This District Is Said To Contain Upward Of 40,000 Souls.
Some Ten Or Twelve Miles To The North Of
The village of Ambaca there once
stood the missionary station of Cahenda, and it is now quite astonishing
to observe
The great numbers who can read and write in this district.
This is the fruit of the labors of the Jesuit and Capuchin missionaries,
for they taught the people of Ambaca; and ever since
the expulsion of the teachers by the Marquis of Pombal,
the natives have continued to teach each other. These devoted men
are still held in high estimation throughout the country to this day.
All speak well of them (os padres Jesuitas); and, now that they are gone
from this lower sphere, I could not help wishing that these
our Roman Catholic fellow-Christians had felt it to be their duty
to give the people the Bible, to be a light to their feet
when the good men themselves were gone.
When sleeping in the house of the commandant, an insect,
well known in the southern country by the name Tampan, bit my foot.
It is a kind of tick, and chooses by preference the parts
between the fingers or toes for inflicting its bite. It is seen
from the size of a pin's head to that of a pea, and is common
in all the native huts in this country. It sucks the blood until quite full,
and is then of a dark blue color, and its skin so tough and yielding
that it is impossible to burst it by any amount of squeezing with the fingers.
I had felt the effects of its bite in former years, and eschewed
all native huts ever after; but as I was here again assailed
in a European house, I shall detail the effects of the bite.
These are a tingling sensation of mingled pain and itching,
which commences ascending the limb until the poison imbibed
reaches the abdomen, where it soon causes violent vomiting and purging.
Where these effects do not follow, as we found afterward at Tete,
fever sets in; and I was assured by intelligent Portuguese there
that death has sometimes been the result of this fever.
The anxiety my friends at Tete manifested to keep my men
out of the reach of the tampans of the village made it evident
that they had seen cause to dread this insignificant insect.
The only inconvenience I afterward suffered from this bite
was the continuance of the tingling sensation in the point bitten
for about a week.
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