The Ilha de Loanda, which gave its name to the city, according to Mr. W. Winwood Reade ("Savage Africa,” chapter xxv.), is “derived from a native word meaning bald:”  I believe it to be the Angolan Luanda, or tribute.  Forming the best harbour of the South African coast, it is made by the missionaries of the seventeenth century to extend some ten leagues long.  James Barbot’s plan (A.D. 1700) shows seven leagues by one in breadth, disposed from north-east to south-west, and, in the latter direction, fitting into the “Mar Aparcelado” or shoaly sea, a curious hook-shaped bight with a southern entrance, the “Barra de Curinba” (Corimba).  But the influences which formed the island, or rather islands (for there are two) have increased the growth, reducing the harbour to three and a half miles by two in breadth, and they are still contracting it; even in the early nineteenth century large ships floated off the custom house, and it is dry land where boats once rode.  Dr. Livingstone ("First Expedition,” chapter xx.) believes the causa causans to be the sand swept over the southern part of the island:  Douville more justly concludes that it is the gift of the Cuanza River, whose mud and ooze, silt and debris are swept north by the great Atlantic current.  Others suppose that it results from the meeting of the Cuanza and the Bengo streams; but the latter outfall would be carried up coast.  The people add the washings of the Morro, and the sand and dust of the sea-shore south of the city.

This excellent natural breakwater perfectly shelters the shipping from the “calemas,” or perilous breakers on the seaward side, and the surface is dotted with huts and groves, gardens and palm orchards.  At the Ponta do Norte once stood a fort appropriately called Na.  Sa.  Flor de Rosa; it has wholly disappeared, but lately, when digging near the sea, heaps of building stone were found.  Barbot here shows a “toll-house to collect the customs,” and at the southern extremity a star-shaped “Fort Fernand.”

This island was the earliest of Portuguese conquests on this part of the coast.  The Conquistador Paulo Dias de Novaes, a grandson of Bartholomeo Dias, was sent a second time, in A.D. 1575, to treat with the king of “Dongo,” who caused trouble to trade.  Accompanied by 700 Portuguese, he reached the Cuanza River, coasted north, and entered by the Barra de Corimba, then accessible to caravels.  He landed without opposition amongst a population already Christianized, and, after occupying for a few months the island, which then belonged to Congo, he founded, during the next year, the Villa de Sao Paulo de Loanda on the mainland.