A QUESTION OF COLOUR 19 



tinctions as we know them blaek, brown, and 

 white, or white, brown, and black : the order of 

 social precedence could be either way ; while 

 Portuguese officers had black wives, and white 

 women dark husbands. Even to one who had 

 travelled in foreign colonies, the extent of this 

 intermingling W 7 as remarkable, and even more 

 astonishing was the presence on board of illegiti- 

 mate children returning from Portugal where 

 they had been educated with their father's 

 relatives. This absence of a colour bar and the 

 free mating of the Portuguese with coloured 

 women may lose him respect among natives, 

 but, it is only fair to say, seems to gain him a 

 certain measure of their affection. 



There were a dozen Americans aboard going 

 to Angola to work in the great mineral concessions 

 which America had obtained in Angola. The 

 men were mostly young and energetic, very like 

 young Englishmen, and as keen to see the new 

 country and know the woods and wilds as one's 

 own countrymen would have been. 



The meals on Portuguese ships are tea and 

 biscuits in the early morning, lunch at eleven, 

 tea at four, dinner at seven, supper at nine. The 

 wines were excellent and the food w r as good, if 

 one could avoid the bachalau, a kind of mature 

 cod-fish, served as a stew with potatoes and rice, 

 a dish from which I would always slip away to the 

 deck and fresh air. One might get to like bachalau 

 in a breezy dining-room or on solid earth, as one 

 gets to like strong cheese, but I retire before this 

 very dead fish in a stuffy saloon at b 



