Large game, buffaloes, and zebras, were abundant abreast the island, but no men could be seen.  On the mainland, over on the right bank of the river, we were amused by the eccentric gyrations and evolutions of flocks of small seed-eating birds, who in their flight wheeled into compact columns with such military precision as to give us the impression that they must be guided by a leader, and all directed by the same signal.  Several other kinds of small birds now go in flocks, and among others the large Senegal swallow.  The presence of this bird, being clearly in a state of migration from the north, while the common swallow of the country, and the brown kite are away beyond the equator, leads to the conjecture that there may be a double migration, namely, of birds from torrid climates to the more temperate, as this now is, as well as from severe winters to sunny regions; but this could not be verified by such birds of passage as ourselves.

On reaching Mazaro, the mouth of a narrow creek which in floods communicates with the Quillimane river, we found that the Portuguese were at war with a half-caste named Mariano alias Matakenya, from whom they had generally fled, and who, having built a stockade near the mouth of the Shire, owned all the country between that river and Mazaro.  Mariano was best known by his native name Matakenya, which in their tongue means “trembling,” or quivering as trees do in a storm.  He was a keen slave-hunter, and kept a large number of men, well armed with muskets.  It is an entire mistake to suppose that the slave trade is one of buying and selling alone; or that engagements can be made with labourers in Africa as they are in India; Mariano, like other Portuguese, had no labour to spare.  He had been in the habit of sending out armed parties on slave-hunting forays among the helpless tribes to the north-east, and carrying down the kidnapped victims in chains to Quillimane, where they were sold by his brother-in-law Cruz Coimbra, and shipped as “Free emigrants” to the French island of Bourbon.  So long as his robberies and murders were restricted to the natives at a distance, the authorities did not interfere; but his men, trained to deeds of violence and bloodshed in their slave forays, naturally began to practise on the people nearer at hand, though belonging to the Portuguese, and even in the village of Senna, under the guns of the fort.  A gentleman of the highest standing told us that, while at dinner with his family, it was no uncommon event for a slave to rush into the room pursued by one of Mariano’s men with spear in hand to murder him.

The atrocities of this villain, aptly termed by the late governor of Quillimane a “notorious robber and murderer,” became at length intolerable.  All the Portuguese spoke of him as a rare monster of inhumanity.  It is unaccountable why half-castes, such as he, are so much more cruel than the Portuguese, but such is undoubtedly the case.