So

Ar length, after an absence of nearly seven years, Dr. Livingstone is not only alive, but has been personally communicated with. often has he been reported to be dead, that we almost feared it would in the end be like the cry of 'Wolf! wolf' in the fable. Where the traveller has been during this long period and what he has been doing, nobody can exactly say. But at all events we are told that in the interior of Africa, where it was imagined there was nothing but arid deserts, he has found a number of lakes, and such a superabundance of water that he was often prevented by it from travelling; that he has discovered the Sources of the Nile between eleven and twelve degrees of south latitude, within 1500 miles of the Cape of Good Hope; that four years and more ago he visited the court of a powerful monarch called the Cazembe, of whom little more than the name is known by most persons; that he has since then been staying in the country of Manyema, whose inhabitants have the unenviable reputation of being cannibals; that on his way back from that country, where it has not fallen to his lot to be eaten up, he has visited a mysterious 'underground village,' with excavations thirty miles in extent, which are ascribed to the hand of the Deity himself, and in which are 'writings' that may possibly rival the Egyptian hieroglyphics or the 'Hamah Stones,' of which facsimiles have just been published by Captain Burton and Mr. Tyrwhitt Drake in their interesting work Unexplored Syria; and that, lastly, on coming out from the exten

sive field of his labours, Dr. Livingstone has, as a final coup de maître, demolished the theory of many learned geographers, that the great Lake Tanganyika, discovered by Burton and Speke, is the head of the Nile, by going round that lake, and establishing the fact that this immense body of water, like Lake Chad and the Caspian Sea, is a still lake, having no communication with the Nile or any other large river!

With these geographical results of the great traveller's explorations, however important they may be, we do not care to burden ourselves, as we imagine they might not prove of much interest to the general reader. On the other hand, we believe that some account of the powerful African sovereign and his people, whose country Dr. Livingstone has visited, cannot fail to prove interesting to all. We wish it were in our power to insert in our pages something derived from the traveller himself; but as he has not yet furnished any information whatever respecting these strange people, we think we shall be gratifying, and at the same time instructing, our readers by laying before them some portion of what is known on the subject from the only other authentic source; namely, the narrative of a mission sent in the year 1831 from Tete, on the river Zambeze, by the Governor of the Portuguese colony on the east coast of Africa, to the Court of the Cazembe, under the command of Major Monteiro; which narrative, written by Major Gamitto, the second officer of the mission, was published at Lisbon in 1854 by the

Portuguese Government, under the title of O Muata Cazembe.

As a preliminary to the notes which we are about to make from that work, and with a view to the better understanding of the same, we must explain that in the centre of Southern Africa, between the Portuguese possessions on the east and west coast of that continent, there exists what appears to be the most powerful monarchy of that part of the world; namely, the kingdom of Molúva, under the rule of a sovereign known by the names or titles of Murópue and Matianvo or Muatiyanvo. The dominions of this potentate are deemed to extend from about the fifth to the thirteenth parallel of south latitude, and from the nineteenth to the thirty-second meridians of east longitude. The Portuguese of Angola and Benguela on the west coast have long had commercial dealings with this country; but owing to their well-known policy of keeping secret their relations with the natives of the interior, it is not possible to say what has been the extent of their dealings or of their knowledge of the country. All that we know for certain is that, in the year 1808, the Murópue or Matianvo sent an embassy to the Portuguese Governor of Angola; but with what result cannot be said.

More than forty years after this, that is to say in 1850 and 1851, and again in 1854, an intelligent and enterprising Hungarian, named Ladislaus Magyar, resident in Benguela, visited the country of the Murópue, he being the first European who ever set foot within the

writing some years ago to Dr. Petermann of Gotha, he described the government of the Murópue or Muatiyanvo as the most despotic, inhuman, and bloodthirsty that ever existed; the sovereign being the uncontrolled disposer of the lives and property of his miserable vassals. It is perfectly marvellous, he said, to witness the abject readiness and resignation with which they obey their inhuman tyrant's arbitrary commands, against which they have no right or even a thought of appeal. They submit to have their noses, ears, and other parts of their body cut off, often without any motive whatever beyond the will of the sovereign, and then to be beheaded or even flayed alive. This can only be accounted for by the fact that they regard their bloodthirsty ruler as a divine being, in whose presence they crawl on all fours, rubbing their breasts and arms with earth, and crying with a loud voice, 'Uverie! Vurie, Calombo! Vurie! Muatiyanvo, vurie !'—' All hail! Hail, O God! Hail! Muatiyanvo, hail!'

The territories or dependencies of this dreaded potentate were also skirted by our countryman, Dr. Livingstone, in his memorable journey across the continent in 1854 and 1855; but he passed so entirely along their extreme south-western limits, and his stay there was so brief, that he was not able to obtain any information of importance respecting the monarch and his court.

It is from the Portuguese colony on the east coast of Africa that fuller and more definite particulars have been obtained respecting this kingdom of Molúva, or at all events of the eastern portion of it; and the information so obtained serves to show that, in spite of the ferocity and inhumanity of their ruler, these people are far from being savages in the ordinary acceptation of the

term; and what is more remarkable

is, that it is owing to their own desire to form an alliance with the Portuguese, and mainly from their endeavour to carry that desire into effect, that such information respecting them as we possess has been obtained.

It was about the beginning of the last century, as far as we can calculate the date, that the then reigning Muatiyanvo, who was already in commercial relations with the Portuguese of the west coast, heard from them that there were other Mozúngos-wise men,' as all white men are called-of the same nation in regions lying far away to the east of his dominions; and in order to ascertain the truth of this report, and with a view to enter into commercial relations with these distant foreigners, he despatched an expedition under the command of one of his Quilólos or nobles, named Canyembo, a man of great talent and bravery, and endowed with many good qualities.

The expedition proceeded across the great river Lua-láo south-eastward, as far as the district in which Lunda, the capital of the Cazembe, now is, when its farther progress was arrested by the natives called Messíras, with whom a sanguinary war ensued, which ended in the defeat and subjugation of the Messíras, and the occupation of their country by the Campocólos, as the conquerors were called. Soon after, the victorious general Canyembo met his death in the river Lualáo, which serves as the boundary between what eventually became the dominions of the Cazembe and the original kingdom of the Murópue or Muatiyanvo, through the treachery of his sovereign's son, of whom he had been appointed guarIdian and who had accompanied him; but his own son, who bore the same name as himself, and who was known as Canyembo II., succeed

ed in establishing himself in the territories of the vanquished Messíras, where his descendants, although they do not appear to have declared themselves absolutely independent of the Muatiyanvo, have founded a separate kingdom, possessing a court, with all the state, dignities, and forms-and it may be added, with all the brutality and disregard for human life-of that of their suzerain.

This eastern kingdom is that of the Muata or Mambo Cazembethe latter name being apparently that of the country and people, whilst the signification of the two former terms is 'Lord,' and it is by these titles that he is usually addressed, though when his vassals wish to flatter him they give him the appellation of Muatiyanvo, which properly belongs to the Murópue alone. To Europeans he is best known as the Cazembe.

The successors of Canyembo I., mindful of the enterprise which led to their rise to power, have always sought to form an alliance with the Portuguese on the east coast. Native traders of each country appear to have visited the other; but the first person of European extraction who visited the Cazembe was a certain Manoel Caetano Pereira, an uneducated man, the son of a Portuguese colonist from Goa in India, who went thither in 1786, and brought back to Tete, the residence of the governor, an account of the country, which proved to be extremely erroneous and misleading.

Nineteen years later the reigning Mambo, Canyembo IV., better known by his proper name Lequéza, sent a mission to Tete, under the command of an intelligent chief named Catára, who arrived there at the moment when the Portuguese governor was organising a considerable expedition to the court of the Cazembe, at the head of which he had received orders from Lisbon to

place himself. This governor was Dr. Francisco José Maria de Lacerda e Almeida, an educated and accomplished Brazilian, who having received a scientific education in Portugal, was appointed astronomer-royal, and in 1780 went out to Brazil to lay down the boundaryline of that colony; after which he was appointed governor of the Rios de Sena, as the Portuguese possessions in Eastern Africa are called, his appointment to that post having been made principally with a view to this contemplated mission to the Cazembe.

The professed object of the mission was to contract a treaty of amity and commerce between the sovereigns of the two countries, and at the same time to endeavour to open an overland communication, through the territories of the Cazembe and the Murópue, with the Portuguese possessions on the west coast of Africa.

This expedition, which was on a very extensive scale, left Tete on July 3rd, 1798, under the most favourable auspices; but the serious illness of its accomplished leader, which terminated in his death on October 18th following, before he reached the court of the Cazembe, led to the disorganisation of the mission, so that it turned out a complete failure. From the scientific attainments of Dr. Lacerda much might have been anticipated from this expedition, had he lived: as it was, the only practical result was the astronomical determination by him of a few places in the interior of Africa; the farthest of them being Chama, the residence of the chief Mouro Achinto, in 10° 20′ 35′′ N. lat., and 30° 1′ 45′′ E. long., about 150 miles southeast of the Cazembe's capital, near which latter, in the valley of the river Chungu, he died and was Duried. Strangely enough, when, thirty-three years afterwards, the

mission under Major Monteiro arrived at this spot, they found a hut erected over the place where he was buried, and in charge of a Muine-mashámo, 'guardian of the sepulchre;' such was the respect in which he had continued to be held, and this although his grave was but an empty one. For when the mission left the country, some nine months after his death, the remains of their lamented chief were disinterred for the purpose of being conveyed to Tete; but shortly after crossing the river Chambeze, the party were attacked by the Muizas, and the whole took to flight, leaving behind them the coffin containing Dr. Lacerda's body, with most of the effects of the mission.

If the first Portuguese mission was a scientific one, the same cannot be said of the second; the two officers in charge of it being the only persons who could read and write; and with the exception of a magnetic compass, they took with them no instruments, not even a telescope. The writer of the narrative, Major Gamitto, appears, however, to have been an intelligent and observant, even though not a highly educated man, but perfectly veracious, so that what he says may be depended on.

This second mission left Tete on June 1st, 1831, and after a disastrous journey, during which they sustained many deaths, owing to sickness brought on by insufficient nourishment verging on starvation, they arrived in the vicinity of the Cazembe's residence on November 9th following, but had to wait nearly three weeks before they were admitted to an audience of the sovereign, Canyembo V., the son and successor of the Muata Lequéza, who was on the throne at the time of the former mission.

The reception they met with, and the treatment they received

during their stay in the country of the Cazembe, differed widely from that accorded to the first mission. Lequéza had striven to favour and please the foreigners, so as to induce them to revisit his country: his degenerate son seemed to do all in his power to disgust them, and prevent them from ever returning. If this was his object he perfectly succeeded; for it may be looked on as certain that the Portuguese will never deem it worth their while to revisit the country, unless they do so in sufficient force to bring the inhuman barbarian to reason. And yet our countryman, Dr. Livingstone, appears to have long sojourned in the country, he having been forty days at the court of the Cazembe, and having visited. it a second time on his way southward to Lake Bangweolo.

readily amenable to their incantations. The Cazembe deems himself immortal by virtue of the same enchantments; and when the death of his predecessors is adduced as proof to the contrary, he meets this by saying they died for want of taking proper care of such enchantments, but that he is not really mortal by nature. For the Pambi created the Mambo to rule over the people, and consequently he would never die, were it not for the enchantments of others. So convinced was Canyembo V. of this absurdity, that, although advanced in years, he would not nominate a Muana-buto, or successor to the throne, lest he should be exposed to his enchantments.

Possessing, as already stated, no information from Dr. Livingstone, we are thrown entirely upon Major Gamitto, and, according to his account, the people under the rule of the Cazembe are black in colour, but not at all of the common 'negro' type; for they have long woolly hair, which both sexes allow to grow a foot in length, and they have a conical head with a high forehead, eyes projecting and generally very animated, flat cheeks, a straight nose, and thin lips. They are of middle stature, rather stout, and hold themselves quite erect. They do not tattoo themselves nor make incisions on the face or any part of the body; neither do they pierce their ears or lips for the insertion of ornaments, but leave their persons altogether in their natural state.

Their religion is styled by Major Gamitto a gross superstition, though it does not appear to be much worse than that of many people much nearer home. They believe that the Pambi is a Being who created everything, and yet is

The burying places of the Muatas are held sacred. Nevertheless they do not worship the dead, but only pay to their muzimos, or spirits, the same respect they rendered to them when living. The Cazembe alone possesses some small wooden images, roughly imitating the human form, which are ornamented with horns, bones, and other remains of animals, and these are revered as mediums for good or for evil.

They believe that the deceased Muata - Cazembes communicate with the living ones, and that they are subject to the like passions and necessities, walk about at night, and are guilty of excesses. This superstition is said to have been introduced by the first Cazembe from Angola, which is the name given to the country of the Murópue or Muatiyanvo. As an example of this belief Major Gamitto relates how, shortly before the mission obtained permission to leave the country, which it had no little difficulty in doing, the Cazembe had a dream, in which the spirit of his deceased father, the Muata Lequéza, appeared to him and said, Severe punishment awaits thee on account of the little