credit these statements, and thought that they were merely exaggerations of the incensed Portuguese, who naturally enough were ex