352 SCENES IN TETE. 



The impressions which Dr. Livingstone had received during 

 his former expedition, as to the policy of the Portuguese and 

 their general influence on the natives, were nof materially- 

 altered. The religious ideas of these nominal representatives of 

 a Christian civilization were unquestionably anything but help- 

 ful to a peop^ already sadly given to superstition. Neither 

 Dr. Livingstone nor any of his associates were inclined to regard 

 with disrespect the rites or ceremonies of any creed, but they 

 were constrained to condemn most unqualifiedly the encourage- 

 ment of native ignorance and superstition, which they could not 

 help observing in even the worship of those who ought to have 

 felt their responsibility in some degree for the intellectual and 

 moral condition of the degraded creatures among whom they 

 were the recognized representatives of civilization. As an illus- 

 tration of the order of things which prevailed, it is mentioned, 

 that, during the prevalence of a "drought, in 1858, a neighbor- 

 ing chief got up a performance, with divers ceremonies and 

 incantations, to bring rain, but it would not come. The 

 Goanese padre of Tete, to satisfy his compatriots, appointed a 

 procession and prayers in honor of Saint Antonio for the same 

 purpose. The first attempt did not answer, but on the second 

 occasion, arranged to come off after the new moon appeared, a 

 grand procession in the saint's honor ended in so much rain 

 that the roof of the Residencia gave way ; Saint Antonio's 

 image was decorated the following week with a golden coronal 

 worth £22, for sending the long-delayed and much-needed rain. 

 So great was the irreverence manifested on this occasion — the 

 kneeling worshippers laughing and joking between the responses, 

 not even ceasing their grins when uttering, ' Ora pro nobis ' — 

 that they could not help believing that if, like the natives, they 

 had faith in rain making, they had faith in nothing else." In- 

 deed, they were convinced that, instead of scattering the dark- 

 ness which they found hovering over the mind of the African, 

 the native Portuguese had themselves become the victims of 

 that darkness, and were hardly less the slaves of idle fancies 

 than their sable subjects. Even in the most matter-of-fact 

 affairs of life they were dragging the degrading chains of super- 

 stition. They would not plant coffee because they believed 

 that he who did so would never be happy afterward. And Dr. 



