44 PORTUGUESE DUPLICITY. Chap. II. 



they wished they had been oxen, but they were only pigs." 

 " Would the Doctor eat pig ? " " Why do you ask ? " rejoined 

 another ; "• if he won't, his people will." When parting 

 they remarked, "We shall sleep to-night." The use of 

 the Residencia or Government-house was kindly given us 

 by Major Tito A. d'A. Sicard ; it is a stone house of one 

 story, thatched with grass, its windows of cloth, and the floors 

 of clay. The Makololo carried up our goods, the minstrel 

 of the party, called Singeleka, followed jingling his native 

 bells, and chanting an energetic song extemporised for the 

 occasion. Some readers may remember that when Dr. Living- 

 stone was in England, it was commonly reported that the Portu- 

 guese Government had sent out orders to have the Makololo 

 supported at the public expense until he returned to take them 

 back to their own country. This generous sympathy on the 

 part of the Ministers in Lisbon gratified many English philan- 

 thropists, and, relieving the Doctor's mind from anxiety, gave 

 him time to prepare his journal for the press before setting out 

 again to his work. When our own Government promises to 

 perform any thing, no one in his senses ever doubts their word 

 of honour ; and for this reason the English people and the 

 English Government naturally err by giving too ready credit 

 to the assurances of Governments, whose moral tone is pitched 

 much lower than their own. The Makololo never heard of the 

 order from Portugal, and the Portuguese authorities at Tette 

 were in profound ignorance of its existence. The pay of the 

 officials, in fact, was several years in arrear, and for His Most 

 Faithful Majesty's Government to pretend to order them to 

 feed a hundred men out of their own private means looked a 

 little like the not unusual kind of benevolence of being generous 

 with other people's property. The poor fellows had to go 

 far to cut wood, and then hawk it round the village to buy a 



