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FROM SAO PAULO DE LOANDA TO THE CONGO. 18 
The Ambrizéte River (which is properly called Nbrish) 
has rather a long course, and rises some little distance 
south-east of Sao Salvador on a plateau 2500 feet high, 
whence it descends in magnificent cascades, called the 
“ Arthington Falls,” into the plain below, and wends a 
tortuous way to the sea. Its upper waters were first 
visited and described by one of the Baptist missionaries 
from Sao Salvador, and he named its falls atter a well- 
known English philanthropist. af 
As Ambriz is the great coffee port, so Ambrizéte is the 
outlet for the ivory trade, and has been for many years: 
As the reader will see farther on, the ivory road starts 
from Stanley Pool, passes through Sao Salvador and 
debouches at Ambrizéte. From Ambrizéte, or some 
neighbouring settlement, the pine-apple has been intro- 
duced along the trade routes far into the interior of the 
southern Congo region, and it is probable that limes, 
oranges, maize, sugarcane, manioc, and many other recent 
additions to native agriculture originally started from here, 
where the Portuguese traders brought them from Brazil, 
and, following the arterial trade routes, quickly overran 
these hitherto poorly-fed countries. 
The natives of Ambrizéte are very turbulent,* and 
decidedly opposed to any idea of annexation or protection 
by a European power.f for this reason no white man is 
allowed to penetrate more than a few miles into the 
interior from Ambrizéte, and scientific explorations are 
indistinguishable in their eyes from political recon- 
naissances. Jn this way the region lying between Sao 
Salvador and the coast, vaguely named Ngoje, remains a 
terra incognita to Europeans. Wending my way north- 
wards from Ambrizéte I touched at different spots where 
factories were established, but none of them offered any- 
thing worthy of note until I reached a small settlement 
about fifty miles south of the Congo, called Cabecga da 
Cobra (the “head of the snake’). This to my long-starved 
* This is the opinion of the white traders, but the natives might 
say, on their side, that they only stood up for ‘their independence, 
+ They have since (1885) accepted Portuguese rule. 
