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to the governor, ' the natives in the interior will not permit 

 the Portuguese, or any other people with straight hair, to 

 enter their territory, and a journey of twenty days is the 

 utmost they (the Portuguese) have ever been known to 

 accomplish ; but through the medium of a large and power- 

 ful tribe whose possessions lie at that distance, they some- 

 times obtain information respecting their settlements on 

 the east coast.' The buildings in the town of Benguela 

 were found to be of half-baked bricks, with mud for cement, 

 the whole coated by a thick plaster of shell lime. They are 

 never repaired, but when a house falls down a new one is 

 built. The site of the town is a marsh, full of stagnant pools, 

 and the place is considered so unhealthy, that it goes by 

 the name of Hell among the Portuguese, who say that none 

 of their countrywomen have ever been known to live in it 

 above a few months. The population is about three thousand, 

 most of whom are free blacks or slaves. The chief defence 

 of the place is a large fort, now fast going to decay. It is-built 

 principally of earth, and mounted a large number of honey- 

 combed guns ; but the garrison, Captain Vidal says, was 

 quite insufficient for its occupation. They saw no sheep, but 

 goats and bullocks, the latter a very small species, in great 

 abundance. The elephants, they were told, had now become 

 scarce, but there were still plenty of lions and tigers ; and 

 a small river near the town contained numerous hippopotami 

 and alligators, which, when the water got dry, were some- 

 times wont to invade the town in a body, and give battle 

 to the inhabitants. Captain Vidal left Benguela on the 

 5th of December. Captain Owen also touched at the place 

 on the following day, but remained only a few hours. He 

 says, ' The only chart that the governor possessed of the 

 harbour, or neighbouring coast, was an old parchment ma- 

 nuscript, on a very small scale. It did not appear that the 

 Portuguese had any settlement to the southward of Ben- 

 guela, while the neighbourhood of Victoria and Theresa 

 rivers, which we call Catamaran Point, was only known to 

 the governor as the salinas, whence they procure salt. The 

 Portuguese sailors have a great dread of Port Negro, which 

 they always avoid ; and it is reported that many vessels are 

 annually wrecked in its vicinity, the crews, when saved, 

 generally walking to Benguela, as the nearest place of 

 refuge." They saw here about a hundred negroes of both 

 sexes chained together in pairs, who had just arrived from 

 a great distance in the interior, to be exported for slaves. 

 They were worn to skeletons with want, fatigue, and disease. 

 In the map of part of the west coast of Africa, prefixed 

 to Mr. T. E. Bowdich's Account of the Discoveries of the 

 Portuguese in the Interior of Angola and Mozambique 

 (8vo. ton. 1824), which was constructed in 1790 by a Por- 

 tuguese military officer, partly from his own observations, 

 and partly from the communications of the commandants 

 of the Portuguese fortresses in the interior, the rivers that 

 fall into the sea or flow towards it, between the Coanza 

 and Cape Negro, are the following, in the order in which 

 they occur from north to south ; the Longa (immediately 

 above Old Benguela), the Cuvo, the Gunza (at the mouth 

 of which, on the left bank, stands Fort Novo Redondo), 

 the Quicombo, the Egito, the Inhandanha, the Catumbela, 

 the Maribombo (of which a southern branch is called the 

 Bandeco), at S. Felipe de Benguela, the Copororo (into 

 which the Quianhecua falls from the south), the S. loao 

 de Quiana (which appears to fall not into the sea, but into 

 a lake near the coast), the Dongue, the Cangala, the Sen- 

 hebari, the Monaia, all of which also, as well as three 

 succeeding rivers to which no names are given, lose them- 

 selves in lakes near the sea, the Rio dos Mortes, into which 

 the Cobal falls from the south-east, and finally a large 

 river, to which no name is given, at Cape Negro. The 

 Cunene, or Cuneni, in the interior, of which only a very 

 small portion is delineated, is represented as flowing to- 

 wards the south, after having been joined about the 15th 

 parallel of latitude, and between the 17th and 18th degrees 

 of longitude (east from Greenwich) by five or six other 

 streams from the east and north-east. In this map, be- 

 tween the rivers Copororo and dos Mortes, are placed in 

 succession the savage tribes of the Mocoandos, the Moco- 

 rocas and the Mucoanhocas ; and to the east of these is the 

 territory of the Quilengues. - To the south of the Rio dos 

 Morteg are the wandering tribes of the Cobaes, to the east 

 of whom, divided from them by the Rio Cobal, is the terri- 

 tory of Donjau. To the south of Cape Negro are the Mu- 

 cuambundos, with the country called Hila, or Auyla, to tho 

 cast of them. From between the 16th and ) 7th to near the 



19th degree of latitude, the country on the sea coast is 

 described as wild and desert. Below that it is inhabited by 

 the Mucuixes, to the east of whom are Hecabona, and the 

 territory of Oimba. 



In the body of Mr. Bowdich's work (pp. 25 64) a long 

 account is given of an expedition of discovery into the 

 interior of Benguela conducted in 1 785 by Gregorio Mendes, 

 at the head of a party of about thirty -Europeans and one 

 thousand natives. The account is abstracted from the 

 manuscript journal of Mendes, which, along with other 

 papers of Baron Mossamedes, the then captain-general of 

 Angola, was put into the hands of Mr. Bowdich by the 

 baron's son, the Count da Lapa. The party, setting out 

 from S. Felipe de Benguela on the 30th of September, 

 proceeded along the coast until they reached the Rio dos 

 Mortes. They appear to have then taken their way along 

 the bank of that river, and to have penetrated through the 

 interior by a semicircular sweep, till they again reached 

 the sea coast at the mouth of the Copororo. The map, 

 however, on which Mr. Bowdich has traced their route 

 exhibits hut a very imperfect agreement with his descrip- 

 tion of the journey. They found the soil on the banks of 

 the Copororo capable of excellent cultivation, and the chiefs 

 to whom the land belonged in possession of large quantities 

 of black cattle, sheep, and goods, which they refused to 

 sell, but presented very freely to the commander of the 

 expedition, together with some fine maize and celery. To 

 the south of this the country became very hilly. Occa- 

 sionally some tolerable water was found, but in general it 

 was very brackish. Lakes both of salt and of fresh water 

 frequently occurred. They also came to some large forests. 

 Inhabitants were found as far as the expedition proceeded, 

 and their dialects, though differing from the Bunda spoken 

 in Angola, were all intelligible to those who understood 

 that language. The expedition terminated on the 29th of 

 December. 



Mr. Bowdich states that, according to an unpublished 

 memoir of M. de Souzas, who was governor-general of 

 Angola till the year 1780, the interior of Benguela is pre- 

 ferable to that of Angola both for commerce and salubrity. 

 Battel speaks of many mines of silver, and also of other 

 metals, as existing in Benguela. There are likewise, ac- 

 cording to Cavazzi, mines of rock-salt, but of inferior qua- 

 lity to that found in Angola. The vegetable productions 

 appear to be the same with those of the neighbouring 

 countries. Merolla particularly mentions the numerous 

 date-trees as the most distinguishing ornament of the coast. 



The old accounts describe the climate of Benguela as 

 extremely unhealthy, at least for Europeans, who on their 

 first arrival are stated to become generally unwell. The 

 missionaries Angelo and Carli, from a notion that there was 

 something in the air which poisoned not only the water, but 

 also the fruits of the earth, and even the flesh of animals, 

 declined the invitation of the governor of S. Felipe to dine 

 with him, till he had given them the strongest assurances 

 that neither the meat nor drink set before them should be 

 the produce Of the country. The miserable appearance of 

 the whites whom they saw, also determined them to refuse 

 to leave any of their companions with the governor, who had 

 no priest in his establishment, and was very anxious to have 

 one. When Merolla, however, visited the place fifteen 

 years afterwards, he found a vicar-general there ; but he was 

 the only Christian minister in the whole country. Benguela 

 was then made use of by the Portuguese as a place of 

 banishment for malefactors. 



According to Cavazzi (see a translation of his account in 

 Labat's Ethiopie Occidentale), there had before his time 

 (the middle of the seventeenth century) been numerous 

 herds of European cattle and sheep in Benguela, but they 

 had then almost all perished, partly from the badness of the 

 water, partly in consequence of the devastations of the 

 Giagas, a race of fierce savages, by whom the country had 

 been frequently invaded. He says that it still abounded in 

 elephants of immense size, which were sometimes to be seen 

 ranging in troops of a hundred or two ; and that there were 

 also many lions and tigers, crocodiles and serpents. The 

 people he describes, although some of them had been for- 

 merly christianized, as having all become most obstinate 

 pagans. Battel says that the natives call themselves Endal 

 Ambondos (there is a race called Ambondos in Angola), 

 and he describes their habits and manner of life as in the 

 highest degree barbarous and brutal, He also represents 

 them as a very cowardly race, 



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