The Ground Had Been
Consecrated In The Truest Sense By The Lives Of Those Brave Men Who
First Occupied It.
In bare justice to Bishop Mackenzie, who was the
first to fall, it must be said, that the repudiation
Of all he had
done, and the sudden abandonment of all that had cost so much life
and money to secure, was a serious line of conduct for one so
unversed in Missionary operations as his successor, to inaugurate.
It would have been no more than fair that Bishop Tozer, before
winding up the affairs of the Mission, should actually have examined
the highlands of the Upper Shire; he would thus have gratified the
associates of his predecessor, who believed that the highlands had
never had a fair trial, and he would have gained from personal
observation a more accurate knowledge of the country and the people
than he could possibly have become possessed of by information
gathered chiefly on the coast. With this examination, rather than
with a stay of a few months on the humid, dripping top of misty
Morambala, we should have felt much more satisfied.
In January, 1864, the natives all confidently asserted that at next
full moon the river would have its great and permanent flood. It had
several times risen as much as a foot, but fell again as suddenly.
It was curious that their observation coincided exactly with ours,
that the flood of inundation happens when the sun comes overhead on
his way back to the Equator. We mention this more minutely because,
from the observation of several years, we believe that in this way
the inundation of the Nile is to be explained. On the 19th the Shire
suddenly rose several feet, and we started at once; and stopping only
for a short time at Chibisa's to bid adieu to the Ajawa and Makololo,
who had been extremely useful to us of late in supplying maize and
fresh provisions, we hastened on our way to the ocean. In order to
keep a steerage way on the "Pioneer," we had to go quicker than the
stream, and unfortunately carried away her rudder in passing suddenly
round a bank. The delay required for the repairs prevented our
reaching Morambala till the 2nd of February.
The flood-water ran into a marsh some miles above the mountain, and
became as black as ink; and when it returned again to the river
emitted so strong an effluvium of sulphuretted hydrogen, that one
could not forget for an instant that the air was most offensive. The
natives said this stench did not produce disease. We spent one night
in it, and suffered no ill effects, though we fully expected an
attack of fever. Next morning every particle of white paint on both
ships was so deeply blackened, that it could not be cleaned by
scrubbing with soap and water. The brass was all turned to a bronze
colour, and even the iron and ropes had taken a new tint. This is an
additional proof that malaria and offensive effluvia are not always
companions. We did not suffer more from fever in the mangrove
swamps, where we inhaled so much of the heavy mousey smell that it
was distinguishable in the odour of our shirts and flannels, than we
did elsewhere.
We tarried in the foul and blackening emanations from the marsh
because we had agreed to receive on board about thirty poor orphan
boys and girls, and a few helpless widows whom Bishop Mackenzie had
attached to his Mission. All who were able to support themselves had
been encouraged by the Missionaries to do so by cultivating the
ground, and they now formed a little free community. But the boys
and girls who were only from seven to twelve years of age, and
orphans without any one to help them, could not be abandoned without
bringing odium on the English name. The effect of an outcry by some
persons in England, who knew nothing of the circumstances in which
Bishop Mackenzie was placed, and who certainly had not given up their
own right of appeal to the sword of the magistrate, was, that the new
head of the Mission had gone to extremes in the opposite direction
from his predecessor; not even protesting against the one monstrous
evil of the country, the slave-trade. We believed that we ought to
leave the English name in the same good repute among the natives that
we had found it; and in removing the poor creatures, who had lived
with Mackenzie as children with a father, to a land where the
education he began would be completed, we had the aid and sympathy of
the best of the Portuguese, and of the whole population. The
difference between shipping slaves and receiving these free orphans
struck us as they came on board. As soon as permission to embark was
given, the rush into the boat nearly swamped her - their eagerness to
be safe on the "Pioneer's" deck had to be repressed.
Bishop Tozer had already left for Quillimane when we took these
people and the last of the Universities' Missionaries on board and
proceeded to the Zambesi. It was in high flood. We have always
spoken of this river as if at its lowest, for fear lest we should
convey an exaggerated impression of its capabilities for navigation.
Instead of from five to fifteen feet, it was now from fifteen to
thirty feet, or more, deep. All the sandbanks and many of the
islands had disappeared, and before us rolled a river capable, as one
of our naval friends thought, of carrying a gunboat. Some of the
sandy islands are annually swept away, and the quantities of sand
carried down are prodigious.
The process by which a delta, extending eighty or one hundred miles
from the sea, has been formed may be seen going on at the present
day - the coarser particles of sand are driven out into the ocean,
just in the same way as we see they are over banks in the beds of
torrents.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 131 of 134
Words from 132787 to 133801
of 136856
