378 
AFRICA AND ITS EXPLORATION. 
variety to the races. With no knowledge of a Supreme 
Being, they had no religion, no thoughts of immortality. 
A volume might be written upon the fetichism of 
Tette alone, taking into account the various grades of the 
superstition common to the inhabitants, who are called 
Teteiros, and chiefly belong to the Maravi and Wan- 
hungwe. To heartless bewitchment by human beings 
are ascribed the adverse freaks of the weather, the 
failure of the crops, and other disasters. For every pre¬ 
meditated action there is a medicine. Not to speak of 
bodily sickness, there are medicines for success in hunt¬ 
ing, for fair weather, for rain, for peace, and for triumph 
in war. They dance, sing, feast, and beat their drums 
in w T ar, or peace, in grief or joy. The god they look up 
to is the king, or the master, who rules them by terror. 
When any one dies of disease the body is thrown into 
the river except in the immediate vicinity of the town. 
The bodies of those who have been killed by order of 
the chief are invariably given to the crocodile. 
Among most of the tribes in the vast valley a fandango 
follows in the wake of every fate, whether it be a birth, 
marriage, or death. Every birth has its omen : at every 
death a man is bewitched. The native’s measure of day 
is in the sun ; his months are in the moons ; and his 
years are in the chronologies of kings. 
The soldiers were blacks, armed with muskets and 
bayonets, and wearing clothes of cotton and shakoes. It 
is generally assumed that there were some Portuguese 
among them; but I saw only two sergeants and one 
officer. The military department is doubtless faulty, 
for it leaves the wdiite people in the town entirely at the 
mercy of the natives should a rising occur. Through¬ 
out the whole of the Portuguese territory of the Zam¬ 
besi—a territory, by the way, which has never been 
clearly defined — the rulers have little power in a 
military sense. Government is wholly a question of 
price and purchase, should they require to enforce their 
laws or to prosecute a campaign. 
From Zumbo down the Zambesi to the sea the Portu¬ 
guese Government has to rely entirely upon native 
