e of our friend the Padre. It
being the marriage of his goddaughter, he kindly invited us to be
partakers in his joy; and we there became acquainted with old Donna
Engenia, who was a married wife and had children, when the slaves came
from Cassange, before any of us were born. The whole merry-making was
marked by good taste amid propriety.

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.

Learning that it would be difficult for our party to obtain food beyond
Kebrabasa before the new crop came in and knowing the difficulty of
hunting for so many men in the wet season, we decided on deferring our
departure for the interior until May, and in the mean time to run down
once more to the Kongone, in the hopes of receiving letters and
despatches from the man-of-war that was to call in March. We left Tette
on the 10th, and at Senna heard that our lost mail had been picked up on
the beach by natives, west of the Milambe; carried to Quillimane, sent
thence to Senna, and, passing us somewhere on the river, on to Tette. At
Shupanga the governor informed us that it was a very large mail; no great
comfort, seeing it was away up the river.

Mosquitoes were excessively troublesome at the harbour, and especially
when a light breeze blew from the north over the mangroves. We lived for
several weeks in small huts, built by our men. Those who did the hunting
for the party always got wet, and were attacked by fever, but generally
recovered in time to be out again before the meat was all consumed. No
ship appearing, we started off on the 15th of March, and stopped to wood
on the Luabo, near an encampment of hippopotamus hunters; our men heard
again, through them, of the canoe path from this place to Quillimane, but
they declined to point it out.

We found our friend Major Sicard at Mazaro with picks, shovels, hurdles,
and slaves, having come to build a fort and custom-house at the Kongone.
As we had no good reason to hide the harbour, but many for its being made
known, we supplied him with a chart of the tortuous branches, which,
running among the mangroves, perplex the search; and with such directions
as would enable him to find his way down to the river. He had brought
the relics of our fugitive mail