some years ago burned all the Portuguese villas on the north bank of the river; afterwards the young men went to Bonga, son of another half-caste chief, who bade defiance to the Tette authorities, and had a stockade at the confluence of the Zambesi and Luenya, a few miles below that village.  Asking the Makololo whence they came, Bonga rejoined, “Why do you come from my enemy to me?  You have brought witchcraft medicine to kill me.”  In vain they protested that they did not belong to the country; they were strangers, and had come from afar with an Englishman.  The superstitious savage put them all to death.  “We do not grieve,” said their companions, “for the thirty victims of the smallpox, who were taken away by Morimo (God); but our hearts are sore for the six youths who were murdered by Bonga.”  Any hope of obtaining justice on the murderer was out of the question.  Bonga once caught a captain of the Portuguese army, and forced him to perform the menial labour of pounding maize in a wooden mortar.  No punishment followed on this outrage.  The Government of Lisbon has since given Bonga the honorary title of Captain, by way of coaxing him to own their authority; but he still holds his stockade.

Tette stands on a succession of low sandstone ridges on the right bank of the Zambesi, which is here nearly a thousand yards wide (960 yards).  Shallow ravines, running parallel with the river, form the streets, the houses being built on the ridges.  The whole surface of the streets, except narrow footpaths, were overrun with self-sown indigo, and tons of it might have been collected.  In fact indigo, senna, and stramonium, with a species of cassia, form the weeds of the place, which are annually hoed off and burned.  A wall of stone and mud surrounds the village, and the native population live in huts outside.  The fort and the church, near the river, are the strongholds; the natives having a salutary dread of the guns of the one, and a superstitious fear of the unknown power of the other.  The number of white inhabitants is small, and rather select, many of them having been considerately sent out of Portugal “for their country’s good.”  The military element preponderates in society; the convict and “incorrigible” class of soldiers, receiving very little pay, depend in great measure on the produce of the gardens of their black wives; the moral condition of the resulting population may be imagined.

Droughts are of frequent occurrence at Tette, and the crops suffer severely.  This may arise partly from the position of the town between the ranges of hills north and south, which appear to have a strong attraction for the rain-clouds.  It is often seen to rain on these hills when not a drop falls at Tette.  Our first season was one of drought.  Thrice had the women planted their gardens in vain, the seed, after just vegetating, was killed by the intense dry heat.  A fourth planting shared the same hard fate, and then some of the knowing ones discovered