I Chose Sixteen Of Those
Who Could Manage Canoes To Convey Me Down The River.
Many more
would have come, but we were informed that there had been
a failure of the crops at
Kilimane from the rains not coming
at the proper time, and thousands had died of hunger.
I did not hear of a single effort having been made to relieve the famishing
by sending them food down the river. Those who perished were mostly slaves,
and others seemed to think that their masters ought to pay for their relief.
The sufferers were chiefly among those natives who inhabit the delta,
and who are subject to the Portuguese. They are in a state of slavery,
but are kept on farms and mildly treated. Many yield
a certain rental of grain only to their owners, and are otherwise free.
Eight thousand are said to have perished. Major Sicard lent me a boat
which had been built on the river, and sent also Lieutenant Miranda
to conduct me to the coast.
A Portuguese lady who had come with her brother from Lisbon,
having been suffering for some days from a severe attack of fever,
died about three o'clock in the morning of the 20th of April.
The heat of the body having continued unabated till six o'clock,
I was called in, and found her bosom quite as warm as I ever did
in a living case of fever. This continued for three hours more.
As I had never seen a case in which fever-heat continued so long after death,
I delayed the funeral until unmistakable symptoms of dissolution occurred.
She was a widow, only twenty-two years of age, and had been ten years
in Africa.
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