Captain Antonio Rodrigues Neves Then Kindly Invited Me
To Take Up My Abode In His House.
Next morning this generous man arrayed me
in decent clothing, and continued during the whole period of my stay
to treat me as if I had been his brother.
I feel deeply grateful to him
for his disinterested kindness. He not only attended to my wants,
but also furnished food for my famishing party free of charge.
The village of Cassange (pronounced Kassanje) is composed of
thirty or forty traders' houses, scattered about without any regularity,
on an elevated flat spot in the great Quango or Cassange valley.
They are built of wattle and daub, and surrounded by plantations of manioc,
maize, etc. Behind them there are usually kitchen gardens,
in which the common European vegetables, as potatoes, peas, cabbages,
onions, tomatoes, etc., etc., grow. Guavas and bananas appear,
from the size and abundance of the trees, to have been introduced
many years ago, while the land was still in the possession of the natives;
but pine-apples, orange, fig, and cashew trees have but lately been tried.
There are about forty Portuguese traders in this district,
all of whom are officers in the militia, and many of them have become rich
from adopting the plan of sending out Pombeiros, or native traders, with large
quantities of goods, to trade in the more remote parts of the country.
Some of the governors of Loanda, the capital of this, the kingdom of Angola,
have insisted on the observance of a law which, from motives of humanity,
forbids the Portuguese themselves from passing beyond the boundary.
They seem to have taken it for granted that, in cases where
the white trader was killed, the aggression had been made by him,
and they wished to avoid the necessity of punishing those who had been
provoked to shed Portuguese blood.
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