300 DB. F. ^VELWITSCn ON THE GUM COPA.I. IN ANaOLA. 



ticated or placed in water, quickly dissolved, showing, to my great 

 disappointment, that it was not a resin, still lesis Gum Copal. 

 When I mentioned my failure to my informers on my return to 

 Loaudo, both of them asserted that the gum which I had found 

 really was young Gum Copal, but that it must first fall off the 

 tree, penetrate into the ground, there ripen, and be transformed 

 into real Copal. Nearly the same thing happened to me in Sep- 

 tember 1857. Descending from the highlands of Inner Angola 

 into the coastal region, I met one evening a party of Gum- Copal 

 gatherers encamped round a fire, sorting Copal collected during 

 the day. I immediately ordered my caravan to stop for the 

 night and to put up near the party, fully hoping that I should be 

 certain now to find out the Copal-tree. Having saluted my 

 heroes with the friendly "Bocuetu" of the Bunda dialect, treat- 

 ing them also to a few glasses of rum, I gradually turned the 

 conversation to the place where they had found the Copal. After 

 some hesitation, one of the elder negroes said that the Copal in 

 their possession had been collected in wooded sand-hills near 

 Mongolo, a station which I had passed with my caravan in the 

 morning. The half-starved condition of my caravan did not 

 admit of my interrupting my journey for several days by a retro- 

 grade march ; nevertheless I determined to visit on the next day 

 the spot indicated by the Copal-gatherers ; and by giving them a 

 few presents I induced two of the party to accompany me. AVe 

 arrived there in five hours, about noon. Before we came to the 

 forest which adorns the heights of the sand-mountains, which are 

 intercepted here and there by plots of marl-stone, I observed 

 that tlie sand had been freshly dug up in many places ; and I felt 

 convinced that the negroes had not deceived me, but had really 

 brought me to the place of their operations on the previous day. 

 This Copal-field extended almost into the middle of the forest, 

 which (although in some places Celastrus, Diospyrns^ Comhreturn, 

 and a few Acacias were seen) consisted chiefly of a tree I had 

 formerly xnet with in isolated groups in the district of Golungo 

 Alto, and more frequently in the dis'trict of Cazengo, and which 

 is called by the natives Calalanza*. 



* This tree, which only occurs here and there throughout the forests in the 

 districts of Golungo Alto and Cayenzo, but which covers large tracts in the 

 lowest littoral region, especially on the lower edge of the primitive-forest region, 

 belongs to the Leguminosee ; and Mr. Bentham, to whom I submitted flower- 

 ing specimens, has described it as a ncvr species of Cynometra [C laxifiora\' 

 See Transactions of the Linnean Societv. vol. ttv. n. 318. 



