to refresh their troops, and to house six or seven wounded men.  The foreign agents, headed by a disreputable M—­M—­, now dead, protested, and, after receiving this unsoldierlike refusal, the Portuguese, harassed by the enemy, continued their return march to Ambriz.  The natives of this country have an insane hate for their former conquerors, and can hardly explain why:  probably the cruelties of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, not peculiar to the Lusitanians, have rankled in the national memory.  A stray Portuguese would infallibly be put to death, and it will, I fear, be long before M. Valdez sees “spontaneous declarations of vassalage on the part of the King of Molembo (Malemba) and others.”

In 1860 the trade of Kinsembo amounted to some L50,000, divided amongst four houses, two English, one American, and one Rotterdam (Pencoff and Kerdyk).  The Cassange war greatly benefited the new station by diverting coffee and other produce of the interior from Loanda.  There are apochryphal tales of giant tusks brought from a five months’ journey, say 500 miles, inland.  I was shown two species of copal (gum anime) of which the best is said to come from the Mosul country up the Ambriz River:  one bore the goose-skin of Zanzibar, and I was assured that it does not viscidize in the potash-wash.  The other was smooth as if it had freshly fallen from the tree.  It was impossible to obtain any information; no one had been up country to see the diggings, and yet all declared that the interior was open; that it would be easy to strike the Coango (Quango) before it joins the Congo River, and that 150 miles, which we may perhaps reduce by a third, would lodge the traveller in the unknown lands of “Hnga.”

Bidding kindly adieu to Mr. Hunter and wishing him speedy deliverance from his dreadful companion, we resumed our travel over the now tranquil main.  Always to starboard remained the narrow sea-wall, a length without breadth which we had seen after the lowlands of Cape Lopez, coloured rosy, rusty-red, or white, and sometimes backed by a second sierra of low blue rises, which suggests the sanatorium.  Forty miles showed us the tall trees of Point Palmas on the northern side of the Conza River; on the south of the gap-like mouth lies the Ambrizette settlement, with large factories, Portuguese and American, gleaming against the dark verdure, and with Conza Hill for a background.  The Cabeca de Cobra, or “Margate Head,” led to Makula, alias Mangal, or Mangue Grande, lately a clump of trees and a point; now the site of English, American, and Dutch factories.  Here the hydrographic charts of 1827 and 1863 greatly vary, and one has countermarched the coast-line some 75 miles:  Beginning with the Congo River, it lays down Mangue Pegueno (where Grande should be), Cobra, and Mangue Grande (for Pequeno) close to Ambrizette.  Then hard ahead rose Cape Engano, whose “deceit” is a rufous tint, which causes many to mistake it for Cape or Point Padrao.  To-morrow, as the dark-green waters tell us, we shall be in the Congo River.