The Whole Merry-
Making Was Marked By Good Taste Amid Propriety.
About the only interesting object in the vicinity of Tette is the
coal a few miles to the north.
There, in the feeders of the stream
Revubue, it crops out in cliff sections. The seams are from four to
seven feet in thickness; one measured was found to be twenty-five
feet thick.
Learning that it would be difficult for our party to obtain food
beyond Kebrabasa before the new crop came in and knowing the
difficulty of hunting for so many men in the wet season, we decided
on deferring our departure for the interior until May, and in the
mean time to run down once more to the Kongone, in the hopes of
receiving letters and despatches from the man-of-war that was to call
in March. We left Tette on the 10th, and at Senna heard that our
lost mail had been picked up on the beach by natives, west of the
Milambe; carried to Quillimane, sent thence to Senna, and, passing us
somewhere on the river, on to Tette. At Shupanga the governor
informed us that it was a very large mail; no great comfort, seeing
it was away up the river.
Mosquitoes were excessively troublesome at the harbour, and
especially when a light breeze blew from the north over the
mangroves. We lived for several weeks in small huts, built by our
men. Those who did the hunting for the party always got wet, and
were attacked by fever, but generally recovered in time to be out
again before the meat was all consumed. No ship appearing, we
started off on the 15th of March, and stopped to wood on the Luabo,
near an encampment of hippopotamus hunters; our men heard again,
through them, of the canoe path from this place to Quillimane, but
they declined to point it out.
We found our friend Major Sicard at Mazaro with picks, shovels,
hurdles, and slaves, having come to build a fort and custom-house at
the Kongone. As we had no good reason to hide the harbour, but many
for its being made known, we supplied him with a chart of the
tortuous branches, which, running among the mangroves, perplex the
search; and with such directions as would enable him to find his way
down to the river. He had brought the relics of our fugitive mail,
and it was a disappointment to find that all had been lost, with the
exception of a bundle of old newspapers, two photographs, and three
letters, which had been written before we left England.
The distance from Mazaro, on the Zambesi side, to the Kwakwa at
Nterra, is about six miles, over a surprisingly rich dark soil. We
passed the night in the long shed, erected at Nterra, on the banks of
this river, for the use of travellers, who have often to wait several
days for canoes; we tried to sleep, but the mosquitoes and rats were
so troublesome as to render sleep impossible.
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