We Breakfasted On The 27th At Pita, And Found
Some Half-Caste Portuguese Had Established Themselves There, After Fleeing
From The Opposite Bank To Escape Kisaka's People, Who Were Now Ravaging
All The Maganja Country.
On the afternoon of the 27th we arrived at Senna.
(Commandant Isidore's house, 300 yards S.W. of the mud fort
on the banks of the river:
Lat. 17d 27' 1" S., long. 35d 10' E.)
We found Senna to be twenty-three and a half hours' sail from Tete.
We had the current entirely in our favor, but met various parties
in large canoes toiling laboriously against it. They use long ropes,
and pull the boats from the shore. They usually take about twenty days
to ascend the distance we had descended in about four.
The wages paid to boatmen are considered high. Part of the men
who had accompanied me gladly accepted employment from Lieutenant Miranda
to take a load of goods in a canoe from Senna to Tete.
I thought the state of Tete quite lamentable, but that of Senna
was ten times worse. At Tete there is some life; here every thing
is in a state of stagnation and ruin. The fort, built of sun-dried bricks,
has the grass growing over the walls, which have been patched in some places
by paling. The Landeens visit the village periodically, and levy fines
upon the inhabitants, as they consider the Portuguese a conquered tribe,
and very rarely does a native come to trade. Senhor Isidore, the commandant,
a man of considerable energy, had proposed to surround the whole village
with palisades as a protection against the Landeens, and the villagers
were to begin this work the day after I left. It was sad to look at the ruin
manifest in every building, but the half-castes appear to be in league
with the rebels and Landeens; for when any attempt is made by the Portuguese
to coerce the enemy or defend themselves, information is conveyed at once
to the Landeen camp, and, though the commandant prohibits
the payment of tribute to the Landeens, on their approach
the half-castes eagerly ransom themselves. When I was there,
a party of Kisaka's people were ravaging the fine country
on the opposite shore. They came down with the prisoners they had captured,
and forthwith the half-castes of Senna went over to buy slaves.
Encouraged by this, Kisaka's people came over into Senna
fully armed and beating their drums, and were received into
the house of a native Portuguese. They had the village at their mercy,
yet could have been driven off by half a dozen policemen. The commandant
could only look on with bitter sorrow. He had soldiers, it is true,
but it is notorious that the native militia of both Senna and Kilimane
never think of standing to fight, but invariably run away,
and leave their officers to be killed. They are brave only among
the peaceable inhabitants. One of them, sent from Kilimane
with a packet of letters or expresses, arrived while I was at Senna.
He had been charged to deliver them with all speed, but Senhor Isidore
had in the mean time gone to Kilimane, remained there a fortnight,
and reached Senna again before the courier came. He could not punish him.
We gave him a passage in our boat, but he left us in the way
to visit his wife, and, "on urgent private business," probably gave up
the service altogether, as he did not come to Kilimane all the time
I was there. It is impossible to describe the miserable state of decay
into which the Portuguese possessions here have sunk.
The revenues are not equal to the expenses, and every officer I met
told the same tale, that he had not received one farthing of pay
for the last four years. They are all forced to engage in trade
for the support of their families. Senhor Miranda had been actually engaged
against the enemy during these four years, and had been highly lauded
in the commandant's dispatches to the home government, but when he applied
to the Governor of Kilimane for part of his four years' pay, he offered him
twenty dollars only. Miranda resigned his commission in consequence.
The common soldiers sent out from Portugal received some pay in calico.
They all marry native women, and, the soil being very fertile, the wives find
but little difficulty in supporting their husbands. There is no direct trade
with Portugal. A considerable number of Banians, or natives of India,
come annually in small vessels with cargoes of English and Indian goods
from Bombay. It is not to be wondered at, then, that there have been
attempts made of late years by speculative Portuguese in Lisbon to revive
the trade of Eastern Africa by means of mercantile companies. One was
formally proposed, which was modeled on the plan of our East India Company;
and it was actually imagined that all the forts, harbors, lands, etc.,
might be delivered over to a company, which would bind itself
to develop the resources of the country, build schools, make roads,
improve harbors, etc., and, after all, leave the Portuguese
the option of resuming possession.
Another effort has been made to attract commercial enterprise
to this region by offering any mining company permission to search
for the ores and work them. Such a company, however, would gain but little
in the way of protection or aid from the government of Mozambique,
as that can but barely maintain a hold on its own small possessions;
the condition affixed of importing at the company's own cost
a certain number of Portuguese from the island of Madeira or the Azores,
in order to increase the Portuguese population in Africa, is impolitic.
Taxes would also be levied on the minerals exported. It is noticeable
that all the companies which have been proposed in Portugal
have this put prominently in the preamble, "and for the abolition
of the inhuman slave-trade." This shows either that the statesmen in Portugal
are enlightened and philanthropic, or it may be meant as a trap
for English capitalists; I incline to believe the former.
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