120 THROUGH ANGOLA 



I have taken you across the 300 miles on a 

 " flying carpet " because I want to bring you back 

 on this railway by the way you will follow it 

 yourself if you go to Angola. 



When approaching Lobito Bay from the sea, 

 one cannot at first see the harbour ; there looms 

 ahead a line of barren cliffs and what appears to 

 be a sandy beach below them. It is not till the 

 ship is close to the cliffs, that what appeared a 

 sandy beach is found to be a long, narrow sand- 

 spit, 3 miles long, a mile or more from the shore 

 and parallel to it ; while between the cliff-girt 

 coast and this narrow sand-strip lies one of the 

 finest harbours in the world. There is little tide, 

 and a great fleet could anchor in these waters so 

 still in all winds, that it might be a mountain and 

 not a flat ribbon of sand only 300 to 400 yards 

 wide which protects it. 



On the narrow sand- spit will one day be a 

 great commercial port, on the hills above it a 

 residential city, and in the water of the bay will 

 lie great ships come with merchandise, to go with 

 the cattle and the food grown on the Angolan 

 highlands, for the workers of Europe. If one 

 climbs the hills on the mainland, the harbour lies 

 at one's feet. Seawards is the yellow ribbon of 

 sand, month by month changing its look, as new 

 houses, gardens, and yards rise up in the growing 

 city. At the wooden pier, jutting out from the 

 spit, two small steamers are loading, while another 

 waits its turn in the bay. 



Where the spit springs from the land is a 

 lagoon, once a mangrove swamp, which looks 



