Volume Ii Part 1 (2/2)
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 s.h.i.+ps 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 flouris.h.i.+ng. 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 So Thome 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 ”Correspondenzblatter 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 via S. Paulo de Loanda and Ca.s.sange (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 So Paulo De Loanda.
At Loango, by invitation of Commander Hoskins, R.N., I transferred myself on board H.M. Steams.h.i.+p ”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 Ocythoe Cranchii was often found inside the sh.e.l.l, and the sea was streaked as with cotton- flecks by lines of eggs several inches long, a ma.s.s 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. Pa.s.sing Cabinda, 57 miles from Loanda, but barely in sight, we fell in with H.M. Steams.h.i.+p ”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 gra.s.s and tree. We then opened a deep bight, which has the honour of being ent.i.tled 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 s.h.i.+pping, 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 taua 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, c.u.mber the base of the ruined sea-wall north of the town; in front is a pellucid sea with the usual tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, 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 Luanda, 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 s.h.i.+ps 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 debris 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 was.h.i.+ngs of the Morro, and the sand and dust of the sea-sh.o.r.e south of the city.
This excellent natural breakwater perfectly shelters the s.h.i.+pping 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. Flor 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 So 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 cypraea moneta. Ample details concerning this industry are given by the old writers. The sh.e.l.l was considered superior to the ”impure or Braziles,” brought from the opposite Bahia (de Todos os Santos), though much coa.r.s.er 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 sh.o.r.e-folk, who return the compliment in kind. They dress comparatively well, and they spend considerable sums in their half-heathen lembamentos (marriages) and mutambe (funerals).
As might be expected, after three centuries of occupation, the Portuguese, both in East and West Africa, have naturalized a mult.i.tude 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 matumbe 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 Athenae or Thebae, a Cidade Alta and a Cidade Baixa, are favourites with the Lusitanians from Lisbon to the China seas, and African So 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 sh.o.r.e from north-east to south-west, and they form a graceful amphitheatre by bending westward at the jutting headland, Morro de So Miguel, of old de So 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 ma.s.sing 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 lat.i.tude 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 pa.s.sed the first fort, So Pedro do Morro (da Ca.s.sandama), 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 Conceico. We anch.o.r.ed in five fathoms about 1,200 yards off sh.o.r.e, in company with some fifteen craft, large and small, including a neat despatch cruizer, built after the ”Nimrod” model. Fort So Francisco, called ”do Penedo,” because founded upon and let into a rock, with the double-tiered batteries a 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 ash.o.r.e 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 qua?
--Non sappiamo in verita!”
The Ponta de Isabel showed the pa.s.seio, 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,”
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