headmen came on board and listened in quiet sadness to the story of poor
Sekwebu, who died at the Mauritius on his way to England. "Men die in
any country," they observed, and then told us that thirty of their own
number had died of smallpox, having been bewitched by the people of
Tette, who envied them because, during the first year, none of their
party had died. Six of their young men, becoming tired of cutting
firewood for a meagre pittance, proposed to go and dance for gain before
some of the neighbouring chiefs. "Don't go," said the others, "we don't
know the people of this country;" but the young men set out and visited
an independent half-caste chief, a few miles to the north, named Chisaka,
who some years ago burned all the Portuguese villas on the north bank of
the river; afterwards the young men went to Bonga, son of another half-
caste chief, who bade defiance to the Tette authorities, and had a
stockade at the confluence of the Zambesi and Luenya, a few miles below
that village. Asking the Makololo whence they came, Bonga rejoined, "Why
do you come from my enemy to me? You have brought witchcraft medicine to
kill me." In vain they protested that they did not belong to the
country; they were strangers, and had come from afar with an Englishman.
The superstitious savage put them all to death. "We do not grieve," said
their companions, "for the thirty victims of the smallpox, who were taken
away by Morimo (God); but our hearts are sore for the six youths who were
murdered by Bonga." Any hope of obtaining justice on the murderer was
out of the question. Bonga once caught a captain of the Portuguese army,
and forced him to perform the menial labour of pounding maize in a wooden
mortar. No punishment followed on this outrage. The Government of
Lisbon has since given Bonga the honorary title of Captain, by way of
coaxing him to own their authority; but he still holds his stockade.

Tette stands on a succession of low sandstone ridges on the right bank of
the Zambesi, which is here nearly a thousand yards wide (960 yards).