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Updated: June 3, 2025
We found the town of Massangano on a tongue of rather high land, formed by the left bank of the Lucalla and right bank of the Coanza, and received true Portuguese hospitality from Senhor Lubata. The town has more than a thousand inhabitants; the district has 28,063, with only 315 slaves.
This river is here a noble stream, about a hundred and fifty yards wide, admitting navigation in large canoes from the bar at its mouth to Cambambe, some thirty miles above this town. There, a fine waterfall hinders farther ascent. Ten or twelve large canoes laden with country produce pass Massangano every day.
I was shown a little north of the town a place where the Dutch, true to their national instincts, began a canal to supply Loanda with sweet and wholesome drinking material and water communication; others place it with more probability near the confluence of the Cuanza and the Lucala, the first great northern fork, where Massangano was built by the Conquistadores.
As the Kisama country is ill supplied with water otherwise, the Portuguese were soon obliged to retreat. Their country, lying near to Massangano, is low and marshy, but becomes more elevated in the distance, and beyond them lie the lofty dark mountain ranges of the Libollo, another powerful and independent people.
The soil contains sufficient ferruginous matter, to impart a red tinge to nearly the whole of it. It is supplied with a great number of little flowing streams which unite in the Lucalla. This river drains Ambaca, then falls into the Coanza to the southwest at Massangano.
Gabriel as far as Icollo i Bengo Sugar Manufactory Geology of this part of the Country Women spinning Cotton Its Price Native Weavers Market-places Cazengo; its Coffee Plantations South American Trees Ruins of Iron Foundry Native Miners The Banks of the Lucalla Cottages with Stages Tobacco-plants Town of Massangano Sugar and Rice Superior District for Cotton Portuguese Merchants and foreign Enterprise Ruins The Fort and its ancient Guns Former Importance of Massangano Fires The Tribe Kisama Peculiar Variety of Domestic Fowl Coffee Plantations Return to Golungo Alto Self-complacency of the Makololo Fever Jaundice Insanity.
The "Ma Robert" and "Pearl" then went to what proved to be a real mouth of the river we sought. When the river is in flood, a natural canal running parallel with the coast, and winding very much among the swamps, forms a secret way for conveying slaves from Quillimane to the bays Massangano and Nameara, or to the Zambesi itself.
The fort of Massangano is small, but in good repair; it contains some very ancient guns, which were loaded from the breech, and must have been formidable weapons in their time. The natives of this country entertain a remarkable dread of great guns, and this tends much to the permanence of the Portuguese authority.
There is not a single inscription on stone visible in Massangano. If destroyed to-morrow, no one could tell where it and most Portuguese interior villages stood, any more than we can do those of the Balonda.
The bar may at springs and floods be easily crossed by sailing-vessels, but, being far from the land, it is always dangerous for boats. Slaves, under the name of "free emigrants," have gone by thousands from Quillimane, during the last six years, to the ports a little to the south, particularly to Massangano.
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