676 TETE PLUNDERED AND BUENED. 



submitted to the authorities for taxation. At present the whole 

 amount of gold obtained annually by the Portuguese is from 8 

 to 10 lbs. only. When the slave-trade began, it seemed to many 

 of the merchants a more speedy mode of becoming rich to sell off 

 the slaves than to pursue the slow mode of gold-washing and 

 agriculture, and they continued to export them until they had 

 neither hands to labor nor to fight for them. It was just the 

 story of the goose and the golden egg. The coffee and sugar 

 plantations and gold-washings were abandoned, because the labor 

 had been exported to the Brazils. Many of the Portuguese then 

 followed their slaves, and the government was obliged to pass a 

 law to prevent further emigration, which, had it gone on, would 

 have depopulated the Portuguese possessions altogether. A clev- 

 er man of Asiatic (Goa) and Portuguese extraction, called Ny- 

 aude, now built a stockade at the confluence of the Luenya and 

 Zambesi ; and when the commandant of Tete sent an officer with 

 his company to summon him to his presence, Nyaude asked per- 

 mission of the officer to dress himself, which being granted, he 

 went into an inner apartment, and the officer ordered his men to 

 pile their arms. A drum of war began to beat a note which is 

 well known to the inhabitants. Some of the soldiers took the 

 alarm on hearing this note, but the officer, disregarding their warn- 

 ing, was, with his whole party, in a few minutes disarmed and 

 bound hand and foot. The commandant of Tete then armed the 

 whole body of slaves and marched against the stockade of Nyaude, 

 but when they came near to it there was the Luenya still to cross. 

 As they did not effect this speedily, Nyaude dispatched a strong 

 party under his son Bonga across the river below the stockade, 

 and up the left bank of the Zambesi until they came near to Tete. 

 They then attacked Tete, which was wholly undefended save by 

 a few soldiers in the fort, plundered and burned the whole town 

 except the house of the commandant and a few others, with the 

 church and fort. The women and children fled into the church ; 

 and it is a remarkable fact that none of the natives of this region 

 will ever attack a church. Having rendered Tete a ruin, Bonga 

 carried off all the cattle and plunder to his father. News of this 

 having been brought to the army before the stockade, a sudden 

 panic dispersed the whole ; and as the fugitives took roundabout 

 ways in their flight, Katolosa, who had hitherto pretended to be 



