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MOSAMBIQUE.
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From Lupata the Portuguese advanced eastward, in hopes of reaching the silver mines of Chicova, and, as they confined themselves during this march to the line of the river Zambezi, they met with little opposition, the natives having, as before, retired to the woods. Still all their search after the valuable commodity they looked for proved fruitless, and their leader was at last, as it is said, ingeniously outwitted by one of the natives, who hid some silver in the ground, and persuaded the Portuguese it was a mine. Soon afterwards, being unable to maintain a large force in the country, they retired to Senà, leaving two hundred men in a new fort constructed at Tête, with positive orders not to give up the enterprise until the party had discovered the object of their reaearch. All trouble, however, on this head was unavailing; for the whole detachment, together with its unfortunate leader Antony Cardosa d'Almeyda, was drawn into an ambuscade by the natives, and cut off to a man.

Since this period the Portuguese have been compelled to act chiefly on the defensive, and to content themselves, like their predecessors the Arabs, with carrying on the trade in a more quiet way, keeping up their influence in the country by setting the native powers in opposition to each other, and confining themselves solely to the coast, and the line of the river Zambezi.

To maintain even these they have had several severe struggles, particularly in the years 1589 and 1592 (Purchas, Part II. p. 1554, and Hist. de l'Ethiopie, p. 141,) when they were attacked on the northern bank of the Zambezi by an inroad of a wandering and ferocious tribe of Muzimbas,[1] who appear at this time to have been passing by on their progress from the south-west. The

  1. They are elsewhere called Mauruca, and their king "Gallo," (Vide Purchas, Part II. Book ix. p. 1552) and these may be recognized in the Maracata, a tribe of Galla in the neighbourhood of Mugdasho. The Muzimbas are accused by some of the Portuguese writers as being cannibals. That raw flesh is the common food of these Galla is certain, from various instances that have been witnessed at Bombay among the slaves taken in French vessels; but of their being cannibals there remains no satisfactory proof, no more than of their idolatry and witchcraft, with which they have been equally charged by the same writers.