One of the Pombeiros had eight good-looking women in a chain whom he was taking to the country of Matiamvo to sell for ivory.  They always looked ashamed when I happened to come near them, and must have felt keenly their forlorn and degraded position.  I believe they were captives taken from the rebel Cassanges.  The way in which slaves are spoken of in Angola and eastern Africa must sound strangely even to the owners when they first come from Europe.  In Angola the common appellation is “o diabo”, or “brutu”; and it is quite usual to hear gentlemen call out, “O diabo! bring fire.”  In eastern Africa, on the contrary, they apply the term “bicho” (an animal), and you hear the phrase, “Call the animal to do this or that.”  In fact, slave-owners come to regard their slaves as not human, and will curse them as the “race of a dog”.  Most of the carriers of my traveling companions were hired Basongo, and required constant vigilance to prevent them stealing the goods they carried.  Salt, which is one of the chief articles conveyed into the country, became considerably lighter as we went along, but the carriers shielded themselves by saying that it had been melted by the rain.  Their burdens were taken from them every evening, and placed in security under the guardianship of Senhor Pascoal’s own slaves.  It was pitiable to observe the worrying life he led.  There was the greatest contrast possible between the conduct of his people and that of my faithful Makololo.

We crossed the Loange, a deep but narrow stream, by a bridge.  It becomes much larger, and contains hippopotami, lower down.  It is the boundary of Londa on the west.  We slept also on the banks of the Pezo, now flooded, and could not but admire their capabilities for easy irrigation.  On reaching the River Chikapa (lat. 10d 10’ S., long. 19d 42’ E.), the 25th of March, we found it fifty or sixty yards wide, and flowing E.N.E. into the Kasai.  The adjacent country is of the same level nature as that part of Londa formerly described; but, having come farther to the eastward than our previous course, we found that all the rivers had worn for themselves much deeper valleys than at the points we had formerly crossed them.

Surrounded on all sides by large gloomy forests, the people of these parts have a much more indistinct idea of the geography of their country than those who live in hilly regions.  It was only after long and patient inquiry that I became fully persuaded that the Quilo runs into the Chikapa.  As we now crossed them both considerably farther down, and were greatly to the eastward of our first route, there can be no doubt that these rivers take the same course as the others, into the Kasai, and that I had been led into a mistake in saying that any of them flowed to the westward.  Indeed, it was only at this time that I began to perceive that all the western feeders of the Kasai, except the Quango, flow first from the western side toward the centre of the country, then gradually turn, with the Kasai itself, to the north; and, after the confluence of the Kasai with the Quango, an immense body of water, collected from all these branches, finds its way out of the country by means of the River Congo or Zaire on the west coast.