Chap. I. ATROCITIES OF MARIANO. 25 



kept a large number of men, well armed with muskets. It 

 is an entire mistake to suppose that the slave-trade is one of 

 buying and selling alone ; or that engagements can be made 

 with labourers in Africa as they are in India ; Mariano, like 

 other Portuguese, had no labour to spare. He had been in 

 the habit of sending out armed parties on slave hunting- 

 forays among the helpless tribes to the north-east, and 

 carrying down the kidnapped victims in chains to Quilli- 

 mane, where they were sold by his brother-in-law Cruz 

 Coimbra, and shipped as " Free emigrants " to the French 

 island of Bourbon. So long as his robberies and murders 

 were restricted to the natives at a distance, the authorities 

 did not interfere ; but his men, trained to deeds of violence 

 and bloodshed in their slave forays, naturally began to 

 practise on the people nearer at hand, though belonging 

 to the Portuguese, and even in the village of Senna, under 

 the guns of the fort. A gentleman of the highest standing 

 told us that, while at dinner with his family, it was no un- 

 common event for a slave to rush into the room pursued 

 by one of Mariano's men with spear in hand to murder him. 



The atrocities of this villain, aptly termed by the late 

 governor of Quillimane a " notorious robber and murderer," 

 became at length intolerable. All the Portuguese spoke of 

 him as a rare monster of inhumanity. It is unaccountable 

 why half-castes, such as he, are so much more cruel than 

 the Portuguese, but such is undoubtedly the case. 



It was asserted that one of his favourite modes of creating 

 an impression in the country, and making his name dreaded, 

 was to spear his captives with his own hands. On one 

 occasion he is reported to have thus killed forty poor 

 wretches placed in a row before him. We did not at first 

 credit these statements, and thought that they were merely 



