CAKEIERS. 417 



were chopping up perpendicularly, they had suddenly been con- 

 gealed. The cottages of the natives, perched on the tops of 

 many of the hillocks, looked as if the owners possessed an eye 

 for the romantic, but they were probably influenced more by the 

 desire to overlook their gardens, and keep their families out of 

 the reach of the malaria, which is supposed to prevail most on 

 the banks of the numerous little streams which run among the 

 hills. 



We were most kindly received by the commandant, Lieutenant 

 Antonio Canto e Castro, a young gentleman whose whole sub- 

 sequent conduct will ever make me regard him with great 

 affection. Like every other person of intelligence whom I had 

 met, he lamented deeply the neglect with which this fine country 

 has been treated. This district contained by the last census 

 26,000 hearths or fires ; and if to each hearth we reckon four 

 souls, we have a population of 104,000. The number of carre- 

 gadores (carriers) who may be ordered out at the pleasure of 

 government to convey merchandise to the coast is in this dis- 

 trict alone about 6000, yet there is no good road in existence. 

 This system of compulsory carriage of merchandise was adopted 

 in consequence of the increase in numbers and activity of our 

 cruisers, which took place in 1845. Each trader who went, pre- 

 vious to that year, into the interior, in the pursuit of his calling, 

 proceeded on the plan of purchasing ivory and beeswax, and a 

 sufficient number of slaves to carry these commodities. The 

 whole were intended for exportation as soon as the trader reached 

 the coast. But when the more stringent measures of 1845 came 

 into operation, and rendered the exportation of slaves almost 

 impossible, there being no roads proper for the employment of 

 wheel conveyances, this new system of compulsory carriage of 

 ivory and beeswax to the coast was resorted to by the govern- 

 ment of Loanda. A trader who requires two or three hundred 

 carriers to convey his merchandise to the coast now applies to 

 the general government for aid. An order is sent to the com- 

 mandant of a district to furnish the number required. Each 

 head man of the villages to whom the order is transmitted must 

 furnish from five to twenty or thirty men, according to the 

 proportion that his people bear to the entire population of the 

 district. For this accommodation the trader must pay a tax to 



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