436 
TETTE AND ITS POPULATION. 
The river here spreads out to a width of three or four 
miles, with many islands, so that the navigation is difficult. 
Within a few miles of Tette are the ruins of stone houses, 
which were used by the Portuguese settlers, and destroyed 
by the hostile natives. 
Tette stands on a succession of low sandstone ridges, 
on the right bank of the Zambesi, which is here 900 yard# 
wide. Shallow ravines, running in the direction of the 
river, form the streets, the houses being built on the ridge# 
between. It is a Portuguese station, and has a fort and a 
church. The number of the white inhabitants is small, the 
military element preponderating, the soldiers being gen- 
erally convicts sent from Portugal. The moral condition 
of the population can be easily imagined, since both officers 
and soldiers seldom receive any pay from the home gov- 
ernment, and are forced to rely therefore upon themselves 
for support. The natives here ascribed the drought pre- 
vailing to the doctor’s rain-gauge he had set up in the 
garden. They are very superstitious. The earth, the air 
and the water are full of spirits to them. Being composed 
of mixtures of various native races, they have the super- 
stitions of them all. They worship the serpent. When a 
man has his hair cut, he burns it, or buries it secretly, lest 
it should fall into the hands of a witch, and be used as a 
charm to torment him. Though the mango grows here 
luxuriantly, and its fruit supplies them with food for some 
four months of the year, yet they will never plant a mango 
tree, from the superstition that he who does so will soon 
die. Even among the native Portuguese of Tette it i« 
believed that the man who plants coffee will never after- 
wards be happy ; yet they drink coffee. 
Here the winter begins in May, and the trees commence 
to shed their leaves, remaining bare until the rains come in 
November. Several species of trees seem to anticipate the 
coming of the rainy season, by a sort of instinct; and 
early as October, while the dry season is at its height, 
not even a drop of dew forms, they begin to vegetate buds- 
