The Population Of The Delta,
Except In The Immediate Neighborhood Of The Portuguese,
Appeared To Be Very Sparse.
Antelopes and hippopotami were plentiful;
the former tame and easily shot.
I inquired frequently
of both natives and Portuguese if slavers were in the habit of entering there
to ship their cargoes, but could not ascertain that they have ever done so
in any except the Quilimane. With common precaution the rivers
are not unhealthy; for, during the whole time I was employed in them
(off and on during eighteen months), in open boats and at all times
of the year, frequently absent from the ship for a month or six weeks
at a time, I had not, in my boat's crew of fourteen men, more than two,
and those mild, cases of fever. Too much importance can not be ascribed
to the use of quinine, to which I attribute our comparative immunity,
and with which our judicious commander, Commodore Wyvill,
kept us amply supplied. I hope these few remarks may be of some little use
in confirming your views of the utility of that magnificent river.
A. H. H. Hoskins."
It ought to be remembered that the testimony of these gentlemen
is all the more valuable, because they visited the river when the water
was at its lowest, and the surface of the Zambesi was not, as it was now,
on a level with and flowing into the Mutu, but sixteen feet beneath its bed.
The Mutu, at the point of departure, was only ten or twelve yards broad,
shallow, and filled with aquatic plants. Trees and reeds along the banks
overhang it so much, that, though we had brought canoes and a boat from Tete,
we were unable to enter the Mutu with them, and left them at Mazaro.
During most of the year this part of the Mutu is dry, and we were even now
obliged to carry all our luggage by land for about fifteen miles.
As Kilimane is called, in all the Portuguese documents,
the capital of the rivers of Senna, it seemed strange to me that the capital
should be built at a point where there was no direct water conveyance
to the magnificent river whose name it bore; and, on inquiry,
I was informed that the whole of the Mutu was large in days of yore,
and admitted of the free passage of great launches from Kilimane
all the year round, but that now this part of the Mutu had been filled up.
I was seized by a severe tertian fever at Mazaro, but went along
the right bank of the Mutu to the N.N.E. and E. for about fifteen miles.
We then found that it was made navigable by a river called the Pangazi,
which comes into it from the north. Another river, flowing from
the same direction, called the Luare, swells it still more;
and, last of all, the Likuare, with the tide, make up the river of Kilimane.
The Mutu at Mazaro is simply a connecting link, such as is so often
seen in Africa, and neither its flow nor stoppage affects
the river of Kilimane.
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