only one regular meal a day—just before sunset. A
man’s ration is two handfuls of flour. The men eat
first and then the women. The cooking _ is generally
done by the men. They also work in iron with great
skill, as may be seen by the shape of their axes shown
on page 237.
The new Governor arrived at Tete on New Year’s Day,
with two gunboats. He was a naval officer, and a most
distinguished looking man. He told me he would place a
gunboat at my disposal to take me as far as the Anglo-
Portuguese frontier at Chiromo, at the' junction of the
Ruo and the Shiré rivers, whither he was himself going.
After a few days’ longer stay in Tete I finally left on
board the gunboat Cuama on the 3°th of January, 1893-
CHAPTER XI.
T H E P O R T U G U E S E ON T H E Z A M B E Z I
''" p H E earliest pioneers of the Portuguese Empire
1 appeared in the neighbourhood of the Zambezi
about the middle of the sixteenth century. One of the
first was a priest, Joncalo da Silveira, who in 1560 penetrated
into the middle of the kingdom of Monomapata,
and was there put to death.
About the same time one
Francisco Baretto ascended the
Zambezi as far as Senna, where
he established himself. Thence
he continued to press up the
river, and came into contact
with the tribes adjacent to the
Gorge of Lupata. He established
a fort at Tete. He died
at Senna while returning from
a journey to Mozambique. His
aide-de-camp, Vasco Fernandez
Homena, succeeded him. He
visited the gold mines of Man-
ica, and returning to Tete, travelled to the silver mines
of Chikoa, where he left his second in command. This
officer, with 200 men, was cut to pieces by the natives
about 1572. All these officers were under the command
of the Viceroy of Portuguese India. In 1608 another
Portuguese officer again visited the silver mines of Chikoa,
and left in the interior one Diego Madeira, who
239