at bank is the
most fertile, and there the Portuguese had their villas and plantations
to which they daily retired from Tete. When these were destroyed the
Tete people were completely impoverished. An attempt was made to
punish this rebel, but it was also unsuccessful, and he has lately been
pardoned by the home government. One point in the narrative of this
expedition is interesting. They came to a field of sugar-cane so large
that 4000 men eating it during two days did not finish the whole. The
Portuguese were thus placed between two enemies, Nyaude on the right
bank and Kisaka on the left, and not only so, but Nyaude, having placed
his stockade on the point of land on the right banks of both the Luenya
and Zambesi, and washed by both these rivers, could prevent intercourse
with the sea. The Luenya rushes into the Zambesi with great force when
the latter is low, and, in coming up the Zambesi, boats must cross it
and the Luenya separately, even going a little way up that river, so
as not to be driven away by its current in the bed of the Zambesi, and
dashed on the rock which stands on the opposite shore. In coming up
to the Luenya for this purpose, all boats and canoes came close to the
stockade to be robbed. Nyaude kept the Portuguese shut up in their fort
at Tete during two years, and they could only get goods sufficient to
buy food by sending to Kilimane by an overland route along the north
bank of the Zambesi. The mother country did not in these "Caffre wars"
pay the bills, so no one either became rich or blamed the missionaries.

The merchants were unable to engage in trade, and commerce, which the
slave-trade had rendered stagnant, was now completely obstructed. The
present commandant of Tete, Major Sicard, having great influence among
the natives, from his good character, put a stop to the war more than
once by his mere presence on the spot. We heard of him among the Banyai
as a man with whom they would never fight, because "he had a good
heart." Had I come down to this coast instead of going to Loanda in
1853, I should have come among the belligerents while the war was still
raging, and should probably have been cut off. My present approach was
just at the conclusion of the peace; and when the Portuguese authorities
here were informed, through the kind offices of Lord Clarendon and Count
de Lavradio, that I was expected to come this way, they all declared
that such was the existing state of affairs that no Europ