They Must, However, Give Certain Quantities Of Cloth
To A Number Of Inferior Chiefs Beside, And They Are Subject To
The game-laws.
They have thus a body of exclusive tribes around them,
preventing direct intercourse between them and the
Population beyond.
It is strange that, when they had the power, they did not insist
on the free navigation of the Zambesi. I can only account for this
in the same way in which I accounted for a similar state of things
in the west. All the traders have been in the hands of slaves,
and have wanted that moral courage which a free man, with free servants
on whom he can depend, usually possesses. If the English had been here,
they would have insisted on the free navigation of this pathway
as an indispensable condition of friendship. The present system
is a serious difficulty in the way of developing the resources of the country,
and might prove fatal to an unarmed expedition. If this desirable
and most fertile field of enterprise is ever to be opened up,
men must proceed on a different plan from that which has been followed,
and I do not apprehend there would be much difficulty in commencing
a new system, if those who undertook it insisted that it is not our custom
to pay for a highway which has not been made by man. The natives themselves
would not deny that the river is free to those who do not trade in slaves.
If, in addition to an open, frank explanation, a small subsidy were given
to the paramount chief, the willing consent of all the subordinates
would soon be secured.
On the 1st of April I went to see the site of a former establishment
of the Jesuits, called Micombo, about ten miles S.E. of Tete.
Like all their settlements I have seen, both judgment and taste had been
employed in the selection of the site. A little stream of mineral water
had been collected in a tank and conducted to their house,
before which was a little garden for raising vegetables at times of the year
when no rain falls. It is now buried in a deep shady grove of mango-trees.
I was accompanied by Captain Nunes, whose great-grandfather,
also a captain in the time of the Marquis of Pombal, received sealed orders,
to be opened only on a certain day. When that day arrived,
he found the command to go with his company, seize all the Jesuits
of this establishment, and march them as prisoners to the coast.
The riches of the fraternity, which were immense, were taken possession of
by the state. Large quantities of gold had often been sent
to their superiors at Goa, inclosed in images. The Jesuits here
do not seem to have possessed the sympathies of the people as their brethren
in Angola did. They were keen traders in ivory and gold-dust.
All praise their industry. Whatever they did, they did it
with all their might, and probably their successful labors in securing
the chief part of the trade to themselves had excited the envy of the laity.
None of the natives here can read; and though the Jesuits are said
to have translated some of the prayers into the language of the country,
I was unable to obtain a copy.
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