were Matebele, who, unable to approach Sebituane on the island of
Loyela, had returned sick and famishing. Moyara's father took advantage
of their reduced condition, and after putting them to death, mounted
their heads in the Batoka fashion. The old man who perpetrated this deed
now lies in the middle of his son's huts, with a lot of rotten ivory
over his grave. One can not help feeling thankful that the reign of such
wretches is over. They inhabited the whole of this side of the country,
and were probably the barrier to the extension of the Portuguese
commerce in this direction. When looking at these skulls, I remarked to
Moyara that many of them were those of mere boys. He assented readily,
and pointed them out as such. I asked why his father had killed boys.
"To show his fierceness," was the answer. "Is it fierceness to kill
boys?" "Yes; they had no business here." When I told him that this
probably would insure his own death if the Matebele came again, he
replied, "When I hear of their coming I shall hide the bones." He was
evidently proud of these trophies of his father's ferocity, and I was
assured by other Batoka that few strangers ever returned from a visit
to this quarter. If a man wished to curry favor with a Batoka chief,
he ascertained when a stranger was about to leave, and waylaid him at a
distance from the town, and when he brought his head back to the chief,
it was mounted as a trophy, the different chiefs vieing with each other
as to which should mount the greatest number of skulls in his village.

If, as has been asserted, the Portuguese ever had a chain of trading
stations across the country from Caconda to Tete, it must have passed
through these people; but the total ignorance of the Zambesi flowing
from north to south in the centre of the country, and the want of
knowledge of the astonishing falls of Victoria, which excite the wonder
of even the natives, together with the absence of any tradition of such
a chain of stations, compel me to believe that they existed only on
paper. This conviction is strengthened by the fact that when a late
attempt was made to claim the honor of crossing the continent for the
Portuguese, the only proof advanced was the journey of two black traders
formerly mentioned, adorned with the name of "Portuguese". If a chain of
stations had existed, a few hundred names of the same sort might easily
have been brought forward; and such is the love of barter among all the
central A