This Is The Account
Which Both Natives And Portuguese Give Of The Affair.
Another half-caste from Macao, called Kisaka or Choutama,
on the opposite bank of the river, likewise rebelled.
His father having died,
he imagined that he had been bewitched by the Portuguese, and he therefore
plundered and burned all the plantations of the rich merchants of Tete
on the north bank. As I have before remarked, that bank is the most fertile,
and there the Portuguese had their villas and plantations to which
they daily retired from Tete. When these were destroyed the Tete people
were completely impoverished. An attempt was made to punish this rebel,
but it was also unsuccessful, and he has lately been pardoned
by the home government. One point in the narrative of this expedition
is interesting. They came to a field of sugar-cane so large
that 4000 men eating it during two days did not finish the whole.
The Portuguese were thus placed between two enemies,
Nyaude on the right bank and Kisaka on the left, and not only so,
but Nyaude, having placed his stockade on the point of land
on the right banks of both the Luenya and Zambesi, and washed
by both these rivers, could prevent intercourse with the sea.
The Luenya rushes into the Zambesi with great force when the latter is low,
and, in coming up the Zambesi, boats must cross it and the Luenya separately,
even going a little way up that river, so as not to be driven away
by its current in the bed of the Zambesi, and dashed on the rock which stands
on the opposite shore. In coming up to the Luenya for this purpose,
all boats and canoes came close to the stockade to be robbed.
Nyaude kept the Portuguese shut up in their fort at Tete during two years,
and they could only get goods sufficient to buy food by sending to Kilimane
by an overland route along the north bank of the Zambesi.
The mother country did not in these "Caffre wars" pay the bills,
so no one either became rich or blamed the missionaries.
The merchants were unable to engage in trade, and commerce,
which the slave-trade had rendered stagnant, was now completely obstructed.
The present commandant of Tete, Major Sicard, having great influence
among the natives, from his good character, put a stop to the war
more than once by his mere presence on the spot. We heard of him
among the Banyai as a man with whom they would never fight,
because "he had a good heart." Had I come down to this coast
instead of going to Loanda in 1853, I should have come among the belligerents
while the war was still raging, and should probably have been cut off.
My present approach was just at the conclusion of the peace;
and when the Portuguese authorities here were informed,
through the kind offices of Lord Clarendon and Count de Lavradio,
that I was expected to come this way, they all declared
that such was the existing state of affairs that no European
could possibly pass through the tribes.
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