[32] João Furtado de Mendonça only arrived at Loanda on August 1, 1594. He remained Governor until early in 1602, when he was succeeded by João Rodriguez Coutinho.
[33] That is, the two incisors of the upper jaw, commonly known as “tusks.”
[34] Battell’s “wheat” is masa-mamputo, or zea mayz. Elsewhere he speaks of “Guinea wheat,” and this might be sorghum or millet; but as he says that the natives call the grain “mas impoto,” there can be no doubt about its identity with masa-mamputo, the grão de Portugal, or maize, which, according to Ficalho, was imported from America.
[35] The River of Congo is known to the natives as “Nzadi,” or “Nzari,” which merely signifies “great river “(Bentley’s Dictionary of the Congo Language). For Isle de Calabes we ought perhaps to read Ilha das Calabaças (Calabash Island). The position of this island I am unable to determine. Perhaps it is the same as an Ilheo dos Cavallos Marinhos (Hippopotamus Island), described by Pimentel as lying within the Cabo do Padrão, Congo mouth. Duarte Lopez (A Report of the Kingdom of Congo, drawn out of the Writings of Duarte Lopez, by F. Pigafetta, 1591. Translated by Margareta Hutchinson. London, 1881) says it was the first island met with on entering the Zaire, and that, although small, the Portuguese had a town upon it.
[36] Palm cloth is made from the fronds of the ntera, or fan palm (Hyphæne Guineensis).
[37] Dapper (Africa, Amsterdam, 1670, p. 520) tells us that the hairs from an elephant’s tail were highly valued by the natives, who wove them into necklaces and girdles; fifty of these hairs or bristles were worth 1000 reis! Duarte Lopez (Kingdom of Congo, London, 1881, p. 46) says that one such tail was equal in value to two or three slaves, and that native hunters followed the elephants up narrow and steep defiles, and there cut off the desired spoils. Battell himself (see p. 58) bought 20,000 (hairs) which he sold to the Portugals for thirty slaves.
[38] The Egyptians were, of course, Ciganos, or gypsies. They appeared in Portugal in the beginning of the sixteenth century. A Royal order of 1526 ordered them to leave the kingdom, but appears to have had no more effect than a law of 1538, which, on account of the thefts of which they were accused, and their sorceries, threatened them with a flogging and the confiscation of their goods, if caught within the kingdom. This law was re-enacted in 1557, when the galleys were substituted for a flogging; and in 1592 a still more severe law was enacted, which threatened with death all those who should not quit the kingdom within four months. Battel’s associates were, no doubt, gipsies who had been sent as convicts to Angola (see F. A. Coelho, Os Ciganos de Portugal, Lisbon, 1892).
The Moriscoes are the Moors of Morocco. Early Portuguese writers refer to the men who had fought in Africa (Morocco) as Africanos, and Battell’s Moriscoes were in all probability Moorish prisoners of war, or Moors expelled from Portugal.
[39] Mani or Muene, lord and even king, as Muene Putu, King of Portugal, but also applied to a mere village chief. The Cabech of Battell must have resided somewhere about Muchima, but on the right bank of the Coanza.
[40] Battell’s Guinea wheat is masa-mamputo, or grão de Portugal, the zea mayz of botanists, which, according to Candolle and Ficalho, was introduced from America.