Behind the beach a salt, marshy plain extends inland for a mile or so, and nearly to Quissembo in a northerly direction. Along the edge of this plain is the road to Quincollo, and many little ravines or valleys lead into it. These, in the hot season particularly, are most lovely in their vegetation, the groups of gigantic euphorbias festooned with many delicate-leaved creepers being especially quaint and beautiful.
A handsome orange and black diurnal moth is found abundantly about Ambriz, and is curious from its exhaling a strong smell of gum benzoin, so strong indeed as to powerfully scent the collecting box. It is the Eusemia ochracea of entomologists.
In 1872, the ship “Thomas Mitchell” took a cargo of coals from England to Rio de Janeiro, and after discharging proceeded in ballast to Ambriz. The crew on arrival were suffering from “chigoes” or “jiggers” in their feet, which they contracted in the Brazils. These pests were quickly communicated to the black crews of our boats and introduced on shore, and in a short time every one in Ambriz had them in their feet and hands. Many of the blacks were miserable objects from the ravages of this horrid insect on their feet and legs, in the skin of which they burrow and breed. They gradually extended up the coast, but not towards the interior. By last advices they appear to be dying out at Ambriz. It is to be hoped that such is the case, and that this fresh acquisition to the insect scourges of tropical Africa may be only temporary. A friend just arrived from the coast tells me that they have already reached Gaboon, and they will doubtlessly run all the way up the coast.
Previous to the occupation of Ambriz by the Portuguese in 1855, the natives used to bring down a considerable quantity of fine malachite from Bembe for sale. A Brazilian slave-dealer, a man of great energy and enterprise, called Francisco Antonio Flores, who, after the abolition of the slave-trade, laboured incessantly to develop the resources of Angola, in which effort he sank the large fortune he had previously amassed, obtained the concession of the Bembe mines from the Portuguese Government, who sent an expedition to occupy the country, and succeeded without any opposition on the part of the natives.
In January, 1858, I was engaged by the Western Africa Malachite Copper Mines Company, who had acquired the mines from Senhor Flores, to accompany a party of twelve miners sent under a Cornish mining captain to explore them. We arrived at Bembe on the 8th March, and the next day seven of the men were down with fever; the others also quickly fell ill, and for three months that followed of the heavy rainy season, they passed through great discomforts from want of proper accommodation. Ultimately eight died within the next nine months, and the rest had to be sent home, with the exception of one man and myself. This result was not so much the effect of the climate, as the want of proper lodgings and care.
The superintendent was at that time the Portuguese commandant, who of course did not interfere with the mining captain, an ignorant man, who made the men work in the same manner of day and night shifts as if they were in Cornwall, in the full blaze of the sun, in their wet clothes, &c.
An English superintendent next arrived, but he unfortunately was addicted to intemperance, and soon died from the effects of the brandy bottle. After being at Bembe eight or nine months, the mining captain, either from stupidity or wilfulness, not only had not discovered a single pound of malachite, but insisted that there was none in the place, where the natives for years previously had extracted from 200 to 300 tons every dry season! In view of his conduct I took upon myself the responsibility of taking charge of the mining operations, and sent him back to England. A few days after we discovered fine blocks of malachite, fifteen tons of which I sent to the Company in the same steamer that took him home.
It would not interest the reader to describe minutely the causes that led gradually to the abandonment of the working of these mines, and to the heavy loss sustained by the Company, but I am convinced that, had duly qualified and experienced men directed the working from the beginning, they would have proved a success. Many hundred tons of malachite were afterwards raised, with the help of a very few white miners, but too late to correct the previous mistakes and losses.
During the years 1858 and 1859 I travelled the road from Ambriz to Bembe eight times, and in the month of April 1873, I went again, for the last time, with my wife.
Lieutenant Grandy and his brother had been our guests at Ambriz, where we had supplied them with the greater part of the beads and goods they required for their arduous journey into the interior. These gentlemen, it will be recollected, were sent by the Royal Geographical Society to discover the source of the Congo, and to meet and aid Dr. Livingstone in the interior should he have crossed the continent from the east coast, as it was imagined he might probably do.