A Gentleman Of The Highest
Standing Told Us That, While At Dinner With His Family, It Was No
Uncommon Event For A Slave To Rush Into The Room Pursued By One Of
Mariano's Men With Spear In Hand To Murder Him.
The atrocities of this villain, aptly termed by the late governor of
Quillimane a "notorious robber and murderer," became at length
intolerable.
All the Portuguese spoke of him as a rare monster of
inhumanity. It is unaccountable why half-castes, such as he, are so
much more cruel than the Portuguese, but such is undoubtedly the
case.
It was asserted that one of his favourite modes of creating an
impression in the country, and making his name dreaded, was to spear
his captives with his own hands. On one occasion he is reported to
have thus killed forty poor wretches placed in a row before him. We
did not at first credit these statements, and thought that they were
merely exaggerations of the incensed Portuguese, who naturally enough
were exasperated with him for stopping their trade, and harbouring
their runaway slaves; but we learned afterwards from the natives,
that the accounts given us by the Portuguese had not exceeded the
truth; and that Mariano was quite as great a ruffian as they had
described him. One expects slave-owners to treat their human
chattels as well as men do other animals of value, but the slave-
trade seems always to engender an unreasoning ferocity, if not blood-
thirstiness.
War was declared against Mariano, and a force sent to take him; he
resisted for a time; but seeing that he was likely to get the worst
of it, and knowing that the Portuguese governors have small salaries,
and are therefore "disposed to be reasonable," he went down to
Quillimane to "arrange" with the Governor, as it is termed here; but
Colonel da Silva put him in prison, and then sent him for trial to
Mozambique.
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