ts--Price of Provisions--Visit Gold-washings--
The Process of obtaining the precious Metal--Coal within a Gold-field--
Present from Major Sicard--Natives raise Wheat, etc.--Liberality of
the Commandant--Geographical Information from Senhor
Candido--Earthquakes--Native Ideas of a Supreme Being--Also of the
Immortality and Transmigration of Souls--Fondness for Display at
Funerals--Trade Restrictions--Former Jesuit Establishment--State of
Religion and Education at Tete--Inundation of the Zambesi--Cotton
cultivated--The fibrous Plants Conge and Buaze--Detained by Fever--The
Kumbanzo Bark--Native Medicines--Iron, its Quality--Hear of Famine
at Kilimane--Death of a Portuguese Lady--The Funeral--Disinterested
Kindness of the Portuguese.

I was most kindly received by the commandant Tito Augusto d'Araujo
Sicard, who did every thing in his power to restore me from my emaciated
condition; and, as this was still the unhealthy period at Kilimane,
he advised me to remain with him until the following month. He also
generously presented my men with abundant provisions of millet; and, by
giving them lodgings in a house of his own until they could erect their
own huts, he preserved them from the bite of the tampans, here named
Carapatos.* We had heard frightful accounts of this insect while among
the Banyai, and Major Sicard assured me that to strangers its bite is
more especially dangerous, as it sometimes causes fatal fever. It may
please our homoeopathic friends to hear that, in curing the bite of
the tampan, the natives administer one of the insects bruised in the
medicine employed.

* Another insect, resembling a maggot, burrows into the feet
of the natives and sucks their blood. Mr. Westwood says, "The
tampan is a large species of mite, closely allied to the
poisonous bug (as it is called) of Persia, 'Argos reflexus',
respecting which such marvelous accounts have been recorded,
and which the statement respecting the carapato or tampan
would partially confirm." Mr. W. also thinks that the poison-
yielding larva called N'gwa is a "species of chrysomelidae.
The larvae of the British species of that family exude a fetid
yellow thickish fluid when alarmed, but he has not heard that
any of them are at all poisonous."

The village of Tete is built on a long slope down to the river, the fort
being close to the water. The rock beneath is gray sandstone, and has
the appearance of being crushed away