To Sao Paulo de Loanda. 23 
and the northern road, where strings of carrega- 
dores, like driver-ants, fetch and carry provisions to 
town. A narrow causeway connects with the gate, 
where blacks on guard lounge in fantastic uniform, 
and below the works are the coal-sheds. Here 
the first turf was lately turned by an English com¬ 
modore—this tramway was intended to connect 
with the water edge, and eventually to reach the 
Cuanza at Calumbo. So Portugal began the rail 
system in West Africa. 
The city was preparing for her ecclesiastical 
festival, and I went ashore at once to see her at 
her best. The landing-place is poor and mean, 
and the dusty and sandy walk is garnished with a 
single row of that funereal shrub, the milky eu¬ 
phorbia. The first sensation came from the pillars 
of an unfinished house— 
“ Care colonne, che fate qua? 
—Non sappiamo in verita !” 
The Ponta de Isabel showed the passeio, or pro¬ 
menade, with two brick ruins : its “ five hundred 
fruit-trees of various descriptions ” have gone the 
way of the camphor, the tea-shrub, and the incense- 
tree, said to have been introduced by the Jesuits. 
“The five pleasant walks, of which the central one 
has nine terraces, with a pyramid at each extremity, 
and leads to the Casa de Recreio, or pleasure- 
house of the governor-general, erected in 1817 by 
Governor Vice-Admiral Luiz da Motta Feio,” have 
