Page:A voyage to Abyssinia (Salt).djvu/39

 to see great waters, and boats like those on the Angola side, but that he believed that the conjecture of this being the eastern sea was totally unfounded. One of the governors of Sena, about seven years ago, undertook a journey inland, and advanced several hundred miles along the course of the great river Zambezi, but he had failed also in his endeavours to discover any connection with the western side. In this incursion he suffered great annoyance from the opposition of the natives. This gentleman is since dead, but the observations which he left are valuable, and in the hands of the Brazil government. The Governor farther observed, that the little advantage actually to be derived from such an undertaking rendered the attempt scarcely worth the risk, as the articles of commerce are too much alike on either coast to bear the expense of carriage. In a geographical point of view, it certainly might prove interesting, but at that time he was too much engaged to enter into any plans of the kind, on account of the great disorder in which he had found affairs on his arrival. After the death of his predecessor, the Government fell into the hands of the Council, consisting of three persons. They had quarrelled among themselves, and the consequence was, that great confusion had prevailed in every department, and general discontent had arisen among the inhabitants. Innocent men had been imprisoned with the guilty, and every thing regulated by caprice and injustice. One case he shewed me, where a murder had been clearly proved against a soldier, for which another poor fellow had been since, without cause, negligently confined for five months. While this conversation occurred, we were walking in the government garden, which seemed to have been as much neglected as the government itself, containing nothing but a few cabbages, lettuces and capsicums, growing wild under the shade of some mimosa, papaw and pomegranate trees.

On the same day we dined at the government-house, with a large party of the principal inhabitants belonging to the Settlement. The dinner was well served, with great profusion of meat, dressed partly after the Indian, and partly after the European fashion. The rice, which came from Sofala, was small, but remarkably fine, and