In All My Previous Inquiries
Respecting The Vegetable Products Of Angola, I Was Invariably Directed
To Pungo Andongo.
Do you grow wheat?
"Oh, yes, in Pungo Andongo."
- Grapes, figs, or peaches? "Oh, yes, in Pungo Andongo."
- Do you make butter, cheese, etc.? The uniform answer was,
"Oh, yes, there is abundance of all these in Pungo Andongo."
But when we arrived here, we found that the answers all referred
to the activity of one man, Colonel Manuel Antonio Pires.
The presence of the wild grape shows that vineyards might be cultivated
with success; the wheat grows well without irrigation;
and any one who tasted the butter and cheese at the table of Colonel Pires
would prefer them to the stale produce of the Irish dairy, in general use
throughout that province. The cattle in this country are seldom milked,
on account of the strong prejudice which the Portuguese entertain
against the use of milk. They believe that it may be used with safety
in the morning, but, if taken after midday, that it will cause fever.
It seemed to me that there was not much reason for carefully avoiding
a few drops in their coffee, after having devoured ten times the amount
in the shape of cheese at dinner.
The fort of Pungo Andongo (lat. 9d 42' 14" S., long. 15d 30' E.)
is situated in the midst of a group of curious columnar-shaped rocks,
each of which is upward of three hundred feet in height. They are
composed of conglomerate, made up of a great variety of rounded pieces
in a matrix of dark red sandstone. They rest on a thick stratum
of this last rock, with very few of the pebbles in its substance.
On this a fossil palm has been found, and if of the same age as those
on the eastern side of the continent, on which similar palms now lie,
there may be coal underneath this, as well as under that at Tete.
The asserted existence of petroleum springs at Dande, and near Cambambe,
would seem to indicate the presence of this useful mineral,
though I am not aware of any one having actually seen a seam of coal
tilted up to the surface in Angola, as we have at Tete.
The gigantic pillars of Pungo Andongo have been formed by a current of the sea
coming from the S.S.E.; for, seen from the top, they appear arranged
in that direction, and must have withstood the surges of the ocean
at a period of our world's history, when the relations of land and sea
were totally different from what they are now, and long before
"the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God
shouted for joy to see the abodes prepared which man was soon to fill."
The imbedded pieces in the conglomerate are of gneiss, clay shale,
mica and sandstone schists, trap, and porphyry, most of which
are large enough to give the whole the appearance of being the only remaining
vestiges of vast primaeval banks of shingle.
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