6 “ TURTLE-TURNING.”
son with his master; but though he was considerably
blacker than the natives there, and very probably came
originally from the same stock, he told me that he did
not understand a word of their language—a curious
instance of negro affectation. These Delagoa men were
the first genuine Africans I had made acquaintance
with—bright-witted apparently, slim, and very ugly,
with a wild avaricious look, eating and drinking anything
you chose to offer them, and scrambling for the
fag-ends of your cigars—all in strong contrast to the
gentle Hindoo. What surprised me was, that near
their conical grass huts they kept pigs, which are rarely
seen near an Indian village. The breed was a very
•good short-nosed black kind. Two vessels in the harbour,
manned by East Indians, were pronounced by
the “ Prince of Wales,” and others who boarded them,
to be fitted up for slaves; but the Portuguese governor
assured us that no slaver had visited Delagoa since the
last English man-of-war was there a year ago. This
did not remove our suspicions, for the flat-roofed houses
in the bazaar had every appearance of being receptacles
for slaves.
On the night of the 1st August the Admiral indulged
us all by lauding on the uninhabited coral island of
Europa. He was the first to “ turn a turtle, and in
low water capsized and sat upon the animal all alone,
while a jolly middie, named O’Eouke, ran for help.
The beast was so strong that he was carrying the
“ light weight” out to sea by the use of his flappers,
which acted to some purpose on the making tide, and
on the Admiral's legs in particular. The doubtful
struggle lasted an hour and a half, when some sailors
came up and towed the vanquished turtle ashore—
SEWING-SCHOOL AT MOZAMBIQUE. 7
weight, 360 lb. The birds here were so tame and insensible
to danger that the men were able to knock
them over when on the ground with sticks and stones.
Four living turtle were brought on board and placed
on their backs, with a swab each as pillow. When
the ship was at anchor they were lowered with a
rope attached to them, and swam about playfully
below the stem of the vessel, coming to the surface
for air every thirty seconds. The butcher, while killing
one by cutting its throat all round and opening
holes in its groins, remarked that its thick blood felt
“ cooler than a sheep's,” and I observed it to be two
degrees less than the atmosphere (78°). He also entertained
the common belief that turtle will only die
at sunset.
On the 7th of August we lay off the wooden pier of
the island of Mozambique, an extinct coral formation.
Here Speke and I were able to converse, in their native
tongue, with Indian traders living away from their
wives and families, whom they had left behind in India.
We saw an interesting sight at a ship-provisioner’s :
in his back premises we found a sewing-school of negro
boys and girls, presided over by a black sempstress;
the boys were on one side and the girls on the other,
Quaker fashion, all very neat and orderly, and engaged
in making shirts. Farther on, in a dirtier quarter,
women stood at a millstone grinding wheat, while
others were alongside sifting it. One, a handsome
gypsy-looking girl, had through her upper lip a large
button of wood, which she sucked into her mouth most
adeptly, in order to create a laugh and coquet for
money. The cooks and henmen were of a lower grade;
and two lads, who also begged hard, were in chains,