On Reaching Mazaro, The Mouth Of A Narrow Creek Which In Floods
Communicates With The Quillimane River, We Found That
The Portuguese
were at war with a half-caste named Mariano alias Matakenya, from
whom they had generally fled, and
Who, having built a stockade near
the mouth of the Shire, owned all the country between that river and
Mazaro. Mariano was best known by his native name Matakenya, which
in their tongue means "trembling," or quivering as trees do in a
storm. He was a keen slave-hunter, and kept a large number of men,
well armed with muskets. It is an entire mistake to suppose that the
slave trade is one of buying and selling alone; or that engagements
can be made with labourers in Africa as they are in India; Mariano,
like other Portuguese, had no labour to spare. He had been in the
habit of sending out armed parties on slave-hunting forays among the
helpless tribes to the north-east, and carrying down the kidnapped
victims in chains to Quillimane, where they were sold by his brother-
in-law Cruz Coimbra, and shipped as "Free emigrants" to the French
island of Bourbon. So long as his robberies and murders were
restricted to the natives at a distance, the authorities did not
interfere; but his men, trained to deeds of violence and bloodshed in
their slave forays, naturally began to practise on the people nearer
at hand, though belonging to the Portuguese, and even in the village
of Senna, under the guns of the fort.
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