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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

28. Beehive. Baskets employed by Women to catch Fish

29. View of Quillimane and of the "Pioneer".

30. Poisoned Arrows........

31. Females Hoeing.

32. Chia Hand-net...

33. Manganja Spears.....

34. Woman grinding.

35. Native Mill for grinding Corn......................

36. Maravi Bow.......

MAP to illustrate Dr. Livingstone's Travels.......

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583

At the end.

THE

ZAMBESI AND ITS TRIBUTARIES.

INTRODUCTION.

Objects of the Expedition.-Portuguese Expedition in Search of the Ophir of King Solomon.-India and not Africa indicated by the Merchandise sought. -Failure in Sofalla.-Second Portuguese Expedition after Gold Mines.Repulsed by large bodies of Natives.-Catholic Missions.-Want of reliable Information regarding them.-Erroneous Ideas as to the Interior of Africa.— Sir Roderick Murchison's Hypothesis correct.-Decrease of the Slave-trade, and Increase of lawful Commerce on the West Coast, owing to Lord Palmerston's Policy. The Fatality of the Murderer attends the Slave-trader.Opinion of Rev. J. L. Wilson on the Slave-trade.—The Operations of our Cruisers.-Ill Effects of sealing up the East Coast.-Instructions to the Expedition.

WHEN first I determined on publishing the narrative of my "Missionary Travels," I had a great misgiving as to whether the criticism my endeavors might provoke would be friendly or the reverse, more particularly as I felt that I had then been so long a sojourner in the wilderness as to be quite a stranger to the British public. But I am now in this, my second essay of authorship, cheered by the conviction that very many readers, who are personally unknown to me, will receive this narrative with the kindly consideration and allowances of friends; and that many more, under the genial influences of an innate love of liberty, and of a desire to see the same social and religious blessings they themselves enjoy, disseminated throughout the world, will sympathize with me in the efforts by which I have striven, however imper

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fectly, to elevate the position and character of our fellow-men in Africa. This knowledge makes me doubly anxious to render my narrative acceptable to all my readers; but, in the absence of any excellence in literary composition, the natural consequence of my pursuits, I have to offer only a simple account of a mission which, with respect to the objects proposed to be thereby accomplished, formed a noble contrast to some of the earlier expeditions to Eastern Africa. I believe that the information it will give, respecting the people visited and the countries traversed, will not be materially gainsaid by any future commonplace traveler like myself, who may be blessed with fair health and a gleam of sunshine in his breast. This account is written in the earnest hope that it may contribute to that information which will yet cause the great and fertile continent of Africa to be no longer kept wantonly sealed, but made available as the scene of European enterprise, and will enable its people to take a place among the nations of the earth, thus securing the happiness and prosperity of tribes now sunk in barbarism or debased by slavery; and, above all, I cherish the hope that it may lead to the introduction of the blessings of the Gospel.

The first expedition sent to East Africa, after the Portuguese had worked a passage round the Cape, was instituted under the auspices of the government of Portugal, for the purpose, it is believed, of discovering the land of Ophir, made mention of in Holy Scripture as the country whence King Solomon obtained sandal wood, ivory, apes, peacocks, and gold. The terms used by the Jews to express the first four articles had, according to Max Müller, no existence in the Hebrew language, but were words imported into it from the Sanscrit. It is curious, then, that the search was not directed to the Coast of India, more particularly as Sanscrit was known

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on the Malabar Coast, and there also peacocks and sandalwood are met with in abundance. The Portuguese, like some others of more modern times, were led to believe that Sofalla, because sometimes pronounced Zophar by the Arabs, from being the lowest or most southerly port they visited, was identical with the Ophir alluded to in Sacred History.

Eastern Africa had been occupied from the most remote times by traders from India and the Red Sea. Vasco da Gama, in 1497-8, found them firmly established at Mozambique, and, after reaching India, he turned with longing eyes from Calicut toward Sofalla, and actually visited it in 1502. As the Scriptural Ophir, it was expected to be the most lucrative of all the Portuguese stations; and, under the impres sion that an important settlement could be established there, the Portuguese conquered, at great loss of both men and money, the district in which the gold-washings were situated; but, in the absence of all proper machinery, a vast amount of labor returned so small an amount of gain, that they abandoned them in disgust.

The next expedition, consisting of three ships and a thousand men, mostly gentlemen volunteers, left Lisbon in 1569 for the conquest of the gold mines or washings of the Chief of Monomotapa, west of Tette, and of those in Manica, still farther west, but in a more southerly direction; and also to find a route to the West Coast. In this last object they failed; and to this day it has been accomplished by only one European, and that an Englishman. The expedition was commanded by Francisco Barreto, and abundantly supplied with horses, asses, camels, and provisions. Ascending the Zambesi as far as Senna, they found many Arab and other traders already settled there, who received the strangers with great hospitality. The horses, however, having passed

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through a district abounding with tsetse, an insect whose bite is fatal to domestic animals, soon showed the emaciation peculiar to the poison; and Senna being notoriously unhealthy, the sickness of both men and horses aroused Barreto's suspicion that poison had been administered by the inhabitants, most of whom, consequently, he put to the sword or blew away from his guns. Marching beyond Senna with a party five hundred and sixty strong, he and his men suffered terribly from hunger and thirst, and, after being repeatedly assaulted by a large body of natives, the expedition was compelled to return without ever reaching the gold mines which Barreto so eagerly sought.

Previous to this, however, devoted Roman Catholic missionaries had penetrated where an army could not go; for Senhor Bordalo, in his excellent Historical Essays, mentions that the Jesuit father Gonçalo da Silveira had already suffered martyrdom by command of the Chief of Monomotapa. Indeed, missionaries of that body of Christians established themselves in a vast number of places in Eastern Africa, as the ruins of mission stations still testify; but, not having succeeded in meeting with any reliable history of the labors of these good men, it is painful for me to be unable to contradict the calumnies which Portuguese writers still heap on their memory. So far as the impression left on the native mind goes, it is decidedly favorable to their zeal and piety; while the writers referred to roundly assert that the missionaries engaged in the slave-trade, which is probably as false as the more modern scandals occasionally retailed against their Protestant brethren. Philanthropists sometimes err in accepting the mere gossip of coast villages as facts, when asserting the atrocities of our countrymen abroad; while others, pretending to regard all philanthropy as weakness, yet prac

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