Angola and the River Congo, vol. 2

by Joachim John Monteiro

At intervals the lines of hills recede inland, and show vast spaces occupied by lakes and lagoons fringed with almost impenetrable virgin forests containing trees of fine timber.

At about fifty or sixty miles from the coast, and about half-way to Dondo, on the southern bank of the Quanza, is the town of Muxima, built on a bare, white limestone rock, on which the hot sun seems to have baked the mud huts with their straw roofs to a dark brown. A fine large red-tiled church, and the ruins of a small fort on the top of a steep rocky hill, give a picturesque appearance to the otherwise glaring and scorched desolation of the place. Hardly any movement of the natives is ever seen at Muxima when passing it on the river; there is no trade or industry whatever in the place, and the town has always the appearance of a deserted ruin as represented in a dissolving view. The Portuguese have a “chefe” here, with a few black soldiers, but it is such a forsaken, dead-alive place that there is always a difficulty in finding an officer for the post.

The church at Muxima is held in the greatest veneration by the natives far and wide. It is considered as a great “fetish;” and even the natives from Loanda seek there the intercession of the Virgin Mary as represented by an image in that church; and I was shown a chest full of plate, chains, rings, and other offerings of the pious pilgrims to its shrine.

Alligators abound, and places are staked round on the banks of the river to enable the natives to fill their vessels with water without danger of being drawn in by these hideous monsters. On a hot day they may be seen dozing on the mudbanks, stretched out flat like great logs of wood. The blacks affirm that the alligator is fonder of eating women and girls than men;—this belief may very likely be due to the fact that it is the women who generally fetch water from the river, and that consequently a greater number of them fall victims to this brute. They have also the belief, common to the natives of all Angola, that the alligator’s liver is poisonous, and that it is used as a poison by the “feiticeiros” or sorcerers.

Numbers of hippopotami also inhabit this river, but since the steamers are constantly navigating it they are seldom seen, and appear to have migrated more to the lagoons. Formerly it was most amusing to watch these huge and inoffensive beasts; I have seen them lift their great heads out of the water and stare quite familiarly for two or three minutes with every appearance of curiosity in their little round eyes at the canoe passing, and then slowly sink with a snort and great bubbling of the water from their nostrils. One wide bend of the river, where the water is very still, used to be the favourite resort of the hippopotamus, and was called by the natives “hippopotamus corner” from this circumstance. I once stopped my canoe off there for some time, to witness the gambols of some twenty of these animals, large and small, evidently playing and chasing one another, lifting their heads and shoulders right out of the water, and snorting and booming away at a great rate.

There were formerly natives who used to hunt these animals for the sake of their flesh, fat, and teeth, and I went ashore to two or three huts where some of these blacks lived to buy for my boatmen a quantity of the dry and salted flesh and bacon of a hippopotamus they had recently killed. It was cut into long thin strips which were hanging to dry over some lines stretched from poles in the ground. I tasted some of the flesh and fat cooked with beans by my men, and it was very nice; and had I not known what it was, I should never have distinguished the taste from that of insipid pork or bacon.

The manatee is also not uncommon, and also a large fresh-water tortoise (Trionyx nilotica) which is speared by the natives and much esteemed for food.

Fish is extremely abundant, particularly a short thick fish called “cacusso,” which is the principal food of the natives on that river. A fisherman once gave me the names of over forty species of fish to be obtained in the Quanza; and at Dondo a large fish is caught, and is much valued by the Portuguese for its delicious flavour.

Fish is principally caught by throw-nets, or by hook and line, also in fish-baskets or traps.

Beyond Muxima the appearance of the banks becomes really charming. A delicious panorama of mile after mile of the most beautiful dark forest of high feathery-topped oil-palms stretches on both sides, but principally on the north bank.