The Portuguese
Have Repeatedly Received Offers Of Territory If They Would Only
Attend The Interment Of The Departed Chief With Troops,
Fire Off Many Rounds Of Cartridges Over The Grave, And Then Give Eclat
To The Installment Of The New Chief.
Their presence would probably
influence the election, for many would vote on the side of power,
and a candidate
Might feel it worth while to grant a good piece of land,
if thereby he could secure the chieftainship to himself.
When the Portuguese traders wish to pass into the country beyond Katalosa,
they present him with about thirty-two yards of calico and some other goods,
and he then gives them leave to pass in whatever direction
they choose to go. 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.
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