bra, and shipped as "Free emigrants" to
the French island of Bourbon. So long as his robberies and murders were
restricted to the natives at a distance, the authorities did not
interfere; but his men, trained to deeds of violence and bloodshed in
their slave forays, naturally began to practise on the people nearer at
hand, though belonging to the Portuguese, and even in the village of
Senna, under the guns of the fort. A gentleman of the highest standing
told us that, while at dinner with his family, it was no uncommon event
for a slave to rush into the room pursued by one of Mariano's men with
spear in hand to murder him.

The atrocities of this villain, aptly termed by the late governor of
Quillimane a "notorious robber and murderer," became at length
intolerable. All the Portuguese spoke of him as a rare monster of
inhumanity. It is unaccountable why half-castes, such as he, are so much
more cruel than the Portuguese, but such is undoubtedly the case.

It was asserted that one of his favourite modes of creating an impression
in the country, and making his name dreaded, was to spear his captives
with his own hands. On one occasion he is reported to have thus killed
forty poor wretches placed in a row before him. We did not at first
credit these statements, and thought that they were merely exaggerations
of the incensed Portuguese, who naturally enough were exasperated with
him for stopping their trade, and harbouring their runaway slaves; but we
learned afterwards from the natives, that the accounts given us by the
Portuguese had not exceeded the truth; and that Mariano was quite as
great a ruffian as they had described him. One expects slave-owners to
treat their human chattels as well as men do other animals of value, but
the slave-trade seems always to engender an unreasoning ferocity, if not
blood-thirstiness.

War was declared against Mariano, and a force sent to take him; he
resisted for a time; but seeing that he was likely to get the worst of
it, and knowing that the Portuguese governors have small salaries, and
are therefore "disposed to be reasonable," he went down to Quillimane to
"arrange" with the Governor, as it is termed here; but Colonel da Silva
put him in prison, and then sent him for trial to Mozambique. When we
came into the country, his people were fighting under his brother Bonga.
The war had lasted six months and stopped all trade on the river during
that period. On the 15th June we f