Note 2 — Chapter VIII

Translation from Josè Joaquim Lopez de Lima’s work on the Portuguese Settlements in Western Africa. 1846. (Page 196.)

“To the southward of the river Longa is the fertile province of Benguela, where, instead of sandy plains, rich meadows watered by mountain-streams display themselves before the eye, covered with cattle and sheep, the principal riches of its pastoral inhabitants. The soil produces all the grains and fruits of Africa, America, and Europe, while from amid these favoured plains arise the magnificent mountains of the Naunos, whose lofty heads are lost in the clouds. From these mountains rush down fertilising streams; in their bowels are found iron, copper, sulphur, and other valuable productions, and the forests afford protection to herds of elephants, to rhinoceroses, stags, and a thousand different descriptions of wild animals, whose spoils constitute a principal portion of the gains of the merchants of Benguela and Mosammedes. This fertility extends over the cultivated plains of Bihe, Quilengues, Bumbo, Huila, Enjau, Caconda, Galengue, and Sambos, being bounded by the country of the Mocoands, which separates the Portuguese possessions from the illimitable deserts of sand which form the ne plus ultra of our dominion.”

N.B. I protest not only against the “illimitable deserts of sand,” but also against the southern portion of the map which accompanies the book, in which a magnificent but apocryphal river is made to meander through them, and over the very ground which I have crossed and recrossed.—F. G.