404 CAPTAIN ALVEZ. Chap. XX. 



incredible, but it is mentioned, to show the way that these 

 men, who have been convicts, speak of each other. 



Captain Alvez was suffering from fever, and had been, ever 

 since he came to this low marshy place. The island would be 

 under water, he said, if the river rose two feet higher, which 

 it was extremely likely to do. The lonely life of a solitary 

 officer, living with a number of debased black soldiers, on such 

 a spot as this, is something frightful to think of. It is next 

 door to imprisonment, if not to solitary confinement ; and this 

 was the lot of a brave artillery officer, who was sent here for 

 some political offence, and who had done all the hard fight- 

 ing with the rebels for a number of years back. While he, 

 who crushed out the rebellion, was living thus, Mariano, the 

 rebel, was reported for the last three years, to have been 

 living sumptuously in the capital of the province ; and even 

 dining at the tables of the highest in the land. Seeing that 

 this sentence of imprisonment at Mosambique was carried out 

 so mildly as not to amount to confinement at all, it is not to 

 be wondered at that men's tongues should speak hard things 

 against the Governor-General, and that, though, of course, it 

 cannot be actually known, bribery should be openly declared 

 to have taken place. We know nothing more than the pro- 

 bability and general report, which may be false. We never 

 met Mozinga again ; he succumbed in a few months to 

 fever. 



After paying our Senna men, as they wished to go home, we 

 landed them here. All were keen traders, and had invested 

 largely in native iron-hoes, axes, and ornaments. Many of 

 the hoes and spears had been taken from the slaving parties 

 whose captives we liberated ; for on these occasions our Senna 

 friends were always uncommonly zealous and active. The 

 remainder had been purchased with the old clothes we had 

 given them, and their store of hippopotamus meat : they 



