KIBOKWE AND ITS PRODUCE. 653 



in Lovale was armed with a gun, they considered themselves powerful enough 

 to insist on all these regulations. 



After Lovale, they came to Kibokwe, where the country began to get 

 more broken and hilly; and they began to ascend towards the western edge 

 of the basins of the Congo and the Zambesi. Here the fish which they had 

 bought in Lovale were in demand, and Cameron soon exhausted all his stock ; 

 and if he had not been able to purchase a little cloth at a most exorbitant 

 price, from some people of Bihe, who were out collecting bees-wax, he and his 

 men would have starved. The only product of Kibokwe which is exported 

 is this bees- wax. From the honey the natives make a sort of mead, which in 

 taste is very like strong ale. At one village where the caravan halted, the 

 chief offered the white man some in a china pint mug, which, as he was very 

 thirsty, he emptied at once. The chief held him in great admiration, when 

 he saw that this potent draught took no effect on his head, and followed him 

 to the two next camps to give him some more drink before starting in the 

 mornings. He brought a little pot with him, in which he warmed the mead, 

 and as the mornings were then raw and cold, the beverage proved most accept- 

 able. 



Leaving Kibokwe, they passed out of the basins of the Congo and the 

 Zambesi (the affluents of which are so interlaced with each other that it was 

 almost impossible to determine the actual watershed), and came into that of 

 the Kwanza. After crossing the Kwanza (which here, some distance above 

 the falls, was a fine navigable stream) they arrived at Komanante, in Bihe, 

 where Kendele (or Alviz) had his settlement. Although he said he was a 

 civilised man, his establishment was little better than that of the natives, and 

 a disgrace to the name of civilisation. Cameron was delayed a week at Kom- 

 anante before he could procure a guide from Kendele to show him the road 

 to the coast. Kendele himself remained up in Bihe, in order to dispose of 

 some of his slaves for bees-wax and ivory ; the others he retained to sell at 

 the coast. When our traveller left Komanante, he had first to go to the town 

 of Kagnombe, the chief of Bihe, as his guide would have been afraid to 

 return if it had been known he had guided a white man through Bihe, with- 

 out taking him to see Kagnombe. Kagnombe's town proved to be the largest 

 he had ever seen in Africa, but Kagnombe (or, as he called himself, King 

 Antonio Kagnombe) was a most despicable specimen of a negro. He said 

 be had been to Loanda, but the only result of his travels seemed to be a 

 grafting of the worst European vices on those already engrained on his 

 nature. 



The day Cameron left Kagnombe's he arrived at the settlement of 

 Senhor Guilherme Goncalves, where he was most kindly and hospitably 

 received, and felt as if he were once more getting into civilisation. The 

 owner of this settlement has lived at Bihe for upwards of thirty-three years, 



