THE PORTUGUESE IN SOUTH AFRICA FROM 1505 TO 1700.

CHAPTER XIV.

EVENTS TO THE CLOSE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

On the 4th of August 1578 the great tragedy took place of the death of King Sebastiao in battle with the Moors of Northern Africa, and the total destruction of the army which he commanded in person, the entire force of Portugal. At once the little kingdom lost the proud position she had occupied among the nations of Europe, and thereafter was regarded as of trifling importance. The country had been drained of men, and was completely exhausted. It must be remembered that she never was in as favourable a condition for conducting enterprises requiring large numbers of sailors and soldiers as the Netherlands were at a later date. She , had no great reservoir of thews and muscles to draw from as Holland had in the German states. Spain was behind her, as the German states were behind the Netherlands, but Spain found employment for all her sons in Mexico and Peru. Portugal had to depend upon her own people. She was colonising Brazil and Madeira too, and occupying forts and factories on the western coast of Africa as well as on the shores of the eastern seas. Of the hosts of men — the very best of her blood — that went to India and Africa, few ever returned. They perished of fevers or other diseases, or they lost their lives in wars and shipwrecks, or they made homes for themselves far from their native land.

To procure labourers to till the soil of her southern provinces, slaves were introduced from Africa. In 1441 Antao Goncalves and Nuno Tristao brought the first home with them, and then the doom of the kingdom was sealed. No other Europeans have ever treated negroes so mildly as the Portuguese, or been so ready to mix with them on equal terms. But even in Estremadura, Alemtejo, and the Algarves it was impossible for the European without losing self respect to labour side by side with the African, and so all of the most enterprising of the peasant class moved away. The slaves, on embracing Christianity, had various privileges conferred upon them, and their blood became mixed with that of the least energetic of the peasantry, until a new and degenerate stock, frivolous, inconstant, incapable of improvement, was formed. In the northern provinces Entre Douro e Minho and Tras os Montes a pure European race remained, fit not only to conquer, but to hold dominion in distant lands, though too small in proportion to the entire population of the country to control its destinies. There to the present day are to be met men capable of doing anything that other Europeans can do, but to find the true descendants of the Portuguese heroes of the sixteenth century, one must not look among the lower classes of the southern and larger part of the country now.

Further, corruption of the grossest kind was prevalent in the administration everywhere. The great offices, including the captaincies of the factories and forts in the distant dependencies, were purchased from the favourites of the king, though they were said to be granted on account of meritorious services. Reversions were secured in advance, often several in succession, and there were even instances of individuals acquiring the reversion of captaincies for unnamed persons. Such offices were held for three years, and the men who obtained them did their utmost to make fortunes within that period. They were like the monomotapa of the Kalanga tribe, no one could approach them to ask a favour or to conduct business without a bribe in his hand, every commercial transaction paid them a toll. They had not yet sunk in the deep sloth that characterised them at a later date, but they lived in a style of luxury undreamed of in earlier days.

1581] Accession of a Spanish Dynasty in Portugal.

The exact manner in which Dom Sebastiao met his death was never known. Many of the common people refused to believe that he had been slain : he was hidden away, they asserted, and in God's good time would return and restore the kingdom to its former glory. Many generations passed away before this strange conviction ceased to be held, and all the time, in expectation of some great supernatural occurrence in their favour, the nation allowed matters to take their course without making a supreme effort to rectify them. The cardinal Dom Henrique, an imbecile old man, ascended the throne, but he died on the Slst of January 1580, and with him the famous dynasty of Avis, that had ruled Portugal so long and so gloriously, became extinct in the direct male line.

The duchess of Bragança as the nearest heir in blood might have succeeded, her title being unquestionably clear, but the spirit of the nation was gone, and the duke, her husband, did not choose to maintain her right against Philippe II of Spain, who based his pretensions to the Portuguese throne on his being descended on his mother's side from a younger branch of the late royal family. Dom Antonio, prior of Crato, an illegitimate son of the duke of Beja, second son of Manuel the Fortunate, however, seized the vacant crown, but in August 1580, as the whole people did not rally round him, was easily expelled by a Spanish army commanded by the duke of Alva. Philippe II then added Portugal to his dominions, nominally as an independent kingdom with all its governmental machinery intact as before, really as a subordinate country, whose remaining resources, such as they were, he drew upon for his wars in the Netherlands. To outward appearance the little state might seem to occupy a more impregnable position after such a close union with her powerful neighbour, but it was not so in reality. The enemies of Spain now became her enemies also, her factories and fleets were exposed to attack, and she received no assistance in defending them. The period of her greatness had for ever passed away.

The establishment of missions among the Bantu by the Dominicans was the most important occurrence in South-Eastern Africa at this period. In 1577 Dom Luis d'Ataide, when on his way to Goa to assume duty as viceroy, found at Mozambique two friars of this order, named Jeronymo de Couto and Pedro Usus Maris, who had come from India and were preparing to proceed to Madagascar to labour among the natives of that island. The viceroy induced them to remain where they were, and provided them with means to build a convent, in which six or seven of the brethren afterwards usually resided. This was the centre from which their missions were gradually extended in Eastern Africa. South of the Zambesi, Sofala, Sena, and Tete were occupied within the next few years.

The missionaries found the Europeans and mixed breeds at these places without the ministrations of chaplains, and sadly ignorant in matters spiritual. In the church within the fortress at Sena, for instance, the friars were shocked to see a picture of the Roman matron Lucretia, which had been suspended over a shrine in the belief that it was a portrait of Saint Catherine, and they observed with much surprise that no one made any distinction between fast and feast days.

They turned their attention therefore first to the nominal Christians, and succeeded in effecting some improvement in the condition of that class of the inhabitants, most of whom, however, continued to live in a way that ministers of religion could not approve of. They next applied themselves to the conversion of the Bantu, but did not meet with the success which they hoped for, though they baptized a good many individuals. It was hardly possible for them to make converts except among those who lived about the forts as dependents of the white people, and who were certainly not the best specimens of their race. The condition of the tribes was then such that anything like improvement was well nigh impossible. Wars and raids were constant, for an individual to abandon the faith and customs of his forefatherswas regarded as treason to his chief, and sensuality had attractions too strong to be set aside. Away from the forts the missionaries were compelled to endure hardships and privations of every kind, hunger, thirst, exposure to heat, fatigue, and fever ; but the initial part of their duty, as they understood it, was to suffer without complaint.

1586 Establishment of Dominican missions.

In 1585 Dom Joao Gayo Kibeiro, bishop of Malacca, wrote to the cardinal archduke Albert of Austria, who then governed Portugal for the king, requesting him to obtain a reinforcement of missionaries for the islands of Solor and Timur, where Christianity was believed to be making rapid progress. He addressed a similar letter to the provincial of the Dominicans, and this, when made public, created such enthusiasm that a considerable number of friars at once volunteered for service in India. Among them was one named Joao dos Santos, to whom we are indebted for a minute and excellent account of South-Eastern Africa and its people. Dos Santos sailed from Lisbon with thirteen others of the same order on the 13th of April 1586, and on the 13th of August of that year reached Mozambique, where he received instructions from his superior to proceed to Sofala to assist the friar Joao Madeira, who was stationed there. Accordingly he set out in the first pangayo that sailed, and after touching at the islands of Angosha and the rivers Kilimane, Old Kuama, and Luabo on the way, reached his destination on the 5th of December. Two others of the party, the friars Jeronymo Lopes and Joao Frausto, went to Sena and Tete, where they remained three years and a half. When Dos Santos took up his abode at the village of Sofala Garcia de Mello was captain of the station, subject to the control of the captain of Mozambique.

The fort built by Pedro d'Anaya had before this time been reconstructed of stone, and nothing of the original walls remained, but the tower erected by Manuel Fernandes was still standing. The form of the first structure — that of a square — was preserved, and a circular bastion had been added at each of the corners. The buildings within the walls were a church, warehouses to contain goods and stores, offices, and residences for all the officials and people engaged in trade. There was also a large cistern in which rain was collected, as the water obtained in wells was not considered good. With the exception of a bombardier, a master gunner, and six assistants, the fort was without other garrison than the European residents of the place and their servants.

Close by was a village containing six hundred inhabitants professing Christianity. These were mixed breeds and negro slaves or others employed by the Portuguese, who in case of necessity would have been called upon to assist in defending the station. In this village there was a chapel, and while Dos Santos resided there a second place of devotion was built in it, as well as another some distance outside. The friar himself went with a party of men to an island in the Pungwe river to cut the timber needed in their construction and to repair and strengthen the church within the fort. The dwelling-houses in the village were tiny structures of wattles and mud covered with thatch, not much larger or better than the huts of Bantu.

Farther away was a hamlet occupied by about a hundred Mohamedans, very poor and humble, the descendants of those who had acknowledged Isuf as their lord. There was still one among them termed a sheik, but he was without any real authority. So entirely dependent were these Mohamedans upon the Portuguese, and so subject to control, that they were obliged to pay tithes of their garden produce to the Dominican fathers, just as the residents in the neighbouring Christian village. A few individuals of their creed were scattered about the country, but all were in the same abject condition as those at Sofala.

The gardens cultivated by the inhabitants produced a variety of vegetables, such as yams, sweet potatoes, cabbages, melons, cucumbers, beans, and onions, in addition to millet, rice, sugar canes, and sesame, the last of which was grown to express the oil. Sugar was not made, but the juicy pith of the cane was esteemed as an article of diet. Fruit too was plentiful. The most common kinds were pomegranates, oranges, limes, pineapples, bananas — usually called Indian figs. — and cocoa nuts. There were even groves of lime trees that had been allowed to become wild, the fruit of which any one who chose could gather. The principal flesh consumed by the Europeans was that of barnyard poultry, as in some parts of South-Eastern Africa at the present day, although horned cattle, goats, and pigs were plentiful. Venison of various kinds was abundant, and fish of good quality was always obtainable. Everything here enumerated could be had at trifling cost in barter for beads and squares of calico, which were used instead of coin, so that the cost of living in a simple manner was very small ; but wines and imported provisions were exceedingly dear. The matical of gold was the common standard of value in commercial transactions between Europeans.

Four leagues above the fort there was in the river an island named Maroupe, about eight leagues in length by a league and a half in breadth. The greater part of this island had been given by the Kiteve to a Portuguese named Rodrigo Lobo, whom he regarded as his particular friend. But it was in no way a dependency of the European establishment at the mouth of the stream, for Lobo, though he still maintained intercourse with his countrymen, ruled there as a vassal of the Bantu overlord, just as a Kalanga sub-chief would have done. He lived in a more luxurious style than any white man at Sofala, had a harem of black women, and was attended upon by numerous slaves. His descendants are to be found in the country at the present day, and still call themselves Portuguese, though they are not distinguishable from Bantu in features or colour.

Sofala was never visited now by a ship direct from Portugal or India, its imports coming from Mozambique and its exports going to that island. The coasting trade was carried on with pangayos and luzios manned by black men who claimed to be Mohamedans, but really knew and cared very little about religion, though they were excessively superstitious and paid much attention to forms. The master, a mate, and a supercargo were commonly the only Europeans on board, and it sometimes happened that even these were mixed breeds.

Every year the Kiteve sent to the fort at Sofala for the cloth that was due to him under the agreement made by Vasco Fernandes Homem. It consisted of two hundred rolls, not mere squares, for each piece was worth more than a cruzado. It was necessary also, in order to maintain friend- ship with the powerful chief, to make presents of beads and calico of some value to his messengers, as they were selected by him with that expectation. This made commerce within his territory free, but any one passing through it to that of his neighbour the Tshikanga, in order to trade there, was obliged to pay him one piece of cloth out of every twenty. There was almost constant war between the four independent Kalanga chiefs, the Monomotapa, Tshikanga, Kiteve, and Sedanda, which of course had a disturbing effect upon commerce.

1587] Description of Sena

Sena was at this time really a place of greater importance than Sofala, though it did not rank so high as a governmental station. The salaries paid to its officials amounted to little more than £500 a year, while those paid at Sofala exceeded £1100. This, however, gives nothing upon which to form an opinion of the value of an office at either place, as incomes were regarded as derivable from perquisites, not from pay. A few years later it was ascertained that one individual, whose salary during his term of office amounted to £850, had realised a fortune of not less than £57,000, — an enormous sum for that period. This was of course a very exceptional case, but probably there were few high officials who did not in some way receive their nominal salaries many times over.

Sena was the emporium of the trade of the Zambesi basin. Goods were brought here from Mozambique and stored in the warehouse within the fort until they were sent up the river to Tete in luzios, or up the Shire to the head waters of navigation, thence to be conveyed by carriers in different directions, or to the territory of the Tshikanga to be bartered for gold. The fort was not yet fully completed, but several pieces of artillery were mounted on its walls. It contained a church, the factory with its storehouses, the residences of the captain and other officials, and the public offices. No soldiers were maintained here, the resident Portuguese and their dependents being regarded as sufficiently strong to defend the place if it should be attacked. The officials were appointed by the captain of Mozambique. In the village just outside the fort there were about fifty Portuguese residents and over seven hundred and fifty Indians, mixed breeds, and blacks. At this time slaves were not exported from the Zambesi, but captives were purchased from tribes that were at war, and were kept for service at all the stations. The blacks residing at Sena were of this class.

Every three years an embassy from the monomotapa visited Sena to receive calico and beads of the value of three thousand cruzados, which each captain of Mozambique on assuming office was obliged to pay for the privilege of trading in the great chief's territory during the term of his government. The embassy was conducted with much state, having at its head men of rank who acted in the capacities so well known to those who have dealings with Bantu, as eyes, ears, and mouth of the chief. A Portuguese returned with it, to deliver the calico and beads formally, so that everything might be carried out in a manner satisfactory to both parties. The monomotapa had a very simple way of enforcing this payment. If it was not made when due he ordered an empata, that is a seizure and confiscation of everything belonging to Portuguese in his country, and stopped all commerce. The goods so seized were never restored, though trade was resumed when merchandise to the full value of three thousand cruzados was forwarded to him. This system prevented payment by promises or running up accounts, which might otherwise have come into practice.

Up at the terminus of the river navigation by the Portuguese, two hundred and ninety kilometres from Sena, on the Botonga or southern bank of the stream, on ground one hundred and fifty-two metres above the level of the sea, stood Tete, the base of the trade with the interior. It contained a fort built of stone, with seven or eight pieces of artillery on its walls, which enclosed a chapel, dedicated to Sao Thiago, warehouses, offices, and other buildings. In the village adjoining it resided about forty Portuguese and some five hundred and fifty Indians, half breeds, and blacks professing Christianity, of the same class as those at Sofala and Sena. There was no garrison of soldiers, the fort being intended for the resident Europeans and their dependents to retire into in case of being attacked. The captain or head of the establishment was appointed by the captain of Mozambique and was subject to his authority.

Within a circuit of three or four leagues from Tete there were eleven kraals of Bantu, that could muster among them more than two thousand men capable of bearing arms. They had been conquered by the monomotapa some time before, and by him presented to the captain of Tete, who acted as their supreme ruler. So perfectly subject were they to him that they brought all cases of importance to him to be tried, and he appointed their headmen and could call out their warriors for service whenever he chose. They were the only Bantu south of the Zambesi, except the slaves and servants of the Europeans at the different stations, who were under Portuguese authority.

From Tete goods were conveyed on the backs of carriers who travelled in caravans to three stations in the Kalanga territory, named Masapa, Luanze, and Bukoto, at each of which a Portuguese who had charge of the local barter resided with some assistants. The most important of these stations, or places of fairs as they were called, was Masapa, twenty-two kilometres from the river Mazoe, about two hundred and ninety kilometres by footpath from Tete, and near the mountain Fura. The principal Portuguese resident at Masapa, though selected for the post by the European inhabitants of the country conjointly with the Kalanga ruler, held the office of chief under the monomotapa, by whom he was vested with power, even of death, over the Bantu residents at the station. No white man or black trader acting for one could pass Masapa without permission from the Portuguese chief or the monomotapa himself, and the chief acted as agent for the monomotapa in receiving and forwarding to him one-twentieth of all the goods brought into that part of the country to be bartered for gold and ivory. This appointment he held for life. So far he was simply a Kaffir chief, and his domestic establishment was that of one. But he was also a Portuguese official. He held a commission from the viceroy of India giving him considerable authority over the Portuguese who went to Masapa for purposes of trade, and he was the medium through whom all communications with the monomotapa passed. He had the title of Capitao das Portas — Captain of the Gates, — on account of his peculiar position.

Luanze was about two hundred kilometres south of Tete, between the rivers Inyadiri and Aruenya, which united below it and then flowed into the Mazoe. The principal Portuguese resident here was also a sub-chief of the monomotapa, who placed the Bantu living at the station under his authority. He held a commission from the viceroy, making him head of the Portuguese frequenting the place ; but he was not such an important personage as the Captain of the Gates.

Bukoto was about fifty-eight kilometres from Masapa, seventy-five from Luanze, and two hundred and thirty-two from Tete. It was situated at the junction of a streamlet with the Mazoe, and was the least important of the three places of fairs, with nothing particular to note about it. At none of them had the Portuguese any authority whatever over the Bantu except such as was derived from the monomotapa, who permitted the trading stations to be established in his country on account of the benefit which he derived 35° from them. By doing so he did not consider that he had diminished his right of sovereignty, and the exercise of authority by the captains over men of their own race, by virtue of power derived from the viceroy of India, was in full accordance with Bantu ideas of government being tribal rather than territorial.

The monomotapa of the time when Dos Santos resided at Sofala, who bore also the title Mambo, was well disposed towards the Portuguese. He gave the Dominicans leave to establish missions in his country, and they had already put up little structures for places of prayer at Masapa, Luanze, and Bukoto. They had not as yet, however, men to occupy these places permanently, but the friar who resided at Tete occasionally visited them. The white people never made a request from Mambo without accompanying it with a present — usually a piece of coloured calico — for himself and something of equal value for his principal wife, their special pleader, whose name was Ma Zarira. This was the custom of the country, for no black man could obtain an audience unless he presented an ox, a goat, or something else according to his means.

In describing the country Dos Santos mentions several kingdoms bordering on the territory of the monomotapa, but in reality these were nothing more than tracts of land inhabited by Bantu tribes under independent chiefs. The kingdom of Sedanda was one of those which he named. This was the territory lying between Sofala and the Sabi river, the ocean and the mountain range bordering the interior plain, occupied by a tribe of the same blood as the Makalanga, under a chief who bore the hereditary title of Sedanda. One of the Sedandas in Dos Santos' time committed suicide, on account of his being afflicted with leprosy. Of the region west of the monomotapa's territory the Portuguese knew nothing except from vague Kalanga reports, for no one of them or of the wandering Mohamedans had ever visited it. It would be useless therefore to repeat the names of the so-called kingdoms given by the Dominican friar. Of the longitudes of places he had of course no knowledge. He believed Angola could not be very far distant, and he states that a blanket brought overland from that country by black traders was purchased by a Portuguese in Manika and shown to him at Sofala as a curiosity. It is just possible that the blanket was carried across the continent, but it is much more likely that the friar was deceived as to the place from which it came. At that time the head waters of the Zambesi were quite unknown, though the Portuguese were fairly well acquainted with the principal features of the great lake region, through accounts obtained from Mohamedan traders as well as from Bantu. Owing to this circumstance their maps of East Central Africa were tolerably correct, while those of South Africa were utterly misleading.

Manufactures of the Makalanga.

Dos Santos states that copper and iron were plentiful in the country. The iron was regarded as of superior quality, so much so that a quantity was once sent to India to make guns of. Though the smelting furnaces were of the crudest description, implements of this metal manufactured by themselves were used by the Makalanga in great abundance, just as a few years ago among the Bapedi farther south, where waggon loads could be collected at a single kraal. He mentions also the manufacture by some of the Bantu of maghiras, or loin cloths, from cotton which grew wild along the banks of the Zambesi.

As yet no attempt had been made to colonise any part of Africa south of the Zambesi on one coast and Benguela on the other. Commerce and the conversion of the heathen were the sole objects of the Portuguese who visited the country, and indeed they had no surplus population with which to form settlements in it. They did not touch at any part of the coast between Benguela and Delagoa Bay when they could avoid doing so, because there was no trade of any kind to be carried on there and because after the slaughter of Dom Francisco dAlmeida and his people on the shore of Table Bay the Hottentots were regarded as the most ferocious of savages, with whom it was well to have as little intercourse as possible. They would have been pleased had they found a port somewhere on the southern shore that their ships could have taken shelter in when returning from India to Lisbon during the time of the westerly gales, but they always tried to pass by in the summer season and to make the run from Mozambique to the island of Saint Helena without a break.

Some years before the arrival of Dos Santos at Sofala a dreadful wave of war and destruction rolled over the country north of the lower Zambesi. A horde of barbarians made their appearance from a distant part of the continent, probably — judging from the few words of their language that have been preserved — from some locality on or near the western coast, and laid the whole territory along their course utterly waste. Theirs was just such another march as that of the horde under Ma Ntati, which passed over the country from the upper Caledon to the border of the Kalahari desert in the early years of the nineteenth century, leaving nothing behind it, where a thickly populated land had been, but ashes and skeletons of men and animals. And just as the hoi'de under Ma Ntati broke into fragments and perished, so did this which appeared on the Zambesi opposite Tete in 1570.

1592] Terribly destructive wars.

Finding that stream a barrier which it could not cross intact, one large section turned to the north-east, and finally reached the shore of the Indian sea, along which it committed the most frightful ravages. The island of Mozambique could not be attacked, but its inhabitants suffered severely from the famine caused by the devastation of the mainland. A body of about forty Portuguese, under the captain Nuno Velho Pereira, with as many slaves as could be collected, endeavoured to protect the plantations at Cabaceira, but nearly the whole of them perished in the attempt, and their bodies were eaten by the savages on the shore. Only Nuno Velho Pereira and two or three other Europeans managed to escape. Thus the greater number of the inhabitants of the island were cut off, and those who remained were in the direst straits for want of food until supplies reached them by sea. This happened in the year 1585. What remained of ancient Kilwa was wiped out of existence, Mombasa was nearly destroyed, and the progress of the cannibal horde was only stopped at Melinde, where Mattheus Mendes de Vasconcellos, head of the factory, with thirty Portuguese and three thousand Bantu warriors, aided the Mohamedan ruler in resistance, and inflicted a defeat upon them in which they were nearly exterminated.

Shortly after the first appearance of the great horde on the Bororo or northern bank of the Zambesi, a small party managed to cross the river, and appeared in the neighbourhood of Tete, but Jeronymo d'Andrade, captain of that station, had no difficulty in driving them back, as the barbarians were so amazed at the effects of the fire from a few arquebuses, which they attributed to witchcraft, that they fled without resistance.

Not long after this event another and much larger band, consisting of ten or twelve thousand men under a chief named Sonza, by some means got across the river, and attacked a clan that was friendly to the Portuguese, killing every living thing and destroying whatever they came across. Jeronymo d'Andrade got together a force of about a hundred Portuguese, and with some four thousand Batonga allies took the field against Sonza. On his approach some of the invaders constructed a rough lager or enclosure of bushes and earth, within which they attempted to defend themselves, but as they were still exposed to the fire of arquebuses they were speedily driven out and dispersed. They and the others of their party were then hunted until it was believed about five thousand had been killed. The remainder of the band escaped, and joined the horde that was laying waste the country towards the coast of Mozambique.

In 1592 two sections of these invaders remained on the northern bank of the lower Zambesi. One was called by the Portuguese the Mumbos, the other was the far-dreaded Mazimba. Dos Santos says that both were cannibals, and there is no rea.son to doubt his assertion, for traditions concerning the Mazimba are still current all over Southern Africa, in which they are represented as ogres or inhuman monsters, and their name is used generally to imply eaters of human flesh. But in all probability they had adopted that custom from want of other food, and would have abandoned it gradually if they had obtained domestic cattle and could have cultivated gardens. The men were much stronger and more robust than Makalanga. They carried immense shields made of ox hide, and were variously armed with assagais, battle-axes, and bows and arrows.

One of the chiefs of the Mumbos, named Kwizura, with about six hundred warriors, attacked a clan friendly to the Portuguese at Tshikarongo, north of the Zambesi, ten leagues from Tete. The clan fled after sustaining severe losses, and applied to Pedro Fernandes de Chaves, captain of Tete, for assistance. The captain thereupon summoned his eleven sub-chiefs, who at once joined him with their men, and with these and the resident Portuguese he crossed the river and marched against Kwizura, who was found in a lager of stakes and earth which he had constructed. Together with the followers of the dispossessed chief the attacking force was so strong that it was able to surround the lager and storm it, when Kwizura and every one of his warriors fell. The courtyard of the hut in which the Mumbo chief had lived was found paved with the skulls of those he had killed and eaten. After vesting a few days, the people of Tete returned to their homes, taking with them as slaves Kwizura's women and children. Such was the style of warfare on the Zambesi at the close of the sixteenth century.

1592] Travels of the friar Joao dos Santos.

Dos Santos was at Tete just before this event. After a residence of three years and a half at Sofala, during which time they baptized seventeen hundred individuals, most of whom must have been Bantu, he and his associate the friar Joao Madeira had been summoned to Mozambique by their provincial to labour in another field, and had left Sofala in July 1590 and travelled overland to the Zambesi in order to obtain a passage in a pangayo. But on their arrival they found no vessel would be leaving that year, so they arranged that Joao Madeira should remain at Sena and Dos Santos should proceed up the rjver to Tete to do duty for the priest there, who was prostrate with illness. He arrived at Tete in September 1590, and remained at that place until May 1591, when he went down to the mouth of the Zambesi, and with the father Joao Madeira proceeded to Mozambique. He was then sent to the island of Querimba, but in April 1594 was instructed to proceed to Sofala again on a special mission. In consequence of this he went to Mozambique, and when the favourable monsoon set in took passage in a pangayo bound to Delagoa Bay, which was to touch at Sofala on the passage. Five days after leaving Mozambique he reached his destination. The pangayo proceeded to Delagoa Bay, where her officers employed themselves in bartering ivory for nearly a year. She was about to return to Mozambique when some Bantu fell upon her captain Manuel Malheiro and another officer, murdered them and plundered the hut in which they had lived and the vessel. One white man remained alive, who succeeded in getting away with the empty pangayo and her Mohamedan crew. To such perils were the Portuguese exposed at the distant trading places on the coast.

On the 16th of April 1595 Dos Santos once more left Sofala for Mozambique, from which place he went to India, and then to Portugal, where his volume Ethiopia Oriental was printed in the Dominican convent at Evora in 1609. But his career in Africa was not yet ended, and we shall meet him again on the Zambesi in another chapter. His successor at Tete was the friar Nicolau do Rosario, of the same order, a man of great devotion, who had suffered much in the wreck of the ship Sao Thomé in 1589.

Before the destruction of Kwizura's band, while Dos Santos was still on the river, a powerful chief of the Mazimba, named Tondo, attacked some people who were on very friendly terms with the Portuguese and who lived on the northern bank of the Zambesi opposite Sena, dispossessed them of their land and killed and ate many of them. In 1592 these fugitives applied to André de Santiago, captain of Sena, for aid, and he, desiring to emulate the action of Pedro Fernandes de Chaves, collected as large a force as he could, Portuguese, mixed breeds, slaves, and friendly Bantu, and with two cannon taken from the walls of his fort crossed the river to attack the Mazimba, who were entrenched in a lager of unusual height and strength. Finding his force unequal to the enterprise he had undertaken, the captain of Sena formed a camp on the bank of a rivulet flowing into the Zambesi, and sent to Tete for assistance.

Pedro Fernandes de Chaves responded by calling out his Bantu retainers and nearly all the Portuguese and half- breeds of Tete, with whom he crossed the Zambesi and marched down its northern bank towards the locality of the war. The Dominican friar Nicolau do Rosario accompanied the force as chaplain. When within a few miles of their destination the Portuguese and principal half-breeds, totally unsuspicious of danger, entered a thicket through which the path passed. They were half a league in advance of their Bantu auxiliaries, and, as was their usual way of travelling, were in palanquins and hammocks borne by their slaves, with other attendants carrying their arquebuses, when they were suddenly attacked by a band of Mazimba. Every man of them was killed on the spot except the friar, who was badly wounded and seized as a prisoner. He was taken to the lager and bound to a tree, where he was made a target for the arrows of his captors till death came to his relief. The Bantu auxiliaries, upon ascertaining what had happened, returned with all haste to Tete.

On the following morning the Mazimba appeared in triumph before André de Santiago's camp, with a man beating upon the drum taken from the Portuguese. Their chief was dressed in the murdered friar's robes, and the head of Pedro Fernandes de Chaves was carried aloft on the point of an assagai. The spoil taken in the thicket was exhibited in bravado, and with it the limbs of those who had fallen, which were destined to supply a feast for the cannibal band. The captain of Sena and his men looked at the cruel Mazimba with horror and dismay. That night they attempted to retreat, but on the bank of the Zambesi the enemy fell upon them, and after a stout resistance killed Andre" de Santiago and many of his followers. The two captains, the priest of Tete, and a hundred and thirty white men and mixed breeds had now perished. The Portuguese power and influence on the Zambesi was almost annihilated.

While these events were taking place Dom Pedro de Sousa succeeded Lourenco de Brito as captain of Mozambique. At a later date he became very unpopular as a governor, being tyrannical in his conduct and permitting his son Dom Francisco to conduct himself as a brawler without reproof. For this he was punished by order of the king, but at the time to which this narrative has reached he was new to his office and therefore untried. He resolved to recover the position that had been lost on the Zambesi, and for this purpose he enlisted as many Europeans as were obtainable, and with them, seventy-five or eighty soldiers drawn from the garrison of the fort, and a good supply of artillery and other munitions of war, in 1593 he sailed for Sena. Here he formed a camp, and enlisted white men, mixed breeds, and Bantu, until he had a force under his command of about two hundred arquebusiers and fifteen hundred blacks armed in the usual manner.

With these he crossed the river and attacked Tondo's stronghold, into which he tried to open an entrance with his cannon, but failed. Then he endeavoured to take the lager by storm, but when his men were crowded together close to it, the Mazimba shot their arrows, hurled their barbed assagais, and threw boiling water and burning fat upon them, until they fell back discomfited. Next he began to form huge wickerwork frames to be filled with earth, from the tops of which arquebusiers could keep the wall of the lager clear with their fire while men below were breaking it down, but before they could be completed the people he had engaged at Sena, who had now been two months in the field, clamoured to be allowed to return home, fearing, as they said, that their wives and children were in danger. Dom Pedro was obliged to accede to their demand, and commenced to retreat. While he was leaving his camp the Mazimba attacked him, and after killing many of his men, took his artillery and the greater part of his baggage. He and the remnant of his army escaped to Sena with difficulty, and from that place he returned to Mozambique, leaving matters along the great river in a worse condition than ever before.

Tondo, however, made an offer of peace to the people of Sena, on condition that they should not interfere again in matters that only concerned Bantu tribes. The Mazimba they were informed, had no desire to quarrel with white people, and had acted in self-defence throughout the war. The few traders at Sena were only too pleased to accept the proposal and resume their ordinary manner of living, though they had thereafter to submit to many insults and exactions from the victorious tribe. In 1597 some cannon and a quantity of ammunition and other supplies needed in war were sent from India by the viceroy, and the forts at Sena and Tete were equipped so that the inhabitants could find safety within them in case of attack. Gradually also men came to these stations to replace those who had been killed, so that in the time of Nuno da Cunha, who followed Jeronymo de Azevedo, Dom Pedro de Sousa's successor as captain of Mozambique, the villages recovered their earlier appearance.

These wars had such important consequences for all South-Eastern Africa that they should be treated of much more fully, but authentic documentary material does not exist for the purpose. It is only, therefore, by piecing together certain facts that deductions can be drawn as to what actually occurred. The Mumbos of the Portuguese are to a certainty the Abambo of more recent history, but what their relationship to the Mazimba was cannot be definitely stated. In all probability, however, they were enemies, and one horde was following or pursuing the other from some starting point far to the northwestward, just as the Amangwane pursued the kindred Amahlubi over the Drakensberg during the wars of Tshaka early in the nineteenth century.

Career of the Abambo

A section of the Abambo must have directed its march towards the south some time between 1570 and 1590, though it is impossible to recover the exact date or to trace the line of advance. That it was a raid terribly destructive of human life cannot be doubted, for all such invasions by Bantu are. The Portuguese may have taken no notice of it, as it die not affect them in any way, or they may have been too deeply absorbed with their own troubles to place anything else on record, or they may even have been entirely ignorant of what was going on at a short distance from them, just as the Cape government and Cape colonists were for mary years of the murderous career of the Amangwane or the ilatabele.

The Abambo at length reached the valley of the Tugela river, in what is now the colony of Natal, where they formed settlemerts. The horde must have been composed of the remnants of various tribes that had once been independent of each other. After it increased in number it broke up agair into independent fragments, in which condition its sectbns were when Tshaka's trained regiments commenced theii career of conquest. The tribes that had once formed the Abambo were then again dispersed and nearly exterminated, as vill be related in another volume.

It is highly probable that many of the ancestors of the men who fought under Tshaka were connected with the Mazinba of the sixteenth century, and followed the Abambo soutlward. There was a great deal in common between then, including the special military tactics which enabled Tshaka to win his greatest victories. This, however, is not absolutely certain, though a great amount of evidence points in that direction.

These movements of tribes, of whom before they arrived on the Zambesi absolutely nothing is known, and the career of some of whose offshoots can only be dimly traced by means of indirect evidence, caused a great expansion of the Bantu along the south eastern coast. The Hottentots and Bushmen were too weak to resist, and such moderji tribes as the Xosa, Tembu, and Pondo then branched off from a parent stock, and pressed on to the south-west to get away from the commotions behind them.

The manner in which the Portuguese carried on jrade in the country varied at different periods during the sixteenth century. At first it was conducted by factors appointed by the king, who sent out agents to sell goods supplied by the royal treasury, into which the proceeds were paid. After a time, however, the principal officials, whose salaries were very small, were allowed a share of the commerce, whiph was strictly defined. Thus, in 1559 the viceroy gave permission to Pantaleao de Sa, captain of Sofala and Mozambique, to purchase and send to India one hundred bars of ivory every year for sale on his own account. In 1562 Fernao Martins Freire d'Andrade, captain of Sofala and Mozambique, was granted by royal authority a monopoly of the commerce of the coast in pitch and coir, one-twentieth of the proceeds of the ivory barter upon his contributing one-twentieth of the capital employed in it, and was further to have a two- hundredth part of the profits on all other trade within the territory south of the Zambesi ; and the factors and notaries were to have another two-hundredth part divided amoigst them. The trade was still to be conducted for the royal treasury, and the captain was to send requisitions to Goa for the merchandise needed to carry it on.

In 1585 Dom Jorge de Menezes, chief ensign of Portugal, succeeded Nuno Velho Pereira as captain of Mozambique. On his appointment the viceroy Dom Duarte de Menezes granted him a monopoly of the trade of Inhambane and of the whole coast south of Delagoa Bay, and subsequently farmed out to him the entire commerce of the country south of the Zambesi for fifty thousand cruzados a year. But in addition to this he was to maintain the forts in good order and to pay all the officials and expenses of government of every kind, according to a list which was drawn up. On the expiration of his term of office he was to undergo a trial, and was to prove that these conditions had been faithfully observed and that all public buildings were in the same state as when he took them over.

This system had the advantage of adding something to the royal treasury, and of extending commerce more than ever before. When the experiment was made Sofala was yielding nothing except the profit on a small quantity of ivory, insufficient to meet the trifling cost of the maintenance of the station : four years later elephants' tusks weighing twenty-three thousand kilogrammes were collected there yearly. Greater profit was gained from ivory than from any other article of commerce in Eastern Africa at this time. Taking one year with another, a quantity weighing nearly fifty thousand kilogrammes was sent annually to India by the captains while they had a monopoly of the trade. Gold came next,, but the quantity obtained cannot be even approximately stated. Ambergris followed, and then in order pearls, gum, and wax. The system made the whole of the Portuguese inhabitants of the country dependents of the captain of Mozambique, but their position was quite as bad before. The most that can be said in favour of it is that the law protected them in person and property, and that after 1548 no sentence of death could be carried into execution until it was confirmed by the supreme court of India.

In 1591 the government of Lisbon ordered the trade to be carried on again by the king's treasury, but two years later another experiment was made. This was to allow the captain of Mozambique a monopoly of the commerce in ivory, ambergris, and coir, and one-fiftieth of all the gold collected and to throw open the trade in gold and other articles to all Portuguese subjects. Customs duties at the rate of six per cent upon goods imported and of twenty per cent upon gold exported were to be paid. This plan was in operation only two years when it was abandoned, and the system of farming out the whole of the commerce of the country south of the Zambesi to the captain of Mozambique was again resorted to. In 1596 Nuno da Cunha was appointed to that office, when the viceroy entered into a .contract with him to pay forty thousand pardaos, or £9,600, a year for his monopoly, to which the king added that he must also pay customs duties on merchandise imported.

North of the Zambesi the inhabitants of Mozambique were allowed to trade, as the policy of the government was to encourage them, in order to strengthen the means of defence of the fort. The jurisdiction of the captain at the close of the sixteenth century extended to all the stations and trading places from the island of Inyaka to Cape Delgado.

CHAPTER XV. KNOWLEDGE DERIVED FROM SHIPWRECKS.