22 
To Sao Paulo de Loanda. 
taken place. Africa shows herself in heaps of filthy 
hovels, wattle and daub and dingy thatch; in “um¬ 
brella-trees ” (ficus), acacias and calabashes, palms 
and cotton-trees, all wilted, stunted, and dusty as 
at Cairo. We are in the latitude of East African 
Kilwa and of Brazilian Pernambuco ; but this is a 
lee-land, and the suffering is from drought. Yet, 
curious to say, the flora, as will appear, is here 
richer than in the well-watered eastern regions. 
Steaming onwards, at one mile off shore, we 
turned from south-east to south-west, and presently 
rounded the north-east point of Loanda Island, 
where a moored boat and a lantern showed the 
way. We passed the first fort, Sao Pedro do Morro 
(da Cassandama), which reminded me of the 
Aguada at the mouth of Goa Harbour. The 
two bastions and their batteries date from a.d. 
i 700, and have been useful in administering a 
strongish hint—in a.d. 1826 they fired into Cap¬ 
tain Owen. The next work is the little four-gun 
work, Na. Sa. da Conceigao. We anchored in 
five fathoms about 1,200 yards off shore, in com¬ 
pany with some fifteen craft, large and small, in¬ 
cluding a neat despatch cruizer, built after the 
“ Nimrod ” model. Fort Sao Francisco, called 
“ do Penedo,” because founded upon and let into 
a rock, with the double-tiered batteries a la Vau- 
ban, carefully whitewashed and subtended by any 
amount of dead ground, commands the anchorage 
