No attempt has since been made to supply the city with water from the Quanza, or from the still nearer River Bengo; besides the great boon such a work would confer on the hot and dry town, it could not fail to be a great success from a monetary point of view.
Plate I.
TRAVELLING IN ANGOLA—VIEW NEAR AMBRIZ.
To face page 23.
CHAPTER II.
PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY—CHARACTER OF VEGETATION—RIVERS.
The Portuguese possessions of Angola on the south-west coast of Africa extend from Ambriz in 7° 49´ S. Lat. to Cape Frio in 18° 20´ S. Lat. Their farthest establishment south is, however, at Mossamedes, or Little Fish Bay, in 15° 20´ S. Lat.
Throughout this book in speaking of Angola I include not only the country from Mossamedes to Ambriz, at present occupied by the Portuguese, but farther north, as far as the River Congo, that being its strong natural limit of climate, fauna, and ethnology, as I shall further explain.
This long extent of coast comprises, as may be readily imagined, considerable variety in geological formation, physical configuration, climate, vegetation, and natural productions, tribes of natives, and different languages, habits, and customs.
The coast-line is nowhere very bold; level sandy bays, fringed with a belt of the dark evergreen mangrove, alternate with long stretches of cliffs, seldom attaining any great height or grandeur, and covered with a coarse branching grass (Eragrostis sp.), small patches of shrubby scrub, a tall cactus-like tree Euphorbia, and the gigantic towering Baobab with its fantastic long gourd-like fruit. ([Plate I.])
The “Calema,” or surf-wave, with its ceaseless roar, breaks heavily in long white lines on the smooth beach, and pulverizes the hardest rock, and every particle of shell and animal structure. It dashes against the base of the cliffs, resounding loudly in its mad fury as it has done, wave after wave and hour after hour, for unknown ages; and the singular absence of gulls or any moving living objects, or noises, to divert the eye or ear from the dreadful monotony of constantly recurring sound, and line after line of dazzling white foam, gives a distinctive and excessively depressing character to the coast, in harmony, as it were, with the enervating influence of its climate.
The character of the Angolan landscape is entirely different from that of the West Coast proper; say from Cape Verde to the Gaboon and the River Congo. Along that great length of coast are hundreds of square miles of brackish and salt-water lagoons and swamps, level with the sea, and often only separated from it by a narrow mangrove-fringed beach. The bottom of these lagoons is generally a soft deep black fetid mud, and a stick plunged into it comes up thickly covered with a mass nearly approaching in appearance to paste blacking. In the dry season great expanses of the bottom of these swamps become partially dry, and fermenting in the hot tropical sun cause a horrible stench, from the decayed millions of small fish, crabs, &c., left exposed on the surface. The number of fish and some of the lower forms of life inhabiting the mud and water of the lagoons is almost incredible. If one keeps quite still for a few minutes, the slimy ground becomes perfectly alive and hissing from the legions of small brightly coloured land crabs that issue simultaneously from thousands of round holes, from the size of a quill to about an inch and a-half in diameter.