Everything Being Ready On The 15th Of May, We Started At 2 P.M. From
The Village Where The Makololo Had Dwelt.
A number of the men did
not leave with the goodwill which their talk for months before had
led us to anticipate; but some proceeded upon being told that they
were not compelled to go unless they liked, though others altogether
declined moving.
Many had taken up with slave-women, whom they
assisted in hoeing, and in consuming the produce of their gardens.
Some fourteen children had been born to them; and in consequence of
now having no chief to order them, or to claim their services, they
thought that they were about as well off as they had been in their
own country. They knew and regretted that they could call neither
wives nor children their own; the slave-owners claimed the whole; but
their natural affections had been so enchained, that they clave to
the domestic ties. By a law of Portugal the baptized children of
slave women are all free; by the custom of the Zambesi that law is
void. When it is referred to, the officers laugh and say, "These
Lisbon-born laws are very stringent, but somehow, possibly from the
heat of the climate, here they lose all their force." Only one woman
joined our party - the wife of a Batoka man: she had been given to
him, in consideration of his skilful dancing, by the chief, Chisaka.
A merchant sent three of his men along with us, with a present for
Sekeletu, and Major Sicard also lent us three more to assist us on
our return, and two Portuguese gentleman kindly gave us the loan of a
couple of donkeys.
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