While here, I reproduced the last of my lost papers and maps;
and as there is a post twice a month from Loanda, I had the happiness
to receive a packet of the "Times", and, among other news,
an account of the Russian war up to the terrible charge of the light cavalry.
The intense anxiety I felt to hear more may be imagined by every true patriot;
but I was forced to brood on in silent thought, and utter my poor prayers
for friends who perchance were now no more, until I reached
the other side of the continent.
A considerable trade is carried on by the Cassange merchants with all the
surrounding territory by means of native traders, whom they term "Pombeiros".
Two of these, called in the history of Angola "the trading blacks"
(os feirantes pretos), Pedro Joao Baptista and Antonio Jose,
having been sent by the first Portuguese trader that lived at Cassange,
actually returned from some of the Portuguese possessions in the East
with letters from the governor of Mozambique in the year 1815,
proving, as is remarked, "the possibility of so important a communication
between Mozambique and Loanda." This is the only instance
of native Portuguese subjects crossing the continent. No European
ever accomplished it, though this fact has lately been quoted
as if the men had been "PORTUGUESE".
Captain Neves was now actively engaged in preparing a present,
worth about fifty pounds, to be sent by Pombeiros to Matiamvo.
It consisted of great quantities of cotton cloth, a large carpet,
an arm-chair with a canopy and curtains of crimson calico, an iron bedstead,
mosquito curtains, beads, etc., and a number of pictures rudely painted in oil
by an embryo black painter at Cassange.
Matiamvo, like most of the natives in the interior of the country,
has a strong desire to possess a cannon, and had sent ten large tusks
to purchase one; but, being government property, it could not be sold:
he was now furnished with a blunderbuss, mounted as a cannon,
which would probably please him as well.
Senhor Graca and some other Portuguese have visited this chief
at different times; but no European resides beyond the Quango;
indeed, it is contrary to the policy of the government of Angola
to allow their subjects to penetrate further into the interior. The present
would have been a good opportunity for me to have visited that chief,
and I felt strongly inclined to do so, as he had expressed dissatisfaction
respecting my treatment by the Chiboque, and even threatened to punish them.
As it would be improper to force my men to go thither, I resolved
to wait and see whether the proposition might not emanate from themselves.
When I can get the natives to agree in the propriety of any step, they go
to the end of the affair without a murmur.
