048—–­ nightly flame suggest the fires of St. John lighted by the goatherds of Tenerife.  They greatly excite the gallant “Griffons,” who everywhere see slaver-signals, and the system is old upon this coast as the days of Hanno and Herodotus.  At this season they are an infallible sign that the dries are ending; the women burn the capim (tall grass) for future forage, and to manure the land for manioc, maize, and beans.  The men seek present “bush-beef:”  as the flames blow inland, they keep to seaward, knowing that game will instinctively and infallibly break cover in that direction, and they have learned the “wrinkle” of the prairie traveller to make a “little Zoar” in case of accidental conflagration.

At 2 P.M. on the 24th we were abreast of Ambriz, an important settlement, where a tall red and white cliff, with a background of broken blue hill, showed a distinct “barra,” or river mouth, not to be confounded with the English “bar.”  The north point of the Rio dos Ambres, of the “green” or “raw copal,” is low and mangrove-grown, throwing into high relief its sister formation, Ambriz Head or Strong-Tide Corner, which stands up gaunt and bluff.

A little to the south-east lies the fort, flying the argent and azure flag, and garrisoned by some 200 men; five large whitewashed houses and the usual bunch of brown huts compose the settlement.  This nest of slavers was temporarily occupied in May 15, 1855.  The Governor-General, Senor Coelho de Amaral, reinforced by 1,000 soldiers from home, and levying 2,500 “Empacasseiros,"[FN#3] embarked from Loanda in the “Dorn Fernando” frigate, landed here, once more burnt the barracoons, and built the fort.  In 1856 a force was sent under Colonel Francisco Salles Ferreira, to re-open a communication with the Bembe mines of copper and malachite.  That energetic officer marched on Sao Salvador, the old capital of Congo, and crowned Dom Pedro V., whose predecessor died the year before.  He there fell a victim to fever, and his second in command, Major Andrade, was nearly cut off on his return.  Shortly afterwards the natives blockaded, but were driven from, Bembe, and they attempted in vain to carry Ambriz.

The far-famed copper mines were granted to the Portuguese in the sixteenth century by the King of Congo.  They were the property of his feudatory, the (black) “Marquess of Pemba” (Bembe):  Barbot mentions their being mistaken for gold, and feels himself bound to warn his readers that the metal was brought “from Sondy, not from Abyssinia 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 Quimalenco.  But the garrison was not strong