was a very tall man, and as he swayed hither and thither
from weakness, weighing down Dr. Livingstone, it must
have appeared like one drunken man helping another.
Some of the Portuguese white soldiers stood fighting
with great bravery against the enemy in front, while
a few were coolly shooting at their own slaves for
fleeing into the river behind. The rebels soon
retired, and the Portuguese escaped to a sandbank
in the Zambesi, and thence to an island opposite Shupanga,
where they lay for some weeks, looking at the rebels
on the mainland opposite. This state of inactivity
on the part of the Portuguese could not well be helped,
as they had expended all their ammunition and were
waiting anxiously for supplies; hoping, no doubt sincerely,
that the enemy might not hear that their powder had
failed. Luckily their hopes were not disappointed;
the rebels waited until a supply came, and were then
repulsed after three-and-a-half hours’ hard
fighting. Two months afterwards Mariano’s
stockade was burned, the garrison having fled in a
panic; and as Bonga declared that he did not wish
to fight with this Governor, with whom he had no quarrel,
the war soon came to an end. His Excellency
meanwhile, being a disciple of Raspail, had taken
nothing for the fever but a little camphor, and after
he was taken to Shupanga became comatose. More
potent remedies were administered to him, to his intense
disgust, and he soon recovered. The Colonel
in attendance, whom he never afterwards forgave, encouraged
the treatment. “Give what is right; never
mind him; he is very (
muito) impertinent:”
and all night long, with every draught of water the
Colonel gave a quantity of quinine: the consequence
was, next morning the patient was cinchonized and
better.
For sixty or seventy miles before reaching Mazaro,
the scenery is tame and uninteresting. On either
hand is a dreary uninhabited expanse, of the same
level grassy plains, with merely a few trees to relieve
the painful monotony. The round green top of
the stately palm-tree looks at a distance, when its
grey trunk cannot be seen, as though hung in mid-air.
Many flocks of busy sand-martins, which here, and
as far south as the Orange River, do not migrate,
have perforated the banks two or three feet horizontally,
in order to place their nests at the ends, and are
now chasing on restless wing the myriads of tropical
insects. The broad river has many low islands,
on which are seen various kinds of waterfowl, such
as geese, spoonbills, herons, and flamingoes.
Repulsive crocodiles, as with open jaws they sleep
and bask in the sun on the low banks, soon catch the
sound of the revolving paddles and glide quietly into
the stream. The hippopotamus, having selected
some still reach of the river to spend the day, rises
out of the bottom, where he has been enjoying his
morning bath after the labours of the night on shore,
blows a puff of spray from his nostrils, shakes the
water out of his ears, puts his enormous snout up
straight and yawns, sounding a loud alarm to the rest
of the herd, with notes as of a monster bassoon.