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When the strangers visited us again in the evening, they were accompanied by a number of the people of an Ambonda chief named Sekelenke. The Ambonda live far to the N.W.; their language, the Bonda, is the common dialect in Angola. Sekelenke had fled, and was now living with his village as a vassal of Masiko.
And were any man to sit on a stone which the king has consecrated to his own use, the transgressor would die within the year. The Cazembes of Angola regard their king as so holy that no one can touch him without being killed by the magical power which pervades his sacred person.
There is so much of this note correspondence carried on in Angola, that a very large quantity of paper is annually consumed. Some other peculiarities of our guide were not so pleasing. A land of slaves is a bad school for even the free; and I was sorry to find less truthfulness and honesty in him than in my own people.
Angola proper, and the whole coast-line of what now constitutes the province of that name, was discovered by Diogo Cam during 1482 and the three following years. The first governor sent to Angola was Paulo Diaz, a grandson of Bartholomew Diaz, who reduced to submission the region south of the Kwanza nearly as far as Benguella. The city of Loanda was founded in 1576, Benguella in 1617.
In the Bechuana country, continuous rains are always from the northeast or east, while in Londa and Angola they are from the north. At Pungo Andongo, for instance, the whitewash is all removed from the north side of the houses. It cleared up, however, about midday, and Monze's sister conducted us a mile or two upon the road.
People of Quality course him, as we do Stags here: and this sort of hunting is the King's usual divertisement. And Gassendus in the Life of Peiresky, tells us they commonly hunt them too in Angola in Africa, as I have already mentioned. So that very likely Herodotus's Troglodyte Æthiopians may be no other than our Orang-Outang or wild Man.
In all my previous inquiries respecting the vegetable products of Angola, I was invariably directed to Pungo Andongo. Do you grow wheat? "Oh, yes, in Pungo Andongo." Grapes, figs, or peaches? "Oh, yes, in Pungo Andongo." Do you make butter, cheese, etc.? The uniform answer was, "Oh, yes, there is abundance of all these in Pungo Andongo."
One species of this bird, observed in Angola, possesses a bill of a peculiar scoop or stone forceps form, as if intended only to tear off insects from the skin; and its claws are as sharp as needles, enabling it to hang on to an animal's ear while performing a useful service within it.
The coloured population of Angola are sunk in the grossest superstition. They fancy themselves completely in the power of spirits, and are constantly deprecating their wrath. A chief, named Gando, had lately been accused of witchcraft, and, being killed by the ordeal, his body was thrown into the river.
This is hawked about every where in Angola, and, next to calico, is the most common medium of barter. The Kisama are brave; and when the Portuguese army followed them into their forests, they reduced the invaders to extremity by tapping all the reservoirs of water, which were no other than the enormous baobabs of the country hollowed into cisterns.
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