the law giving it effect is so fenced round with limitations, and so deluged with verbiage, that to plain people it seems any thing but a straightforward license to foreigners to become ‘bona fide’ landholders and cultivators of the soil.  At present the tolls paid on the different lines of roads for ferries and bridges are equal to the interest of large sums of money, though but a small amount has been expended in making available roads.

There are two churches and a hospital in ruins at Massangano; and the remains of two convents are pointed out, one of which is said to have been an establishment of black Benedictines, which, if successful, considering the materials the brethren had to work on, must have been a laborious undertaking.  There is neither priest nor schoolmaster in the town, but I was pleased to observe a number of children taught by one of the inhabitants.  The cultivated lands attached to all these conventual establishments in Angola are now rented by the government of Loanda, and thither the bishop lately removed all the gold and silver vessels belonging to them.

The fort of Massangano is small, but in good repair; it contains some very ancient guns, which were loaded from the breech, and must have been formidable weapons in their time.  The natives of this country entertain a remarkable dread of great guns, and this tends much to the permanence of the Portuguese authority.  They dread a cannon greatly, though the carriage be so rotten that it would fall to pieces at the first shot; the fort of Pungo Andongo is kept securely by cannon perched on cross sticks alone!

Massangano was a very important town at the time the Dutch held forcible possession of Loanda and part of Angola; but when, in the year 1648, the Dutch were expelled from this country by a small body of Portuguese, under the Governor Salvador Correa de Sa Benevides, Massangano was left to sink into its present decay.  Since it was partially abandoned by the Portuguese, several baobab-trees have sprung up and attained a diameter of eighteen or twenty inches, and are about twenty feet high.  No certain conclusion can be drawn from these instances, as it is not known at what time after 1648 they began to grow; but their present size shows that their growth is not unusually slow.

Several fires occurred during our stay, by the thatch having, through long exposure to a torrid sun, become like tinder.  The roofs became ignited without any visible cause except the intense solar rays, and excited terror in the minds of the inhabitants, as the slightest spark carried by the wind would have set the whole town in a blaze.  There is not a single inscription on stone visible in Massangano.  If destroyed to-morrow, no one could tell where it and most Portuguese interior villages stood, any more than we can do those of the Balonda.