The Portuguese wished to degrade us in the eyes of the negroes; to show them what an inferior race the English were; that they could not keep one slave, whilst the Portuguese had hundreds.
After the severe toil of the day, we were all glad when night came, and thankful that health and strength were granted to us.
Such was the state of affairs in my house, when my German friend offered me a passage in one of the vessels belonging to his firm, which was then in port, and proceeding to Zanzibar.
Although resolved to remain at Mozambique, and maintain my post, despite all persecution, I reasoned with myself on the sinfulness of sacrificing the lives of two other persons, and, therefore, determined to avail myself of this opportunity of sending my wife and her maid to Zanzibar, to await my arrival there; as, in that case, I would have been able to find accommodation for myself on board some vessel or dhow in the harbour, until such time as the hour of deliverance arrived, by the presence of one of Her Majesty’s ships.
On proposing to my wife a visit to Zanzibar, her countenance revealed with what joy she hailed any change from that continued toil under which herself and her maid were rapidly failing. But, instantly divining that it was my intention to remain at Mozambique, and maintain my post, while she and her maid were expected to proceed to Zanzibar, with her eyes suffused with tears, she claimed, and successfully pleaded, her wife’s privilege to share her husband’s trials.
Soon afterwards my wife sent for her maid, and told her that there was a passage provided for her to Zanzibar, where arrangements would be made for her conveyance to the Cape of Good Hope, where her mother lived. But that noble girl, Rosa Smith, refused to desert her mistress; and, when this offer was again made to her, after the desertion of H.M. frigate “Castor,” she adhered to the same resolution.
From that evening, during our stay at Mozambique, in all our sufferings and privations, with sickness, hunger, and even death in my house, I never heard a murmur. Both these Englishwomen felt that they were called upon to perform a sacred duty. They suffered in a holy cause—that of the slave—and HE who “tempereth the wind to the shorn lamb” gave them strength to endure.
The following is an account of an act of brutality towards a domestic slave which came under my own eye, and the particulars of which I extract from my journal at Mozambique:—
“On Monday, the 15th of March, 1858, at 8.30 A.M., we were greatly distressed by screams, which proceeded from some fellow-being in the compound of the next house, the wall of which was about thirty yards distant from our own. Mrs. M’Leod was at the time slowly recovering from the effects of the fever, and the treatment she had received from Dr. Fonseca, and it may be easier imagined than described, what a serious effect this affair had on her system. The screams proceeding from that house were, on this occasion, more alarming than those that were heard from time to time, daily, when the female overseer was employed in punishing the slaves under her control. At last, they became so alarming that we came to the conclusion that the slaves had risen upon Portuguese Rosa, the overseer, and having succeeded in getting her into one of the outhouses, they were employed in avenging themselves for the gross and continued wrongs which they had suffered at her hands.
“Believing that this was the case, and urged by the entreaties of my wife and her maid to endeavour to save the woman from the fury of the negroes, I repaired to Mr. Soares’ house, in the court-yard of which the following revolting scene met my view:—