To Sao Paulo de Loanda. 
29 
as the Legion Etrangere of Algeria. Most of 
the men have been found guilty of capital crimes, 
yet they are allowed to carry arms, and they are 
intrusted with charge of the forts. Violence is 
almost unheard of amongst them : if an English 
sailor be stabbed, it is generally by the free 
mulattoes and blacks, who hate the uniform for 
destroying their pet trade of man-selling. It is 
true that these convicts have hopes of pardon, but 
I prefer to attribute their remarkable gentleness 
and good behaviour to the effects of the first fever, 
which, to quote from the Latin grammar, 
“ Emollit mores nec sinit esse feros.” 
The negroes of Loanda struck me as unusually 
ill-favoured ; short, “ stumpy,” and very- dark, or 
tinged with unclean yellow. Lepers and hideous 
cripples thrust their sores and stumps in the face 
of charity. There was no local colouring compared 
with the carregadores, or coolies, from the north¬ 
east, whose thrum-mop heads and single monkey 
skins for fig-leaves, spoke of the wold and the 
wild. The body-dress of both sexes is the tanga, 
pagne, or waist-cloth, unless the men can afford 
trousers and ragged shirts, and the women a “ veo 
preto,” or dingy black sheet, ungracefully worn, 
like the graceful sari of Hindostan, over the bright 
foulard which confines the wool. “ It is mighty 
ridiculous to observe,” says the old missionary, 
“ that the women, contrary to the custom of all 
