Africans
Being Prone To Assign Plausible Reasons For Their Conduct, Like White
Men In More Enlightened Lands, It Is Possible
They may be good-
humouredly giving their reason for insisting on being invariably paid
in advance in the words of
Their favourite canoe-song, "Uachingere,
Uachingere Kale," "You cheated me of old;" or, "Thou art slippery
slippery truly."
The Landeens or Zulus are lords of the right bank of the Zambesi; and
the Portuguese, by paying this fighting tribe a pretty heavy annual
tribute, practically admit this. Regularly every year come the Zulus
in force to Senna and Shupanga for the accustomed tribute. The few
wealthy merchants of Senna groan under the burden, for it falls
chiefly on them. They submit to pay annually 200 pieces of cloth, of
sixteen yards each, besides beads and brass wire, knowing that
refusal involves war, which might end in the loss of all they
possess. The Zulus appear to keep as sharp a look out on the Senna
and Shupanga people as ever landlord did on tenant; the more they
cultivate, the more tribute they have to pay. On asking some of them
why they did not endeavour to raise certain highly profitable
products, we were answered, "What's the use of our cultivating any
more than we do? the Landeens would only come down on us for more
tribute."
In the forests of Shupanga the Mokundu-kundu tree abounds; its bright
yellow wood makes good boat-masts, and yields a strong bitter
medicine for fever; the Gunda-tree attains to an immense size; its
timber is hard, rather cross-grained, with masses of silica deposited
in its substance; the large canoes, capable of carrying three or four
tons, are made of its wood. For permission to cut these trees, a
Portuguese gentleman of Quillimane was paying the Zulus, in 1858, two
hundred dollars a year, and his successor now pays three hundred.
At Shupanga, a one-storied stone house stands on the prettiest site
on the river. In front a sloping lawn, with a fine mango orchard at
its southern end, leads down to the broad Zambesi, whose green
islands repose on the sunny bosom of the tranquil waters. Beyond,
northwards, lie vast fields and forests of palm and tropical trees,
with the massive mountain of Morambala towering amidst the white
clouds; and further away more distant hills appear in the blue
horizon. This beautifully situated house possesses a melancholy
interest from having been associated in a most mournful manner with
the history of two English expeditions. Here, in 1826, poor
Kirkpatrick, of Captain Owen's Surveying Expedition, died of fever;
and here, in 1862, died, of the same fatal disease, the beloved wife
of Dr. Livingstone. A hundred yards east of the house, under a large
Baobab-tree, far from their native land, both are buried.
The Shupanga-house was the head-quarters of the Governor during the
Mariano war. He told us that the province of Mosambique costs the
Home Government between 5000l. and 6000l. annually, and East Africa
yields no reward in return to the mother country.
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