378 
BASONGO —TRUE NEGROES. 
Chap. XIX. 
tinned to use them for the sake of the shelter they afforded, until 
I found that they were lodgings also, for certain inconvenient 
bedfellows. 
27^A.—Five hours’ ride through a pleasant country of forest and 
meadow like those of Londa, brought us to a village of Basongo, a 
tribe living in subjection to the Portuguese. We crossed several 
little streams, which were flowing in the westerly direction in 
wliich we were marching, and unite to form the Quize, a feeder 
of the Coanza. The Basongo were very civil, as indeed all the 
tribes were who had been conquered by the Portuguese. The 
Basongo and Bangala are yet only partially subdued. The 
farther west we go from this, the less independent we find the 
black population until we reach the vicinity of Loanda, where the 
free natives are nearly identical in their feelings towards the 
government with the slaves. But the governors of Angola wisely 
accept the limited allegiance and tribute rendered by the more 
distant' tribes, as better than none. 
All the inliabitants of this region, as well as those of Londa, 
may be called true negroes, if the limitations formerly made be 
borne in mind. The dark colour, tliick lips, heads elongated 
backwards and upwards and covered with wool, flat noses, with 
other negro peculiarities, are general; but wliile these charac¬ 
teristics place them in the true negro family, the reader would 
imbibe a wrong idea, if he supposed that all these features com¬ 
bined are often met with in one individual. All have a certain 
tliickness and prominence of lip, but many are met with in every 
village in whom thickness and projection are not more marked 
than in Europeans. All are dark, but the colour is shaded off 
in different individuals firom deep black to light yellow. As we 
go westward, we observe the light colour predominating over the 
dark, and then again, when we come within the influence of damp 
from the sea air, we find the shade deepen into the general 
blackness of the coast population. The shape of the head, with 
its woolly crop, though general, is not universal. The tribes on 
the eastern side of the continent, as the Caffres, have heads finely 
developed and strongly European. Instances of tliis kind are 
frequently seen, and after I became so familiar with the dark 
colour as to forget it in viewing the countenance, I was struck 
by the strong resemblance some natives bore to certain of our 
