As The Kisama Country Is Ill Supplied With Water Otherwise,
The Portuguese Were Soon Obliged To Retreat.
Their country, lying near
to Massangano, is low and marshy, but becomes more elevated in the distance,
and beyond them lie the lofty dark mountain ranges of the Libollo,
another powerful and independent people.
Near Massangano I observed
what seemed to be an effort of nature to furnish a variety of domestic fowls,
more capable than the common kind of bearing the heat of the sun.
This was a hen and chickens with all their feathers curled upward,
thus giving shade to the body without increasing the heat.
They are here named "Kisafu" by the native population,
who pay a high price for them when they wish to offer them as a sacrifice,
and by the Portuguese they are termed "Arripiada", or shivering.
There seems to be a tendency in nature to afford varieties
adapted to the convenience of man. A kind of very short-legged fowl
among the Boers was obtained, in consequence of observing that
such were more easily caught for transportation in their frequent removals
in search of pasture. A similar instance of securing a variety
occurred with the short-limbed sheep in America.
Returning by ascending the Lucalla into Cazengo, we had
an opportunity of visiting several flourishing coffee plantations,
and observed that several men, who had begun with no capital
but honest industry, had, in the course of a few years,
acquired a comfortable subsistence. One of these, Mr. Pinto,
generously furnished me with a good supply of his excellent coffee,
and my men with a breed of rabbits to carry to their own country.
Their lands, granted by government, yielded, without much labor,
coffee sufficient for all the necessaries of life.
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