PUNGO ANDONGO. 



191 



degraded reverence of things inanimate. Livingstone was far 

 from reflecting severely on the Catholic Church or her servants, 

 but he could not fail to record a remonstrance, and he could not 

 record with pleasure even the most conspicuous self-sacrifice, 

 followed inevitably by such results. There could only be pain- 

 ful meditations tinging the pleasing influence of nature's charms 

 as the missionary explorer turned away from this singularly 

 favored and unfortunate district — favored in having heard, 

 unfortunate in having forgotten, precious, most vital things. 



Crossing the Lucalla, he bent his way towards the paradise 

 of the country. He says : " In all my inquiries about the 

 vegetable products of Angola I had been invariably directed to 

 Pungo Andongo." On reaching the wonderful place he found 

 that the remarkable success of a single man in cultivating his 

 large estate told the whole story of the reputation the district 

 had gained. This man's name was Pires ; he was commander 

 of the district. Coming to the country as a servant on a ship, 

 he had by industry made himself the richest man in all Angola. 

 His residence and the fort are under the shadow of a group of 

 "columnar-shaped rocks, each of which is more than three 

 hundred feet high." Of these mighty rocks Dr. Livingstone 

 writes: "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 this 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 which similar palms now lie, 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 Pungo 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 withstood 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 



