Chapter XVII. Concluding Remarks

Appendix:--

I. Meteorological

II. Plants collected in the Congo, at Dahome, and the Island of

Annabom, by Mr. Consul Burton

III. Heights of Stations, West Coast of Africa, computed from

Observations made by Captain Burton

IV. Immigration Africaine

PART II.

The Cataracts of the Congo.

"Allí o mui grande reino está de Congo,

Por nós ja convertido à fé de Christo,

Por onde o Zaire passa claro e longo,

Rio pelos antiguos nunca visto."

"Here lies the Congo kingdom, great and strong,

Already led by us to Christian ways;

Where flows Zaïre, the river clear and long,

A stream unseen by men of olden days."

The Lusiada, V. 13.

Part II.

The Cataracts of the Congo.

Chapter I.

From Fernando Po to Loango Bay.--the German Expedition.

During the hot season of 1863, "Nanny Po," as the civilized

African calls this "lofty and beautiful island," had become a

charnel-house, a "dark and dismal tomb of Europeans." The yellow

fever of the last year, which wiped out in two months one-third

of the white colony--more exactly, 78 out of 250--had not

reappeared, but the conditions for its re-appearance were highly

favourable. The earth was all water, the vegetation all slime,

the air half steam, and the difference between wet and dry bulbs

almost nil. Thoroughly dispirited for the first time, I was

meditating how to escape, when H. M. Steamship "Torch" steamed

into Clarence Cove, and Commander Smith hospitably offered me a

passage down south. To hear was to accept. Two days afterwards

(July 29, 1863) I bade a temporary "adios" to the enemy.

The bitterness of death remained behind as we passed out of the

baneful Bights. Wind and wave were dead against us, yet I greatly

enjoyed the gradual emerging of the sun through his shroud of

"smokes;" the increasing consciousness that a moon and stars

really exist; the soft blue haze of the sky, and the coolness of

73° F. at 6 A.M. in the captain's cabin. I had also time to enjoy

these charms. The "Torch" was not provided with "despatch-

boilers:" she was profoundly worm-eaten, and a yard of copper,

occasionally clapped on, did not prevent her making some four

feet of water a day. So we rolled leisurely along the well-known

Gaboon shore, and faintly sighted from afar Capes Lopez and St.

Catherine, and the fringing ranges of Mayumba-land, a blue line

of heights based upon gently rising banks, ruddy and white,

probably of shaly clay. The seventh day (August 5) placed us off

the well-known "red hills" of Loango-land.

The country looks high and bold after the desperate flatness of

the Bights, and we note with pleasure that we have left behind us

the "impervious luxuriance of vegetation which crowns the

lowlands, covers the sides of the rises, and caps their summits."

During the rains after October the grass, now showing yellow

stubble upon the ruddy, rusty plain, becomes a cane fence, ten to

twelve feet tall; but instead of matted, felted jungle, knitted

together by creepers of cable size, we have scattered clumps of

dark, lofty, and broad-topped trees. A nearer view shows great

cliffs, weather-worked into ravines and basins, ribs and ridges,

towers and pinnacles. Above them is a joyful open land,

apparently disposed in two successive dorsa or steps, with bright

green tiers and terraces between, and these are pitted with the

crater-like sinks locally called "holes," so frequent in the

Gaboon country. Southwards the beauty of eternal verdure will

end, and the land will become drier, and therefore better fitted

for Europeans, the nearer it approaches Mossamedes Bay. South of

"Little Fish," again, a barren tract of white sand will show the

"Last Tree," an inhospitable region, waterless, and bulwarked by

a raging sea.

Loango is a "pool harbour," like the ancient Portus Lemanus

(Hythe), a spit of shingle, whose bay, north-east and south-west,

forms an inner lagoon, bounded landwards by conspicuous and

weather-tarnished red cliffs. This "lingula" rests upon a base of

terra firma whose westernmost projection is Indian Point. From

the latter runs northwards the "infamous" Indian Bar, compared by

old sailors with a lengthened Bill of Portland; a reef some three

miles long, which the waves assault with prodigious fury; a

terror to slavers, especially in our autumn, when the squalls and

storms begin. The light sandy soil of the mainland rests upon

compact clay, and malaria rises only where the little drains,

which should feed the lagoon, evaporate in swamps. Here and there

are clumps of tall cocoas, a capot, pullom or wild cotton-tree,

and a neat village upon prairie land, where stone is rare as on

the Pampas. Southwards the dry tract falls into low and wooded

ground.

The natural basin, entered by the north-east, is upwards of a

mile in length, and the narrow, ever-shifting mouth is garnished

with rocks, the sea breaking right across. Gunboats have floated

over during the rains, but at dead low water in the dry season we

would not risk the gig. Guided by a hut upon the beach fronting

French Factory and under lee of the breakers off Indian Bar, I

landed near a tree-motte, in a covelet smoothed by a succession

of sandpits. The land sharks flocked down to drag the boat over

the breakwater of shingle. They appeared small and effeminate

after the burly negroes of the Bights, and their black but not

comely persons were clad in red and white raiment. It is a tribe

of bumboat men, speaking a few words of English, French, and

Portuguese, and dealing in mats and pumpkins, parrots, and

poultry, cages, and Fetish dolls called "idols."

Half a mile of good sandy path led to the English Factory, built

upon a hill giving a charming view. To the south-east, and some

three miles inland from the centre of the bay, we were shown

"Looboo Wood," a thick motte conspicuously crowning a ridge, and

forming a first-rate landmark. Its shades once sheltered the

nyáre, locally called buffalo, the gorilla, and perhaps the more

monstrous "impungu" (mpongo). Eastward of the Factory appears

Chomfuku, the village of Jim Potter, with a tree-clad sink,

compared by old voyagers with "the large chalkpit on Portsdown

Hill," and still much affected by picnickers. At Loanghili, or

Loanguilli, south of Looboo Wood, and upon the right bank of a

streamlet which trickles to the sea, is the cemetery, where the

kings are buried in gun-boxes.

The Ma-Loango (for mwani, "lord" of Loango), the great despot who

ruled as far as the Congo River, who used to eat in one house,

drink in another, and put to death man or beast that saw him

feeding, is a thing of the past. Yet five miles to the eastward

(here held to be a day's march) King Monoyambi governs "big

Loango town," whose modern native name, I was told, is Mangamwár.

He shows his power chiefly by forbidding strangers to enter the

interior.

The Factory (Messrs. Hatton and Cookson) was a poor affair of

bamboos and mats, with partition-walls of the same material, and

made pestilent by swamps to landward. Little work was then doing

in palm oil, and the copper mines of the interior had ceased to

send supplies. We borrowed hammocks to cross the swamps, and we

found French Factory a contrast not very satisfactory to our

insular pride. M. Charles de Gourlet, of the Maison Régis, was

living, not in a native hut lacking all the necessaries of

civilized man, but in a double-storied stone house, with

barracoons, hospital, public room, orchestra, and so forth,

intended for the "emigrants." Instead of water, the employés had

excellent cognac and vermouth, and a succulent cuisine replaced

the poor Britishers' two barrels of flour and biscuit. No wonder

that in our half-starved fellow countrymen we saw little of the

"national failing, a love of extravagant adventure." The

Frenchmen shoot, or at least go out shooting, twice a week, they

walk to picnics, learn something of the language, and see

something of the country. They had heard a native tradition of

Mr. Gorilla's "big brother," but they could give no details.

I will conclude this chapter with a notice of what has taken

place on the Loango Coast a decade after my departure. Although

Africa has changed but little, Europe has, and we can hardly envy

the German nation its eminence and unexpected triumphs in war

when we see the energy and persistency with which they are

applying themselves to the arts of peace--especially of

exploration. And nowhere have they been more active than in this

part of the world, where their old rivals, the English, are

apparently contented to sit at home in ease, working their

factories and counting out their money.

To begin with the beginning. The year 1872 found the Berlin

Geographical Society intent upon "planting a lance in Africa,"

and upon extending and connecting the discoveries of Livingstone,

Du Chaillu, Schweinfurth, and other travellers. Delegates from

the various associations of Germany met in congress, and

organized (April 19, 1873) the Germanic "Afrikanische

Gesellschaft." Ex-President Dr. Adolf Bastian, a well-known

traveller in Siam, Cambodia, China, and the Indian Archipelago,

and who, moreover, had visited Ambassi or Salvador do Congo, the

old missionary capital, in 1857, was at once sent out as pioneer

and vanguard to prospect the coast for a suitable station and a

point de départ into the interior--a scientific step dictated by

trained and organized common sense. The choice of leader fell

upon Dr. Gussfeldt, Herr von Hattorf being his second in command,

and with them were associated Dr. Falkenstein as zoologist, and

Dr. Soyaux as botanist. A geologist, Dr. Lenz, of Hamburg, was

sent to connect the Ogobe and Okanda rivers with, the Loango

coast, unless he found a likely northeastern route. In this case,

the Society would take measures to supply him with the necessary

equipment.

The expedition began unfortunately, by the loss of outfit and

instruments in the "Nigritia," wrecked off Sierra Leone: it

persevered, however, and presently met Dr. Bastian and Professor

von Gorschen at Cabinda. The former had collected much

information about the coast. He had learned from slaves that the

old kingdoms of Loango, Mahango, and Angay are bounded eastwards,

or inland, by Mayombe, a belt of forest, the threshold of the

unknown interior. It begins the up-slope to the great Ghat ridge,

which, visible after a day's journey, separates the coast from

the central basin. A fortnight or three weeks' march leads to an

open country, a land of metalliferous hills, where the people

barter their goods against gunpowder and weapons, brought by

traders from the east. These "Orientals" are now heard of almost

all along the West African coast, and doubtless, in several

places, the report will prove true. The prospector had also

visited, in search of a depôt, Futila in Cabinda-land; the

Tschiluango (Chiloango), or Cacongo River, a fine navigable

stream, where the people float down their palm oil; Landana;

"Chinsonso" (Chinxoxo, pronounced Chinshosho), Chicambo, Loango,

and the Quillu (Kwillu) stream, the latter breaking through the

coast range, disemboguing near Loango Bay, and reported to be

connected with the great Congo. He found the old despotism of

Loango to be insignificant, reduced, in fact, to the strip of

coast between the Quillu and the Luema-Lukallo Rivers. The slave

trade, once a monopoly of kings, princes, and chiefs, is now no

more; legitimate commerce has levelled ranks, and the real power

is in the hands of the wealthiest merchants.

From the Abbé Durand, librarian of the Paris Geographical

Society, we learn: 1. That Loango is in the Province of Cacongo;

2. That Cacongo is considered a province of Loango; 3. That

Cacongo forms a kingdom of itself, with a capital, Ringwele. The

name of the late king was "Dom João, Capitão Mempolo," and,

though he had died some years ago, he was not buried, for the

usual reasons, in early 1874. Meanwhile his nephew and successor,

Mwátá Bona, was acting regent until the obsequies shall take

place.

The station finally chosen by the German explorers was Chinxoxo,

or, as Herr Kiepert uncompromisingly writes it,

"Tschinschonkscho." It is within easy distance of the Chiloango

or "Luiza Loango" River; and its port, Landana in Cabindaland,

has become a thoroughly Europeanized settlement, with five

trading stations up stream. An empty Dutch factory was repaired,

and the house, containing a parlour, three small bed rooms, and

the usual offices, was ready for habitation by the second week in

October.

On October 26th, Dr. Güssfeldt, after shaking off the "seasoning

fever" at Ponta Negra, proceeded to make a trial trip, and a

route survey with compass and chronometer, up the important

Quillu River. As usual, it has a bar; within the last few years

the right bank has been carried away by the floods, and some of

the old factories are under water. The average breadth is 400

paces, which diminishes to 25 at the rocky "gates" near Kama-

Chitoma, Manyamatal and Gotu. At 29 direct miles from the mouth

lies "Chimbak," a trading station, where Dr. Güssfeldt rested and

recruited strength for a month. Thence he went leisurely up

stream to the Bumina Rapids, and found the easterly rhumb of the

river bending to the N.E. and the N.N.E.; its channel did not

exceed 50 yards in width, and precipitous rock-walls rose on

either hand. At Bumina as at Gotu the Quillu breaks through the

parallel lines of Ghats, whose trend is from N.W. to S.E.; in

fact, these "Katarakten" are the Yellalas of the Congo. A march

of four hours brought him to the Mayombe country (circ. S. Lat.

4°), which must not be confounded with the Ma-yumba or

northernmost possession of the Congo kingdom; the latter word

properly means "King of Yumba," as Ma-Loango is Mwani-Loango. The

Mayombe chief proved friendly, and assisted Dr. Güssfeldt to hire

bearers (November 7) for Yangela, where his excursion ended. The

boundary-line is marked by a large gate, like the two openings in

the wooden wall denoting the Loango frontier between the Quillu

and Luema rivers. The character of the country changed to the

normal park-like aspect of Africa above the Ghats; the dense

forests waxed thin; picturesque views presented themselves,

reminding the wayfarer of Switzerland; and bare, dome-shaped

mountains formed the background. At Nsunsi, about 2,100 feet

above sea-level, the eye ranged over the Yangela country, as far

as the land of the Batetye, whose grassy plains are traversed by

ranges trending to the W.S.W., and apparently culminating to the

south. At the Tondo village the skull of a gorilla was remarked.

The upper Quillu, after its great bend, proved to be 350 to 400

paces broad; and the traveller ascertained that, instead of being

connected with the great artery, it rises in a lake nearly due

north of Nsundi (Sundi), near the country of the Babongo and the

Babum. Dr. Güssfeldt returned to the coast on December 2, and

prepared for the great march into the interior.

Dr. Falkenstein, the medicus and zoologist, in November 1873

reported favourably of Chinxoxo. The station is situated on a

hilly ridge commanding a view of the sea. "It looks imposing

enough, but it would produce more effect if we could hoist the

German flag, as the other establishments here do those of their

respective nations. German ships would then take home news of the

progress of our undertaking, and the natives would see at a

distance this token of the enterprising spirit of the German

nation, and come to us with provisions and other natural

products." He adds, "In Fernando Po, an island which I would

recommend as a sanatorium for wealthy hypochondriacs, we found an

extraordinary abundance of fruit, cocoa-nuts, bananas, mangoes,

delicious oranges, and pine-apples...The ivory trade on the

Gaboon is very flourishing. A German firm which I visited

exports, £10,000 worth per annum, the value of total exports

being, £26,000. The tusks are very large; one weighed about 80

lbs., and some have ranged to 120 lbs. The other articles

exported are gum and ebony, which are brought by the natives,

especially the Fans and Mpangwes (sic) from the interior. The

slave trade is said still to be carried on by Europeans, though

it is not known where the slaves go to " (of course to São Thomé

and Prince's Island). "In the immediate vicinity of our station

the chief trade is in palm oil and ground nuts..... Rings,

chains, crosses, watches, &c., are readily taken by the savages

in exchange for native goods, and I obtained a valuable fetish

for a chain and a cross worth a silbergroschen."

After three months spent upon the coast, and much suffering from

fever, the energetic Dr. Bastian was welcomed home on December

13, 1873. His present book[FN#1] makes only one instalment of the

work, the other being the "Correspondenzblätter der Afrikanischen

Gesellschaft." Briefly, everything has been done to lay the

foundation for success and to advertise the undertaking. Finally,

not satisfied with these steps, the German Society for the

Exploration of equatorial Africa organized in September, 1874, a

second expedition. Captain Alexander von Homeyer, a well-known

ornithologist, will lead it viâ S. Paulo de Loanda and Cassange

(Kasanji) to the mysterious lands of the Mwata ya Nvo, and thus

supplement the labours of Portuguese travellers. This fine

undertaking set out early in 1875.

Chapter II.

To São Paulo De Loanda.

At Loango, by invitation of Commander Hoskins, R.N., I

transferred myself on board H.M. Steamship "Zebra," one of the

nymphs of the British navy, and began the 240 miles southwards.

There was no wind except a slant at sunset, and the current often

carried us as far backwards as the sails drove us onwards. The

philosophic landlubber often wonders at the eternal restlessness

of his naval brother-man, who ever sighs for a strong wind to

make the port, and who in port is ever anxious to get out of it.

I amused myself in the intervals of study with watching the huge

gulls, which are skinned and found good food at Fernando Po, and

in collecting the paper-nautilus. The Ocythoë Cranchii was often

found inside the shell, and the sea was streaked as with cotton-

flecks by lines of eggs several inches long, a mass of mucus with

fine membraneous structure adhering to the rocks, and coagulating

in spirits or salt water. The drum-fish was not heard except when

we were at anchor; its sound somewhat suggests a distant frog-

concert, and I soon learned to enjoy what M. Dufosse has

learnedly named "ichthyopsophosis," the song of the fish. Passing

Cabinda, 57 miles from Loanda, but barely in sight, we fell in

with H.M. Steamship "Espoir," Commander Douglas, who had just

made his second capture of a slave-schooner carrying some 500

head of Congos. In these advanced days, the representative man

walks up to you as you come on board; touches his cap or his

wool, and expresses his best thanks in West Coast English; when

you offer him a dram he compares it with the trade article which

"only ‘ting, he no burn." The characteristic sights are the

captured Moleques or negrokins, who, habited in sacks to the

knees, choose an M.C. to beat time, whilst they sing in chorus,

extending the right arm, and foully abusing their late masters,

who skulk about the forecastle.

Ten days sped by before we sighted the beginning of the end, Cape

Spilemberta and Dande Point, two bluffs in distinct serrations;

the aspect of the land was pleasant, a vista of tall cliffs,

white or red, rising wall-like from a purple sea, jagged with

sharp, black reef and "diabolito," and bearing on the summit a

plateau well grown with grass and tree. We then opened a deep

bight, which has the honour of being entitled the longest

indentation from Cape Lopez to Great Fish Bay, some 17° or a

thousand miles of coast. A gap in the cliff line and darker

vegetation showed the Zenza River, generally called Bengo from

the district (Icolo e Bengo) which it traverses. Here was once a

busy settlement much frequented by shipping, which thus escaped

harbour dues. The mosquito-haunted stream, clear in the dries,

and, as usual, muddy during the rains, supports wild duck, and,

carried some ten miles in "dongos" or flat-bottomed boats,

supplies the capital of Angola with drinking water and dysentery.

As we glide towards the anchorage two features attract my

attention: the Morro or hill-ridge on the mainland, and the

narrow strip which forms the harbour. The escarpment, sweeping

from a meridian to a parallel, juts westward in the bluff Cape

Lagostas (Lobsters), a many-coloured face, in places not unlike

the white cliffs of Dover; it then trends from north-east to

south-west, bending at last in a picturesque bow, with a shallow

sag. The material is the tauá or blood-red marl of the Brazil,

banded with white and brown, green, chocolate, and yellow; huge

heaps of "rotten earth," washed down by the rains, cumber the

base of the ruined sea-wall north of the town; in front is a

pellucid sea with the usual trimmings, while behind roll the

upland stubbles of autumn, here mottled black with fire, there

scattered with the wild ficus and the cashew, a traveller from

the opposite hemisphere.

The Ilha de Loanda, which gave its name to the city, according to

Mr. W. Winwood Reade ("Savage Africa," chapter xxv.), is "derived

from a native word meaning bald:" I believe it to be the Angolan

Luánda, or tribute. Forming the best harbour of the South African

coast, it is made by the missionaries of the seventeenth century

to extend some ten leagues long. James Barbot's plan (A.D. 1700)

shows seven leagues by one in breadth, disposed from north-east

to south-west, and, in the latter direction, fitting into the

"Mar Aparcelado" or shoaly sea, a curious hook-shaped bight with

a southern entrance, the "Barra de Curinba" (Corimba). But the

influences which formed the island, or rather islands (for there

are two) have increased the growth, reducing the harbour to three

and a half miles by two in breadth, and they are still

contracting it; even in the early nineteenth century large ships

floated off the custom house, and it is dry land where boats once

rode. Dr. Livingstone ("First Expedition," chapter xx.) believes

the causa causans to be the sand swept over the southern part of

the island: Douville more justly concludes that it is the gift of

the Cuanza River, whose mud and ooze, silt and débris are swept

north by the great Atlantic current. Others suppose that it

results from the meeting of the Cuanza and the Bengo streams; but

the latter outfall would be carried up coast. The people add the

washings of the Morro, and the sand and dust of the sea-shore

south of the city.

This excellent natural breakwater perfectly shelters the shipping

from the "calemas," or perilous breakers on the seaward side, and

the surface is dotted with huts and groves, gardens and palm

orchards. At the Ponta do Norte once stood a fort appropriately

called Na. Sa. Flór de Rosa; it has wholly disappeared, but

lately, when digging near the sea, heaps of building stone were

found. Barbot here shows a "toll-house to collect the customs,"

and at the southern extremity a star-shaped "Fort Fernand."

This island was the earliest of Portuguese conquests on this part

of the coast. The Conquistador Paulo Dias de Novaes, a grandson

of Bartholomeo Dias, was sent a second time, in A.D. 1575, to

treat with the king of "Dongo," who caused trouble to trade.

Accompanied by 700 Portuguese, he reached the Cuanza River,

coasted north, and entered by the Barra de Corimba, then

accessible to caravels. He landed without opposition amongst a

population already Christianized, and, after occupying for a few

months the island, which then belonged to Congo, he founded,

during the next year, the Villa de São Paulo de Loanda on the

mainland.

The importance of the island arose from its being the great money

bank of the natives, who here collected the zimbo, buzio, cowrie,

or cypræa moneta. Ample details concerning this industry are

given by the old writers. The shell was considered superior to

the "impure or Braziles," brought from the opposite Bahia (de

Todos os Santos), though much coarser than the small Indian, and

not better than the large blue Zanzibar. M. Du Chaillu ("Second

Expedition," chap, iv.) owns to having been puzzled whence to

derive the four sacred cowries: "They are unknown on the Fernand

Vaz, and I believe them to have come across the continent from

eastern Africa." There are, indeed, few things which have

travelled so far and have lasted so long as cowries--they have

been found even amongst "Anglo-Saxon" remains.

The modern Muxi-Loandas hold aloof from the shore-folk, who

return the compliment in kind. They dress comparatively well, and

they spend considerable sums in their half-heathen lembamentos

(marriages) and mutambé (funerals).

As might be expected, after three centuries of occupation, the

Portuguese, both in East and West Africa, have naturalized a

multitude of native words, supplying them with a Lusitanian

termination. The practice is very useful to the traveller, and

the despair of the lexicographer. During the matumbé the

relations "wake" the toasted, swaddled, and aromatized corpse

with a singular vigour of drink and general debauchery.

I arrived with curiosity at the capital of Angola, the first

Portuguese colony visited by me in West Africa. The site is

pleasing and picturesque, contrasting favourably with all our

English settlements and with the French Gaboon; for the first

time after leaving Teneriffe, I saw something like a city. The

escarpment and the sea-bordering shelf, allowing a double town

like Athenæ or Thebæ, a Cidade Alta and a Cidade Baixa, are

favourites with the Lusitanians from Lisbon to the China seas,

and African São Paulo is reflected in the Brazilian Bahia. So

Greece affected the Acropolis, and Rome everywhere sought to

build a Capitol. The two lines follow the shore from north-east

to south-west, and they form a graceful amphitheatre by bending

westward at the jutting headland, Morro de São Miguel, of old de

São Paulo. Three hundred years of possession have built forts and

batteries, churches and chapels, public buildings and large

private houses,white or yellow, withample green verandahs--each

an ugly cube, but massing well together. The general decline of

trade since 1825, and especially the loss of the lucrative slave

export, leave many large tenements unfinished or uninhabited,

while the aspect is as if a bombardment had lately

026--- taken place. Africa shows herself in heaps of filthy

hovels, wattle and daub and dingy thatch; in "umbrella-trees"

(ficus), acacias and calabashes, palms and cotton-trees, all

wilted, stunted, and dusty as at Cairo. We are in the latitude of

East African Kilwa and of Brazilian Pernambuco; but this is a

lee-land, and the suffering is from drought. Yet, curious to say,

the flora, as will appear, is here richer than in the well-

watered eastern regions.

Steaming onwards, at one mile off shore, we turned from south-

east to south-west, and presently rounded the north-east point of

Loanda Island, where a moored boat and a lantern showed the way.

We passed the first fort, São Pedro do Morro (da Cassandama),

which reminded me of the Aguada at the mouth of Goa Harbour. The

two bastions and their batteries date from A.D. 1700, and have

been useful in administering a strongish hint--in A.D. 1826 they

fired into Captain Owen. The next work is the little four-gun

work, Na. Sa. da Conceição. We anchored in five fathoms about

1,200 yards off shore, in company with some fifteen craft, large

and small, including a neat despatch cruizer, built after the

"Nimrod" model. Fort São Francisco, called "do Penedo," because

founded upon and let into a rock, with the double-tiered

batteries à la Vauban, carefully whitewashed and subtended by any

amount of dead ground, commands the anchorage and the northern

road, where strings of carregadores, like driver-ants, fetch and

carry provisions to town. A narrow causeway connects with the

gate, where blacks on guard lounge in fantastic uniform, and

below the works are the coal-sheds. Here the first turf was

lately turned by an English commodore--this tramway was intended

to connect with the water edge, and eventually to reach the

Cuanza at Calumbo. So Portugal began the rail system in West

Africa.

The city was preparing for her ecclesiastical festival, and I

went ashore at once to see her at her best. The landing-place is

poor and mean, and the dusty and sandy walk is garnished with a

single row of that funereal shrub, the milky euphorbia. The first

sensation came from the pillars of an unfinished house--

"Care colonne, che fate quà?

--Non sappiamo in verità!"

The Ponta de Isabel showed the passeio, or promenade, with two

brick ruins: its "five hundred fruit-trees of various

descriptions" have gone the way of the camphor, the tea-shrub,

and the incense-tree, said to have been introduced by the

Jesuits. "The five pleasant walks, of which the central one has

nine terraces, with a pyramid at each extremity, and leads to the

Casa de Recreio, or pleasure-house of the governor-general,

erected in 1817 by Governor Vice-Admiral Luiz da Motta Feio,"

have insensibly faded away; the land is a waste, poor grazing

ground for cattle landed from the south coast, whilst negrokins

scream and splash in the adjoining sea.

Beyond the Government gardens appears the old Ermida (chapel), Na

Sa. da Nazareth, which English writers have dubbed, after

Madeiran fashion, the Convent. The frontage is mean as that of

colonial ecclesiastical buildings in general, and even the

epauletted façades of old São Paulo do not deserve a description.

Here, according to local tradition, was buried the head of the

"intrepid and arrogant king of Congo," Dom Antonio, whose 100,000

warriors were defeated at Ambuilla (Jan. ist, 1666) by Captain

Luiz Lopes de Sequeira, the good soldier who lost his life, by a

Portuguese hand, at the battle of Matamba (Sept. 4th, 1681). A

picture in Dutch tiles (azulejos) was placed on the right side of

the altar to commemorate the feat.

After the Ermida are more ruined houses and ragged plantations

upon the narrow shelf between the sea-cliff and the sea: they

lead to the hot and unhealthy low town skirting the harbour, a

single street with small offsets. A sandy strip spotted with

cocoa-nuts, represents the Praia do Bungo (Bungo Beach), perhaps

corrupted from Bunghi, a praça, or square; it debouches upon the

Quitanda Pequena, a succursale market-place, where, on working-

days, cloth and beads, dried peppers, and watered rum are sold.

Then come a single large building containing the Trem, or

arsenal, the cavalry barracks, the "central post-office," and the

alfandega, or custom-house, which has a poor platform, but no

pier. The stables lodge some half-a-dozen horses used by mounted

orderlies--they thrive, and, to judge from their high spirits,

the climate suits them. In Captain Owen's time (A.D. 1826) there

was "a respectable corps of cavalry."

Passing the acting cathedral for the See of Angola and Congo,

which deserves no notice, you reach the Quitanda Grande, where

business is brisker. There is a sufficiency of beef and mutton,

the latter being thin-tailed, and not "five-quartered." Fish is

wisely preferred to meat by the white man, "affirming that it is

much easier digested;" and a kind of herring, and the sparus

known upon the Brazilian coast as the "tainha," the West African

"vela," and the French "mulet," at times superabound. All the

tropical fruits flourish, especially the orange; the exotic

vegetables are large and sightly, but tasteless and insipid,

especially peas and radishes: the indigenous, as tomatoes, are

excellent, but the list is small. Gardens are rare where the soil

is so thin, and the indispensable irrigation costs money. The

people still "choke for want of water," which must be bought:

there is only one good well sunk in the upper town, about 1840,

when the Conde de Bomfim was Minister of Marine and the

Colonies,--it is a preserve for government officials. Living in

the native style is cheap; but cooks are hardly procurable, and a

decent table is more expensive than in an English country town. A

single store (M. Schutz) supplies "Europe" articles, of course at

fancy prices, and here a travelling outfit may be bought. It has

been remarked that Loanda has no shop that sells "food for the

mind;" this is applicable, not only to all East and West Africa,

but to places far more progressive. A kind of cafe-billard

supplies a lounge and tepid beer. The attendants in Portuguese

houses are slaves; the few English prefer Cabindas, a rude form

of the rude Kru-boy, and the lowest pay of the lowest labourer is

5d. per diem.

The "Calçada Nova," a fine old paved "ramp"--to speak Gibraltar-

English--connects Basse Ville and Hauteville. The latter was once

a scatter of huge if not magnificent buildings, now in ruins; we

shall pass through it en route to Calumbo. Here are the remains

of the three chief convents, the Jesuit, the Carmelite, and the

Third Order of St. Francis. The citadel de São Miguel, lately

blown up, has been restored; the extensive works of dressed

freestone, carefully whitewashed, stand out conspicuously from

the dark bush dotting the escarpment top. Here also is the Alto

das Cruzes, the great cemetery, and the view from the sheer and

far-jutting headland is admirable. A stroll over this cool and

comparatively healthy escarpment ended by leaving a card at the

Paço do Governo.

Lopes de Lima (vol. iii. part ii.) gives São Paulo in 1846 a

total of 5,065 whites, mulattoes, and blacks, distributed into

1,176 hearths; the census of 1850-51 raised the number to 12,000,

including 7,000 negroes, of whom 5,000 were serviles; in 1863 the

figure was understood to have diminished rather than to have

increased. Old authors divided the population into five orders.

The first was of ecclesiastics, the second contained those who

were settled for command or trade, and the third were convicts,

especially new Christians of Jewish blood, who were prevented

from attending the sacred functions for a scandalous reason. Then

ranked the Pomberos, or Pombeiros, mostly mulattoes, free men,

and buyers of slaves; their morals seem to have been abominable.

Last and least were the natives, that is, the "chattels." Amongst

the latter the men changed wives for a time, "alleging, in case

of reproof, that they are not able to eat always of the same

dish;" and the women were rarely allowed by their mistresses to

marry--with the usual results. The missionaries are very severe

upon the higher ranks of colonists. Father Carli (A.D. 1666)

found the whites the most deceitful and the wickedest of men,--an

effect caused by the penal settlement. Father Merolla (A.D. 1682)

declares that "the women, being bred among blacks, suffer

themselves to be much perverted--they scarcely retain anything

white about them except their skins." J. C. Fêo Cardoso (Memoir

published in Paris in 1825) attributes the decadence of Angola

and Benguela to three reasons; rare marriages amongst the higher

orders; poverty amongst the lower; and the immorality and

incontinence of both. Lopes de Lima (p. 149 loc. cit.) traces the

decline and fall of Christianity in the eighteenth century to the

want of priests, to the corruption of the regular clergy

(Carmelites and Franciscans), for whom West Africa, like Syria

and Palestine, was made a kind of convict station, and to the

inhuman slave-export, as opposed to domestic slavery. All has now

changed for the better; society in Angola is not a whit inferior

to that of any English colony in West Africa, and, as a convict

establishment, Loanda is a great success.

The theoretical garrison is one regiment of the line, a squadron

of cavalry, and two companies of artillery with three-pounders;

the real force is of some 800 men, mostly convicts. No difference

is made between white and black, nor is the corps force, which

was once very cruelly used, severely treated as the Légion

Etrangère of Algeria. Most of the men have been found guilty of

capital crimes, yet they are allowed to carry arms, and they are

intrusted with charge of the forts. Violence is almost unheard of

amongst them: if an English sailor be stabbed, it is generally by

the free mulattoes and blacks, who hate the uniform for

destroying their pet trade of man-selling. It is true that these

convicts have hopes of pardon, but I prefer to attribute their

remarkable gentleness and good behaviour to the effects of the

first fever, which, to quote from the Latin grammar,

"Emollit mores nec sinit esse feros."

The negroes of Loanda struck me as unusually ill-favoured; short,

"stumpy," and very dark, or tinged with unclean yellow. Lepers

and hideous cripples thrust their sores and stumps in the face of

charity. There was no local colouring compared with the

carregadores, or coolies, from the northeast, whose thrum-mop

heads and single monkey skins for fig-leaves, spoke of the wold

and the wild. The body-dress of both sexes is the tángá, pagne,

or waist-cloth, unless the men can afford trousers and ragged

shirts, and the women a "veo preto," or dingy black sheet,

ungracefully worn, like the graceful sárí of Hindostan, over the

bright foulard which confines the wool. "It is mighty ridiculous

to observe," says the old missionary, "that the women, contrary

to the custom of all other nations, buy and sell, and do all

things which the men ought to do, whilst their husbands stay at

home and spin or weave cotton, or busy themselves in such other

effeminate actions." This is not wholly true in ‘63. The

"munengana,"or machila-man, is active in offering his light cane

palanquin, and he chaffs the "mean white" who is compelled to

walk, bitterly as did the sedan-chairmen of Bath before the days

of Beau Nash. Of course the Quitandeira, or market-woman, holds

her own. The rest of the street population seems to consist of

negro "infantry" and black Portuguese pigs, gaunt and long-

legged. The favourite passe-temps is to lie prone in sun or

shade, chattering and smoking the cachimbo, a heavy clay pipe,

with peculiar stem--"to sleep supine," say the Arabs, "is the

position of saints; on the dexter side, of kings; on the

sinister, of learned men; and on the belly, of devils."

Chapter III.

The Festival--a Trip to Calumbo--portuguese Hospitality.

My first step after reaching S. Paolo de Loanda was to call upon

Mr. Commissioner Vredenburg, who had lately taken up the

undesirable appointment, and who, moreover, had brought a pretty

French wife from Pará. I had warned him that he was risking her

life and that of her child; he bravely made the attempt and

nearly lost them both. I have reason to be grateful to him and to

Mr. Vice-consul E. H. Hewett for hospitality during my stay at

the Angolan capital. There is a place called an hotel, but it is

in the Seven Dials of the African city, and--nothing more need be

said.

Fortunately for me, as for herself, Loanda had got rid of Mr.

Vredenburg's predecessor, who soon followed the lamented Richard

Brand, first British Consul, appointed in 1844. The "real whole-

hearted Englishman" was after that modern type, of which La

Grundy so highly approves. An honest man, who does not hold to

the British idea that "getting on in the world" is Nature's first

law, would be sorely puzzled by such a career.

The day after my arrival was the festival which gives to São

Paulo de Loanda its ecclesiastical name "da Assumpção." The

ceremonies of the day were duly set forth in the Boletim Official

do Governo Geral da Provincia de Angola. A military salute and

peals of bells aroused us at dawn; followed a review of the

troops, white and black; and a devout procession, flags flying

and bands playing, paced through the chief streets to the

Cathedral. A visit of ceremony in uniform to the Governor-

General, Captain José Baptista de Andrade, a historic name in

Angola, led to an invitation for the evening, a pleasant soirée

of both sexes. The reception was cordial: whatever be the

grievances of statesmen and historians, lawyers and slave-

mongers, Portuguese officers are always most friendly to their

English brethren. The large and airy rooms were hung with

portraits of the several dignitaries, and there was an Old World

look about Government House, like the Paço at Pangim (Goa). Fifty

years ago colonial society was almost entirely masculine; if you

ever met a white woman it was in a well-curtained manchila

surrounded by "mucambas" or "mucacamas, negro waiting maids:" as

the old missioner tells us, "when they go abroad, which is

seldom, they are carried in a covered net with attendance of

captives." All this is changed, except as regards leaving the

house, which is never done during the day: constitutionals are

not wanted in the tropics, and the negroes everywhere make the

streets unfit, except for any but the very strongest-minded of

the weaker sex. The evenings at Government House are passed with

music and dancing, and petits jeux innocents for the juniors,

whilst the seniors talk and play voltarete till midnight. I well

remember one charming face, but I fear to talk about it--ten

years in Africa cannot pass without the saddest changes.

With an eye to future exploration, I was anxious to see something

of the style of travel in Angola, and to prospect the proposed

line of railway intended to checkmate the bar of the river

Cuanza. The Cassange (Kasanjí) war on the eastern frontier had

just ended honourably to Portuguese arms, but it proved costly;

the rich traffic of the interior had fallen off, and the well-

known Feira was sending down its fairings to independent

Kinsembo. Moreover, in order to raise funds for the rail, the

local Government talked of granting the land to an English

company for growing the highly prized gossypium arboreum.

Sr. João Soares Caldeira, C.E., kindly asked me to join his

party, which started early on August 19. All rode the tipoia, a

mere maca or hammock sadly heating to the back, but handier than

the manchila: the bearers wore loose waistbelts, with a dozen

small sheep's bells on the crupper, intended to proclaim our

importance, and supposed to frighten away wild beasts. These

gentry often require the stimulus of "ndokwe" (go on), but seldom

the sedative of "malemba" (gently) or "quinga" (stop). The "boi-

cavallo," the riding bull (not ox) of the interior, which costs

about £4, is never used in these fashionable localities. I failed

to remark the line of trenches supposed to defend the land-side,

but I did remark the "maiangas," said to be indigo vats made by

the Jesuits. After a hot depression we ascended a rough zigzag,

and halting we enjoyed a charming view of St. Paul. The domed

Morro concealing the squalid lower town was crowned with once

lordly buildings--cathedral, palace, treasury, and fort; the

colours of the ground-swell were red and white, with here and

there a dot of green; and the blue sea rose in its loveliness

beyond the hill horizon. For a whole league we were in the region

of "arimos," or outside farms, where villages, villas, and

plantations, threaded by hot and sandy lanes with hedges of green

euphorbia, showed the former prosperity of the country. Beyond it

the land forms, as in Yoruba, lines of crescents bulging west or

seaward, quartz and pebbles showing here and there an old true

coast.

After a five hours' ride we reached Cavúa, the half-way house,

where breakfast had been sent on; the habitations are wretched

thatches, crowded with pigs and mosquitoes. Clearings had all

ended, and the red land formed broken waves of poor soil, almost

nude of vegetation at this mid-winter of the tropics, except

thickets of "milk plant" and forests of quadrangular cactus; the

latter are quaint as the dragon-tree, some twenty feet tall and

mostly sun-scorched to touchwood. The baobab (adansonia) is

apparently of two kinds, the "Imbundeiro," hung with long-

stringed calabashes, which forms swarming-places for bees; and

the "Aliconda" (Nkondo), whose gourd is almost sessile, and whose

bark supplies fibre for cloth and ropes. The haskúl or big-aloe

of Somali-land was not absent, and, amongst other wild fruits, I

saw scattered over the ground the husks of a strychnine, like the

east African species. Deer, hares, and partridges are spoken of

in these solitudes, but they must be uncommonly hard to find at

such a season.

About three hours after leaving Cavúa were spent upon this high,

dry, and healthy desert, when suddenly we sighted the long

reaches of the Cuanza River, sharply contrasting, like the Nile,

with the tawny yellow grounds about its valley. A steep descent

over water-rolled pebbles showed the old bank; the other side,

far and blue, gave a goodly breadth of five miles; then we

plunged into the green selvage of the modern stream, following

muddy paths where the inundation had extended last June. Here

tobacco, orchilla, and indigo in the higher, and sugar-cane,

rice, and ricinus on the lower lands flourish to perfection. The

Angolan orchilla was first sent to Lisbon by Sr. F. R. Batalha:

it is a moss, like the tillandsia of the Southern United States,

and I afterwards recognized it in the island of Annobom. Passing

Pembe and other outlying hamlets, after nine hours of burning

sun, we entered Calumbo Town, and were hospitably lodged by the

Portuguese Commandant. We had followed the highway, as a line for

the intended railway had not yet been marked out, and the

distance measured 33,393 metres (= 20.75 English miles).

Calumbo is now a poor place, with a few dilapidated stone houses

in a mass of wattle and daub huts, surrounded by large "arimos."

The whole "Districto da Barra do Calumbo" contains only 444

hearths. A little stone pier, which Loanda wants, projects into

the stream; the lime was formerly procured from shells, but in

1761 calcareous stone was found near the Dande stream. The

sightliest part is the vegetation, glorious ceibas (bombax) used

for dug-outs; baobabs, tamarinds which supply cooling fruit and

distilled waters; limes and bitter oranges. The most remarkable

growth is the kaju or cashew nut: an old traveller quaintly

describes it "as like St. John's apple with a chestnut at the end

of it." M. Valdez ("Six Years of a Traveller's Life," vol. ii.

267), calls it "a strange kind of fruit," though it was very

familiar to his cousins in the Brazil, of which it is an

aborigine. Here it is not made into wine as at Goa: "Kaju-brandy"

is unknown, and the gum, almost equal to that of the acacia, is

utterly neglected. A dense and shady avenue of these trees, ten

paces apart, leads from the river to the parish church of S.

José, mentioned by Carli in 1666: an inscription informs us that

it was rebuilt in 1850, but the patron is stored away in a

lumber-room, and the bats have taken the place of the priest.

Portugal has perhaps gone too far in abolishing these church

establishments, but it is a reaction which will lead to the

golden mean.

The site of Calumbo is well chosen, commanding a fine view, and

raised above the damps of the cold Cuanza, whose stagnant lagoon,

the Lagôa do Muge on the other side, is divided from the main

branch by a low islet with palms and some cultivation. At the

base of Church Hill are huts of the Mubiri or blacksmiths, who

gipsy-like wander away when a tax is feared; they are not

despised, but they are considered a separate caste. I was shown a

little north of the town a place where the Dutch, true to their

national instincts, began a canal to supply Loanda with sweet and

wholesome drinking material and water communication; others place

it with more probability near the confluence of the Cuanza and

the Lucala, the first great northern fork, where Massangano was

built by the Conquistadores. This "leat" was left incomplete, the

terminus being three miles from St. Paul's; the Governor-General

José de Oliveira Barbosa, attempted to restore it, but was

prevented by considerations of cost.

Calumbo must be a gruesome place to all except its natives.

Whilst Loanda has improved in climate since Captain Owen's day

(1826), this has become deadly as Rome in 1873. The raw mists in

early morning and the hot suns, combined with the miasmas of the

retreating waters, sometimes produce a "carneirado" (bilious

remittent) which carries off half the inhabitants. Dysenteries

are everywhere dangerous between the Guinea Coast and Mossamedes,

the cause being vile water. All the people looked very sickly;

many wore milongos, Fetish medicines in red stripes, and not a

few had whitewashed faces in token of mourning. I observed that

my Portuguese companions took quinine as a precaution. Formerly a

few foreign merchants were settled here, but they found the hot

seasons fatal, and no wonder, with 130° (F.) in the shade! The

trade from the upper river, especially from the Presidio das

Pedras Negras de Pungo Andongo,[FN#2] consists of hides, cattle

tame and wild (cefos); saltpetre washed from earth in sieves,

mucocote or gum anime (copal), said by Lopes de Lima to be found

in all the forests of Pungo Andongo; wax, white and yellow; oil

of the dendêm (Elaïs Guineënsis) and mandobim, here called

ginguba (arachis); mats, manioc-flour, and sometimes an ivory.

Calumbo was built as early as 1577 by the Conquistador Porcador

and first Capitão Mór Paulo Dias II., a gallant soldier, who died

in 1589 at Massangano, the "Presidium," which he had founded

between 1580-83, and who was buried in the Church of Na. Sa. da

Vittoria; he is said also to have built the Church of Santa Cruz.

Equidistant from Loanda and the sea, the settlement soon had a

wealthy trade with the fortified stations of the interior, and

large Government stores filled with merchandize. In 1820 a number

of schooners, pinnaces, and small crafts plied up and down to

Muchimo, Massangano, Cambembe, and other inland settlements; now

we find out only a few canoes. The Cuanza at "Sleepers' Bay" has

one of the worst shifting bars on the whole coast. At this

distance, five leagues from the mouth, its width is one hundred

fathoms, and the depth varies from eight to nine. It breeds good

fish; the manatus is common, people talk of fresh-water sharks,

and the jacare (crocodile) is fatal to many a pig even in the

village. It is navigable for schooners, they say, six days, or

150 miles, to the large "Presidio de Cambembe," where Andrew

Battel (1589-1600) visited a "perpendicular water-fall, which

made such a noise as to be heard thirty miles' distance." This

and another water-fall higher up are laid down in the map of Dr.

Livingstone's admirable first journey. Above Cambembe the river-

bed is broken by archipelagoes, and the shoals render it fit only

for boats. The Cuanza head has been explored only lately,

although a royal order to that effect was issued on March 14,

1800.

After receiving and returning the visits of the principal whites,

all habited in frocks and continuations of the blackest and

heaviest broadcloth, we feasted with the excellent commandant,

who was hospitality itself. The mosquitoes soon roused us from

any attempt at sleep, and we passed the night after a fashion

which sometimes leads to red eyes and "hot coppers" in the

morning. I left early, for my companions had business at Calumbo;

as they were no longer present to control the bearers, a race

soft as putty, and I was not used to manage them, the gang became

unbearable. The soldier sent to keep them in order did his best

with his "supple-jack," and the consequence was that all bolted

into the bush. At Cavúa two men were forcibly enlisted, but I

preferred walking in. When at home in the Red House (Mr.

Hewett's) the hammock men came complaining of my deserting them,

and begging bakhshish.

It was another lesson to me--the Gaboon had lately administered

one--that, however well you may know the negro generally, each

tribe requires a specific study. This, however, would not take

long, and with a little knowledge of the language there would be

no difficulty in following the footsteps of Joaquim Rodrigues

Graça; letters would be required to the several commandants, the

season of setting out should be in early Cacimbo (April), and the

up march would take six months, with about four to return. But,

unless active measures are adopted, only the seaboard will remain

to the Portuguese. This is an exploration which I had kept "dark"

for myself; but Captain von Homeyer has gained the day, and

nothing remains for me but to give the gallant officer God speed.

After a short but exceedingly pleasant visit, I left the capital

of Angola with regret. All seemed anxious to further my views of

travel; the authorities gave me the very best advice, and offered

me introductions to all the district commandants, Sr. Moses

Abecasis, and Sr. Francisco A. Flores, Sir Henry Huntley's host,

obliged me with recommendations to the most influential agents at

Porto da Lenha on the Congo River. Mr. Essex of St. Helena placed

me in the hands of his compatriot, Mr. Scott, and Captain

Hoskins, R.N., ended his kindness with ordering for me a passage

on board H.M. Steamship "Griffon," an old acquaintance in the

Gaboon River. Briefly, I quitted São Paulo with the best wishes

for one and all who had befriended me.

Chapter IV.

The Cruise along Shore--the Granite Pillar of Kinsembo.

On August 22nd we left Loanda, and attacked the 180 miles

separating it from the Congo mouth. Steaming along shore we

enjoyed the vanishing perspective of the escarpment disappearing

in the misty distance. The rivers Bengo, Dande, and Onze are

denoted by densely wooded fissures breaking the natural sea-wall,

and, as usual in West Africa, these lines are the favourite sites

for settlements. The Onze or the Lifune of Mazula Bay--which the

Hydrographic Chart (republished March 18, 1869) changes into

"River Mazulo," and makes the mouth of the "River Onzo"--is

chosen by Bowdich and writers of his day as the northern boundary

of Angola, greatly to the disgust of the Portuguese, whose

pretensions extend much farther north. Volumes of daily smoke and

048--- nightly flame suggest the fires of St. John lighted by the

goatherds of Tenerife. They greatly excite the gallant

"Griffons," who everywhere see slaver-signals, and the system is

old upon this coast as the days of Hanno and Herodotus. At this

season they are an infallible sign that the dries are ending; the

women burn the capim (tall grass) for future forage, and to

manure the land for manioc, maize, and beans. The men seek

present "bush-beef:" as the flames blow inland, they keep to

seaward, knowing that game will instinctively and infallibly

break cover in that direction, and they have learned the

"wrinkle" of the prairie traveller to make a "little Zoar" in

case of accidental conflagration.

At 2 P.M. on the 24th we were abreast of Ambriz, an important

settlement, where a tall red and white cliff, with a background

of broken blue hill, showed a distinct "barra," or river mouth,

not to be confounded with the English "bar." The north point of

the Rio dos Ambres, of the "green" or "raw copal," is low and

mangrove-grown, throwing into high relief its sister formation,

Ambriz Head or Strong-Tide Corner, which stands up gaunt and

bluff.

A little to the south-east lies the fort, flying the argent and

azure flag, and garrisoned by some 200 men; five large

whitewashed houses and the usual bunch of brown huts compose the

settlement. This nest of slavers was temporarily occupied in May

15, 1855. The Governor-General, Senor Coelho de Amaral,

reinforced by 1,000 soldiers from home, and levying 2,500

"Empacasseiros,"[FN#3] embarked from Loanda in the "Dorn

Fernando" frigate, landed here, once more burnt the barracoons,

and built the fort. In 1856 a force was sent under Colonel

Francisco Salles Ferreira, to re-open a communication with the

Bembe mines of copper and malachite. That energetic officer

marched on São Salvador, the old capital of Congo, and crowned

Dom Pedro V., whose predecessor died the year before. He there

fell a victim to fever, and his second in command, Major Andrade,

was nearly cut off on his return. Shortly afterwards the natives

blockaded, but were driven from, Bembe, and they attempted in

vain to carry Ambriz.

The far-famed copper mines were granted to the Portuguese in the

sixteenth century by the King of Congo. They were the property of

his feudatory, the (black) "Marquess of Pemba" (Bembe): Barbot

mentions their being mistaken for gold, and feels himself bound

to warn his readers that the metal was brought "from Sondy, not

from Abyssinia or the empire of Prester John." They lost all

their mystery about A.D. 1855, when they were undertaken by an

English company, Messrs. John Taylor & Co. of London, after

agreement with the concessionists, Messrs. Francisco A. Flores

and Pinto Perez of Loanda. Between Ambriz and Bembe, on the

Lunguila (Lufula?) River, and 770 feet above sea-level, the

Angolan government built four presidios, Matuta, Quidilla,

Quileala, and Quimalenco. But the garrison was not strong enough

to keep the country quiet, and the climate proved deadly to white

men. The 24 sappers and 60 linesmen extracted nearly 4,000 lbs.

of gangue per diem, when the English manager and his assistant,

with four of the ten miners died, and the plant was destroyed by

fire. I was assured that this line (Ambriz-Bembe) was an easy

adit to the interior, and so far the information is confirmed by

the late Livingstone-Congo Expedition under Lieutenant Grandy.

In 1863 the coast was still in confusion. The Portuguese claimed

too much seaboard according to the British: the British

government ignored the just claims of Portugal, and the political

bickerings were duly embittered by a demoralized race of English

traders, who perpetually applied for cruisers, complaining that

the troops interfered with their trade. Even in the seventeenth

century the Portuguese had asserted their rights to the Reino do

Congo, extending between the great stream of that name and the

Ambriz, also called the Loge and Doce River. In the older maps--

for instance, Lopes de Lima--the Loge is an independent stream

placed north of the Ambriz River; in fact, it represents the Rue

or Lue River of Kinsembo, which is unknown to our charts. Within

the Doce and the Cuanza lies the Reino de Angola, of which, they

say, the Congo was a dependency, and south of the Cuanza begins

the Reino de Benguela. The Government-General of Loanda thus

contained four provinces-Congo (now reduced to Ambriz), Angola,

Benguela, and Mossamedes. The English government has now agreed

to recognize the left or southern bank of the Ambriz as the

northern frontier of Angola and of Portuguese rule.

Passing the river mouth, we were alongside of independent lands,

and new to us. Boobies (Pelecanus sula), gulls, petrels, and men-

of-war birds (P. aquila), flew about the ship; according to the

experts, they were bound for fetid marshes which outlie the Loge

River. Before nightfall we were off the Lue or Rue River of

Kinsembo, which disputes with Landána (not "Landano"[FN#4]) the

palm of bad landing. At this season boats are

052--- sometimes kept waiting fourteen days, and the "barreiras"

(cliffs) are everywhere at unbounded war with the waters. I

determined to land and to inspect the "remarkable lofty granite

pillar," which was dimly visible from our deck; but we rowed in

vain along the tall and rusty sea-walls. No whaler could attack

the huge rollers that raised their monstrous backs, plunged over

with a furious roar, and bespread the beach with a swirl of foam.

At last, seeing a fine surf-boat, artistically raised at stern

and bow, and manned by Cabindas, the Kruboys of the coast, made

fast to a ship belonging to Messrs. Tobin of Liverpool, we

boarded it, and obtained a passage.

The negroes showed their usual art. Paddling westward they

rounded the high red and white South Point, where a projecting

reef broke the rollers. We waited for some twenty minutes for a

lull; at the auspicious moment every throat was strained by a

screaming shout, and the black backs bent doughtily to their

work. We were raised like infants in the nurse's arms; the good

craft was flung forward with the seething mass, and as she

touched shore we sprang out, whilst our conveyance was beached by

a crowd of stragglers. The dreaded bar is as usual double: in the

heaviest weather boats make for a solitary palm-tree at the

bottom of the sandy bay. Some of the dug-outs are in pairs like

the Brazilian Ajoujo; the sides are lashed together or fastened

by thwarts, and both are made to bend a little too much inwards.

It was dark when we climbed up the stiff Jacob's ladder along the

landward side of the white Kinsembo bluff. There are three ramps:

the outermost is fit only for unshod feet; the central is better

for those who can squeeze through the rocky crevices, and the

furthest is tolerably easy; but it can be reached only by

canoeing across the stream. Mr. Hunter of Messrs. Tobin's house

received us in the usual factory of the South Coast, a ground-

floor of wicker-work, windowless, and thatched after native

fashion. The chief agent, who shall be nameless, was drunk arid

disorderly: it is astonishing that men of business can trust

their money to such irresponsible beings; he had come out to

Blackland a teetotaller, and presently his condition became a

living lecture upon geographical morality.

The night gave us a fine study of the Kinsembo mosquito, a large

brown dipter, celebrated even upon this coast. A barrel of water

will act as nursery; at times the plagues are said to extinguish

a lantern, and to lie an inch deep at the bottom. I would back

them against a man's life after two nights of full exposure: the

Brazilian "Marimbondo" is not worse. At 7 A.M. on the next day we

descended the easiest of the ramps, which are common upon this

coast, and were paddled over the Kinsembo River. Eleven miles

off, it issues from masses of high ground, and at this season it

spreads out like the Ambriz in broad stagnant sheets, bordered

with reeds and grass supplying fish and crabs, wild ducks and

mosquitoes. Presently, when the Cacimbo ends in stormy rains and

horrid rollers, its increased volume and impetus will burst the

sand-strip which confines it, and the washed-away material will

recruit the terrible bar.

Leaving the ferry, wre mounted the "tipoias," which Englishmen

call "hammocks" after the Caribs of Jamaica, and I found a

strange contrast between the men of Kinsembo and of São Paulo.

The former are admirable bearers, like their brethren of

Ambrizette, famed as the cream of the coast: four of them carried

us at the rate of at least six miles an hour; apparently they

cannot go slowly, and they are untireable as black ants. Like the

Bahian cadeira-men, they use shoulder-pads, and forked sticks to

act as levers when shifting; the bamboo-pole has ivory pegs, to

prevent the hammock-clews slipping, and the sensation is somewhat

that of being tossed in a blanket.

Quitting the creeper-bound sand, we crossed a black and fetid

mire, and struck inland to a higher and drier level. The

vegetation was that of the Calumbo road, but not so utterly

sunburnt: there were dwarf fields of Manioc and Thur (Cajanus

indicus), and the large wild cotton shrubs showed balls of

shortish fibre. As we passed a euphorbia-hedged settlement,

Kizúlí yá Mú, "Seabeach Village," a troop of women and girls,

noisy as those of Ugogo, charged us at full gallop: a few silver

bits caused prodigious excitement in the liberal display of

charms agitated by hard exercise. The men were far less

intrusive, they are said not to be jealous of European rivals,

but madly so amongst themselves: even on suspicion of injury, the

husband may kill his wife and her lover.

At Kilwanika, the next hamlet, there was a "king;" and it would

not have been decent to pass the palace unvisited. Outside the

huts stood a bamboo-girt "compound," which we visited whilst H.M.

was making his toilette, and where, contrary to Congo usage, the

women entered with us. Twenty-two boys aged nine or ten showed,

by faces whitened with ashes, that they had undergone

circumcision, a ceremony which lasts three months: we shall find

these Jinkimba in a far wilder state up the Congo. The rival

house is the Casa das Tinta, where nubile girls are decorated by

the Nganga, or medicine-man, with a greasy crimson-purple pigment

and, preparatory to entering the holy state of matrimony, receive

an exhaustive lecture upon its physical phases. Father Merolla

tells us that the Congoese girls are locked up in pairs for two

or three months out of the sight of man, bathing several times a

day, and applying "taculla," the moistened dust of a red wood;

without this "casket of water" or "of fire," as they call it,

barrenness would be their lot. After betrothal the bride was

painted red by the "man-witch" for one month, to declare her

engagement, and the mask was washed off before nuptials. Hence

the "Paint House" was a very abomination to the good Fathers.

Amongst the Timni tribe, near Sierra Leone, the Semo, or

initiation for girls, begins with a great dance, called Colungee

(Kolangí), and the bride is "instructed formally in such

circumstances as most immediately concern women."

After halting for half an hour, ringed by a fence of blacks, we

were summoned to the presence, where we found a small boy backed

by a semi-circle of elders, and adorned with an old livery coat,

made for a full-grown "Jeames." With immense dignity, and without

deigning to look at us, he extended a small black paw like a

Chimpanzee's, and received in return a promise of rum--the sole

cause of our detention. And, as we departed through the euphorbia

avenue, we were followed by the fastest trotters, the Flora

Temples and the Ethan Allens, of the village.

Beyond Kilwanika the land became rougher and drier, whilst the

swamps between the ground-waves were deeper and stickier, the

higher ridges bearing natural Stonehenges, of African, not

English, proportions At last we dismounted, ascended a rise, the

most northerly of these "Aravat Hills," and stood at the base of

the "Lumba" The Pillar of Kmsembo is composed of two huge blocks,

not basaltic, but of coarse-grained reddish granite the base

measures twenty and the shaft forty feet high. With a little

trimming it might be converted into a superior Pompey's Pillar:

we shall see many of these monoliths in different parts of the

Congo country.

The heat of the day was passed in the shade of the Lumba,

enjoying the sea-breeze and the novel view. It was debated

whether we should return viâ Masera, a well-known slaving

village, whose barracoons were still standing. But the bearers

dissuaded us, declaring that they might be seized as "dash,"

unless the white men paid heavy "comey" like those who shipped

black cargoes: they cannot shake off this old practice of

claiming transit money. So we returned without a halt, covering

some twelve of the roughest miles in two hours and a quarter.

The morning of the 26th showed an ugly sight from the tall

Kinsembo cliff. As far as the eye could reach long green-black

lines, fronted and feathered with frosted foam, hurried up to the

war with loud merciless roars, and dashed themselves in white

destruction against the reefs and rock-walls. We did not escape

till the next day.

Kinsembo does not appear upon the old maps, and our earliest

hydrographic charts place it six miles wrong.[FN#5] The station

was created in 1857-61 by the mistaken policy of Loanda, which

determined to increase the customs three per cent, and talked of

exacting duties at Ambriz, not according to invoice prices, but

upon the value which imported goods represented amongst the

natives. It was at once spread abroad that the object was to

drive the wax and ivory trade to São Paulo, and to leave Ambriz

open to slavers. The irrepressible Briton transferred himself to

Kinsembo, and agreed to pay the king £9 in kind, after "country

fashion," for every ship. In 1857 the building of the new

factories was opposed by the Portuguese, and was supported by

English naval officers, till the two governments came to an

arrangement. In February, 1860, the Kinsembo people seized an

English factory, and foully murdered a Congo prince and

Portuguese subject, D. Nicoláo de Agua Rosada, employed in the

Treasury Department, Ambriz. Thereupon the Governor-General sent

up two vessels, with thirty guns and troops; crossed the Loge

River, now a casus belli; and, on March 3rd, burned down the

inland town of Kinsembo. On the return march the column debouched

upon the foreign factories. About one mile in front of the point,

Captain Brerit, U.S. Navy, and Commander A. G. Fitzroy, R.N., had

drawn up 120 of their men by way of guard. Leave was asked by the

Portuguese to refresh their troops, and to house six or seven

wounded men. The foreign agents, headed by a disreputable M--M--,

now dead, protested, and, after receiving this unsoldierlike

refusal, the Portuguese, harassed by the enemy, continued their

return march to Ambriz. The natives of this country have an

insane hate for their former conquerors, and can hardly explain

why: probably the cruelties of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries, not peculiar to the Lusitanians, have rankled in the

national memory. A stray Portuguese would infallibly be put to

death, and it will, I fear, be long before M. Valdez sees

"spontaneous declarations of vassalage on the part of the King of

Molembo (Malemba) and others."

In 1860 the trade of Kinsembo amounted to some £50,000, divided

amongst four houses, two English, one American, and one Rotterdam

(Pencoff and Kerdyk). The Cassange war greatly benefited the new

station by diverting coffee and other produce of the interior

from Loanda. There are apochryphal tales of giant tusks brought

from a five months' journey, say 500 miles, inland. I was shown

two species of copal (gum anime) of which the best is said to

come from the Mosul country up the Ambriz River: one bore the

goose-skin of Zanzibar, and I was assured that it does not

viscidize in the potash-wash. The other was smooth as if it had

freshly fallen from the tree. It was impossible to obtain any

information; no one had been up country to see the diggings, and

yet all declared that the interior was open; that it would be

easy to strike the Coango (Quango) before it joins the Congo

River, and that 150 miles, which we may perhaps reduce by a

third, would lodge the traveller in the unknown lands of "Hnga."

Bidding kindly adieu to Mr. Hunter and wishing him speedy

deliverance from his dreadful companion, we resumed our travel

over the now tranquil main. Always to starboard remained the

narrow sea-wall, a length without breadth which we had seen after

the lowlands of Cape Lopez, coloured rosy, rusty-red, or white,

and sometimes backed by a second sierra of low blue rises, which

suggests the sanatorium. Forty miles showed us the tall trees of

Point Palmas on the northern side of the Conza River; on the

south of the gap-like mouth lies the Ambrizette settlement, with

large factories, Portuguese and American, gleaming against the

dark verdure, and with Conza Hill for a background. The Cabeça de

Cobra, or "Margate Head," led to Makula, alias Mangal, or Mangue

Grande, lately a clump of trees and a point; now the site of

English, American, and Dutch factories. Here the hydrographic

charts of 1827 and 1863 greatly vary, and one has countermarched

the coast-line some 75 miles: Beginning with the Congo River, it

lays down Mangue Pegueno (where Grande should be), Cobra, and

Mangue Grande (for Pequeno) close to Ambrizette. Then hard ahead

rose Cape Engano, whose "deceit" is a rufous tint, which causes

many to mistake it for Cape or Point Padrão. To-morrow, as the

dark-green waters tell us, we shall be in the Congo River.

Chapter V.

Into the Congo River.--the Factories.--trip to Shark's Point.--

the Padrão and Pinda.

The best preparation for a first glance at the Congo River is to

do as all do, to study the quaint description which old Purchas

borrowed from the "Chronica da Companhia de Jesus em Portugal."

"The Zaire is of such force that no ship can get in against the

current but near to the shore; yea, it prevails against the

ocean's saltness three-score, and as some say, four-score miles

within the sea, before his proud waves yield their full homage,

and receive that salt temper in token of subjection. Such is the

haughty spirit of that stream, overrunning the low countries as

it passeth, and swollen with conceit of daily conquests and daily

supplies, which, in armies of showers, are, by the clouds, sent

to his succour, runnes now in a furious rage, thinking even to

swallow the ocean, which before he never saw, with his mouth wide

gaping eight-and-twenty miles, as Lopez[FN#6] affirmeth, in the

opening; but meeting with a more giant-like enemie which lies

lurking under the cliffes to receive his assault, is presently

swallowed in that wider womb, yet so as, always being conquered,

he never gives over, but in an eternall quarrel, with deeper and

indented frownes in his angry face, foaming with disclaine, and

filling the aire with noise (with fresh helpe), supplies those

forces which the salt sea hath consumed."

I was disappointed after the Gambia and Gaboon rivers in the

approach to the Congo. About eight miles south of the mouth the

green sea changed to a clear brown which will be red during the

flood. Some three degrees (F. 79° to 82°) cooler than the salt

tide, the lighter water, which was fresh as rain, feathered out

like a fan; a rippling noise was faintly audible, and the clear

lines of white foam had not time to melt into the coloured

efflux. The flow was diverted into a regular curve northwards by

the South Atlantic current; voyagers from Ascension Island to the

north-west therefore feel the full throb of the great riverine

pulse, and it has been recognized, they say, at a distance of 300

miles. Lopez, Merolla, and Dapper[FN#7] agree that the Congo

freshens the water at thirty miles from the mouth, and that it

can be distinguished thirty leagues off. The Amazonas tinges the

sea along the Guiana coast 200 miles, and the effect of the

Ganges extends to about twenty leagues. At this season, of

course, we saw none of the floating islands which during the

rains sail out sixty to seventy leagues from land. "Tuckey's

Expedition" informs us, that the Hon. Captain Irby, H.M.S.

"Amelia," when anchored twelve miles from the South Point, in

fifteen fathoms, "observed on the ocean large floating islands

covered with trees and bushes, which had been torn from the banks

by the violent current." The Journal of Captain Scobell, H.M.S.

"Thais," remarks: "In crossing this stream I met several floating

islands or broken masses from the banks of that noble river." We

shall find them higher up the bed, only forming as the inundation

begins; I doubt, however, that at any time they equal the meadows

which stud the mouth of the Rio Formoso (Benin River).

Historic Point Padrao, the "Mouta Seca," or Dry Bush, of the

modern Portuguese, showed no signs of hospitality. The fierce

rollers of the spumous sea broke and recoiled, foaming upon the

sandy beach, which they veiled with a haze of water-dust, almost

concealing the smoke that curled from the mangrove-hedged "King

Antonio's Town." Then, steaming to the north-east, we ran five

miles to Turtle Cove, formerly Turtle Corner, a shallow bay,

whose nearest point is "Twitty Twa Bush," the baptismal effort of

some English trader. And now appeared the full gape of the Congo

mouth, yawning seven sea-miles wide; the further shore trending

to the north-west in a low blue line, where Moanda and Vista,

small "shipping-ports" for slaves, were hardly visible in the

hazy air. As we passed the projecting tooth of Shark Point, a

sandspit garnished with mangroves and dotted with palmyras, the

land-squali flocked from their dirty-brown thatches to the beach,

where flew the symbolic red flag. Unlike most other settlements,

which are so buried in almost impenetrable bush that the

traveller may pass by within a few yards without other sign but

the human voice, this den of thieves and wreckers, justly named

in more ways than one, flaunts itself in the face of day.

The Congo disclaims a bore, but it has a very distinct bar, the

angle pointing up stream, and the legs beginning about Bananal

Bank (N.) and Alligator River (S.). Here the great depth above

and below (145 and 112 fathoms) shallows to 6-9. Despite the

five-knot current we were "courteously received into the embraces

of the river;" H.M. Steamship "Griffon" wanted no "commanding

sea-breeze," she found none of the difficulties which kept poor

Tuckey's "brute of a transport" drifting and driving for nearly a

week before he could anchor off Fuma or Sherwood's Creek, the

"Medusa" of modern charts (?) and which made Shark Point, with

its three-mile current, a "more redoubtable promontory than that

of Good Hope was to early navigators." We stood boldly E.N.E.

towards the high blue clump known as Bulambemba, and, with the

dirty yellow breakers of Mwáná Mazia Bank far to port, we turned

north to French Point, and anchored in a safe bottom of seven

fathoms.

Here we at once saw the origin of the popular opinion that the

Congo has no delta. On both sides, the old river valley, 32 miles

broad, is marked out by grassy hills rolling about 200 feet high,

trending from E.N.E. to W.S.W., and forming on the right bank an

acute angle with the Ghats. But, whilst the northern line

approaches within five or six miles, the southern bank, which

diverges about the place where "King Plonly's town" appears in

charts, sweeps away some seventeen miles down coast, and leaves a

wide tract of mangrove swamps. These, according to the Portuguese

traders, who have their own plans of the river, extend some

seventy miles south to Ambrizette: slavers keep all such details

very close, and doubtless for good reasons--"short-cuts" greatly

facilitate shipping negroes. The lesser Congo delta is bounded

north by the Banana or Malela stream, whose lower fork is

"Pirates' Creek;" and south by the mangrove-clad drains, which

subtend the main line: the base measures 12-15 miles. At the

highest station, Boma, I shall have something to say about the

greater delta. The left bank of the embouchure projects further

seaward, making it look "under hung," representing in charts a

lower jaw, and the projection of Shark Point the teeth, en

profile.

My first care was to collect news at the factories. French Point

is a long low spit, which supports two establishments where the

chart (September 1859) gives "Emigration Depot." It is the old

Banana Point, and probably the older Palmeirinha Point of James

Barbot, who places it in the territory of Goy (Ngoy), now

Cabinda. This part has greatly changed since 1859; either the

Banana River requires removing two miles to the north, or French

Point must be placed an equal distance south. The principal

establishment, M. Régis' of Marseilles, is built in his best

style; a two-storied and brilliantly "chunam'd" house, containing

a shop and store on the ground-floor, defended by a three-

pounder. Behind it a square "compound," with high walls, guards

the offices and the other requisites of a bar racoon. It is

fronted by a little village where "Laptots," Senegal Moslems, and

men-at-arms live with their families and slaves. In the rear

stands the far more modest and conscientious establishment of

Messrs. Pencoff and Kerdyk: their plank bungalow is full of work,

whilst the other lies idle; so virtue here is not, as in books,

its own reward.

M. Victor Parrot, the young Swiss agent of M. Régis, hospitably

asked us to take up our quarters with him, and promised to start

us up stream without delay; his employer fixes the tariff of

every article, and no discretion is left to the subordinates. We

called upon M. Elkman of the Dutch factory. His is a well-known

name on the river, and, though familiar with the people, he has

more than once run some personal risk by assisting our cruizers

to make captures. He advised us to lose no time in setting out

before the impending rains: I wanted, however, a slight

preparation for travel, and determined to see something of the

adjoining villages, especially the site of the historic Padrão.

Whilst crossing the stream, we easily understood how the river

was supposed to be in a perpetual state of inundation. The great

breadth and the shallows near either jaw prevent the rain-floods

being perceptible unless instruments are used, and "hydrometry,"

still in an imperfect state, was little to be depended upon in

the days when European ideas concerning the Congo River were

formed. Twenty miles up stream the high-water mark becomes

strongly marked, and further on, as will be seen, it shows even

better.

If Barbot's map have any claim to correctness, the southern shore

has changed greatly since A.D. 1700. A straight line from Cape

Padrão to Chapel Point, now Shark Point, was more than double the

breadth of the embouchure. It is vain to seek for the "Island of

Calabes" mentioned by Andrew Battel, who was "sent to a place

called Zaire on the River Congo, to trade for elephants' teeth,

wheat, and palm oil." It may be a mistake for Cavallos, noticed

in the next chapter; but the "town on it" must have been small,

and has left, they say, no traces. After a scramble through the

surf, we were received at Shark Point, where, at this season, the

current is nearer five than three knots, by Mr. Tom Peter,

Mafuka, or chief trader, amongst these "Musurungus." He bore his

highly respectable name upon the frontal band of his "berretta"

alias "corôa," an open-worked affair, very like the old-fashioned

jelly-bag night cap. This head-gear of office made of pine-apple

fibre-- Tuckey says grass--costs ten shillings; it is worn by the

kinglets, who now distribute it to all the lieges whose fortunes

exceed some fifty dollars.

Most of the Squaline villagers appeared to be women, the men

being engaged in making money elsewhere. Besides illicit trade,

which has now become very dangerous, a little is done in the

licit line: grotesquely carved sticks, calabashes rudely

ornamented with ships and human figures, the neat bead-work

grass-strings used by the women to depress the bosom, and

cashimbos or pipes mostly made about Boma. All were re-baptized

in 1853, but they show no sign of Christianity save crosses, and

they are the only prostitutes on the river.

Following Tom Peter, and followed by a noisy tail, we walked to

the west end of Shark Point, to see if aught remained of the

Padrão, the first memorial column, planted in 1485 by the

explorer Diogo Cam, knight of the king's household, Dom João II.

"O principe perfeito," who, says De Barros ("Asia," Decad. I.

lib. iii. chap. 3), "to immortalize the memory of his captains,"

directed them to plant these pillars in all remarkable places.

The Padrões, which before the reign of D. João were only wooden

crosses, assumed the shape of "columns, twice the height of a man

(estado), with the scutcheon bearing the royal arms. At the sides

they were to be inscribed in Latin and Portuguese (to which James

Barbot adds Arabic), with the name of the monarch who sent the

expedition, the date of discovery, and the captain who made it;

on the summit was to be raised a stone cross cramped in with

lead." According to others, the inscription mentioned only the

date, the king, and the captain. The Padrão of the Congo was

especially called from the "Lord of Guinea's favourite saint, de

São Jorge"--sit faustum! As Carli shows, the patron of Congo and

Angola was Santiago, who was seen bodily assisting at a battle in

which Dom Affonso, son of Giovi (Emmanuel), first Christian king

of Congo, prevailed against a mighty host of idolaters headed by

his pagan brother "Panso Aquitimo." In 1786 Sir Home Popham found

a marble cross on a rock near Angra dos Ilheos or Pequena (south

latitude 26° 37'), with the arms of Portugal almost effaced. Till

lately the jasper pillar at Cabo Negro bore the national arms.

Doubtless much latitude was allowed in the make and material of

these padrões; that which I saw near Cananea in the Brazil is of

saccharine marble, four palms high by two broad; it bears a

scutcheon charged with a cross and surmounted by another.

There is some doubt concerning the date of this mission. De

Barros (I. iii. 3) says A.D. 1484. Lopes de Limn (IV. i. 5) gives

the reason why A.D. 1485 is generally adopted, and he believes

that the cruise of the previous year did not lead to the Congo

River. The explorer, proceeding to inspect the coast south of

Cape St. Catherine (south latitude 2° 30'), which he had

discovered in 1473, set out from São Jorge da Mina, now Elmina.

He was accompanied by Martin von Behaim of Nürnberg (nat. circ.

A.D. 1436, ob. A.D. 1506), a pupil of the mathematician John

Müller (Regiomontanus); and for whom the discovery of the New

World has been claimed.

After doubling his last year's terminus, Diogo Cam chanced upon a

vast embouchure, and, surprised by the beauty of the scenery and

the volume of the stream, he erected his stone Padrão, the first

of its kind. Finding the people unintelligible to the

interpreters, he sent four of his men with a present of hawk's

bells (cascaveis) and blue glass beads to the nearest king, and,

as they did not soon return, he sailed back to Portugal with an

equal number of natives as hostages, promising to return after

fifteen moons. One of them, Caçuta (Zacuten of Barbot), proved to

be a "fidalgo" of Sonho, and, though the procedure was contrary

to orders, it found favour with the "Perfect Prince." From these

men the Portuguese learned that the land belonged to a great

monarch named the Mwani-Congo or Lord of Congo, and thus they

gave the river a name unknown to the riverine peoples.

Diogo Cam, on his second visit, sent presents to the ruler with

the hostages, who had learned as much Portuguese and Christianity

as the time allowed; recovered his own men, and passed on to

Angola, Benguela and Cabo Negro, adding to his discoveries 200

leagues of coast. When homeward bound, he met the Mwani-Sonho,

and visited the Mwani-Congo, who lived at Ambasse Congo (São

Salvador), distant 50 leagues (?). The ruler of the "great and

wonderful River Zaire," touched by his words, sent with him

sundry youths, and the fidalgo Caçuta, who was baptized into Dom

Joao, to receive instruction, and to offer a present of ivory and

of palm cloth which was remarkably strong and bright. A request

for a supply of mechanics and missionaries brought out the first

mission of Dominicans. They sailed in December, 1490, under

Gonçalo de Sousa; they were followed by others, and in the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the country was fairly over-

run by the Propaganda. A future page will enter into more

details, and show the results of their labours.

The original Padrão was destroyed by the Dutch in 1645, an act of

barbarism which is justly called "Vandalica façanha." Father

Merolla says (1682), "The Hollanders, out of envy, broke the fine

marble cross to pieces; nevertheless, so much remained of it,

when I was there, as to discover plainly the Portuguese arms on

the ruins of the basis, with an inscription under them in Gothic

characters, though not easy to be read." In 1859 a new one was

placed in Turtle Cove, a few yards south-west of Shark Point; but

the record was swept away by an unusually high tide, and no

further attempt has been made.

We were then led down a sandy narrow line in the bush, striking

south-east, and, after a few yards, we stood before two pieces of

marble in a sandy hollow. The tropical climate, more adverse than

that of London, had bleached and marked them till they looked

like pitted chalk: the larger stump, about two feet high, was

bandaged, as if after amputation, with cloths of many colours,

and the other fragment lay at its feet. Tom Peter, in a fearful

lingua-Franca, Negro-Anglo-Portuguese, told us that his people

still venerated the place as part of a religious building; it is

probably the remnant thus alluded to by Lopes de Lima (iii. 1-6):

"Behind this point (Padrão) is another monument of the piety of

our monarchs, and of the holy objects which guided them to the

conquest of Guinea, a Capuchin convent intended to convert the

negroes of Sonho; it has long been deserted, and is still so.

Even in A.D. 1814, D. Garcia V., the king of Congo, complained in

a letter to our sovereign of the want of missionaries." Possibly

the ruined convent is the church which we shall presently visit.

Striking eastward, we soon came to a pool in the bush

sufficiently curious and out of place to make the natives hold it

"Fetish;" they declare that it is full of fish, but it kills all

men who enter it--"all men" would not include white men. Possibly

it is an old piscina; according to the Abbé Proyart, the

missionaries taught the art of pisciculture near the village of

Kilonga, where they formed their first establishment. The place

is marked "Salt-pond" in Barbot, who tells us that the condiment

was made there and carried inland.

A short walk to a tall tree backing the village showed us,

amongst twenty-five European graves, five tombs or cenotaphs of

English naval officers, amongst whom two fell victims to

mangrove-oysters, and the rest to the deadly "calenture" of the

lower Congo. We entered the foul mass of huts,

"Domus non ullo robore fulta

Sed sterili junco cannâque intecta palustri."

It was too early for the daily debauch of palm wine, and the

interiors reeked with the odours of nocturnal palm oil. The older

travellers were certainly not blasés; they seemed to find

pleasure and beauty wherever they looked: Ca da Mosto (1455),

visiting the Senegal, detected in this graveolent substance, fit

only for wheel-axles, a threefold property, that of smelling like

violets, of tasting like oil of olives, and tinging victuals like

saffron, with a colour still finer. Even Mungo Park preferred the

rancid tallow-like shea butter to the best product of the cow. We

chatted with the Shark Point wreckers, and found that they

thought like Arthegal,

"For equal right in equal things doth stand."

Moreover, here, as in the Shetlands of the early nineteenth

century, when the keel touches bottom the seaman loses his

rights, and she belongs to the shore.

Tom Peter offered to show us other relics of the past if we would

give him two days. A little party was soon made up, Mr. J. C.

Bigley, the master, and Mr. Richards, the excellent gunner of the

"Griffon," were my companions. We set out in a south-by-easterly

direction to the bottom of Sonho, or Diogo's Bay, which Barbot

calls "Bay of Pampus Rock." Thence we entered Alligator River, a

broad lagoon, the Raphael Creek of Maxwell's map, not named in

the hydrographic chart of 1859. Leading south with many a bend,

it is black water and thick, fetid mud, garnished with scrubby

mangrove, where Kru-boys come to cut fuel and catch fever; here

the dew seemed to fall in cold drops. After nine miles we reached

a shallow fork, one tine of which, according to our informants,

comes from the Congo Grande, or São Salvador, distant a week's

march. Leaving the whaler in charge of a Kru-man, we landed, and

walked about half a mile over loose sand bound by pine-apple

root, to the Banza Sonho, or, as we call it, King Antonio's Town-

-not to be mistaken for that placed in the charts behind Point

Padron. Our object being unknown, there was fearful excitement in

the thatched huts scattered under the palm grove, till Tom Peter

introduced us, and cleared for us a decent hut. The buildings, if

they can be so called, are poor and ragged, copies of those which

we shall see upon the uplands. Presently we were visited by the

king named after that saint "of whom the Evil One was parlous

afraid." This descendant of the "Counts of Sonho," in his dirty

night-cap and long coat of stained red cloth, was a curious

contrast to the former splendour of the "count's habit," with cap

of stitched silk which could be worn only by him and his nobles,

fine linen shirt, flowered silk cloak, and yellow stockings of

the same material. When King Affonso III. gave audience to the

missioners (A.D. 1646), the negro grandee "had on a vest of cloth

set with precious stones, and in his hat a crown of diamonds,

besides other stones of great value. He sat on a chair under a

canopy of rich crimson velvet, with gilt nails, after the manner

of Europe; and under his feet was a great carpet, with two stools

of the same colour, and silk laced with gold." After the usual

palaver we gave the black earl a cloth and bottle of rum for

leave to pass on, but no one would accompany us that evening, all

pretending that they wanted time to fit up the hammocks. At night

a body of armed bushmen marched down to inspect us.

The demands for porterage were so exorbitant next morning, that

we set out on foot under the guidance of Tom Peter. We passed

southwards over large tracts of bush and gramineous plants, with

patches of small plantations, manioc and thur; and settlements

girt by calabash-trees, cocoas, palmyra and oil palms. The people

poured out, threatened impotent vengeance on those who brought

the white men to "make their country," that is, to seize and

settle in it. The only animals were fowls and pigs; small strong

cages acting as hogstyes showed that leopards were dangerous; in

1816 Lieutenant Hawkey found signs of these animals, together

with elephant, wild boar, and antelope. Now there is no sport

below the cataracts, and possibly very little, except in the

water, above them. Thence we debouched upon rolling land, loose

and sandy waves, sometimes divided by swamps; it is the lower end

of the high yellow band seen from the south of the river, the

true coast of alluvial soil, scattered here and there with quartz

and pebbles. Then the bush opened out, and showed to the north-

east stretches of grassy land, where the wild fig-tree drooped

its branches, laden with thick fleshy leafage, to the ground;

these are the black dots which are seen from afar studding the

tawny desert-like surface. Flowers were abundant despite the

lateness of the season, and the sterility of the soil was

evidenced by cactus and euphorbia.

After a walk of six miles Tom Peter pompously announced that we

had reached the church. We saw only an oblong furrow and a little

worm-eaten wood near three or four of the most miserable

"magalia;" but a bell, hung to a dwarf gallows, was dated 1700,

and inscribed, "Si Deus cum nobis Qis (sic) contra nos?" The

aspect of this article did not fail to excite Mr. Richards'

concupiscence: I looked into the empty huts, and in the largest

found a lot of old church gear, the Virgin (our Lady of Pinda),

saints, and crucifixes, a tank-like affair of iron that acted as

font, and tattered bundles of old music-scores in black and red

ink. In Captain Tuckey's day some of the Sonho men could read the

Latin Litany; there was a priest ordained by the Capuchins of

Loanda, a bare-footed (and bare-faced) black apostle, with a wife

and five handmaids; and a multitude of converts loaded with

crucifixes and satchels of relics. Our home march was enlivened

by glimpses of the magnificent river seen through the perennial

tropical foliage, and it did not suggest trite reflections upon

the meanness of man's highest aspirations in presence of eternal

Nature.

We had been treading upon no vulgar spot. We are now in the

earldom of Sonho, bounded north by the Congo River and south by

the Ambriz, westward by the Atlantic, and eastward by the "Duchy

of Bamba." It was one of the great divisions of the Congo

kingdom, and "absolute, except only its being tributary to the

Lord Paramount." The titles of Portugal were adopted by the

Congoese, according to Father Cavazzi, after A.D. 1571, when the

king constituted himself a vassal of the Portuguese crown. Here

was the Pinda whose port and fort played an important part in

local history. "Built by the Sonhese army at the mouth of the

River Zaire," it commanded both the stream and sea: it was

plundered in 1600 by four French pirates. According to Carli

(1666-67) "the Count of Sonho, the fifth dignitary of the empire,

resided in the town of Sonho, a league from the River Zaire."

Pinda was for a time the head-quarters of the Portuguese Mission,

subject only to that of São Salvador; it consisted of an

apartment two stories high, which caused trouble, being contrary

to country custom.

At the French factory I found the employés well "up" in the

travels of the unfortunate adventurer Douville ("Voyage au Congo

et dans l'Intérieur de l'Afrique Equinoxiale fait dans les années

1828, 1829, et 1830. Par J. B. Douville, Secrétaire de la Société

de Géographic de Paris pour l'année 1832, etmembre de plusieurs

Sociétés savantes françoises et étrangères. Ouvrage auquel la

Société de Géographic a décerné le prix dans sa séance du 30

mars, 1832. 3 tomes. 8vo. Paris, 1832"). Dr. Gardner, in his

Brazilian travels, gives an account of Douville's murder, the

consequence of receiving too high fees for medical attendance on

the banks of the São Francisco. So life like are his descriptions

of the country and its scenery, that no one in the factory would

believe him to have been an impostor, and the Frenchmen evidently

held my objections to be "founded on nationality." The besetting

sins of the three volumes are inordinate vanity and

inconséquence, but these should not obscure our vision as to

their solid and remarkable merits. Compare the picturesque

account of São Paulo with those of the latest English travellers,

and the anthropology of the people, their religion, their

ceremonies, their magic, their dress and costume, their trade,

their manufactures, their maladies (including earth-eating),

their cannibalism, the condition of their women, and the

necessity of civilizing them by education before converting them,

all subjects of the highest interest, with that of Mungo Park,

for instance, arid we have a fair measure of the French

traveller's value. The native words inserted into the text are

for the most part given with unusual correctness, and the carping

criticism which would correct them sadly requires correction

itself. "Thus the word which he writes mouloundu in his text, and

mulundu in his vocabulary, is not singular, as he supposes, but

the plural of loondu, a mountain" (p. 200 of the" Review").

Firstly, Douville has warned the reader that the former is the

spelling best adapted to French, the latter to Portuguese.

Secondly, "mulundu" in Angolan is singular, the plural being

"milundu"--a handful, the Persians say, is a specimen of the

heap. The excess of female births in low and unhealthy places (1,

309) and as the normal result of polygamy (3, 243), is a highly

interesting subject still awaiting investigation. I do not mean

that Douville was the first to observe this phenomenon, which

forced itself upon the notice of physiologists in ancient times.

Foster ("Cook's Third Voyage") remarks that, wherever men and

animals have many females, the feminine births preponderate over

the masculine; a fact there explained by the "organic molecule"

of Buffon. Pigafetta, the circumnavigator, gives the King of

Tidor eighteen daughters to eight sons.

The French traveller does not pretend to be a mineralogist, but

he does his best to lay open the metallic riches of the country;

he gives careful observations of temperature, in water as well as

air, he divines the different proportions of oxygen in the

atmosphere, and he even applies himself to investigating the

comparative heat of the negro's blood, an inquiry still far from

being exhausted. The most remarkable part is certainly the

medical, and here the author was simply in advance of his age.

Instead of the lancet, the drastic cathartics, and the calomel

with which our naval surgeons slew their patients, he employed

emetics and tonics to an extent that would have charmed my late

friend, Dr. Dickson, the chromothermalist, and he preceded Dr.

Hutchinson in the use of quinine wine. Indeed, the peculiar

aptitude for medicine shown in these pages led to the traveller's

adopting the destructive art of healing as a profession, and

caused his unhappy end. The curious mixture of utter imposture

and of genius for observation which a traveller can detect in

Douville renders him worthy of a monograph.

Chapter VI.

Up the Congo River.--the Slave Depot, Porto Da Lenha.--arrival at

Boma.

M. Parrot was as good as his word. By August 31st, "L'Espérance,"

a fine schooner-rigged palhabote (launch) of thirty-five tons,

heavily sparred and carrying lots of "muslin," was ready to

receive my outfit. The party consisted of the commander, Mr.

Bigley, and five chosen "Griffons," including William Deane,

boatswain's mate, as good a man as his namesake in Blake's day,

and the estimable Friend, captain's cook and Figaro in general.

M. Pissot, an Arlésien, clerk to the factory, went up on business

with a crew of eight useless Cabindas under Frank, their pagan

"patron," who could only run us aground. Finally, there was a

guard of half-a-dozen "Laptots," equally good sailors and

soldiers. The French squadron in West Africa has the advantage

over ours of employing these men,

086--- who are clean, intelligent, and brave; whilst we are

reduced to the unprogressive Kru-man, who is, moreover, a model

coward, a poltroon on principle.

At 5 P.M. our huge canvas drove us rapidly over the shoals and

shallows of this imperfectly known sea: the Ethiopic Directory

justly grumbles, "It is a subject of regret that navigators who

have had occasion to enter the Congo, and to remain there some

time, have not furnished us with more information about the

tides." This will be a work of labour and endurance; detached

observations are of very little use. We at once remarked the

complication caused by the upper, surface, or freshwater current

of 3 to 4 knots an hour, meeting the under, or oceanic inflow.

There is a short cut up Pirate's Creek, but we avoided it for the

usual reason, fear of finding it very long. Passing a low point

to port, subtended north and south by the Bananal River and

Pirate's Creek, after some six knots we were abreast of

Bulambemba (the Boulem beembo of Tuckey's Vocabulary). It is

interpreted "Answer," hence our "Echo Point"(?); but others

render it, "Hold your tongue." The former is correct, and the

thick high screen of trees explains the native and English names.

Old writers call it Fathomless Point, which it is not now; a

bank, the south-eastern projection of the great Mwáná Mázia

shoal, has formed a few feet below the surface; but the term will

apply at the distance of a mile further south. This acute angle

shows a glorious clump, the "Tall Trees," white mangroves rising

a hundred feet, and red mangroves based upon pyramidal cages of

roots; and beyond it the immediate shore is covered with a dense

tropical vegetation, a tangle of bush, palms, and pandanus,

matted with creepers and undergrowth, and rhyzophoras of many

varieties delighting in brackish water. We passed on the right

the Ponta de Jacaré (Point of the Crocodile), fronting Point

Senegal on the other side. The natives call the former Ngándu

(li. Jigándu), and farcical tales are told about it: in the lower

settlements Europeans will not go abroad by night without a

lantern. During my trip I sighted only one startled crocodile

that floated log-like a mile off, and Captain Baak, of the Dutch

house, had not seen one during a whole year at Banana Point.

We anchored for the night off the south side of the Zungá chyá

Ngombe, in Portuguese Ilha do Boi (Bullock), the Rhinoceros

Island of our early charts. It emerges from the waters of the

right bank, a mere "ponton" plumed with dark mangroves and

streaked with spar-like white trunks. This is probably the

"Island of Horses," where the Portuguese, flying from the

victorious Hollanders, were lodged and fed by the courteous Count

of Sonho; perhaps it is Battel's "Isle Calabes." The place is

backed by the Monpanga or Mombang, the "Look-out Islands" of the

chart, which has greatly changed since the beginning of the

century; the dark mass of mangroves is now apparently part of the

northern shore. Almost due south of the Ilha do Boi is the Zungá

chyá Kampenzi, whence our word chimpanzee: in the hydrographic

chart it is miswritten Zoonga Campendi, and in Tuckey's map,

which contradicts his text, "Zoonga Casaquoisa." His "Zoonga

Kampenzey," also named "Halcyon Island," appears to be the

Draper's Island or the "Monkey Island" of Mr. Maxwell: the latter

in modern charts is more to the north-east, that is, above Porto

da Lenha, than the former. The Simiads have been killed out;

Captain Tuckey going up the river saw upwards of twenty which,

but for their tails, might have been mistaken for negroes.

Merolla says that wild men and women (gorillas?) have been

captured in Sonho, and he carefully distinguishes them from

baboons: one of them was presented to a friar of his order, who

"bestowed it on the Portuguese governor of Loanda." Chimpanzee

Island may be the Zariacacongo of Father Merolla, who makes

Cacongo (Great Congo) a large and independent kingdom" lying in

the middle between Congo and Loango." He describes Zariacacongo,

"none of the smallest, and situate in the midst of the River

Zaire." It abounded in all sorts of provisions, was well peopled,

consisted of a plain raised eight fathoms above water, and was

divided from the kingdom of Congo by a river, over which there

was a bridge.

After a pleasant breezy night upon the brown waters, on September

1st we hove anchor betimes and made for Scotchman's Head, a

conspicuous mangrove bluff forming a fine landmark on the left

bank. The charts have lately shifted it some two miles west of

its old position. Six or seven miles beyond it rise the blue

uplands of the "Earldom of Sonho." On our right, in mid-stream,

lay a "crocodile bank," a newly fixed grass islet, a few square

feet of green and gold, which the floods will presently cover or

carry away. To the left, above the easternmost "Mombang" and the

network of islands behind it, opens the gape of the Malela River,

a short cut to French Point, found useful when a dangerous tide-

rip is caused by the strong sea-breeze meeting the violent

current of the Thalweg. Above it lies a curious formation like

concentric rings of trees inclosing grass: it is visible only

from the north-east. Several slave factories now appear on either

shore, single-storied huts of wood and thatch, in holes cut out

of the densest bush, an impenetrable forest whose sloppy soil and

miry puddles seem never to dry. The tenements serve as videttes

and outposts, enabling cargoes to ship without the difficulties

of passing Palm Point, and thus to make a straight run down

stream. There are three on the north bank, viz. M. Rágis (aîné),

now deserted, Sr. Lima Viana, and Sr. Antonio Fernandez; and

three on the left side, Sr. Alessandro Ferreira, Sr. Guilherme,

and Sr. Fonseca. Those on the southern or left bank facilitate

overland transit to Mangue, Ambrizette, and other dépôts. At

present it is "tiempo seco" (dull time), and the gérants keep

their hands in by buying ground-nuts and palm oil. The slave

trade, however, makes 500, not 50, per cent., and the agents are

naturally fond of it, their mere salaries being only some 150

francs a month.

Landing at the factory of Sr. Fernandez, we were received by his

agent, Sr. Silva, in a little bungalow of bamboo and matting,

paved with tamped earth and old white ostreoid shells, a kind of

Mya, relished by the natives but not eaten by Europeans. To

these, doubtless, Mr. W. Winwood Reacle refers ("Savage Africa,"

chap, xxxvii.), "The traders say that in Congo there are great

heaps of oyster-shells, but no oysters. These shells the negroes

also burn for lime." I did not hear of any of these "ostreiras,"

which, if they exist, must reflect the Sambaquis of the opposite

Brazilian shore. The house was guarded by three wooden figures,

"clouterly carved," and powdered with ochre or red wood; two of

them, representing warriors in studded coatings of spike nails,

with a looking-glass fixed in the stomach, raised their hands as

if to stab each other. These figures are sometimes found large as

life: according to the agents, the spikes are driven in before

the wars begin, and every one promises the hoped-for death of an

enemy. Behind them the house was guarded by a sentinel with drawn

sword. The unfortunate tenant, who looked a martyr to ague, sat

"in palaver" with a petty island "king," and at times the tap of

a war-drum roused my experienced ear. The monarch, habited in a

shabby cloth coat, occupied a settee, with a "minister" on either

side; he was a fat senior of light complexion, with a vicious

expression upon features, which were not those of the

"tobacconist nigger," nor had he the effeminate aspect of the

Congoese.

I looked curiously at these specimens of the Musulungu or

Musurungu, a wilder race than that of Shark Point: the English,

of course, call them Missolonghi, because Lord Byron died there.

Here the people say "le" for "re," and "rua" for "lua,"

confounding both liquids, which may also be found in the Kibundo

tongue. In Loango, according to the Abbé Proyart, the national

organ does not admit the roughness of the r, which is changed to

l. Monteiro and Gamitto assert (xxii.) that the "Cazembes or

Lundas do not pronounce the letter r, in whose place they use l."

The "Ibos" of the lower Congo, dwelling on the southern shore

between the mouth and the Porto da Lenha, above which they are

harmless, these men have ever been dangerous to strangers, and

the effect of the slave-trade has been to make them more

formidable. Lieutenant Boteler (1835) was attacked by twenty-

eight canoes, carrying some 140 men, who came on boldly,

"ducking" at the flash, and who were driven off only by a volley

of musketry and a charge of grape. In 1860 a whaler and crew were

attacked by their war-canoes sallying out from behind Scotchman's

Head. These craft are of two kinds, one shaped like a horse-

trough, the other with a lean and snaky head. The "Wrangler" lost

two of her men near Zungá chyá Kampenzi, and the "Griffon"

escaped by firing an Armstrong conical shell. They have

frequently surprised and kept for ransom the white agents, whom

"o negocio" deterred from reprisals. M. Pissot, our companion,

was amarré by them for some weeks, and the most unpleasant part

of his captivity was the stunning concert of songs and

instruments kept up during the day to prevent his escaping by

night. The more sensible traders at Boma pay them black mail by

employing them as boats' crews, upon our Anglo-Indian principle

of the "Paggi" and the "Ramosi."

Merolla calls these men Musilongo or Sonhese. The word appears to

me opprobrious, as if each tribe termed itself Mushi-Congo (Congo

people), and its neighbours Musulungus: Barbot writes as a

Frenchman Moutsie, the Portuguese Muxi (Mushi). Mushi-Longo would

perhaps mean Loango-people; but my ear could not detect any

approach to "Loango" in "Musulungu." The first syllable, Mu, in

Fiote or Congoese, would be a contraction of Muntu (plural

Wántú). They inhabit the islands, own a part of the north bank,

and extend southwards to Ambriz: eastward they are bounded by the

Fiote or Congo-speaking peoples, to whom their tongue is

intelligible. They have no tattoo, but they pierce the nose

septum and extract the two central and upper incisors; the Muxi-

Congoes or Lower Congoese chip or file out a chevron in the near

sides of the same teeth-- an ornament possibly suggested by the

weight of the native pipe. The chipping and extracting seem to be

very arbitrary and liable to change: sometimes the upper, at

other times the lower teeth are operated upon. The fashionable

mutilation is frequently seen in Eastern Africa, and perhaps it

is nothing but a fashion. They are the "kallistoi" and "megistoi"

of the Congoese bodies, taller and darker, fiercer and braver

than their neighbours, nor will they cease to be river pirates

till the illicit trade dies.

After taking leave of Sr. Silva we resumed our way, the

thermometer (F.) showing at 1.45 P.M. 95° in the air when the sun

was obscured, and the mirage played the usual fantastic tricks.

The mangrove, which Tuckey's introduction prolongs to fifty miles

from the mouth, now disappears; in fact, it does not extend much

above Bullock Island, nineteen direct miles on the chart from

Shark Point and, as usual, it enables us to measure the extreme

limit where the salt-tide ascends. The palhabote went gallantly,

"The water round her bows

Dancing as round a drinking cup."

Small trembling waves poppled and frothed in mid-stream, where

the fresh water met wind and tide; and by the "boiling" of the

surface we saw that there was still a strong under-current

flowing against the upper layer. A little beyond the factory we

were shown on the northern bank Mariquita Nook, where the slaver

of that name, commanded by a Captain Bowen, had shipped some 520

men. She was captured by H.M. Steamship "Zebra," Commander

Hoskins, after being reported by a chief, whom her captain had

kicked, to a trader at the river mouth, and by him to the

cruizer. Slavers used to show their sense by starting on Sundays,

when the squadron kept a careless look-out; but their inevitable

danger was the general "drunk" of the officers and crew to

celebrate the event, and this libation often caused delays which

led to seizure. It was an admirable site, a bit of golden sand

fronting the cleared bush, commanding an unbroken sweep of vision

to the embouchure, and masked by forest from Porto da Lenha. It

is easily known by its two tall trees, and that nearest the sea,

when viewed from the east, appears surmounted by what resemble

the "Kangaroo's Head:" they are cones of regular shape, covered

to the topmost twig with the lightest green Flagellaria. The

"bush" now becomes beautiful, rolling in bulging masses of

verdure to the very edge of the clear brown stream. As in the

rivers of Guinea, the llianas form fibrous chains, varying in

size from a packthread to a cable; now straight, then twisted;

investing the trees with an endless variety of folds and

embraces, and connecting neighbours by graceful arches like the

sag of an acrobat's rope. Here and there a grotesque calabash

contrasted with the graceful palms towering in air for warmth and

light, or bending over water like Prince of Wales's feathers. The

unvarying green was enlivened by yew-like trees with scarlet

flowers, the "Burning Bush" of Sierra Leone, setting off the

white boles of the cotton-trees; and the whole was edged by the

yellow green of the quaint pandanus hung with heavy fruit.

A little beyond "Mariquita Nook" the right bank becomes a net-

work of creeks, "obscure channels," tortuous, slimy with mud,

banked with the snake-like branches of trees, and much resembling

the lower course of the Benin, or any other north equatorial

African river; the forest is also full of large villages,

invisible like the streams till entered. A single tree,

apparently growing out of the great stream-bed, showed shallow

water as we passed the Ponte de tres Palmeiras; the three oil-

palms are still there, but the easternmost is decaying. At 2 P.M.

we were in sight of the chief slaving settlement on the Congo,

the Whydah of the river, Porto da Lenha. Our charts have "Ponta

de Linha," three mistakes in as many words. Some authorities,

however, prefer Ponta da Lenha, "Woody Point," from the piles

flanking the houses; others, Ponte da Lenha, from a bridge built

by the agent of Messrs. Tobin's house over the single influent

that divides the settlement. Cruizers have often ascended thus

far; the Baltimore barque of 800 tons went up and down safely in

1859, but now square-rigged ships, which seldom pass Zungá chyá

Kampenzi, send up boats when something is to be done higher up.