Angola may very easily be taken, for the Portugals have no forts to defend it of any strength.
The King[285] of Congo is the greatest King in all Ethiopia; and doth keep in the field continually sixty thousand soldiers, that do war against the King of Vangala,[286] and the King of Angola; this King is a Christian, and his brother-in-law of arms with the King of Spain. His servants of his house are most of them all Portugals, and he doth favour them very much.
The King is of a very liberal condition, and very favourable to all travellers, and doth delight very much to hear of foreign countries. He was in a manner amazed to hear how it was possible Her Majesty [Queen Elizabeth] had lived a maiden Queen so long, and always reigned in peace with her subjects. When I was brought before the King, and told him of my country, what plenty of things we had, if the Portugals had not liked of it, they would interrupt my speech, and the King would show himself very angry, and tell them that every man was best able to speak of his country, and that I had no reason but to tell him that which was true.
The King of Congo, when he goeth to the camp to see his army, rideth upon an elephant in great pomp and majesty; on either side of the elephant he hath six slaves. Two of them were kings, that he himself had taken in the field; all the rest were of noble birth; some of them were brothers to the King of Ancica, and some of them were of the chiefest blood of the great King of Bengala. These noble slaves, at every command of the King of Congo, do fall flat on the ground on their breasts. When the King doth ride, as you have heard, they carry a canopy, as it were a cloth of state, over his head. His two secretaries, the one a nobleman of Spain, the other a Moor, do ride next after him. Before him goeth at the least five hundred archers which are his guard; then there followeth a Moor, which doth nothing but talk aloud in praise of the King, telling what a great warrior he hath been, and praising his wisdom for all things that he hath accomplished very honourably to his great fame of such as knew him.
When this King of Congo cometh to his host, all the soldiers, as he passeth, fall flat on their faces to the ground. He never cometh into his host after any battle, but he dubbeth at the least twenty Knights Portugals, and as many Moors, giving them very great living according to their callings, and the service that they have done. The brother of this King was in Spain at my coming from thence for ambassador from his brother.[287]
Here the Portugal Captain would have taken me perforce, to have been a common soldier, but the King commanded that they should let me go whither I would, and my determination at that time was to have gone for the country of Prester John [Abyssinia], for I had a great desire to see the River of Nilo and Jerusalem (for I accounted myself as a lost man, not caring into what country or kingdom I came) But it was not the will of God that I should at that time obtain my desire, for travelling through the kingdom of Congo, to have gone to the kingdom of Angila,[288] it was my fortune to meet a company of Portugal soldiers that went to a conquest that the King of Spain had newly taken, called Masangana; which place is on the borders of Anguca. Here they made me serve like a drudge, for both day and night I carried some stone and lime to make a fort.
It lyeth right under the Line, and standeth in a bottom in the middle of four hills, and about are many fogges [bogs] but not one river.[289] It is the unfirmest country under the sun. Here the Portugals die like chickens. You shall see men in the morning very lusty, and within two hours dead. Others, that if they but wet their legs, presently they swell bigger than their middles;[290] others break in the sides with a draught of water. O, if you did know the intolerable heat of the country, you would think yourself better a thousand times dead, than to live there a week. There you shall see poor soldiers lie in troops, gaping like camelians [camels?] for a puff of wind.
Here lived I three months, not as the Portugals did, taking of physick, and every week letting of blood and keeping close in their houses when they had any rain, observing hours, and times to go abroad morning and evening, and never to eat but at such and such times. I was glad when I had got anything at morning, noon, or night; I thank God I did work all day from morning till night; had it been rain or never so great heat, I had always my health as well as I have in England.
This country is very rich. The king had great store of gold[291] sent him from this place: the time that I was there, the King of Angica had a great city at Masangana; which city Paulas Dias, Governor of Angola, took and situated there; and finding hard by it great store of gold, fortified it with four forts, and walled a great circuit of ground round about it, and within that wall; now the Portugals do build a city, and from this city every day they do war against the King of Angica, and have burnt a great part of his kingdom.
The Angicas[292] are men of goodly stature; they file their teeth before on their upper jaw, and on their under jaw, making a distance between them like the teeth of a dog; they do eat man’s flesh; they are the stubbornest nation that lives under the sun, and the resolutest in the field that ever man saw; for they will rather kill themselves than yield to the Portugals. They inhabit right under the line, and of all kinds of Moors these are the blackest. They do live in the law of the Turks, and honour Mahomet. They keep many concubines, as the Turks do; they wash themselves every morning upwards, falling flat on their faces towards the east. They wear their hair all made in plaits on their heads, as well men as women; they have good store of wheat, and a kind of grain like vetches, of which they make bread: they have great store of hens like partridges, and turkeys, and all their feathers curl on their backs. Their houses are like the other houses of the kingdoms aforenamed.