and I soon learned to enjoy what M. Dufosse has learnedly named “ichthyopsophosis,” the song of the fish.  Passing Cabinda, 57 miles from Loanda, but barely in sight, we fell in with H.M.  Steamship “Espoir,” Commander Douglas, who had just made his second capture of a slave-schooner carrying some 500 head of Congos.  In these advanced days, the representative man walks up to you as you come on board; touches his cap or his wool, and expresses his best thanks in West Coast English; when you offer him a dram he compares it with the trade article which “only ’ting, he no burn.”  The characteristic sights are the captured Moleques or negrokins, who, habited in sacks to the knees, choose an M.C. to beat time, whilst they sing in chorus, extending the right arm, and foully abusing their late masters, who skulk about the forecastle.

Ten days sped by before we sighted the beginning of the end, Cape Spilemberta and Dande Point, two bluffs in distinct serrations; the aspect of the land was pleasant, a vista of tall cliffs, white or red, rising wall-like from a purple sea, jagged with sharp, black reef and “diabolito,” and bearing on the summit a plateau well grown with grass and tree.  We then opened a deep bight, which has the honour of being entitled the longest indentation from Cape Lopez to Great Fish Bay, some 17deg. or a thousand miles of coast.  A gap in the cliff line and darker vegetation showed the Zenza River, generally called Bengo from the district (Icolo e Bengo) which it traverses.  Here was once a busy settlement much frequented by shipping, which thus escaped harbour dues.  The mosquito-haunted stream, clear in the dries, and, as usual, muddy during the rains, supports wild duck, and, carried some ten miles in “dongos” or flat-bottomed boats, supplies the capital of Angola with drinking water and dysentery.

As we glide towards the anchorage two features attract my attention:  the Morro or hill-ridge on the mainland, and the narrow strip which forms the harbour.  The escarpment, sweeping from a meridian to a parallel, juts westward in the bluff Cape Lagostas (Lobsters), a many-coloured face, in places not unlike the white cliffs of Dover; it then trends from north-east to south-west, bending at last in a picturesque bow, with a shallow sag.  The material is the taua or blood-red marl of the Brazil, banded with white and brown, green, chocolate, and yellow; huge heaps of “rotten earth,” washed down by the rains, cumber the base of the ruined sea-wall north of the town; in front is a pellucid sea with the usual trimmings, while behind roll the upland stubbles of autumn, here mottled black with fire, there scattered with the wild ficus and the cashew, a traveller from the opposite hemisphere.