the spot on which they are planted, and they prove one of
the civilizing influences.
Before leaving the most wonderful Falls in the world, one
may be excused for referring to the fact that, though they had
produced a decided impression on the native mind in the
interior, no intelligence of their existence ever reached the
Portuguese. About 1809 two black slavès, named Pedro-
Baptista and Andre José, were sent from Cassange, a village
three hundred miles from the West Coast, through the country
of Cazembe, to Tette, nearly an equal distance from the East
Coast- A lady now living at Tette, Donna Eugenia, remembers
distinctly these slaves—their woolly hair dressed
in the Londa fashion-—arriving and remaining at Tette, till,
letters came from the Governor-General of Mosambique,
which they successfully carried back to Cassange. On this
slender fibre hangs all the Portuguese pretension to having
possessed a road across Africa. Their maps show the
source of the Zambesi S.S.W. of Zumbo, about where the
Falls were found ; and on this very questionable authority
an untravelled English map-maker, with most amusing assurance,
asserts that the river above the Falls runs under
the Kalahari Desert and is lost.
Where one Englishman goes, others are sure to folbw. Mr.
Baldwin, a gentleman from Natal, succeeded in reaching the
Falls guided by his pocket-compass alone. On meeting
the second subject of Her Majesty, who had ever beheld the
greatest of African wonders, we found him a sort of prisoner
at large. He had called on Mashotlane to ferry him over to
the north side of the river, and, when nearly over, he took
a bath, by jumping in and swimming ashore. “ H, ” said
Mashotlane, “ he had been devoured by one of the crocodiles
which abound there, the English would have blamed us for
his death. He nearly inflicted a great injury upon us, therefore,
we said, he must pay a fine.” As Mr. Baldwin had
nothing with him wherewith to pay, they were taking care
of him till he should receive beads from his wagon two days
distant.
Mashotlane’s education had been received in the camp of
.Sebituane, where but little regard was paid to human life.
He was not yet in his prime, and his fine open countenance
presented to us no indication of the evil influences which
unhappily, from infancy, had been at work on his m in d .
The native eye was more penetrating than ours; for the
expression of our men was, “ He has drunk the blood of
men you may see it in his eyes,” He made no further
difficulty about Mr. Baldwin; but, the week after we left, he
inflicted a severe wound on the head of one of b is wives, with
his rhinoceros-horn club. She, being, of a good family, left
him, and we subsequently met her and another of his wives
proceeding up the country.
The ground is strewn with agates for a number of miles
above the Falls; but the fires, which burn off the grass yearly,
have injured most of those on the surface. Our men were
delighted to hear that they do as well as flints for muskets;
and this, with the new ideas of the value of gold (dalama) and
malachite, that they had acquired at Tette, made them conceive
that We were not altogether silly in picking up and
looking at stones.