The country between Benguella and Mossamedes abounds with large animals: elands, spring-bok, and other antelopes, zebras, wild buffaloes, &c. The natives affirm positively that the eland and other antelopes in their wild state capture and eat small birds.
It would be curious to ascertain if this strange habit or taste in a herbivorous animal is true, or has been observed in South Africa, where these animals are still more abundant.
I was once fortunate enough to see, from a low rocky ridge, a vast herd of spring-bok running at full speed across a plain near Mossamedes, and it was really a fine sight. This very beautiful animal has a quantity of long, snow-white hair completely hidden in a fold of the skin along its spine;—when running, its pace seems to be a succession of high leaps, in which this long white hair is alternately exposed and hidden at each jump. The effect of these flashes of pure white in the sun was most striking and beautiful, as the thousands of spring-bok sped rapidly across the plain at our feet, and gradually vanished in the distance. Although I had been prepared to see large herds of antelopes at Mossamedes, from the accounts of the Portuguese there, and from what I had read in books of travel in Southern Africa, I could not help being astonished at the sight, and feeling how impossible it was to realize, except from actual observation, the appearance of thousands of these lovely animals assembled together and scudding like a cloud across the face of the great bare plain.
The large tree euphorbias, so common near the coast at Ambriz and Loanda, become scarcer in the country to the south till we get to the desert hills and cliffs about Elephant Bay, and beyond to Mossamedes, where they completely disappear.
Perfectly flat-topped hills are a striking feature of this part of the coast, and are appropriately termed “mezas” or “tables” by the Portuguese. The coast, more particularly from the River San Nicolau, is deeply cut by ravines with almost perpendicular sides, and leading no great distance inland, evidently worn by the action of the water through the basalt and other friable rock. It makes travelling on foot hard work, as the usual road is near the sea and some of the walls of cliff are difficult and dangerous to ascend and descend.
In one of my excursions in this part of the coast, I saw the dead body of a black lying at the foot of one of these precipices, seemingly fallen from the top. It was nearly devoured by birds, crabs, and small animals. There is another road, a very good one, a few miles farther inland.
There are no elephants to be met with now on the coast at any part of Angola; the last were said to have been seen about Elephant Bay, from which it may probably have derived its name. They do come down occasionally on the Quissama side of the River Quanza, and one was lately shot at Bruto, most likely having swum the river.
On Cape Santa Maria, the southern point of the “Bahia dos Passaros” (Bay of Birds), there is an old marble column, placed there by the Portuguese in olden times to commemorate the discovery of this cape, in 1486, by the navigator Diogo Cam. I once went with a Portuguese in a boat from Cuio to Catara, a small bay beyond Cape Santa Maria. Our men had been rowing all the moonlight night long, and at daybreak we landed at the Bahia dos Passaros, and found an empty hut that had been occupied by a curer during the fishing season; this was taken possession of by our blacks, who went fast asleep in it, after hauling up the boat. We had our breakfast under the shade of the boat sail, and then followed their example. We had slept about a couple of hours when I was awakened by the loud cawing of the pretty white-banded crows of the coast (Corvus scapulatus). I threw a stone at the noisy birds, and happening to look in the direction of the sea, noticed that our boat was gone; I looked into the hut thinking our men had gone off with it in search of birds’ eggs, but they lay like logs, still fast asleep. I woke my companion, and we ran to the beach and saw our boat at the northern end of the bay slowly drifting away, the tide having risen and floated it while we slept. Our men ran along the beach and swam off to the boat, and we thanked the crows with the remains of our breakfast. It is astonishing how soon a number of these birds will appear after any one lands in these desolate bays, to pick up any food that may be left about. This bay derives its name from the number of sea-gulls that inhabit a high-peaked rock rising out of the sea at a short distance from the shore.
The River San Nicolau only runs in the rainy season, which is likewise the case with all the other rivers on this part of the coast, south of the River Quanza, and even this shifts its bar a mile or more to the north in the dry season.
At the little Bay of Baba, I saw a very extraordinary sight, and one that shows the great quantity of fish in the sea of that coast. I had started on foot early in the morning, from the house of a Portuguese who was engaged in the fishing trade, on my way to Mossamedes, and as I walked along the beach for more than a mile, I saw for the whole distance, in the calm water, a small species of fish, about a foot long, in countless numbers, packed side by side so closely as almost to touch one another, and their snouts touching the sand. Farther south, fish are said to be even more plentiful.
At Port Pinda a three-masted fishing vessel arrived with a crew of fishermen from Algarve, and they caught such quantities that they found the work of curing too hard, and they gradually gave up fishing, and employed their vessel in earning freights up and down the coast.
I was told by the captain of a British man-of-war that at Walwish Bay he had seen eight tons of fish taken at one haul of the seine net.
The town of Mossamedes (or Little Fish Bay of the English charts) is very prettily built on the shore of the little bay from which it derives its name. The houses are of stone, well built and commodious, and the town has quite a clean and imposing appearance as seen from the sea. The bay is very pretty, and protected from the “calema” or surf. A fort commands it, which is built on a low cliff immediately south of the town. At a little distance off a low line of hills hides the further view of the interior, and all around nothing but an arid waste of pure white sand meets the eye with a very depressing effect. Three miles to the north are the “hortas” or “kitchen gardens” of the Portuguese, where the fertile sandy soil grows every kind of root and vegetable. The common potato grows there in perfection, and was the principal article of cultivation a few years ago, when the American whalers used to call there from the fishery on the coast. The English cruisers also used to touch there for cattle and fresh provisions. Cattle used to be so abundant that the ordinary price of a bullock was from ten shillings to one pound. There is a considerable quantity of sugar-cane grown there and converted into rum, several thousand pipes being the yearly production. The little River Giraul runs through these plantations, and its overflow sometimes causes considerable damage.
I saw excellent gum-arabic at Mossamedes, brought from the Gambos country, and I sent a large tinfull of it to London, where it was reported upon as being equal to the best quality in the market.
At Mossamedes oxen are trained for riding; the cartilage of the nose is perforated, and through the opening a thin, short piece of round iron is passed, at the ends of which are attached the reins, and the animal is guided by them in the same manner as a horse. A good bullock will trot well, and even gallop for a short distance. They are most useful in that country, and are very comfortable to ride. The saddle is made of leather, and is only a well-padded cushion with stirrups. A riding ox will go faster, if required, than blacks on foot can accompany it, but as in travelling a caravan of blacks with provisions and baggage is always necessary, there is no need of greater speed. They will live on such spare dry grass as can be obtained on the road, and are much safer over the stony and sandy ground than horses, and not so liable to lame or be knocked up;—they will also go a much longer time without water.
On one of my visits to Mossamedes I was away a fortnight in the bush, on an excursion to explore several places where copper ore had been found, and reached about forty miles into the interior, to near the first range of mountains called the “Xellas” (pronounced Sheilas). Our road lay north till we had crossed the dry, sandy bed of the River Giraul, and then in an easterly direction. The first deposits met with are recent clayey beds, gypsum-dust, and sandstones, and in some places the perpendicular faces of the high masses are covered with an abundant efflorescence of almost pure sulphate of magnesia. This had attracted the attention of some of the Portuguese, who imagined that it might be nitre. One man sent a cask full of it to Lisbon to be reported upon, and the answer he received was, “that it was not nitre as it would not make gunpowder, and that they could not tell what else it was!”
This formation is succeeded by massive basalt, containing in places small quantities of double refracting calcspar and heulandite.
This narrow belt or strip of basalt is followed farther inland by a highly quartzose schistose rock with much iron and hornblende. This insensibly changes to a quartzose granite, then to more schist, and in some places to a fine-grained porphyry. In these are found quartz veins with small strings or lodes of very rich sulphide of copper. These were the only copper lodes in situ that I have been able to find in Angola, but unfortunately, although containing the very richest copper ore, they are so poor in size, and otherwise under such disadvantages that they would be quite profitless to work or explore.
About twenty or thirty miles from Mossamedes the granite country is very peculiar. In some places huge single rocks rise out of the nearly level plain; in others hills of rocks, in several of which deposits of rain-water are found at the very top. One of these was a natural tank with a narrow entrance, and so dark that we had to light an old newspaper to see it. It contained, I should say, not less than three or four hundred gallons of water, which was exquisitely clear and cool. It was covered by vast slabs of granite, from which the rain drained into it, so that the sun was unable to evaporate it during the hot season, when not a drop of water is to be found for miles anywhere else.
A still more singular phenomenon is that of the “Pedra Grande,” or “big stone,” on the road to the interior at over thirty miles from Mossamedes. This, as its name implies, is a huge rounded mass of granite rising out of the granitic, sandy plain.
On the smooth side of this rock, about twenty or thirty feet above the plain, is a circular pit about nine or ten feet deep and five or six wide. The rainfall on that part of the rock that lies above this pit, drains into it, and is said to fill it completely every rainy season. The form of the pit is like that of the inside of a crucible, narrowing gently to the bottom. The walls are perfectly smooth and regular, and it can contain several thousand gallons of water. The mass of granite rock is of the closest and hardest description, and no explanation seems possible of the formation of this pit, except that of a bubble in the rock when primarily formed, or that there was a mass of easily soluble or decomposable mineral contained in it that has since been dissolved out. I must say, however, that there is no evidence anywhere visible to corroborate this latter theory. There are, it is true, one or two other small and similar pits near the great one, but this does not throw any more light upon their probable formation. This grand deposit supplies the Mundombes and travellers with an abundant supply of water during the dry season, and is therefore a principal halting-place.
This is a lion country, but on both occasions that I was at Mossamedes it was not the season in which they abounded, so that I saw but little signs of them.
They come regularly to the “hortas” near the town, and several have been shot there by the Portuguese. I was shown the hut of a German emigrant where a lion came through the grass roof on to the table at which he was seated at supper with his wife.
It appeared that the lion had chased a cat on to the roof from an outhouse, and the roof being of a frail nature, had given way under his weight, but luckily the cries of the man and his wife so frightened the astonished beast, that he forced himself through the slender walls of the hut and ran away.
On an excursion to visit a copper locality inland of Baba Bay, where a Portuguese convict alleged he had discovered and extracted a basketful of good specimens of ore, I put up one night at a hut belonging to a Portuguese engaged with a number of slaves in collecting orchilla-weed. At a distance of about two or three hundred yards from the hut was a pool of brackish water, in a grove of trees at the foot of a rocky hill. During the night, which was pitch dark, the blacks declared that a lion had captured some animal at the pool, and was eating it. At daybreak we turned out and came on about a dozen black and white dog-like animals, about the size of a Newfoundland dog, that ran quickly up the hill on our approach. Close to the pool we found the remains of an eland that had been killed by the lion. The other animals, which are said to follow it, and wait till the royal beast has had its fill of the game it has killed, and devour the remainder, had not had time to finish it, and there was enough left to afford us a good breakfast of venison steak, and our blacks a feast of fresh meat.
Thick eland steak is delicious, both from its juiciness and flavour, and its exquisite tenderness.
My excursion was unsuccessful in discovering the copper-mine, as I found that the rogue of a convict, who had been promised a large sum of money for it by a friend of mine at Mossamedes, Senhor Accacio d’Oliveira, had buried a basketful of copper ore taken from some other locality, in a hole, where he pretended to find it when my friend sent his own blacks with him to bring away larger samples.
Hyenas are very common; and I saw at Mossamedes a magnificent wolfhound (from the Serra da Estrella, in the north of Portugal) and his dam, who always used to run out together at night and chase away any hyena that came near their master’s house. One night, however, they did not return, so their owner turned out to seek for them as soon as it was daylight, and found them at some little distance lying down bleeding and exhausted, and between them the dead body of a huge hyena which they had fought with and killed. Some idea may be formed of the size of the hyena, and of the ferocious nature of the fight, when I state that the dogs were young, as powerful and as large as any I have ever seen, and that they were protected by thick collars studded with strong iron spikes. These beautiful animals recovered from their wounds, but they never ran out after hyenas again.
The country about Mossamedes is exposed to periodical irruptions of the Monanos, or natives from the Nano country, which is inland, and north of Mossamedes. They come down in large expeditions, laying waste the country by driving off the cattle and sheep belonging to the Mundombes. One of these marauding columns came down to the very town of Mossamedes, but they agreed to retire on the payment of a certain amount of cloth and other goods by the Portuguese; and amongst other articles that they stipulated for were a number of dogs, which they wanted for food. This condition was easily complied with, as Mossamedes always contains a number of maimed and horribly mangy mongrels, who try to pick up a living from the remains of fish and other offal on the beach.
The few native inhabitants about Mossamedes are Mundombes, like those of Benguella, but between the two places there is a district peopled by a curious tribe called the Mucoandos. This district lies to the interior, and between Point Santa Maria and the River San Nicolau. These Mucoandos are a roving, migratory tribe, rearing flocks of sheep, which are their only wealth; it is said that they hardly ever cultivate the ground, and only build temporary huts or shelters. They go about nearly naked, only wearing a small piece of sheepskin round their loins, and are a quiet and inoffensive tribe. They are said to be gradually dying out.
A still more curious tribe are the Muquices, of whom only a few now remain. They are found near the sea, between Mossamedes and Carumjamba. They do not keep sheep or cattle, or any live-stock whatever, and never cultivate the ground or build huts to live in. Their food is principally fish, which they catch with hook and line, and shellfish, particularly mussels, which are very abundant and fine on the rocks, and oysters. They cook their food by roasting it at a fire, and at night they each make a small half circle of stones about a foot high, against which they curl up like dogs as a shelter from the wind, very often on the bare tops of the cliffs overhanging the sea. They also take advantage of the ledges of rock and open caves or holes to sleep in, but they are always on the move, never remaining more than a few days at each place. I often saw these encampments, with the usual accompaniments of heaps of mussel-shells and ashes, the remains of their food and fires on the cliffs.
I once saw a party of eight of these Muquices at Point Giraul, the northern end of Mossamedes Bay, where I had gone with some friends for a day’s picnic of fish, oysters, and mussels off the rocks. This was the largest number I had seen together. They were living in a large hole in the soft rock, and were very pleased to have a talk, and get a drink and a few small presents.
They are rather light-coloured, with very decided obliquely-set eyes, which gives them a singular Chinese expression of face. They are slow and gentle in their manner, and are said to be what their appearance indicates, very quiet and inoffensive. The Portuguese often employ them as letter-carriers up and down that part of the coast.
Their constantly roving habits do not allow them to have old or infirm people;—when these cannot walk and keep up with the rest, they are killed by being knocked on the head from behind with a stick. The eldest son, or nearest male relative, does the deed, and the victim is not apprised beforehand of his fate.
About Mossamedes that most singular plant the Welwitschia mirabilis is found growing, and the country about the River San Nicolau, or 14° S. lat., seems to be its northern limit. It has been found south, in Damara Land. I was fortunate enough to be able to collect specimens of the plant, flowers, and cones for Dr. Hooker, which supplied some of the materials for his splendid monograph on this wonderful plant. These specimens are now preserved in the Kew Museum.
WELWITSCHIAS GROWING IN A PLAIN NEAR MOSSAMEDES
Plate XV.
WELWITSCHIAS GROWING IN A PLAIN NEAR MOSSAMEDES.
To face page 229.
The following account of it is an extract from Dr. Hooker’s work:—“The ‘Welwitschia’ is a woody plant, said to attain a century in duration, with an obconic trunk, about two feet long, of which a few inches rise above the soil, presenting the appearance of a flat, two-lobed, depressed mass, sometimes (according to Dr. Welwitsch) attaining fourteen feet in circumference (!), and looking like a round table. When full grown it is dark-brown, hard, and cracked over the whole surface (much like the burnt crust of a loaf of bread); the lower portion forms a stout tap-root, buried in the soil, and branching downwards at the end. From deep grooves in the circumference of the depressed mass two enormous leaves are given off, each six feet long when full grown, one corresponding to each lobe: these are quite flat, linear, very leathery, and split to the base into innumerable thongs that lie curling upon the surface of the soil. Its discoverer describes these same two leaves as being present from the earliest condition of the plant, and assures me that they are in fact developed from the two cotyledons of the seed, and are persistent, being replaced by no others. From the circumference of the tabular mass, above but close to the insertion of the leaves, spring stout dichotomously branched cymes, nearly a foot high, bearing small, erect scarlet cones, which eventually become oblong and attain the size of those of the common spruce-fir. The scales of the cones are very closely imbricated, and contain, when young and still very small, solitary flowers, which in some cones are hermaphrodite (structurally but not functionally), in others female. The hermaphrodite flower consists of a perianth of four pieces, six monadelphous stamens with globose three-locular anthers, surrounding a central ovule, the integument of which is produced into a styliform sigmoid tube, terminated by a discoid apex. The female flower consists of a solitary erect ovule contained in a compressed utricular perianth. The mature cone is tetragonous, and contains a broadly-winged fruit in each scale.”
I first saw the plant in my first journey inland from Mossamedes. On a second visit to Mossamedes I went one day specially to obtain the large specimens now at Kew, which were growing about six miles south of the town on the sandy plain near the sea.
I found a considerable number of the plants growing, and having secured my specimens, placed fresh cones in spirit, and transplanted a couple of the small plants into a box of earth, I prepared to return. I had ridden an old mule, and taken with me a number of blacks with poles to carry the specimens. I tied the mule to a pole and left her to graze about on the scanty tufts of grass whilst I dug out the plants. The little refreshment she had picked up made her quite skittish, and all our efforts to catch her were unavailing. For more than an hour did she manage to elude us over the burning white sand, and I was fairly tired out when she was at last caught.
I several times witnessed the “mirage” at Mossamedes. At a distance of a few hundred yards before me I seemed to see the surface of the ground covered with about two feet of water, and only the tops of the grass and bushes could be seen out of it. The illusion is absolutely perfect: the little waves and ripples of the water, and the reflection of the sun from the surface, are all there, and only seeing the tops of the grass still further increases the reality of the impression, which continues sometimes for more than a quarter of an hour.
I found most agreeable society at Mossamedes, many of the Portuguese there having their wives and families with them, which was not the case at Benguella or elsewhere in Angola.
The climate at Mossamedes is remarkably healthy, and for many years fevers were quite unknown there. I saw the white children looking as healthy and rosy and strong as in Europe, and the white men working in the plantations as in Portugal. Subsequently fever made its appearance there, and once of a rather severe type, which I cannot help thinking originated from the total want of sanitary arrangements for the greatly increased population.
The Portuguese in Angola are everywhere remarkably neglectful and careless of these matters, so necessary for the preservation of health, especially in a hot climate.