Chap. XXI. PUXGO ANDONGO. 421 • 



answers all referred to the activity of one man, Colonel Manuel 

 Antonio Pires. The presence of the wild grape shows that 

 vineyards might be cultivated with success; the wheat grows 

 well without irrigation ; and any one who tasted the butter and 

 cheese at the table of Colonel Pires would prefer them to the 

 stale produce of the Irish dairy, in general use throughout that 

 province. The cattle in tin's country are seldom milked, on 

 account of the strong prejudice winch the Portuguese entertain 

 against the use of milk. They believe that it may be used with 

 safety in the morning ; but if taken after midday, that it will 

 cause fever. It seemed to me that there was not much reason 

 for carefully avoiding a few drops in their coffee, after having 

 devoured ten times the amount in the shape of cheese at dinner. 

 The fort of Pungo Andongo (lat, 9° 42' 14" S., long. 15° 30' E.) 

 is situated in the midst of a group of curious columnar-shaped 

 rocks, each of winch is upwards of three hundred feet in 

 height. They are composed of conglomerate, made up of a 

 great variety of rounded pieces in a matrix of dark red sand- 

 stone. They rest on a thick stratum of tins last rock, with 

 very few of the pebbles in its substance. On this a fossil 

 palm has been found, and if of the same age as those on the 

 eastern side of the continent, on winch similar palms now he, 

 there may be coal underneath this, as well as under that at Tete. 

 The asserted existence of petroleum-springs at Dande, and near 

 Cambambe, would seem to indicate the presence of this useful 

 mineral, though I am not aware of any one having actually seen 

 a seam of coal tilted up to the surface in Angola, as we have at 

 Tete. The gigantic pillars of Pimgo Andongo, have been formed 

 by a current of the sea coming from the S.S.E., for, seen from the 

 top, they appear arranged in that direction, and must have with- 

 stood the surges of the ocean at a period of our world's history, 

 when the relations of land and sea were totally different from what 

 they are now, and long before " the morning stars sang together, 

 and all the sons of God shouted for joy, to see the abodes prepared 

 which man was soon to fill." The embedded pieces in the conglo- 

 merate are of gneiss, clay shale, mica and sandstone schists, trap, 

 and porphyry, most of which are large enough to give the whole the 

 appearance of being the only remaining vestiges of vast primaeval 

 banks of shingle. Several little streams run amongst these rocks, 



