Dispirited, Famished, Borne Down By Fever, They Returned
To The Falls, And All Except Five Were Cut Off.
But though the Batoka appear never to have had much inclination to
fight with men, they are decidedly brave hunters of buffaloes and
elephants.
They go fearlessly close up to these formidable animals,
and kill them with large spears. The Banyai, who have long bullied
all Portuguese traders, were amazed at the daring and bravery of the
Batoka in coming at once to close quarters with the elephant; and
Chisaka, a Portuguese rebel, having formerly induced a body of this
tribe to settle with him, ravaged all the Portuguese villas around
Tette. They bear the name of Basimilongwe, and some of our men found
relations among them. Sininyane and Matenga also, two of our party,
were once inveigled into a Portuguese expedition against Mariano, by
the assertion that the Doctor had arrived and had sent for them to
come down to Senna. On finding that they were entrapped to fight,
they left, after seeing an officer with a large number of Tette
slaves killed.
The Batoka had attained somewhat civilized ideas, in planting and
protecting various fruit and oil-seed yielding trees of the country.
No other tribe either plants or abstains from cutting down fruit
trees, but here we saw some which had been planted in regular rows,
and the trunks of which were quite two feet in diameter. The grand
old Mosibe, a tree yielding a bean with a thin red pellicle, said to
be very fattening, had probably seen two hundred summers.
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