addressing it to the shopkeeper with the rather pompous title, “Illustrissimo Senhor” (Most Illustrious Sir).  This is the invariable mode of address throughout Angola.  The answer returned would be in the same style, and, if satisfactory, another note followed to conclude the bargain.  There is so much of this note correspondence carried on in Angola, that a very large quantity of paper is annually consumed.  Some other peculiarities of our guide were not so pleasing.  A land of slaves is a bad school for even the free; and I was sorry to find less truthfulness and honesty in him than in my own people.  We were often cheated through his connivance with the sellers of food, and could perceive that he got a share of the plunder from them.  The food is very cheap, but it was generally made dear enough, until I refused to allow him to come near the place where we were bargaining.  But he took us safely down to Ambaca, and I was glad to see, on my return to Cassange, that he was promoted to be sergeant-major of a company of militia.

Having left Cassange on the 21st, we passed across the remaining portion of this excessively fertile valley to the foot of Tala Mungongo.  We crossed a fine little stream called the Lui on the 22d, and another named the Luare on the 24th, then slept at the bottom of the height, which is from a thousand to fifteen hundred feet.  The clouds came floating along the valley, and broke against the sides of the ascent, and the dripping rain on the tall grass made the slaps in the face it gave, when the hand or a stick was not held up before it, any thing but agreeable.  This edge of the valley is exactly like the other; jutting spurs and defiles give the red ascent the same serrated appearance as that which we descended from the highlands of Londa.  The whole of this vast valley has been removed by denudation, for pieces of the plateau which once filled the now vacant space stand in it, and present the same structure of red horizontal strata of equal altitudes with those of the acclivity which we are now about to ascend.  One of these insulated masses, named Kasala, bore E.S.E. from the place where we made our exit from the valley, and about ten miles W.S.W. from the village of Cassange.  It is remarkable for its perpendicular sides; even the natives find it extremely difficult, almost impossible, to reach its summit, though there is the temptation of marabou-nests and feathers, which are highly prized.  There is a small lake reported to exist on its southern end, and, during the rainy season, a sort of natural moat is formed around the bottom.  What an acquisition this would have been in feudal times in England!  There is land sufficient for considerable cultivation on the top, with almost perpendicular sides more than a thousand feet in height.