46 
The Cruise along Shore. 
metal was brought “ from Sondy, not from Abys¬ 
sinia or the empire of Prester John.” They lost 
all their mystery about a.d. 1855, when they were 
undertaken by an English company, Messrs. John 
Taylor & Co. of London, after agreement with the 
concessionists, Messrs. Francisco A. Flores and 
Pinto Perez of Loanda. Between Ambriz and 
Bembe, on the Lunguila (Lufula ?) River, and 770 
feet above sea-level, the Angolan government 
built four presidios, Matuta, Quidilla, Quileala, and 
Quimalen90. But the garrison was not strong 
enough to keep the country quiet, and the climate 
proved deadly to white men. The 24 sappers 
and 60 linesmen extracted nearly 4,000 lbs. of 
gangue per diem, when the English manager and 
his assistant, with four of the ten miners died, and 
the plant was destroyed by fire. I was assured 
that this line (Ambriz-Bembe) was an easy adit 
to the interior, and so far the information is con¬ 
firmed by the late Livingstone-Congo Expedition 
under Lieutenant Grandy. 
In 1863 the coast was still in confusion. The 
Portuguese claimed too much seaboard according 
to the British : the British government ignored the 
just claims of Portugal, and the political bickerings 
were duly embittered by a demoralized race of 
English traders, who perpetually applied for 
cruisers, complaining that the troops interfered with 
their trade. Even in the seventeenth century the 
