REGENT GEOGRAPHICAL EXPLORATION. 181 



ber 12, 1877, and arrived at the end of his journey in Durban, on the 

 Indian Ocean, on April 14, 1879, a journey occupying nearly twenty 

 months. He discovered the source of the river Cubango, west of 

 Bihe ; and, shortly afterward, two of its affluents, finding the river to 

 be contrary to all the descriptions of it on the maps. He says, in 

 speaking of those affluents, "I use the words small rivers, but the 

 smallest in Africa are almost always enormous ones." He found the 

 river Cuqueima, to his surprise, running to the north, which was con- 

 trary to its position on the maps, and flowing from the north to the 

 southwest, toward the Quango, of which it is an affluent. He after- 

 ward struck the Quango, flowing to the north, and the Cuito, an af- 

 fluent of the Cuando, running to the south. All the great rivers, he 

 says, of South Africa, have their sources in an immense rich plain, 

 which is in 12 south latitude. The way in which rivers in this part 

 of Africa take their rise and are formed, as described by him, is inter- 

 esting. They begin with a slight humidity, resembling the trickling 

 of a small fountain. By degrees the current swells, and suddenly, 

 without having received any visible affluents, it becomes an enormous 

 river, on which any one may sail with a boat. He says he saw the 

 source of the Cuando, first as a tiny rill, which flowed between his 

 feet ; that a little lower down he descended it in a canoe, and that 

 thence it was quite navigable till it entered the Zambesi, where Liv- 

 ingstone calls it the Chobe, a name which Major Pinto says is utterly 

 unknown at the present day in Africa. Not only is the Cuando navi- 

 gable, but also many of its affluents ; and there is a cataract at its 

 extremity, which nearly proved fatal to the explorer, as it had not 

 been previously mentioned by any one. There is, he says, no connec- 

 tion by water between the Cuando and the Cubango, and while in the 

 region of the Cuando he met one of the most curious discoveries in 

 his journey. He found that one of the carriers supplied to him by a 

 friendly chief was, to his astonishment, a white man belonging to a 

 race in Africa heretofore entirely unknown. This race, called the 

 Cassequer, he says, exist in large numbers in this part of South Africa, 

 and that they are whiter even than the Caucasians, with this distinc- 

 tion, that, instead of hair, their heads are covered with small tufts of 

 very short wool, that they have prominent cheek-bones, and eyes like 

 the Chinese. He states that he has seen girls with such a complexion 

 that, if their features were European, they would pass in Europe for 

 beauties. Lieutenant de Braza is of the opinion that this race of 

 people came from North Africa, as he states that he has seen a race 

 greatly resembling them, called the Ubamlo, south of the Congo. 

 The men of this white African race, Major Pinto says, are remarkably 

 muscular and robust, and that when they discharge an arrow at an 

 elephant they bury the entire shaft in the animal's body. They live by 

 themselves, subsisting on roots or the spoils of the chase ; and it is only 

 when their supplies fall short that they hold any communications with 



