Chap. VI. COAL AT TETTE. 145
about to be married to a young lady of no less illustrious
a name than Yictoria Alexandrina, the daughter of one of the
richest merchants of Tette. But her mother had been living
only in a state of concubinage ; and, to legitimatize the children,
the marriage of the parents was first celebrated, and then
Terrazao received his bride, and another gentleman her sister
on the same day. With our laws it seems to be a pity that
those who have the misfortune to be bom out of wedlock
should be condemned, for no sin of their own, to bear the
stain through life.
In the wedding processions, the brides and bridegrooms are
carried in hammocks slung to poles, called machillas. The
female slaves, dressed in all their finery, rejoice in the happiness
of their masters and mistresses. The males carry the
machillas, or show their gladness by discharging their
muskets. The friends of .the young couple form part of the
procession behind the machillas, dressed usually in black
dress-coats and tall chimney-pot hats, which to us outlandish
spectators look more hideous now than they ever did at
home. The women, as seen in the woodcut, stand admiring
their neighbour’s finery, balancing their water-pots gracefully
on their heads; while all the invited guests proceed
to wash down the dust, raised by the crowd, in copious
potations, followed by feasting, dancing, and joyous merrymaking.
About the only interesting object in the vicinity of Tette is
the coal a few miles to the north. There, in the feeders of
the stream Revubue, it crops out in cliff sections. The seams
are from four to seven feet in thickness; one measured was
found to be twenty-five feet thick. That on the surface
contains much shale, but, a shaft having been ran in horizontally
for some twenty-five or thirty feet, the quality improved,