The theoretical garrison is one regiment of the line, a squadron of cavalry, and two companies of artillery with three-pounders; the real force is of some 800 men, mostly convicts.  No difference is made between white and black, nor is the corps force, which was once very cruelly used, severely treated 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 northeast, 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 other nations, buy and sell, and do all things which the men ought to do, whilst their husbands stay at home and spin or weave cotton, or busy themselves in such other effeminate actions.”  This is not wholly true in ’63.  The “munengana,"or machila-man, is active in offering his light cane palanquin, and he chaffs the “mean white” who is compelled to walk, bitterly as did the sedan-chairmen of Bath before the days of Beau Nash.  Of course the Quitandeira, or market-woman, holds her own.  The rest of the street population seems to consist of negro “infantry” and black Portuguese pigs, gaunt and long-legged.  The favourite passe-temps is to lie prone in sun or shade, chattering and smoking the cachimbo, a heavy clay pipe, with peculiar stem—­“to sleep supine,” say the Arabs, “is the position of saints; on the dexter side, of kings; on the sinister, of learned men; and on the belly, of devils.”

Chapter III.

The Festival—­a Trip to Calumbo—­portuguese Hospitality.

My first step after reaching S. Paolo de Loanda was to call upon Mr. Commissioner Vredenburg, who had lately taken up the undesirable appointment, and who, moreover, had brought a pretty French wife from Para.  I had warned him that he was risking her life and that of her child; he bravely made the attempt and nearly lost them both.  I have reason to be grateful to him and to Mr. Vice-consul E. H. Hewett for hospitality during my stay at the Angolan capital.  There is a place called an hotel, but it is in the Seven Dials of the African city, and—­nothing more need be said.