During the period when the city’s prosperity was interrupted, its streets were left uncared for and their beautiful pavements became covered with a bed of loose red sand, which was washed by the rain down from the surrounding hills. This drifting still continues, rendering walking so very difficult that it is indulged in only by the convicts and natives. The better classes have resource to the “maxilla.” The “maxilla” is a flat frame of canework with one or two arms at the side and a low back provided with a cushion. This frame is hung by cords to a hook on a palm pole, about eighteen feet long, and is carried upon the shoulders of two blacks, who travel with it easily at the rate of three or four miles an hour. It is covered with an awning of oiled cloth and has silk curtains hung all around it.
Loanda is a convict settlement, but, contrary to what might be expected, its people are remarkably law-abiding. This may arise from the fact that discovered law-breakers are punished most severely, often dying under the lash. The convicts, as a rule, are store-keepers and farmers. They are prosperous, and soon become contented with their lot and rarely return to Europe. Ignorant and unrefined, they assimilate readily with the native classes, and take part in all their pleasures.
The “batuco,” country dance, is the popular form of amusement. A “batuco” is danced in the following fashion: A large ring is formed of men and women. On the outside several fires are kept burning, near which are assembled the musicians with horns, drums and the twanging “maremba.” Others clap their hands and sing a kind of chorus. Two dancers, a man and a woman, jump with a yell into the ring, shuffle their feet with great rapidity, passing backwards and forwards. Then facing one another, suddenly advance and bring their breasts together with a whack. These dances are not in great favor with the better class of free blacks, but this does not prevent them from occurring every night. Although the abolition of slavery is supposed to have taken place in 1878, almost all servants are slaves. They are well treated, however, as public opinion condemns harshness and quite a rivalry exists in having household slaves well dressed and happy looking.
The city has no places of public amusement except a theatre, but
this for some time has not been used on account of a social war between the married women and those who do not consider the marriage ceremony essential to their welfare. There is a fair military band, however, which plays twice a week in the park in the upper town, and there is hardly a night that there is not something going on at some of the private homes. A dance at the Governor’s palace is certain to be given once a mouth.
The aborigines of Loanda owe much to the Catholic Church. Its priests have taught the natives many trades and industries. There are four newspapers published in the city, but they deal mainly in unpleasant personalities.
Even more important than Angola, in a commercial and political sense, is the Portuguese province to the south, known as Benguella, with Benguella as the capital. The town is an old one and has not shared the decay incident to the early Portuguese settlements on the western coast. The harbor is excellent, and is the entrepôt to the celebrated Bihé section, through a series of tribes which Pinto visited and which he describes as of superior physique and intelligence. Benguella was once the seat of an active slave trade, and Monteiro says, in his volume published in 1875, that he has seen caravans of 3,000 blacks coming into Benguella from Bihé, fully 1,000 of which were slaves. The white settlers cleared many fine plantations about Benguella, which they stocked with slaves and upon which large crops of cotton were formerly raised. The contiguous tribe is the Mundombe, wild and roving, dirty and selfish, little clothed and living in low round-roofed huts. Cattle are their principal riches, yet they seldom partake of their flesh, except upon feast days, when the whole tribe assembles, and as many as 300 head of fine cattle are dispatched in a single day.
It is only within the last few years that this region has been entered by the Protestant missionaries. In 1880 the American Board sent out three missionaries to Benguella, the port of the Bihé country. They were Rev. Walter W. Bagster, grandson of Samuel Bagster, publisher of the Polyglot Bible, and the leader of the expedition; the Rev. Wm. H. Sanders, son of a missionary in Ceylon; and Mr. Samuel T. Miller, both of whose parents were slaves. The kings of Bailunda and Bihé showed themselves friendly, and the
missionaries, since reinforced, entered hopefully upon their work. On February 22, 1882, Mr. Bagster died from malarial fever. Bishop Taylor has opened up a number of stations in Angola, of which mention will be made when we come to speak of his work in establishing self-supporting missions in Africa.
