against the enemy in front, while a few were coolly shooting at their own
slaves for fleeing into the river behind. The rebels soon retired, and
the Portuguese escaped to a sandbank in the Zambesi, and thence to an
island opposite Shupanga, where they lay for some weeks, looking at the
rebels on the mainland opposite. This state of inactivity on the part of
the Portuguese could not well be helped, as they had expended all their
ammunition and were waiting anxiously for supplies; hoping, no doubt
sincerely, that the enemy might not hear that their powder had failed.
Luckily their hopes were not disappointed; the rebels waited until a
supply came, and were then repulsed after three-and-a-half hours' hard
fighting. Two months afterwards Mariano's stockade was burned, the
garrison having fled in a panic; and as Bonga declared that he did not
wish to fight with this Governor, with whom he had no quarrel, the war
soon came to an end. His Excellency meanwhile, being a disciple of
Raspail, had taken nothing for the fever but a little camphor, and after
he was taken to Shupanga became comatose. More potent remedies were
administered to him, to his intense disgust, and he soon recovered. The
Colonel in attendance, whom he never afterwards forgave, encouraged the
treatment. "Give what is right; never mind him; he is very (_muito_)
impertinent:" and all night long, with every draught of water the Colonel
gave a quantity of quinine: the consequence was, next morning the patient
was cinchonized and better.

For sixty or seventy miles before reaching Mazaro, the scenery is tame
and uninteresting. On either hand is a dreary uninhabited expanse, of
the same level grassy plains, with merely a few trees to relieve the
painful monotony. The round green top of the stately palm-tree looks at
a distance, when its grey trunk cannot be seen, as though hung in mid-
air. Many flocks of busy sand-martins, which here, and as far south as
the Orange River, do not migrate, have perforated the banks two or three