Angola and the River Congo, vol. 2

by Joachim John Monteiro

A friend told me, that being once with the “chefe” of a district in the interior, they saw two bullocks approaching the “chefe’s” house, and on his asking a black standing near whose cattle they were, he answered very coolly that “they were two oxen that were bringing a petition!”

I need not say that I have known some honest “chefes” who discharged the duties of their ill-paid and thankless office honourably and with intelligence, but these exceptions are too rare to influence in the least the sad state into which the country has been sunk by long years of rapacity on the part of its irresponsible rulers. Only a total change in the system of government can again people the vast deserted tracts with industrious inhabitants to cultivate its rich land; but, I am sorry to say, a termination to the long reign of corruption that has existed in Angola is not to be expected for years to come.

Whilst in Portugal itself patriotism and public morality are debased by an unchecked system of bribery and greed of money and power, it is too much to expect that her rich colonies will be purged of their long-existing abuses.

As might be expected, the great peninsular obstruction and impediment of high custom-house duties, so fatal to all commercial and industrial development, is in full and vexatious force in Angola, with the exception of Ambriz, where the total annihilation of trade from this cause, after its occupation by the Portuguese, was so striking, that I at last prevailed upon the Governor, Francisco Antonio Gonçalves Cardozo, to reduce the duties to a moderate figure, with what wonderful results I have already explained in a former chapter.

With the great want of roads and carriers, or other means of conveyance, either for goods into or produce from the interior, transport is very expensive, and it is evident that the levying of high import duties besides on all goods for trade so enhances their value, that it becomes impossible to offer an adequate return or advantage to the native for the result of his labour or industry, or to leave much margin for profit to the merchant; consequently, the development of the country becomes completely paralysed and the revenue of the state remains small in proportion. Such a simple fact, apparent to the meanest understanding, is perfectly incomprehensible to the Portuguese! To mention one instance only: the last time I was at Golungo Alto the price of gunpowder was nearly six shillings a pound, and that of other goods in proportion! That the natives of Angola will cultivate large quantities of produce, if they can get moderately well paid for their trouble, is evidenced by the considerable exports from the country from Ambriz to the River Congo, where there are no custom-houses, and also on the River Quanza, where steam navigation enables goods to be sent up the country cheaply, and so to bear the almost prohibitive duties levied on them at Loanda.

It is not only the excessively high duties paid to the custom-house that are complained of by the merchants at Loanda, but the absurd, petty, and vexatious manner in which the whole system is worked; the mean prohibitions and regulations attending the loading, discharging, and clearing of goods, vessels, and boats; the great delay and trouble about the simplest operations; the intense obtuseness of the officials, and the utter want of reason or object for such irritating proceedings. They do not prevent smuggling, as that can be most easily effected by any one desiring to do so, the lower officers and police being all common blacks or mulattoes in the receipt of miserable pay; and I remember one of the first merchants of Loanda once opening a drawer in his office, and showing me significantly, when speaking on this subject, a number of vouchers for small sums of money he had advanced on loan to the petty officers employed by the custom-house, and paid liberally at the rate of a few pence a day to prevent smuggling!

It would be amusing to see so much imposing bombast in the custom-house of a little place like Loanda, depending on a lot of poor, ragged, and starving blacks for its preventive service, were it not so annoying to see the effect of the high duties in hindering the development of the riches of the country, whose commercial prosperity is at present the only remedy for the evils of its misgovernment.

From olden times the report has been handed down of the occurrence of silver in the district of Cambambe, and the object of the Portuguese in some of their first wars in the interior was to obtain possession of the mines. There is, however, no record to show that they were successful in their endeavours; and beyond the statement that the natives of Cambambe paid tribute to the Portuguese in silver, part of which was made into a service for a church in Lisbon, nothing more was definitely known about it.

When I left the Bembe mines I was engaged by Senhor Flores of Loanda to explore the supposed locality of the silver mines, as well as various sites in Cambambe, believed in former days to have been copper workings. I made a preliminary trip into the interior in September 1859, and then left Africa, returning a few months later with miners and the necessary tools and apparatus for a more complete exploration, which the indications I had noticed warranted me in undertaking.

I luckily had with me six capital Ambriz carriers, who had brought me from Ambriz to Loanda, in my journey through the country of Mossulo, which I have described in a preceding chapter, and I readily induced them to take me to Cambambe. I say luckily, as we found the greatest difficulty in obtaining carriers on the road, and we should have had to walk much greater distances than we did, if I had not had the Ambriz blacks. I was accompanied by a Senhor Lobato, of Massangano, the first man who had started trade on the River Quanza by means of barges to and from Loanda. Our route lay from Loanda to the River Bengo, and from thence inland, in an easterly direction, on the high road to Cassange—the farthest point occupied by the Portuguese in Angola.