The Quissama blacks are extremely poor, their arid country producing hardly anything besides the food necessary for their bare subsistence, and a little beeswax. The principal food of those near the river is fish.
There is a deposit of rock-salt in the Quissama country somewhere between Muxima and Calumbo (said to be south of the former), and at some distance from the river. It has never to my knowledge been visited by any white man, nor would the Quissamas readily allow one to go to the place; but the most curious thing connected with this salt is that they cut it into little bars with five or six sides or facets, about eight or nine inches long and about an inch thick, tapering slightly to the ends, and closely encased in cane-work. These pass as money, not only on the river, but in the interior, where they are at last perhaps consumed.
During the Abyssinian war, some of the correspondents described exactly the same shaped pieces of rock-salt encased in similar wicker-work, as being obtained and employed in that country for the same purpose. This is extremely interesting, and opens several questions as to a possible common origin for the custom in the far and dim past; and the case of the bellows already described is another similar instance.
Many of the native words mentioned by the same correspondents are identical with those used in different places in Angola. I am very sorry now that I did not devote more attention to the investigation of the languages of the natives of Angola, and in particular that of the Quissama tribe, which is different to the Bunda language, and is also said to be different to that of Benguella Velha and Novo Redondo farther south. The number of distinct languages and dialects in Angola is very curious, and a similar multiplicity of tongues has been noted by travellers in other parts of Tropical Africa. None of the languages in Angola are guttural, or spoken with a “click.”
There is a great deal of most interesting detail to be worked out in Angola in every branch of natural history and ethnology.
My chapters are little more than an indication of the wealth that lies there buried for future explorers, and of the success that will attend their investigations.
CHAPTER VI.
COUNTRY SOUTH OF THE RIVER QUANZA—CASSANZA—NOVO REDONDO—CELIS—CANNIBALS—LIONS—HOT SPRINGS—BEES—EGITO—SCORPIONS—RIVER ANHA—CATUMBELLA.
The country south of the River Quanza is very different from that to the north of it, just described, not only in its physical aspect, but also in the tribes of natives inhabiting it. The evidences of a former degree of civilization, and of the good work of the old missionaries, are not here visible, and I should almost imagine that this part of Angola was not under their care to anything like the same extent.
From June 1861 to the end of 1863, I was engaged in working two copper deposits at Cuio and Benguella, and in exploring the coast from Cassanza, about eighty miles from the River Quanza, as far as and including Mossamedes or Little Fish Bay.
In these explorations I did not go inland a greater distance than about thirty or forty miles at Mossamedes, and forty or fifty at Novo Redondo. I cannot, therefore, speak from personal knowledge of those most interesting places in the interior, Bihé and Bailundo, or the Portuguese districts of Caconda, Quillengues, Huilla, Capangombe, &c.