"The Zambesi appears to have five principal mouths, of which the Luabo is the most southern and most navigable; Cumana, and two whose names I do not know, not having myself visited it, lying between it and the Quilimane, and the rise and fall at spring tides on the bar of the Luabo is 22 feet; and as, in the passage, there is NEVER less than four feet (I having crossed it at dead low-water--springs), this would give an average depth sufficient for any commercial purposes. The rise and fall is six feet greater, the passages narrow and more defined, consequently deeper and more easily found than that of the Quilimane River. The river above the bar is very tortuous, but deep; and it is observable that the influence of the tide is felt much higher in this branch than in the others; for whereas in the Catrina and Cumana I have obtained drinkable water a very short distance from the mouth, in the Luabo I have ascended seventy miles without finding the saltness perceptibly diminished. This would facilitate navigation, and I have no hesitation in saying that little difficulty would be experienced in conveying a steam-vessel of the size and capabilities of the gunboat I lately commanded as high as the branching off of the Quilimane River (Mazaro), which, in the dry season, is observed many yards above the Luabo (main stream); though I have been told by the Portuguese that the freshes which come down in December and March fill it temporarily. These freshes deepen the river considerably at that time of the year, and freshen the water many miles from the coast. The population of the delta, except in the immediate neighborhood of the Portuguese, appeared to be very sparse. Antelopes and hippopotami were plentiful; the former tame and easily shot. I inquired frequently of both natives and Portuguese if slavers were in the habit of entering there to ship their cargoes, but could not ascertain that they have ever done so in any except the Quilimane. With common precaution the rivers are not unhealthy; for, during the whole time I was employed in them (off and on during eighteen months), in open boats and at all times of the year, frequently absent from the ship for a month or six weeks at a time, I had not, in my boat's crew of fourteen men, more than two, and those mild, cases of fever. Too much importance can not be ascribed to the use of quinine, to which I attribute our comparative immunity, and with which our judicious commander, Commodore Wyvill, kept us amply supplied. I hope these few remarks may be of some little use in confirming your views of the utility of that magnificent river.
A. H. H. Hoskins."
It ought to be remembered that the testimony of these gentlemen is all the more valuable, because they visited the river when the water was at its lowest, and the surface of the Zambesi was not, as it was now, on a level with and flowing into the Mutu, but sixteen feet beneath its bed. The Mutu, at the point of departure, was only ten or twelve yards broad, shallow, and filled with aquatic plants. Trees and reeds along the banks overhang it so much, that, though we had brought canoes and a boat from Tete, we were unable to enter the Mutu with them, and left them at Mazaro. During most of the year this part of the Mutu is dry, and we were even now obliged to carry all our luggage by land for about fifteen miles. As Kilimane is called, in all the Portuguese documents, the capital of the rivers of Senna, it seemed strange to me that the capital should be built at a point where there was no direct water conveyance to the magnificent river whose name it bore; and, on inquiry, I was informed that the whole of the Mutu was large in days of yore, and admitted of the free passage of great launches from Kilimane all the year round, but that now this part of the Mutu had been filled up.
I was seized by a severe tertian fever at Mazaro, but went along the right bank of the Mutu to the N.N.E. and E. for about fifteen miles. We then found that it was made navigable by a river called the Pangazi, which comes into it from the north. Another river, flowing from the same direction, called the Luare, swells it still more; and, last of all, the Likuare, with the tide, make up the river of Kilimane. The Mutu at Mazaro is simply a connecting link, such as is so often seen in Africa, and neither its flow nor stoppage affects the river of Kilimane. The waters of the Pangazi were quite clear compared with those of the Zambesi.*