FIERCE NATIVE REPRISALS 37 



chiefs courtyard had been paved with the skulls 

 of the victims he and his people had devoured. 

 These Mazimba hordes, finding the Portuguese 

 firearms too deadly to face, thence turned north- 

 ward, and, it is said, sweeping across what are 

 now the Shir^ Highlands, harried the country as 

 far as the Rovuma to the north of Mozambique. 

 About the same time another Zimba division 

 destroyed every available fighting man in Tete, by 

 a ruse to which for cunning and ferocity it would 

 be hard to find a parallel. It had been attacked 

 by the Portuguese commandant from Sena, who, 

 however, finding he had undertaken a hopeless 

 task and being unable to retreat, sent messengers 

 to Tete for assistance. The captain, Pedro Fer- 

 nandes de Chaves, responded by collecting all his 

 countrymen and a large number of natives, and 

 proceeded at once to his colleague's succour. In- 

 formation of their approach was conveyed to the 

 Mazimba, however, who despatched a strong party 

 to ambush them in a thick jungle. The unsus- 

 pecting Portuguese were far ahead of their native 

 troops, travelling in palanquins and wholly unarmed, 

 when without warning they were suddenly fallen 

 upon by the Mazimba and killed to the last man, 

 the only one reserved being a monk, a contemporary 

 of the friar Joao dos Santos, who tells us what 

 took place. This luckless cleric was taken to the 

 Mazimba camp, tied to a tree, and gradually killed 

 by being shot with arrows. The returning Mazimba 

 detachment then appeared before the camp of the 

 beleaguered Portuguese, their chief arrayed in the 

 plundered vestments of the murdered priest, whose 



