I am convinced that, from the amount of nitrogenous matter, and the form in which the large quantity of oil is masked in the ground-nut, its use by invalids and persons of delicate constitution would be attended with valuable results. The nuts are delicious simply roasted, or, better still, afterwards covered with a little sugar dried on them in the pan.
A small plant bearing pods containing one or two roundish seeds, and like the ground-nut ripening beneath the soil, is also sparingly cultivated in Cambambe and the surrounding districts. It is the Voandzeia subterranea of botanists.
The round fruit, about the size of a small apple, of a handsome leaved plant is employed by the natives of the same places for washing their cloths, &c., instead of soap, and Dr. Welwitsch named the plant the Solanum saponaceum from this circumstance.
CHAPTER V.
RIVER QUANZA—CALUMBO—BRUTO—MUXIMA—MASSANGANO—DONDO—FALLS OF CAMBAMBE—DANCES—MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS—QUISSAMA—LIBOLLO.
The River Quanza is the gem of the Portuguese possession of Angola. South of the great River Zaire, or Congo, it is the only river navigable for any distance, and is the natural highway to the most fertile and healthy countries of the interior, yet, such has been the apathy of the Portuguese, and so utterly and culpably neglectful have they been in developing the vast resources of their rich possessions, that, till the year 1866, only an insignificant amount of produce or trade came to Loanda by that river.
Mr. Augustus Archer Silva, an American, long established in business at Loanda, obtained from the Portuguese Government a concession for the steam navigation of the river, after great trouble and opposition, and on the 21st of September, 1866, I accompanied him in the steamer “Andrade” on her first trip to the Quanza.
We started from Loanda at midnight, and arrived at about eight o’clock in the morning opposite the bar, where a dozen of the so-called bar pilots came on board, and a more surprising manner of coming through the heavy surf that breaks over it can hardly be imagined.
On their knees, and squatted on their heels, each on a perfectly flat, plain piece of thick board, about eight or nine feet long and two or three feet wide, evidently the bottom of an old canoe, the blacks pushed off from the shore, and with a single-bladed paddle propelled their primitive boats to the steamer, a distance of over a mile. At high tide there was sufficient depth of water, and the “Andrade” steamed safely into the river. Our trip that time was only as far as a place called Bruto, about thirty miles up the river, and we returned to Loanda in a few days, the steamer decorated with flags and branches of palm-trees, making her look like a floating island.
This trip was the commencement of the most important era in the modern development of Angola. The great and yearly increasing trade on that river is entirely due to its steam navigation, and fostered principally by the efforts of its spirited promoter.
The trade of Loanda has since increased to a wonderful extent, and has enabled the province to pay its own expenses, which were formerly supplemented by a grant from Portugal.