Angola and the River Congo, vol. 2

by Joachim John Monteiro

On one of my visits to Mossamedes I was away a fortnight in the bush, on an excursion to explore several places where copper ore had been found, and reached about forty miles into the interior, to near the first range of mountains called the “Xellas” (pronounced Sheilas). Our road lay north till we had crossed the dry, sandy bed of the River Giraul, and then in an easterly direction. The first deposits met with are recent clayey beds, gypsum-dust, and sandstones, and in some places the perpendicular faces of the high masses are covered with an abundant efflorescence of almost pure sulphate of magnesia. This had attracted the attention of some of the Portuguese, who imagined that it might be nitre. One man sent a cask full of it to Lisbon to be reported upon, and the answer he received was, “that it was not nitre as it would not make gunpowder, and that they could not tell what else it was!”

This formation is succeeded by massive basalt, containing in places small quantities of double refracting calcspar and heulandite.

This narrow belt or strip of basalt is followed farther inland by a highly quartzose schistose rock with much iron and hornblende. This insensibly changes to a quartzose granite, then to more schist, and in some places to a fine-grained porphyry. In these are found quartz veins with small strings or lodes of very rich sulphide of copper. These were the only copper lodes in situ that I have been able to find in Angola, but unfortunately, although containing the very richest copper ore, they are so poor in size, and otherwise under such disadvantages that they would be quite profitless to work or explore.

About twenty or thirty miles from Mossamedes the granite country is very peculiar. In some places huge single rocks rise out of the nearly level plain; in others hills of rocks, in several of which deposits of rain-water are found at the very top. One of these was a natural tank with a narrow entrance, and so dark that we had to light an old newspaper to see it. It contained, I should say, not less than three or four hundred gallons of water, which was exquisitely clear and cool. It was covered by vast slabs of granite, from which the rain drained into it, so that the sun was unable to evaporate it during the hot season, when not a drop of water is to be found for miles anywhere else.

A still more singular phenomenon is that of the “Pedra Grande,” or “big stone,” on the road to the interior at over thirty miles from Mossamedes. This, as its name implies, is a huge rounded mass of granite rising out of the granitic, sandy plain.

On the smooth side of this rock, about twenty or thirty feet above the plain, is a circular pit about nine or ten feet deep and five or six wide. The rainfall on that part of the rock that lies above this pit, drains into it, and is said to fill it completely every rainy season. The form of the pit is like that of the inside of a crucible, narrowing gently to the bottom. The walls are perfectly smooth and regular, and it can contain several thousand gallons of water. The mass of granite rock is of the closest and hardest description, and no explanation seems possible of the formation of this pit, except that of a bubble in the rock when primarily formed, or that there was a mass of easily soluble or decomposable mineral contained in it that has since been dissolved out. I must say, however, that there is no evidence anywhere visible to corroborate this latter theory. There are, it is true, one or two other small and similar pits near the great one, but this does not throw any more light upon their probable formation. This grand deposit supplies the Mundombes and travellers with an abundant supply of water during the dry season, and is therefore a principal halting-place.

This is a lion country, but on both occasions that I was at Mossamedes it was not the season in which they abounded, so that I saw but little signs of them.

They come regularly to the “hortas” near the town, and several have been shot there by the Portuguese. I was shown the hut of a German emigrant where a lion came through the grass roof on to the table at which he was seated at supper with his wife.

It appeared that the lion had chased a cat on to the roof from an outhouse, and the roof being of a frail nature, had given way under his weight, but luckily the cries of the man and his wife so frightened the astonished beast, that he forced himself through the slender walls of the hut and ran away.

On an excursion to visit a copper locality inland of Baba Bay, where a Portuguese convict alleged he had discovered and extracted a basketful of good specimens of ore, I put up one night at a hut belonging to a Portuguese engaged with a number of slaves in collecting orchilla-weed. At a distance of about two or three hundred yards from the hut was a pool of brackish water, in a grove of trees at the foot of a rocky hill. During the night, which was pitch dark, the blacks declared that a lion had captured some animal at the pool, and was eating it. At daybreak we turned out and came on about a dozen black and white dog-like animals, about the size of a Newfoundland dog, that ran quickly up the hill on our approach. Close to the pool we found the remains of an eland that had been killed by the lion. The other animals, which are said to follow it, and wait till the royal beast has had its fill of the game it has killed, and devour the remainder, had not had time to finish it, and there was enough left to afford us a good breakfast of venison steak, and our blacks a feast of fresh meat.