We believe that we are uttering the sentiments of many devout members of different sections of Christians, when we say, it was a pity that the Mission of the Universities was abandoned.The ground had been consecrated in the truest sense by the lives of those brave men who first occupied it.In bare justice to Bishop Mackenzie, who was the first to fall, it must be said, that the repudiation of all he had done, and the sudden abandonment of all that had cost so much life and money to secure, was a serious line of conduct for one so unversed in Missionary operations as his successor, to inaugurate.
It would have been no more than fair that Bishop Tozer, before winding up the affairs of the Mission, should actually have examined the highlands of the Upper Shire; he would thus have gratified the associates of his predecessor, who believed that the highlands had never had a fair trial, and he would have gained from personal observation a more accurate knowledge of the country and the people than he could possibly have become possessed of by information gathered chiefly on the coast.With this examination, rather than with a stay of a few months on the humid, dripping top of misty Morambala, we should have felt much more satisfied.
In January, 1864, the natives all confidently asserted that at next full moon the river would have its great and permanent flood.It had several times risen as much as a foot, but fell again as suddenly.
It was curious that their observation coincided exactly with ours, that the flood of inundation happens when the sun comes overhead on his way back to the Equator.We mention this more minutely because, from the observation of several years, we believe that in this way the inundation of the Nile is to be explained.On the 19th the Shire suddenly rose several feet, and we started at once; and stopping only for a short time at Chibisa's to bid adieu to the Ajawa and Makololo, who had been extremely useful to us of late in supplying maize and fresh provisions, we hastened on our way to the ocean.In order to keep a steerage way on the "Pioneer," we had to go quicker than the stream, and unfortunately carried away her rudder in passing suddenly round a bank.The delay required for the repairs prevented our reaching Morambala till the 2nd of February.
The flood-water ran into a marsh some miles above the mountain, and became as black as ink; and when it returned again to the river emitted so strong an effluvium of sulphuretted hydrogen, that one could not forget for an instant that the air was most offensive.The natives said this stench did not produce disease.We spent one night in it, and suffered no ill effects, though we fully expected an attack of fever.Next morning every particle of white paint on both ships was so deeply blackened, that it could not be cleaned by scrubbing with soap and water.The brass was all turned to a bronze colour, and even the iron and ropes had taken a new tint.This is an additional proof that malaria and offensive effluvia are not always companions.We did not suffer more from fever in the mangrove swamps, where we inhaled so much of the heavy mousey smell that it was distinguishable in the odour of our shirts and flannels, than we did elsewhere.
We tarried in the foul and blackening emanations from the marsh because we had agreed to receive on board about thirty poor orphan boys and girls, and a few helpless widows whom Bishop Mackenzie had attached to his Mission.All who were able to support themselves had been encouraged by the Missionaries to do so by cultivating the ground, and they now formed a little free community.But the boys and girls who were only from seven to twelve years of age, and orphans without any one to help them, could not be abandoned without bringing odium on the English name.The effect of an outcry by some persons in England, who knew nothing of the circumstances in which Bishop Mackenzie was placed, and who certainly had not given up their own right of appeal to the sword of the magistrate, was, that the new head of the Mission had gone to extremes in the opposite direction from his predecessor; not even protesting against the one monstrous evil of the country, the slave-trade.We believed that we ought to leave the English name in the same good repute among the natives that we had found it; and in removing the poor creatures, who had lived with Mackenzie as children with a father, to a land where the education he began would be completed, we had the aid and sympathy of the best of the Portuguese, and of the whole population.The difference between shipping slaves and receiving these free orphans struck us as they came on board.As soon as permission to embark was given, the rush into the boat nearly swamped her--their eagerness to be safe on the "Pioneer's" deck had to be repressed.
Bishop Tozer had already left for Quillimane when we took these people and the last of the Universities' Missionaries on board and proceeded to the Zambesi.It was in high flood.We have always spoken of this river as if at its lowest, for fear lest we should convey an exaggerated impression of its capabilities for navigation.
Instead of from five to fifteen feet, it was now from fifteen to thirty feet, or more, deep.All the sandbanks and many of the islands had disappeared, and before us rolled a river capable, as one of our naval friends thought, of carrying a gunboat.Some of the sandy islands are annually swept away, and the quantities of sand carried down are prodigious.
