I Was Always Anxious
To Transmit An Account Of My Discoveries On Every Possible Occasion,
Lest, Any Thing Happening In The Country To Which I Was Going,
They Should Be Entirely Lost.
I also fondly expected
a packet of letters and papers which my good angel at Loanda
would be sure
To send if they came to hand, but I afterward found that,
though he had offered a large sum to any one who would return
with an assurance of having delivered the last packet he sent,
no one followed me with it to Cabango. The unwearied attentions
of this good Englishman, from his first welcome to me when,
a weary, dejected, and worn-down stranger, I arrived at his residence,
and his whole subsequent conduct, will be held in lively remembrance by me
to my dying day.
Several of the native traders here having visited the country of Luba,
lying far to the north of this, and there being some visitors also
from the town of Mai, which is situated far down the Kasai, I picked up
some information respecting those distant parts. In going to the town of Mai
the traders crossed only two large rivers, the Loajima and Chihombo.
The Kasai flows a little to the east of the town of Mai,
and near it there is a large waterfall. They describe the Kasai
as being there of very great size, and that it thence bends round to the west.
On asking an old man, who was about to return to his chief Mai,
to imagine himself standing at his home, and point to the confluence
of the Quango and Kasai, he immediately turned, and, pointing to the westward,
said, "When we travel five days (thirty-five or forty miles)
in that direction, we come to it." He stated also that the Kasai received
another river, named the Lubilash. There is but one opinion among the Balonda
respecting the Kasai and Quango. They invariably describe the Kasai
as receiving the Quango, and, beyond the confluence, assuming the name
of Zaire or Zerezere. And the Kasai, even previous to the junction,
is much larger than the Quango, from the numerous branches it receives.
Besides those we have already crossed, there is the Chihombo at Cabango;
and forty-two miles beyond this, eastward, runs the Kasai itself;
fourteen miles beyond that, the Kaunguesi; then, forty-two miles farther east,
flows the Lolua; besides numbers of little streams, all of which contribute
to swell the Kasai.
About thirty-four miles east of the Lolua, or a hundred and thirty-two miles
E.N.E. of Cabango, stands the town of Matiamvo, the paramount chief of all
the Balonda. The town of Mai is pointed out as to the N.N.W. of Cabango,
and thirty-two days or two hundred and twenty-four miles distant,
or about lat. S. 5d 45'. The chief town of Luba, another independent chief,
is eight days farther in the same direction, or lat. S. 4d 50'.
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