Farther on we left the mountainous country, and, as we descended toward the west coast, saw the lands assuming a more sterile, uninviting aspect.  On our right ran the River Senza, which nearer the sea takes the name of Bengo.  It is about fifty yards broad, and navigable for canoes.  The low plains adjacent to its banks are protected from inundation by embankments, and the population is entirely occupied in raising food and fruits for exportation to Loanda by means of canoes.  The banks are infested by myriads of the most ferocious mosquitoes I ever met.  Not one of our party could get a snatch of sleep.  I was taken into the house of a Portuguese, but was soon glad to make my escape and lie across the path on the lee side of the fire, where the smoke blew over my body.  My host wondered at my want of taste, and I at his want of feeling; for, to our astonishment, he and the other inhabitants had actually become used to what was at least equal to a nail through the heel of one’s boot, or the tooth-ache.

As we were now drawing near to the sea, my companions were looking at every thing in a serious light.  One of them asked me if we should all have an opportunity of watching each other at Loanda.  “Suppose one went for water, would the others see if he were kidnapped?” I replied, “I see what you are driving at; and if you suspect me, you may return, for I am as ignorant of Loanda as you are; but nothing will happen to you but what happens to myself.  We have stood by each other hitherto, and will do so to the last.”  The plains adjacent to Loanda are somewhat elevated and comparatively sterile.  On coming across these we first beheld the sea:  my companions looked upon the boundless ocean with awe.  On describing their feelings afterward, they remarked that “we marched along with our father, believing that what the ancients had always told us was true, that the world has no end; but all at once the world said to us, ‘I am finished; there is no more of me!’” They had always imagined that the world was one extended plain without limit.

They were now somewhat apprehensive of suffering want, and I was unable to allay their fears with any promise of supply, for my own mind was depressed by disease and care.  The fever had induced a state of chronic dysentery, so troublesome that I could not remain on the ox more than ten minutes at a time; and as we came down the declivity above the city of Loanda on the 31st of May, I was laboring under great depression of spirits, as I understood that, in a population of twelve thousand souls, there was but one genuine English gentleman.  I naturally felt anxious to know whether he were possessed of good-nature, or was one of those crusty mortals one would rather not meet at all.

This gentleman, Mr. Gabriel, our commissioner for the suppression of the slave-trade, had kindly forwarded an invitation to meet me on the way from Cassange, but, unfortunately, it crossed me on the road.  When we entered his porch, I was delighted to see a number of flowers cultivated carefully, and inferred from this circumstance that he was, what I soon discovered him to be, a real whole-hearted Englishman.