450 MARIANO'S ATROCITIES. Chap. XXII. 



be cleared of corpses, canglit by the floats during the night. 

 For scores of miles the entire population of the valley was 

 swept away by this scourge Mariano, who is again, as he was 

 before, the great Portuguese slave-agent. It made the heart 

 ache to see the wide-spread desolation ; the river-banks, 

 once so populous, all silent ; the villages burned down, and 

 an oppressive stillness reigning where formerly crowds of 

 eager sellers appeared with the various products of their 

 industry. Here and there might be seen on the bank a small 

 dreary deserted shed, where had sat, day after day, a starving 

 fisherman, until the rising waters drove the fish from their 

 wonted haunts, and left him to die. Tingane had been 

 defeated ; his people had been killed, kidnapped, and forced 

 to flee from their villages. There were a few wretched sur- 

 vivors in a village above the Ruo ; but the majority of the 

 population was dead. The sight and smell of dead bodies 

 was everywhere. Many skeletons lay beside the path, where 

 in their weakness they had fallen and expired. Ghastly 

 living forms of boys and girls, with dull dead eyes, were 

 crouching beside some of the huts. A few more miserable 

 days of their terrible hunger, and they would be with the 

 dead. 



Oppressed with the shocking scenes around, we visited the 

 Bishop's grave ; and though it matters little where a good 

 Christian's ashes rest, yet it was with sadness that we thought 

 over the hopes which had clustered around him, as he left the 

 classic grounds of Cambridge, all now buried in this wild place. 

 How it would have torn his kindly heart to witness the sights 

 we now were forced to see ! 



In giving vent to the natural feelings of regret, that a 

 man so eminently endowed and learned, as was Bishop Mac- 

 kenzie, should have been so soon cut off, some have ex- 

 pressed an opinion that it was wrong to use an instrument so 



