108 START FROM TETTE. Chap. IV. 



Everything being ready on the 15th of May, we 

 started at 2 p.m. from the village where the Makololo had 

 dwelt. A number of the men did not leave with the good- 

 will which their talk for months before had led us to anti- 

 cipate ; but some proceeded upon being told that they 

 were not compelled to go unless they liked, though others 

 altogether declined moving. Many had taken up with 

 slave-women, whom they assisted in hoeing, and in con- 

 suming the produce of their gardens. Some fourteen 

 children had been born to them ; and in consequence of 

 now having no chief to order them, or to claim their 

 services, they thought that they were about as well off as 

 they had been in their own country. They knew and 

 regretted that they could call neither wives nor children 

 their own; the slave-owners claimed the whole; but 

 their natural affections had been so enchained, that they 

 clave to the domestic ties. By a law of Portugal the 

 baptized children of slave women are all free ; by the 

 custom of the Zambesi that law is void. When it is re- 

 ferred to, the officers laugh and say, " These Lisbon-born 

 laws are very stringent, but somehow, possibly from the 

 heat of the climate, here they lose all their force." Only 

 one woman joined our party — the wife of a Batoka man : 

 she had been given to him, in consideration of his skilful 

 dancing, by the chief, Chisaka. A merchant sent three of 

 his men along with us, with a present for Sekeletu, and 

 Major Sicard also lent us three more to assist us on our 

 return, and two Portuguese gentleman kindly gave us the 

 loan of a couple of donkeys. We slept four miles above 

 Tette, and hearing that the Banyai, who levy heavy fines 

 on the Portuguese traders, lived chiefly on the right bank, 

 we crossed over to the left, as we could not fully trust our 

 men. If the Banyai had come in a threatening manner, 

 our followers might, perhaps, from having homes behind 

 them, have even put down their bundles and run. Indeed, 



