Chap. XXII. EETUEN TO THE ZAMBESI. 447 



All agricultural enterprise is virtually discouraged by the 

 Quilliuiane Government. A man must purchase a permit 

 from the Governor, when he wishes to visit his country farm ; 

 and this tax, in a country where labour is unpopular, causes 

 the farms to be almost entirely left in the hands of a head 

 slave, who makes returns to his master as interest or honesty 

 prompts him. A passport must also be bought whenever a 

 man wishes to go up the river to Mazaro, Senna, or Tette, or 

 even to reside for a month at Quillimane. With a soil 

 and a climate well suited for the growth of the cane, abun- 

 dance of slave labour, and water communication to any 

 market in the world, they have never made their own 

 sugar. All they use is imported from Bombay. " The 

 people of Quillimane have no enterprise," said a young- 

 European Portuguese, " they do nothing, and are always 

 wasting their time in suffering, or in recovering from fever." 



We entered the Zambesi about the end of November and 

 found it unusually low, so we did not get up to Shupanga 

 till the 19th of December. The friends of our Mazaro men, 

 who had now become good sailors and very attentive ser- 

 vants, turned out and gave them a hearty welcome back 

 from the perils of the sea : they had begun to fear that 

 they would never return. We hired them at a sixteen- 

 yard piece of cloth a month — about ten shillings' worth, the 

 Portuguese market-price of the cloth being then sevenpence 

 halfpenny a yard, — and paid them five pieces each, for four- 

 and-a-half months' work. A merchant at the same time paid 

 other Mazaro men three pieces for seven months, and they 

 were with him in the interior. If the merchants do not 

 prosper, it is not because labour is dear, but because it 

 is scarce, and because they are so eager on every occasion 

 to sell the workmen out of the country. Our men had 

 also received quantities of good clothes from the sailors 



