Chap. VI. PORTUGUESE CUNNING. 137 



and trades ; after which they could manufacture their own 

 cloth from cotton grown on the spot ; and make their own 

 sugar too, instead of importing it from abroad : he saw 

 no reason even why they should not ere long have a railroad 

 across the continent to Angola ! 



His Excellency's remarks exhibit a failing often noticed 

 among the Portuguese, and resembling that of certain of our 

 countrymen, who take a foolish pride in deriding everything 

 English. If we may judge by our own impressions, strangers 

 would either regret to hear a man, as we often have, wind- 

 ing up a tirade with the climax " I am horribly ashamed 

 that I was born a Portuguese ; " or would despise him. His 

 observations also showed the magnificent ideas that are 

 entertained, to the entire neglect of plain matter-of-fact 

 business and industry. Indigo six feet high was growing 

 self-sown in abundance at our feet; superior cotton was 

 found about a mile off, which had propagated itself in 

 spite of being burned off annually for many years ; and 

 sugar-cane is said to be easily cultivated on the greater 

 part of the Zambesi delta ; but, instead of taking the 

 benefit, in a common-sense way, of these obvious advan- 

 tages, our friends, while indulging in magnificent dreams of 

 a second East India Company, to be established by English 

 capitalists in Eastern Africa, were all the while, diligently 

 exporting the labour to the Island of Bourbon. The pro- 

 gramme of this English Company, carefully drawn out by a 

 Minister of the Crown at Lisbon, provides with commend- 

 able stringency for the erection of schools and bridges, the 

 making of roads, and deepening of harbours, in this land 

 of "Prester John," all to be delivered back to the Portu- 

 guese at the lapse of twenty years ! 



His Excellency adverted to the notorious fact, that the 



