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It is about a hundred miles broad, clothed with dark forest, except where the light green grass covers meadow-lands on the Quango, which here and there glances out in the sun as it wends its way to the north.
On the 4th of April they reached the banks of the Quango, here a hundred and fifty yards wide. The chief of the district a young man, who wore his hair curiously formed into the shape of a cone, bound round with white thread on their refusing to pay him an extortionate demand, ordered his people not to ferry them across, and opened fire on them.
4TH APRIL. We were now on the banks of the Quango, a river one hundred and fifty yards wide, and very deep. The water was discolored a circumstance which we had observed in no river in Londa or in the Makololo country. This fine river flows among extensive meadows clothed with gigantic grass and reeds, and in a direction nearly north.
There can not have been much intercourse between real Portuguese and these people even here, so close to the Quango, for Sansawe asked me to show him my hair, on the ground that, though he had heard of it, and some white men had even passed through his country, he had never seen straight hair before. This is quite possible, as most of the slave-traders are not Portuguese, but half-castes.
On the 4th they were close to the Quango, here one hundred fifty yards broad, when they were stopped for the last time by a village chief and surrounded by his men.
The path was steep and slippery; deep gorges appear on each side of it, leaving but a narrow path along certain spurs of the sierra for the traveler; but we accomplished the ascent in an hour, and when there, found we had just got on to a table-land similar to that we had left before we entered the great Quango valley. We had come among lofty trees again.
Before reaching the Quango we were again brought to a stand by fever in two of my companions, close to the residence of a Portuguese who rejoiced in the name of William Tell, and who lived here in spite of the prohibition of the government. We were using the water of a pond, and this gentleman, having come to invite me to dinner, drank a little of it, and caught fever in consequence.
Gabriel Native Information respecting the Kasai and Quango The Trade with Luba Drainage of Londa Report of Matiamvo's Country and Government Senhor Faria's Present to a Chief The Balonda Mode of spending Time Faithless Guide Makololo lament the Ignorance of the Balonda Eagerness of the Villagers for Trade Civility of a Female Chief The Chief Bango and his People Refuse to eat Beef Ambition of Africans to have a Village Winters in the Interior Spring at Kolobeng White Ants: "Never could desire to eat any thing better" Young Herbage and Animals Valley of the Loembwe The white Man a Hobgoblin Specimen of Quarreling Eager Desire for Calico Want of Clothing at Kawawa's Funeral Observances Agreeable Intercourse with Kawawa His impudent Demand Unpleasant Parting Kawawa tries to prevent our crossing the River Kasai Stratagem.
The returns from 1818 to 1844 have been obtained from different sources as the average revenue; those from 1844 to 1849 are from the Custom-house records. As soon as we could move toward the Quango we did so, meeting in our course several trading-parties, both native and Portuguese. We met two of the latter carrying a tusk weighing 126 lbs.
We never saw discoloration till we reached the Quango; that obtained its matter from the western slope of the western ridge, just as this part of the Zambesi receives its soil from the eastern slope of the eastern ridge. It carried a considerable quantity of wreck of reeds, sticks, and trees.