The weddings are celebrated with as much jollity as weddings are anywhere.  We witnessed one in the house of our friend the Padre.  It being the marriage of his goddaughter, he kindly invited us to be partakers in his joy; and we there became acquainted with old Donna Engenia, who was a married wife and had children, when the slaves came from Cassange, before any of us were born.  The whole merry-making was marked by good taste amid propriety.

About the only interesting object in the vicinity of Tette is the coal a few miles to the north.  There, in the feeders of the stream Revubue, it crops out in cliff sections.  The seams are from four to seven feet in thickness; one measured was found to be twenty-five feet thick.

Learning that it would be difficult for our party to obtain food beyond Kebrabasa before the new crop came in and knowing the difficulty of hunting for so many men in the wet season, we decided on deferring our departure for the interior until May, and in the mean time to run down once more to the Kongone, in the hopes of receiving letters and despatches from the man-of-war that was to call in March.  We left Tette on the 10th, and at Senna heard that our lost mail had been picked up on the beach by natives, west of the Milambe; carried to Quillimane, sent thence to Senna, and, passing us somewhere on the river, on to Tette.  At Shupanga the governor informed us that it was a very large mail; no great comfort, seeing it was away up the river.

Mosquitoes were excessively troublesome at the harbour, and especially when a light breeze blew from the north over the mangroves.  We lived for several weeks in small huts, built by our men.  Those who did the hunting for the party always got wet, and were attacked by fever, but generally recovered in time to be out again before the meat was all consumed.  No ship appearing, we started off on the 15th of March, and stopped to wood on the Luabo, near an encampment of hippopotamus hunters; our men heard again, through them, of the canoe path from this place to Quillimane, but they declined to point it out.

We found our friend Major Sicard at Mazaro with picks, shovels, hurdles, and slaves, having come to build a fort and custom-house at the Kongone.  As we had no good reason to hide the harbour, but many for its being made known, we supplied him with a chart of the tortuous branches, which, running among the mangroves, perplex the search; and with such directions as would enable him to find his way down to the river.  He had brought the relics of our fugitive mail, and it was a disappointment to find that all had been lost, with the exception of a bundle of old newspapers, two photographs, and three letters, which had been written before we left England.