We found the town of Massangano on a tongue of rather high land, formed by the left bank of the Lucalla and right bank of the Coanza, and received true Portuguese hospitality from Senhor Lubata.  The town has more than a thousand inhabitants; the district has 28,063, with only 315 slaves.  It stands on a mound of calcareous tufa, containing great numbers of fossil shells, the most recent of which resemble those found in the marly tufa close to the coast.  The fort stands on the south side of the town, on a high perpendicular bank overhanging the Coanza.  This river is here a noble stream, about a hundred and fifty yards wide, admitting navigation in large canoes from the bar at its mouth to Cambambe, some thirty miles above this town.  There, a fine waterfall hinders farther ascent.  Ten or twelve large canoes laden with country produce pass Massangano every day.  Four galleons were constructed here as long ago as 1650, which must have been of good size, for they crossed the ocean to Rio Janeiro.

Massangano district is well adapted for sugar and rice, while Cambambe is a very superior field for cotton; but the bar at the mouth of the Coanza would prevent the approach of a steamer into this desirable region, though a small one could ply on it with ease when once in.  It is probable that the objects of those who attempted to make a canal from Calumbo to Loanda were not merely to supply that city with fresh water, but to afford facilities for transportation.  The remains of the canal show it to have been made on a scale suited for the Coanza canoes.  The Portuguese began another on a smaller scale in 1811, and, after three years’ labor, had finished only 6000 yards.  Nothing great or useful will ever be effected here so long as men come merely to get rich, and then return to Portugal.

The latitude of the town and fort of Massangano is 9d 37’ 46” S., being nearly the same as that of Cassange.  The country between Loanda and this point being comparatively flat, a railroad might be constructed at small expense.  The level country is prolonged along the north bank of the Coanza to the edge of the Cassange basin, and a railway carried thither would be convenient for the transport of the products of the rich districts of Cassange, Pungo Andongo, Ambaca, Cambambe, Golungo Alto, Cazengo, Muchima, and Calumbo; in a word, the whole of Angola and independent tribes adjacent to this kingdom.

The Portuguese merchants generally look to foreign enterprise and to their own government for the means by which this amelioration might be effected; but, as I always stated to them when conversing on the subject, foreign capitalists would never run the risk, unless they saw the Angolese doing something for themselves, and the laws so altered that the subjects of other nations should enjoy the same privileges in the country with themselves.  The government of Portugal has indeed shown a wise and liberal policy by its permission for the alienation of the crown lands in Angola; but