The district of Golungo Alto gives the same name to its town, which is most picturesquely situated and surrounded by luxuriant vegetation, and is reached in another two days’ journey from Cazengo, through exquisite scenery. Starting from the town of Golungo Alto in a northerly direction, I arrived in the afternoon at the River Zenza, and slept a few miles beyond it at a place called Gonguembo, at the house of a respectable black, who was a kind of government official for that district, and who was married to a very comely black woman from Loanda. I was most hospitably treated by these good people, and a clean bed in a nice airy room was prepared for me; they would not accept any remuneration for their kindness, so I had to content myself with making them a present of some handkerchiefs I had with me. Next day I continued to travel in the same direction, sleeping at night in a wood, and the day after arrived at a place called Mayengo, near the River Lombige, there only a noisy mountain torrent of most beautifully clear water. It was here that the two white men with the party of blacks were exploring for gold, and they had already obtained a few ounces of dust from the sand of the river by washing it in pans and a couple of rockers.
The following morning I proceeded about ten miles farther in the direction of the course of the Lombige, to another place where a little gold-dust had also been obtained.
The formation of the country from Golungo Alto to the auriferous ground of the Lombige is a hard clay slate, in which I observed only a few small quartz veins, and in my opinion it is a poor gold country. Not more than a couple of pounds weight of gold were obtained after many months working, and the exploration was finally abandoned on the death of Senhor Flores, which happened at the Lombige.
My friend Mr. Richard Smith, of the Metallurgical Laboratory at the Royal School of Mines, has kindly assayed a sample of gold from Lombige, with the following results:—
| Gold | 93·860 |
| Silver | 5·352 |
| Copper | 0·404 |
| 99·616 |
equal to 22¹⁄₂ carats fine.
From Golungo Alto to the south the geological formation is a hard, compact, quartzose granite rock. At Cazengo is found gneiss, granite, and a hard quartzose slaty rock, with in places a curious rock seemingly composed of disintegrated granite and clay slate. The strike of the clay slate is about E. and W., and it dips to the S.S.W.
The few natives I saw about the Lombige seemed rather a fine race. They belong to a tribe called the Dembos, which is the name of that part of the country, and they have lately driven back the Portuguese, who had attempted to encroach on their territory with the customary exactions of the “chefes.”
To show that they bore no ill-will to the Portuguese, but only desired to resist the grasping oppression of the “chefes,” they escorted to the River Zenza, near Golungo Alto, a small number of unfortunate troops they had surrounded, and who, without pay, provisions, ammunition, shoes, or clothing, had been obliged to surrender, and they greatly insulted the Portuguese by offering to give these poor soldiers a month’s pay in cash! I was at Loanda when several batches of soldiers, composing the so-called expedition to the Dembos, arrived, viâ the River Quanza, in a disgraceful state of starvation and rags, and the poor devils were loud in their complaints of the way they had been treated and robbed by their own government and officers.
A more shameful manner of exposing men to disease and the enemy cannot be imagined. A local newspaper at Loanda exposed the scandalous way in which the war was conducted; and the merchants represented the true state of the case to the government at Lisbon, but no attention was given to them, as the governor at Loanda reported that there was nothing going on in Angola to call for special notice.