Discovery in the African Continent. 229 



nations, who frequently bring into the hostile field armies of 

 eighteen thousand men." 



" The Commercial Establishments, called Fairs or Feiras, 

 two of which are 700 miles within land, are under the super- 

 intendence of the Portugueze Resident, who is stationed there 

 for the purpose of keeping up a continual correspondence with 

 the Governor General, and to prevent his countrymen, who 

 frequent these markets ])eriodically, from abusing the confidence 

 of the Natives, or offending them by any other injury." 



The first attempt to open a direct communication with Mo- 

 zambique " was made during the Government of Count Sal- 

 danah. M. da Costa, a respectable Portugueze merchant, who 

 formerly commanded the militia in the interior, having retired 

 from some disgust, went and established himself as a trader in 

 Cassange, where he lived many years in perfect harmony with 

 the natives. To this gentleman, Count Saldanha, soon after 

 his arrival at the seat of government in 1807, applied for in- 

 formation respecting the practicability of employing an expe- 

 dition on a route of discovery. 



" After receiving several communications, favourable to the 

 object he had in view, the Count authorised M. da Costa to 

 send a Portugueze mulatto, stationed at one of the fairs in 

 Cassange, accompanied by native guides and interpreters, to 

 penetrate, if possible to Mooloaa, a country hitherto unknown 

 to Europeans, except by the report of its populousness and 

 power. The mulatto, after a journey of two months, from the 

 southernmost fair in Cassange, reached the capital of Mooloaa,* 

 where he met with a liberal reception from the monarch, Muata 

 Janvo. This Mutua, for that it seems is the titular name, lives 

 at a considerable distance from his -wife, who governs another 

 state, perfectly independent of her husband, with whom she 

 only resides on particular days of the year. The town of the 

 Mooloaas is laid out in streets, which are watered daily, and 

 there are held in it regular markets. A horrid practice, of 

 sacrificing from fifteen to twenty negroes every day, prevails 

 both at the court of the Muata and that of his wife. Their 

 neighbours, on the south-east, pay them tribute in marine salt ; 

 and they described another country as dependent on them, to 

 which a Portugeuze officer had recently penetrated from the 

 eastern coast, and died there. This person was M. Lacerda, 

 colonel of Engineers. 



" The king of the Moolooas would not suffer the Portugueze 

 envoy to pass through his territories, for the eastern coast, until 

 an understanding had been settled between himself and the 

 governor-general Count Saldanha, to whom accordingly two 



* Situated about lat, 11" 30', long. 32« M'. 



