slavers were
in the habit of entering there to ship their cargoes, but could not
ascertain that they have ever done so in any except the Quilimane. With
common precaution the rivers are not unhealthy; for, during the whole
time I was employed in them (off and on during eighteen months), in open
boats and at all times of the year, frequently absent from the ship for
a month or six weeks at a time, I had not, in my boat's crew of fourteen
men, more than two, and those mild, cases of fever. Too much importance
can not be ascribed to the use of quinine, to which I attribute our
comparative immunity, and with which our judicious commander, Commodore
Wyvill, kept us amply supplied. I hope these few remarks may be of some
little use in confirming your views of the utility of that magnificent
river.

A. H. H. Hoskins."

It ought to be remembered that the testimony of these gentlemen is all
the more valuable, because they visited the river when the water was at
its lowest, and the surface of the Zambesi was not, as it was now, on a
level with and flowing into the Mutu, but sixteen feet beneath its bed.
The Mutu, at the point of departure, was only ten or twelve yards broad,
shallow, and filled with aquatic plants. Trees and reeds along the banks
overhang it so much, that, though we had brought canoes and a boat
from Tete, we were unable to enter the Mutu with them, and left them
at Mazaro. During most of the year this part of the Mutu is dry, and we
were even now obliged to carry all our luggage by land for about fifteen
miles. As Kilimane is called, in all the Portuguese documents, the
capital of the rivers of Senna, it seemed strange to me that the capital
should be built at a point where there was no direct water conveyance
to the magnificent river whose name it bore; and, on inquiry, I was
informed that the whole of the Mutu was large in days of yore, and
admitted of the free passage of great launches from Kilimane all the
year round, but that now this part of the Mutu had been filled up.

I was seized by a severe tertian fever at Mazaro, but went along the
right bank of the Mutu to the N.N.E. and E. for about fifteen miles.
We then found that it was made navigable by a river called the Pangazi,
which comes into it from the north. Another river, flowing from the same
direction, called the Luare, swells it still more; and, last of all,
the Likuare, with the tide, make up the river of Kilimane. The Mutu at
Mazaro is simpl