The large spade shows a very brittle fracture.
The iron is too brittle for gun-work; it would be liable to break.
This iron, if REPEATEDLY heated and hammered, would become decarbonized,
and would then possess the qualities found in the spear-head,
which, after being curled up by being struck against a hard substance,
was restored, by hammering, to its original form without injury.
The piece of iron marked II is a piece of gun-iron of fibrous quality,
such as will bend without breaking.
The piece marked III is of crystalline quality; it has been submitted
to a process which has changed it to IIII; III and IIII are cut
from the same bar. The spade-iron has been submitted to the same process,
but no corresponding effect can be produced.
-
The iron ore exists in great abundance, but I did not find any limestone
in its immediate vicinity. So far as I could learn, there is neither
copper nor silver. Malachite is worked by the people of Cazembe,
but, as I did not see it, nor any other metal, I can say nothing about it.
A few precious stones are met with, and some parts are quite covered
with agates. The mineralogy of the district, however, has not been explored
by any one competent to the task.
When my friend the commandant was fairly recovered, and I myself
felt strong again, I prepared to descend the Zambesi. A number of my men
were out elephant-hunting, and others had established a brisk trade
in firewood, as their countrymen did at Loanda. I chose sixteen of those
who could manage canoes to convey me down the river. Many more
would have come, but we were informed that there had been
a failure of the crops at Kilimane from the rains not coming
at the proper time, and thousands had died of hunger.
I did not hear of a single effort having been made to relieve the famishing
by sending them food down the river. Those who perished were mostly slaves,
and others seemed to think that their masters ought to pay for their relief.
The sufferers were chiefly among those natives who inhabit the delta,
and who are subject to the Portuguese. They are in a state of slavery,
but are kept on farms and mildly treated. Many yield
a certain rental of grain only to their owners, and are otherwise free.
Eight thousand are said to have perished. Major Sicard lent me a boat
which had been built on the river, and sent also Lieutenant Miranda
to conduct me to the coast.
A Portuguese lady who had come with her brother from Lisbon,
having been suffering for some days from a severe attack of fever,
died about three o'clock in the morning of the 20th of April.
The heat of the body having continued unabated till six o'clock,
I was called in, and found her bosom quite as warm as I ever did
in a living case of fever.
