It Is Supplied With A Great Number Of Little Flowing Streams
Which Unite In The Lucalla.
This river drains Ambaca,
then falls into the Coanza to the southwest at Massangano.
We crossed the Lucalla by
Means of a large canoe kept there by a man
who farms the ferry from the government, and charges about a penny per head.
A few miles beyond the Lucalla we came to the village of Ambaca,
an important place in former times, but now a mere paltry village,
beautifully situated on a little elevation in a plain surrounded on all hands
by lofty mountains. It has a jail, and a good house for the commandant,
but neither fort nor church, though the ruins of a place of worship
are still standing.
We were most kindly received by the commandant of Ambaca, Arsenio de Carpo,
who spoke a little English. He recommended wine for my debility,
and here I took the first glass of that beverage I had taken in Africa.
I felt much refreshed, and could then realize and meditate on
the weakening effects of the fever. They were curious even to myself;
for, though I had tried several times since we left Ngio
to take lunar observations, I could not avoid confusion of time and distance,
neither could I hold the instrument steady, nor perform a simple calculation;
hence many of the positions of this part of the route were left till my return
from Loanda. Often, on getting up in the mornings, I found my clothing
as wet from perspiration as if it had been dipped in water.
In vain had I tried to learn or collect words of the Bunda, or dialect spoken
in Angola. I forgot the days of the week and the names of my companions,
and, had I been asked, I probably could not have told my own.
The complaint itself occupied many of my thoughts. One day I supposed that
I had got the true theory of it, and would certainly cure the next attack,
whether in myself or companions; but some new symptoms would appear,
and scatter all the fine speculations which had sprung up,
with extraordinary fertility, in one department of my brain.
This district is said to contain upward of 40,000 souls.
Some ten or twelve miles to the north of the village of Ambaca there once
stood the missionary station of Cahenda, and it is now quite astonishing
to observe the great numbers who can read and write in this district.
This is the fruit of the labors of the Jesuit and Capuchin missionaries,
for they taught the people of Ambaca; and ever since
the expulsion of the teachers by the Marquis of Pombal,
the natives have continued to teach each other. These devoted men
are still held in high estimation throughout the country to this day.
All speak well of them (os padres Jesuitas); and, now that they are gone
from this lower sphere, I could not help wishing that these
our Roman Catholic fellow-Christians had felt it to be their duty
to give the people the Bible, to be a light to their feet
when the good men themselves were gone.
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