When We Explained Our Objects,
He Told Us That Mburuma, He Had No Doubt, Would Receive Us Well.
The reason
why Selole acted in this foolish manner we afterward found to be this:
an Italian named Simoens,
And nicknamed Siriatomba (don't eat tobacco),
had married the daughter of a chief called Sekokole, living north of Tete.
He armed a party of fifty slaves with guns, and, ascending the river in canoes
some distance beyond the island Meya makaba, attacked several
inhabited islands beyond, securing a large number of prisoners,
and much ivory. On his return, the different chiefs,
at the instigation of his father-in-law, who also did not wish him
to set up as a chief, united, attacked and dispersed the party of Simoens,
and killed him while trying to escape on foot. Selole imagined
that I was another Italian, or, as he expressed it, "Siriatomba risen
from the dead." In his message to Mburuma he even said that Mobala,
and all the villages beyond, were utterly destroyed by our fire-arms,
but the sight of Mobala himself, who had come to the village of Selole,
led the brother of Mburuma to see at once that it was all a hoax.
But for this, the foolish fellow Selole might have given us trouble.
We saw many of the liberated captives of this Italian among the villages here,
and Sekwebu found them to be Matebele. The brother of Mburuma had a gun,
which was the first we had seen in coming eastward.
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