BETWEEN ANGOLA AND THE ZAMBESI. 457 
have no upper storey, are built of unbaked bricks, and 
the flooring is composed either of tiles or wood. The 
custom-house is a good building, recently erected, and 
has spacious warehouses for the storing of goods. This 
establishment and the public garden before alluded to, 
as well as other improvements in Benguella, were the 
work of a former governor, Leite Mendes. To him also 
is due, I believe, the foundation of a magnificent pier 
with iron architraves, subse¬ 
quently carried to completion by 
Governor Teixeira da Silva. It 
is furnished with two cranes and 
trams, by which goods are con¬ 
veyed from the vessels into the 
custom-house. I am grammati¬ 
cally wrong, however, in using 
the present tense in respect of 
such conveyance ; I should rather 
employ the conditional, and say 
they li'ould be conveyed, if there 
were any men to do the work ; 
but as these are wanting, they 
are not conveyed at all. The 
town further boasts of a decent 
church and a cemetery, well 
placed and walled in. The Euro¬ 
pean population is surrounded 
on all sides by senzalas, or the 
huts of the negroes, which in 
fact are occasionally discoverable Q UIMBANI * -woman carrying 
J 9 HER LOAD. 
in deserted grounds in the very 
midst of the dwellings of the whites. Take it for all 
in all, the general aspect of the place is agreeable and 
picturesque. 
Benguella has a somewhat doubtful reputation 
among the Portuguese possessions in Africa. Many 
suppose the country to be infected ; that it exhales 
pestiferous miasma too often causing death from 
plague. But this is really not the case. True, I was 
not acquainted with the Benguella of the past, but I 
