The province of Angola is divided by the Portuguese into four governments, viz., Ambriz (or Dom Pedro V.), Loanda, Benguella, and Mossamedes. These are again subdivided into districts, each ruled by a military “chefe” or chief subordinate to the governors of each division, and these in their turn to the Governor-General of the province at Loanda. In this great extent of country under Portuguese rule, from the difficulty and delay in the communications with the central head of military and civil government at Loanda, and from the fact that the “chefes” combine both military and civil functions, the tyrannical injustice and spoliation the natives have so long suffered at their hands can be easily imagined.
Other causes also concurred to produce this disgraceful state of things in Angola. The wretched pay of the Portuguese officers almost obliged them to prey upon the utterly defenceless population. The great bribery and corruption by means of which places that bled well or yielded “emoluments,” as they were called, were filled; the ignorant and ordinary class of officers, as a rule, who could be forced to serve in Angola; and the knowledge that scarcely any other future was open to them than the certainty of loss of health after years of banishment in Africa—must be mentioned as causes of the despotic oppression that crushed the whole country under its heel, depopulating it, and stifling any attempt at industrial development on the part of the natives. That this is a truth, admitting of no denial or defence, is at once shown by the fact that the sources of the great exports of native produce are all places removed from the direct misrule of the Portuguese.
The pay of the Governor-General of Angola is 1333l. per annum. That of the Colonial Secretary is 444l. A major’s pay is now 10l. per month; that of a captain, 6l. 13s. 4d.; a lieutenant’s, 5l. 12s. 1d.; a sub-lieutenant’s, 4l. 8s. 11d. Some few years ago the pay was actually, incredible as it may appear, thirty-seven and a half per cent. below the above amounts: the present pay is only the same as in Portugal. When in command, a major and captain have thirty per cent., and a lieutenant and sub-lieutenant twenty-five per cent. in addition.
For the above mean and miserable pay Portugal sent, and still continues to send, men to govern her extensive semi-civilized colonies. Can any one in his senses be astonished at the result? Not a penny more did a poor officer get when perhaps sent miles away into the interior, where the carriage of a single load of provisions, &c., from Loanda would cost half a sovereign or more, and where even necessaries were often at enormous prices.
In the fifteen years that I have principally lived in, and travelled over a great part of Angola, and passed in intimate intercourse with the natives and Portuguese, I have had abundant opportunities of witnessing the miserable state to which that fine country has been reduced by the wretched and corrupt system of government. This state is not unknown to Portugal, and she has several times sent good and honest men as governors to Loanda to try to put a stop to the excesses committed by their subordinates, but they have been obliged to return in despair, as without good and well-paid officials it was no use either to change, or to make an example of one or two where all were equally bad or guilty. There is, of course, but little chance of any change until Portugal sees that it is to her own advantage that this immensely rich possession should be governed by enlightened and well-paid officials. Let her send to Angola independent and intelligent men, and let them report faithfully on the causes that have depopulated vast districts, that have destroyed all industry, and that continually provoke the wars and wide dissatisfaction among tribes naturally so peaceable and submissive, and amenable to a great extent to instruction and advancement.
A few instances will give an idea of the persecution that the natives were subject to in Angola from the rapacity of their rulers, and from which no redress was possible.
To assist the traders established at Pungo Andongo, Cassange, and other parts of the interior to transport their ivory, wax, and other produce to the coast, the government directed that a certain number of carriers should be supplied by the “Soba” or native king of each district, and that a stipulated payment should be made to these carriers for their services by the traders. This was immediately turned by the Portuguese “chefes” to their own advantage. The carriers were forced to work without any pay, which was retained by the “chefe;” and as fines and imprisonments helped to depopulate whole districts, and carriers became more difficult to obtain, the “chefes” in their rapacity exacted a larger and larger sum from the traders for each, over and above the stipulated pay. This frightful abuse existed in full force till 1872, when the forced liability of the natives to serve as carriers was abolished by law.
So easy and successful a robbery was this, that large sums were spent, and much interest employed, for the sake of getting the post of “chefe” to the more important districts, such as Golungo Alto, Pungo Andongo, &c., even for a short time. The “chefe” being military commandant and civil judge, the population were perfectly incapable of resistance or complaint, and if such reached Loanda, it was of course quashed by the friends of the despot in power, who had themselves received a heavy sum to obtain him the post.
While I was exploring the district of Cambambe, an order arrived from Loanda for the “chefe” to draw up and forward a list of the number of men capable of bearing arms and being called out as a native militia. Such an apparently simple order supplied the “chefe” with a means of committing a dastardly robbery on the defenceless natives; and he in his turn was cheated of more than half of it by his subordinates, two mulatto militia officers, who were sent by him with half-a-dozen black soldiers to scour the country and obtain the desired information.
I was staying at the house of a Portuguese trader, at a place called Nhangui-a-pepi, on the road to Pungo Andongo, and about half way between that place and Dondo, when these two scoundrels arrived, and arranged the following plan with the trader, whose name was Diaz. They had agreed with the “chefe” of Cambambe at Dondo, to receive a small share of the plunder they were to collect for him, but as they considered this share was not sufficiently liberal, they proposed to Diaz to send him part of the horned cattle they should obtain, for which he was to pay them in cash,—a certain amount below the value of course. This was agreed to, and they departed in high spirits.
A month after, on calling again on Diaz, I found that the two villains had already sent him seventy oxen, and that their journey was not yet completed! How many they had sent to the “chefe” at Cambambe of course I could not ascertain.
The manner of proceeding was simple and ingenious. They pretended that the Governor-General at Loanda had sent an order that all men in the district should be enlisted as soldiers and sent to the coast to serve in some war, that the names of all were down from the registers at Cambambe, and they had come to revise the list, and that all would be liable to serve and be taken from their homes unless they were bribed to have the names erased.
In this way they robbed the poor inhabitants wholesale of oxen, sheep, goats, fowls, money, &c., with what success will be seen from the number of cattle only that they sent Diaz in one month, and from a part only of an extensive district.
On my arrival at Loanda some months later, I informed the governor personally of what I had witnessed, but he declared himself unable to prevent it or punish the culprits, from the impossibility of obtaining legal proofs, and from the influential position held by the principal robber.
Shortly after the commencement of steam navigation on the River Quanza, the Governor-General was asked to order the “chefes” of Cambambe and Muxima to cause stumps and snags that were dangerous to the steamers to be removed from the river. By a similar ingenious interpretation this inoffensive order of the government was converted into a means of levying black-mail on the natives of the river. The subordinates intrusted with the execution of the measure declared that they had orders to cut down all palm-trees on or near the banks of the river, and would do so unless bribed to spare them. In this way a considerable sum of money was netted by the rogues in power.
The natives of the interior of Loanda are very fond of litigation, and this again is a source of considerable profit to the “chefes,” as they will not receive any petition, issue a summons, &c., without being bribed, and the crooked course of justice may in consequence be imagined.
A friend told me, that being once with the “chefe” of a district in the interior, they saw two bullocks approaching the “chefe’s” house, and on his asking a black standing near whose cattle they were, he answered very coolly that “they were two oxen that were bringing a petition!”
I need not say that I have known some honest “chefes” who discharged the duties of their ill-paid and thankless office honourably and with intelligence, but these exceptions are too rare to influence in the least the sad state into which the country has been sunk by long years of rapacity on the part of its irresponsible rulers. Only a total change in the system of government can again people the vast deserted tracts with industrious inhabitants to cultivate its rich land; but, I am sorry to say, a termination to the long reign of corruption that has existed in Angola is not to be expected for years to come.
Whilst in Portugal itself patriotism and public morality are debased by an unchecked system of bribery and greed of money and power, it is too much to expect that her rich colonies will be purged of their long-existing abuses.
As might be expected, the great peninsular obstruction and impediment of high custom-house duties, so fatal to all commercial and industrial development, is in full and vexatious force in Angola, with the exception of Ambriz, where the total annihilation of trade from this cause, after its occupation by the Portuguese, was so striking, that I at last prevailed upon the Governor, Francisco Antonio Gonçalves Cardozo, to reduce the duties to a moderate figure, with what wonderful results I have already explained in a former chapter.
With the great want of roads and carriers, or other means of conveyance, either for goods into or produce from the interior, transport is very expensive, and it is evident that the levying of high import duties besides on all goods for trade so enhances their value, that it becomes impossible to offer an adequate return or advantage to the native for the result of his labour or industry, or to leave much margin for profit to the merchant; consequently, the development of the country becomes completely paralysed and the revenue of the state remains small in proportion. Such a simple fact, apparent to the meanest understanding, is perfectly incomprehensible to the Portuguese! To mention one instance only: the last time I was at Golungo Alto the price of gunpowder was nearly six shillings a pound, and that of other goods in proportion! That the natives of Angola will cultivate large quantities of produce, if they can get moderately well paid for their trouble, is evidenced by the considerable exports from the country from Ambriz to the River Congo, where there are no custom-houses, and also on the River Quanza, where steam navigation enables goods to be sent up the country cheaply, and so to bear the almost prohibitive duties levied on them at Loanda.
It is not only the excessively high duties paid to the custom-house that are complained of by the merchants at Loanda, but the absurd, petty, and vexatious manner in which the whole system is worked; the mean prohibitions and regulations attending the loading, discharging, and clearing of goods, vessels, and boats; the great delay and trouble about the simplest operations; the intense obtuseness of the officials, and the utter want of reason or object for such irritating proceedings. They do not prevent smuggling, as that can be most easily effected by any one desiring to do so, the lower officers and police being all common blacks or mulattoes in the receipt of miserable pay; and I remember one of the first merchants of Loanda once opening a drawer in his office, and showing me significantly, when speaking on this subject, a number of vouchers for small sums of money he had advanced on loan to the petty officers employed by the custom-house, and paid liberally at the rate of a few pence a day to prevent smuggling!
It would be amusing to see so much imposing bombast in the custom-house of a little place like Loanda, depending on a lot of poor, ragged, and starving blacks for its preventive service, were it not so annoying to see the effect of the high duties in hindering the development of the riches of the country, whose commercial prosperity is at present the only remedy for the evils of its misgovernment.
From olden times the report has been handed down of the occurrence of silver in the district of Cambambe, and the object of the Portuguese in some of their first wars in the interior was to obtain possession of the mines. There is, however, no record to show that they were successful in their endeavours; and beyond the statement that the natives of Cambambe paid tribute to the Portuguese in silver, part of which was made into a service for a church in Lisbon, nothing more was definitely known about it.
When I left the Bembe mines I was engaged by Senhor Flores of Loanda to explore the supposed locality of the silver mines, as well as various sites in Cambambe, believed in former days to have been copper workings. I made a preliminary trip into the interior in September 1859, and then left Africa, returning a few months later with miners and the necessary tools and apparatus for a more complete exploration, which the indications I had noticed warranted me in undertaking.
I luckily had with me six capital Ambriz carriers, who had brought me from Ambriz to Loanda, in my journey through the country of Mossulo, which I have described in a preceding chapter, and I readily induced them to take me to Cambambe. I say luckily, as we found the greatest difficulty in obtaining carriers on the road, and we should have had to walk much greater distances than we did, if I had not had the Ambriz blacks. I was accompanied by a Senhor Lobato, of Massangano, the first man who had started trade on the River Quanza by means of barges to and from Loanda. Our route lay from Loanda to the River Bengo, and from thence inland, in an easterly direction, on the high road to Cassange—the farthest point occupied by the Portuguese in Angola.
The road, for a couple of days’ journey or more, is on and near the south bank of the River Bengo, and passes through some of the most fertile land imaginable, but, with the exception of small mandioca and other food-plantations, producing but little beyond the requirements of the few inhabitants of the country owing to the absence of cultivation.
We passed many places where towns had formerly existed, but the inhabitants had been obliged to remove farther into the interior, or to the country about the River Dande, to escape the wholesale robbery and exactions of the Portuguese “chefes.”
The second night after leaving Loanda we dined and slept at the house of the “chefe” of the district of Icollo e Bengo, a very intelligent young man, newly appointed to that place, and he gave us a painful description of the wretched condition in which he had found his district.
We were unable to obtain carriers here at any price, those that had brought us from Loanda having been hired for that distance only, as they would not trust themselves farther inland, fearing they might be forced to carry back heavy loads, for which they would be paid only a miserable pittance, or perhaps nothing at all.
We had, consequently, to rely only on the six Ambriz men we had with us, but subsequently we were fortunate enough to pick up a few more on the road. In six days we arrived at Porto Domingos, on the River Lucala, a tributary of the Quanza. In these six days we passed through very varied scenery, due not only to the gradual elevation of the country from the coast, as noticed on the road from Ambriz to Bembe, but also to the variety of geological formations. On leaving Loanda horizontal beds of limestone, and then fine sandstones, occur. Near the junction, at a place called Tantanbondo, there are curious lines of nodules embedded in the limestone, and numbers loose on the surface from the weathering of the latter. These nodules are generally fractured, and re-cemented with crystalline calcspar; those not fractured are mostly of a singular, rounded shape, like an ordinary cottage-loaf. At Icollo e Bengo, finely micaceous iron ore is found; and at Calunguembe trap-rock occurs, which gives a most picturesque peaky appearance to the country.
Porto Domingos is one of the most lovely places I have seen in Africa; the vegetation of palm-trees, baobabs, cottonwood-trees, and creepers of many kinds on the banks of the river is wonderfully luxuriant. We found traces everywhere of a former very much larger population, and the same true tale of the inhabitants having been driven farther inland by the rapine of their Portuguese rulers.
After leaving Porto Domingos we arrived next day at the dry bed of the River Mucozo, a small stream running only in the rainy season and joining the River Quanza at Dondo. We passed through a thick wood, the road being the dry bed of a small stream running through it, and the ground a sandy dust of a bright red colour from oxide of iron. We and our carriers presented a comical appearance after walking an hour and a half through the wood.
The rock of the country is a kind of conglomerate, with a matrix containing much oxide of iron. At the River Mucozo this formation is succeeded by a very hard white quartzose rock, containing but little mica or feldspar, and the scenery is very beautiful, the country being very hilly and broken.
Three days’ journey over a wild and rocky country brought us to the “Soba” Dumbo, formerly a very powerful king, and from whom the Portuguese have always derived great assistance in their wars, but only a handful of natives remain at the present day in the country, to mark the place of the once populous kingdom of the “Soba” Dumbo.
In the next two or three succeeding days I visited the places where, from the heaps of stones lying close to holes and excavations, it was likely that the natives had formerly worked for minerals; and that copper was what they had extracted or searched for was evident from the indications of blue and green carbonate of copper in these heaps. I saw enough to convince me that an exploration of the country was desirable, and likely to result in meeting with important deposits of copper. Of silver or other metals I saw no indications whatever.
We crossed in a southerly direction to Nhangui-a-pepi, and from thence to Dondo, and down the River Quanza in a canoe to Calumbo. A night’s journey in a hammock brought us back to Loanda, having been absent exactly a fortnight on this very interesting journey, and though we suffered several times from hunger and thirst, and walked a great part of the distance from want of carriers, it was performed without any accident whatever or ill effects to health.
On my return to Africa in November 1860, I was accompanied from Lisbon by two Portuguese miners, to assist me in the exploration of these localities and in my search for the ancient silver mines. One of these men died on arrival at Loanda of an epidemic of malignant fever then raging there, and the other died shortly after reaching Cambambe, whither I had immediately proceeded.
From November to June I was actively occupied in exploring this district, and I cleared out several of the old workings, but failed to discover metallic deposits or indications of any value, though malachite and blue carbonate of copper were to be noticed abundantly distributed everywhere.
I made many excursions, sometimes of several days’ duration, in that time—one in the direction of the district of Duque de Bragança, to a place called Ngombi Ndua, on the fine range of granite mountains ending south at Pungo Andongo; but beyond the universal indications of carbonates of copper, my explorations yielded no result.
A very interesting excursion was one I made about thirty miles in a northerly direction, where I passed through most beautiful mountain scenery, the formation of the country being trachyte or volcanic rock.
This evidence of ancient volcanic action is extremely interesting, as it may have caused the ridge or elevation running the whole length of Angola, which elevation has prevented the drainage of the plateau of the interior of that part of Africa from flowing to the Atlantic. This too strengthens my idea of the great River Congo being found to bend to the south, and be the outlet for the waters of the hundreds of miles of country lying behind Angola, and perhaps far beyond to the south, where, as I have already stated, there is no river of any consequence to be found.
The only other example of volcanic rock I have met with in Angola is the narrow belt or strip of basalt found at Mossamedes, and on the sea shore to the north of it for about thirty or forty miles.
This trachyte of part of Cambambe is no doubt connected with the trap-rocks noticed in my journey overland from Loanda to that district. The greater part of Cambambe is rocky, and destitute of forest or large trees; large tracts are covered with grass and shrubs, and of these the “Nborotuto” (Cochlospermum Angolense, Welw.), a small shrubby tree with large, bright yellow flowers about four inches across, and like gigantic butter-cups in shape and colour, is extremely common, and very conspicuous. In the cacimbo, or dry season, some very beautiful bulbs and orchids spring up after the ground has been cleared of grass by burning.
Birds of many species and of beautiful colouring are abundant, and in a small collection I made (see ‘The Ibis’ for October 1862), Dr. Hartlaub found several new species, and I have no doubt this district would well repay a collector. The most extraordinary bird in appearance and habits is certainly a large black hornbill (Bucorax Abyssinicus), called by the natives Engungoashito. It is about the size of a large turkey, but longer in the body and tail. The following is from my notes on this bird in the above publication:—
“They are found sparingly nearly everywhere in Angola, becoming abundant, however, only towards the interior. In the mountain-range in which Pungo Andongo is situated, and running nearly N. and S., they are common, and it was near the base of these mountains that I shot these two specimens. They are seen in flocks of six or eight (the natives say, always in equal number of males and females). Farther in the interior, I was credibly informed that they are found in flocks of from one to two hundred individuals.
“The males raise up and open and close their tails exactly in the manner of a turkey, and filling out the bright cockscomb-red, bladder-like wattle on their necks, and with wings dropping on the ground, make quite a grand appearance.
“They do not present a less extraordinary appearance as they walk slowly with an awkward gait, and peer from side to side with their great eyes in quest of food in the short grass, poking their large bills at any frog, snake, &c., that may come in their way.
“Their flight is feeble, and not long-sustained. When alarmed, they generally fly up to the nearest large tree, preferring such as have thick branches with but little foliage, as the Adansonia “Mucuzo” (a wild fig). Here they squat close on the branches, and, if further alarmed, raise themselves quite upright on their legs in an attitude of listening, with wide-open bills. The first to notice a person at once utters its customary cry, and all fly off to the next tree.
“They are very wary. The grass near the mountains being comparatively short, and with but little scrub or bush, it is very difficult to approach them without being observed from the high trees. I followed a flock of six for upwards of two hours, crawling flat on my stomach, negro fashion, before I obtained a chance of a shot, when I was so fortunate as to break the wing of a male without otherwise injuring it. It was quickly captured by the blacks.
“They are omnivorous in their food: reptiles, birds, eggs, beetles, and all other insects, mandioca-roots, ginguba or ground-nuts, constitute their food in the wild state. In confinement I have fed this bird upon the same food, also upon fresh fish, which it showed itself very fond of, as well as on the entrails of fowls, &c. On letting it loose in Loanda, in a yard where there were several fowls with chickens, it immediately gulped down its throat six of the latter, and finished its breakfast with several eggs!
“The note or cry of the male is like the hoarse blast of a horn, repeated short three times, and answered by the female in a lower note. It is very loud, and can be heard at a considerable distance, particularly at night.
“They are said to build their nests on the very highest adansonias, in the hollow or cavity formed at the base or junction of the branches with the trunk.”
Another bird (the Scopus umbretta) is singular from the curious story of its habits, as described by the natives, but unfortunately I had not an opportunity of investigating their statements to ascertain the exact foundation for them.
All the more intelligent blacks in Cambambe gave me exactly the same description, and I leave it for future collectors to verify the statement. It is a small heron-like bird of a very uniform chestnut-brown colour, and is found near pools and marshes. It is affirmed by the natives that it never builds its own nest, but that other birds, of different species, make one for it; and also, that if a person bathes in the pool in which this bird is in the habit of washing and pluming itself, he becomes quickly affected with a cutaneous eruption similar to the itch.
The lovely “plantain-eaters,” principally the Corythaix Paulina, are very abundant all over Angola where thick forests are found. They are common in the country about Pungo Andongo, and also near the River Quanza. They have a very loud, hoarse cry, quite unlike that which a bird might be imagined to produce, which has a very singular and startling effect when heard in a forest.
It is its unearthly cry that makes this bird an object of superstition to the natives of the whole of Angola. It is said by them to be a “feiticeiro,” or sorcerer, and that it warns travellers of danger by frightening with its cry animals or robbers lying in wait for them. If one of these birds should perch on a hut or on a tree within the enclosure of a town and sing, it is thought such a bad omen that the inhabitants vacate it and remove to another place. When the natives bring them in cages from the interior for sale on the coast, they never take them into the towns on the road for fear they should sing whilst in them, and at night the carrier, for the same reason, sleeps with his birds at some little distance from any town.
One most singular circumstance connected with this bird is the fact that the gorgeous blood-red colour of its wing-feathers is soluble, especially in weak solution of ammonia, and that this soluble colouring matter contains a considerable quantity of copper, to which its colour may very probably be due. My attention was first called to this extremely curious and unexpected fact by Professor Church’s paper in the ‘Phil. Trans.’ for 1869; and, on my last voyage home from the Coast, I purchased a large bunch of the red wing-feathers in the market at Sierra Leone, with which my brother-in-law, Mr. Henry Bassett, F.C.S., has verified Professor Church’s results conclusively, and has found even a larger proportion of copper in the colouring matter extracted from these feathers.
The ammoniacal solution is of a magnificent ruby-red colour by transmitted light. Mr. Bassett obtained the following as the result of his investigation:—
“From 300 feathers obtained 1·045 grm. turacin. Two copper determinations, made by fusing with nitre and carbonate of soda, washing out with water, then dissolving the oxide of copper in nitric acid, filtering, and precipitating with potash, gave quantities of oxide of copper corresponding to 7·6 and 8·0 per cent. of metallic copper. Church found 6·0 per cent.; on the other hand, the feathers yielded him a larger quantity of the colouring matter. General characters, appearance, &c., exactly in accordance with Church’s description; insoluble in benzol, sulphide carbon, tetrachloride carbon. The copper to be unmistakably seen by burning the smallest portion of a feather in a Bunsen burner.”
It is difficult to say whether this copper is derived from the metal contained in the food of these birds, or whether they pick up, with sand and gravel, the attractive looking particles of malachite so universally distributed over Angola. Their habits would seem to favour somewhat this view, as they are extremely inquisitive in their wild state, running along the large branches of the trees in an excited and fussy manner, with outstretched neck and expanded wings, and peering down on any intruder with every expression of interest and curiosity.
At the same time, two birds that I have had in confinement in England, both for five or six years, moulted regularly every year, and reproduced the splendidly coloured feathers, of the same brightness, without the possibility of getting any copper except what might have entered into the composition of their food, which was most varied, consisting of every ripe fruit in season, cooked vegetables and roots, rice, bread, biscuits, dried fruits, &c.
In Angola many of the “plantain-eaters” to be obtained from the natives will only eat bananas, and refuse all other food, so that they cannot be brought to Europe; others, however, readily adapt themselves to almost every kind of soft food.
My first bird was a Corythaix Livingstonii, and was beautifully tame and gentle; it was most amusing in its habits, and in the notice it took of everything around it;—a change of dress, or even new or differently coloured ribbons to what it had been in the habit of seeing, excited its attention greatly, and it would utter a loud cry and open out its lovely wings in astonishment, and coming close to the cage bars examine it with the greatest curiosity. It was very fond of having a picture-book shown it, noticing especially those pictures that were most vividly coloured. It was very fond of a bath, which it used to come out and take in a large pie-dish full of water placed on the table. At night it roosted in a little, flat basket, in which it would not readily nestle till one of my sisters sang to it for a few minutes, when it would utter a satisfied kind of low, rumbling noise, and at once squat down quietly to sleep.
My last live specimen, a Corythaix Paulina was also very tame, and has only recently died from the breaking of an egg inside its body. A former egg that it laid is now in the collection of the British Museum. It had only just moulted before it died, and the skin is in beautiful plumage.
It is pleasing to record an instance of a bird being considered of good omen; this is one called “Quioco” by the natives, which has a beautifully clear and loud song, and this is believed to be a sign of good luck when heard near their huts. Its scientific name is Telephonus erythropterus.
Cattle thrive excellently in this district, and might be reared in any number, as also goats, sheep, and poultry. Game is comparatively scarce. Wild animals are principally the spotted and striped hyena and the black-backed jackal. Leopards I only heard of as infesting the country about half-way between Nhangui-a-pepi and Dondo, where, during the time I was in Cambambe, they had carried away cattle and attacked several blacks. The hyenas used to visit us almost every night in Cambambe, and at one place, where my cook slept by himself in a small hut, which was also the kitchen, they frightened him so by snorting under the door and trying to force their way in, attracted no doubt by the smell of the pots and pans, that he refused to pass another night in it, and I had to let him sleep in my hut. One night we heard a noise of smashing of crockery and falling of pots, &c., from the kitchen, and in the morning we found that a hyena had forced his way into the hut (built of sticks and grass), and had taken away a sheepskin from a wooden frame that served as a table, on which my cook had carefully placed my stock of plates and cooking utensils to dry, bringing the whole to the ground, and considerably reducing my limited stock of china and glass.
Nothing comes amiss to these voracious creatures, their powerful jaws and teeth enabling them to crunch up any bones, skin, &c. The hides of the oxen that were killed for food used to be thrown on the roofs of the huts to dry, and the hyenas would sometimes get at them, and if not taken away bodily we would find them almost entirely eaten up, their sharp teeth having cut through the tough raw hide as perfectly, and seemingly as easily, as a pair of shears; the ox skull and other bones of course always disappeared completely during the night.
When driven by hunger they become very bold, but rarely attack man. At Benguella, where they are very abundant, such a thing as an attack on a native was unknown, although at night many blacks sleep out of doors, and often in a drunken and helpless state; but at Golungo Alto, after an epidemic of small-pox, when the hyenas preyed upon the bodies of natives who had died of the disease, I was told that they had got into a habit of attacking the live blacks at night, but no fatal case occurred.
Hyenas always hunt in couples, a male and female according to the natives, and very often several couples together.
That they seek their prey in pairs I believe to be the case, from an instance that occurred to myself in Cambambe. I had built a long hut of sticks and grass for two white men (Portuguese soldiers and military convicts) from Loanda, who had been sent me on the death of the miner I had brought with me from Portugal. The two men occupied one end of the hut, the other being taken up with the mining tools, stores, &c., and one night two sheep had been placed there also, for safety. One was tied to a bundle of shovels, and the other to a wheelbarrow, to prevent them from straying about in the hut. Opposite to where they were secured was a door made of green sticks and withes.
Whilst the men were asleep a hyena forced his way under the door, and carried off one of the sheep; its cries and the noise awoke the men, who jumped out of bed and rushed out to try and save the poor sheep, but in the darkness of the night nothing could be seen, and all that was heard was the rush of the animals and shovels down the rocky and stony ground—the hut being built on a small steep rise or hill. Whilst the men were thinking what they should do, and standing only a few yards from the hut, another hyena got into it through the now open door and carried off the second sheep and the wheelbarrow, which went banging down the hill over the loose stones. In the morning the shovels and wheelbarrow were found at some little distance at the foot of the hill, but not a trace of the poor sheep.
The hyenas are remarkably wary and cautious, only coming near habitations in the darkest nights, and generally near daybreak. I was never able to shoot one in the ordinary way, though I often watched with gun ready through an opening in the walls of my hut. I once, however, killed a fine spotted hyena by tying my gun to a couple of stakes in the ground, and putting an ox’s gullet on the muzzle as a bait, so arranged with a string to the trigger as to fire off the gun on the animal attempting to pull it away.
The next time I arranged this infernal-machine it nearly killed a fine pig that had set its heart on the bait, but as he luckily did not approach it in the right direction, I lost the charge of powder and ball, and the pig found his anticipated titbit suddenly vanish in smoke.