A gentleman, now residing at Mozambique, told me, that he and his brother were taken from their beds at midnight, without being suffered to hold any communication with their families, with nothing but their clothes on their backs, and hurried on board two different vessels, one to West Africa, to Benguela, and the other to East Africa, to Mozambique; and to make it the more heart-rending, all near relations were separated in this manner. We heard similar distressing accounts, when at the Cape de Verd islands and at Macao. The bitter curses which have ascended to Heaven, against the Braganza family, for the last three hundred years, from the exiles of Portugal, to South America, Africa, and India, from aged parents, heart-broken wives, and fatherless children, will shortly sweep from the earth this destructive scourge, and leave on record but a small part of the vile doings of the most heartless, worthless, lascivious, and diabolical monarch, which ever disgraced the face of the earth. When this place was first visited by Vasco de Gama, in the latter part of the fourteenth century, the crescent was flying instead of the cross, and he was welcomed by the Arabs with music and dancing. But the attempt to plant, rather too abruptly, the standard of our holy religion, was received with disgust; and the followers of the prophet flew to arms, but were discomfited by their more warlike foes. In fact, they at length submitted to the conquerors, who then made great exactions of provisions and of every thing else, of which they stood in need. It is stated, that at that time, every part of the country, capable of cultivation, was well attended to; that their flocks and herds were peacefully grazing upon the plains; that the slave-trade had barely a name; and that the people were trading to various parts of the coast, to Zofar, or Zofal, the Sofala of modern days--supposed by some to be the land of gold--the Ophir of King Solomon, to the Red and to the Erythrean sea, or Persian gulf.