Some Natives
At Last Came Down The River To Tete And Said, Alluding To
The Sextant And Artificial Horizon, That
"The Son of God had come,"
and that he was "able to take the sun down from the heavens and
Place it
under his arm!" Major Sicard then felt sure that this was the man
mentioned in Lord Clarendon's dispatch.
On mentioning to the commandant that I had discovered a small seam of coal,
he stated that the Portuguese were already aware of nine such seams,
and that five of them were on the opposite bank of the river.
As soon as I had recovered from my fatigue I went to examine them.
We proceeded in a boat to the mouth of the Lofubu or Revubu,
which is about two miles below Tete, and on the opposite or northern bank.
Ascending this about four miles against a strong current
of beautifully clear water, we landed near a small cataract,
and walked about two miles through very fertile gardens to the seam,
which we found to be in one of the feeders of the Lofubu,
called Muatize or Motize. The seam is in the perpendicular bank,
and dips into the rivulet, or in a northerly direction.
There is, first of all, a seam 10 inches in diameter, then some shale,
below which there is another seam, 58 inches of which are seen,
and, as the bottom touches the water of the Muatize, it may be more.
This part of the seam is about 30 yards long. There is then a fault.
About 100 yards higher up the stream black vesicular trap is seen,
penetrating in thin veins the clay shale of the country,
converting it into porcellanite, and partially crystallizing the coal
with which it came into contact. On the right bank of the Lofubu
there is another feeder entering that river near its confluence
with the Muatize, which is called the Morongozi, in which
there is another and still larger bed of coal exposed.
Farther up the Lofubu there are other seams in the rivulets Inyavu and Makare;
also several spots in the Maravi country have the coal cropping out.
This has evidently been brought to the surface by volcanic action
at a later period than the coal formation.
I also went up the Zambesi, and visited a hot spring called Nyamboronda,
situated in the bed of a small rivulet named Nyaondo, which shows
that igneous action is not yet extinct. We landed at a small rivulet
called Mokorozi, then went a mile or two to the eastward,
where we found a hot fountain at the bottom of a high hill.
A little spring bubbles up on one side of the rivulet Nyaondo,
and a great quantity of acrid steam rises up from the ground adjacent,
about 12 feet square of which is so hot that my companions could not
stand on it with their bare feet. There are several little holes from which
the water trickles, but the principal spring is in a hole a foot in diameter,
and about the same in depth.
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