Keep the child out of currents of wind,
she preferred to follow her own custom, and even got it cupped on the cheeks.
The consequence was that the child was soon in a dying state,
and the father wishing it to be baptized, I commended its soul to
the care and compassion of Him who said, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven."
The mother at once rushed away, and commenced that doleful wail
which is so affecting, as it indicates sorrow without hope.
She continued it without intermission until the child was buried.
In the evening her female companions used a small musical instrument,
which produced a kind of screeching sound, as an accompaniment
of the death wail.
In the construction of this instrument they make use of caoutchouc, which,
with a variety of other gums, is found in different parts of this country.
The intercourse which the natives have had with white men
does not seem to have much ameliorated their condition.
A great number of persons are reported to lose their lives annually
in different districts of Angola by the cruel superstitions
to which they are addicted, and the Portuguese authorities either
know nothing of them, or are unable to prevent their occurrence.
The natives are bound to secrecy by those who administer the ordeal,
which generally causes the death of the victim. A person,
when accused of witchcraft, will often travel from distant districts
in order to assert her innocency and brave the test. They come to a river
on the Cassange called Dua, drink the infusion of a poisonous tree,
and perish unknown.
A woman was accused by a brother-in-law of being the cause of his sickness
while we were at Cassange. She offered to take the ordeal,
as she had the idea that it would but prove her conscious innocence.
Captain Neves refused his consent to her going, and thus saved her life,
which would have been sacrificed, for the poison is very virulent.
When a strong stomach rejects it, the accuser reiterates his charge;
the dose is repeated, and the person dies. Hundreds perish thus every year
in the valley of Cassange.
The same superstitious ideas being prevalent through the whole of the country
north of the Zambesi, seems to indicate that the people must originally
have been one. All believe that the souls of the departed still mingle
among the living, and partake in some way of the food they consume.
In sickness, sacrifices of fowls and goats are made to appease the spirits.
It is imagined that they wish to take the living away from earth
and all its enjoyments. When one man has killed another, a sacrifice is made,
as if to lay the spirit of the victim. A sect is reported to exist
who kill men in order to take their hearts and offer them to the Barimo.
The chieftainship is elective from certain families.
Among the Bangalas of the Cassange valley the chief is chosen
from three families in rotation. A chief's brother inherits
in preference to his son. The sons of a sister belong to her brother;
and he often sells his nephews to pay his debts. By this and other
unnatural customs, more than by war, is the slave-market supplied.
The prejudices in favor of these practices are very deeply rooted
in the native mind. Even at Loanda they retire out of the city in order
to perform their heathenish rites without the cognizance of the authorities.
Their religion, if such it may be called, is one of dread. Numbers of charms
are employed to avert the evils with which they feel themselves
to be encompassed. Occasionally you meet a man, more cautious or more timid
than the rest, with twenty or thirty charms round his neck. He seems to act
upon the principle of Proclus, in his prayer to all the gods and goddesses:
among so many he surely must have the right one. The disrespect
which Europeans pay to the objects of their fear is to their minds
only an evidence of great folly.
While here, I reproduced the last of my lost papers and maps;
and as there is a post twice a month from Loanda, I had the happiness
to receive a packet of the "Times", and, among other news,
an account of the Russian war up to the terrible charge of the light cavalry.
The intense anxiety I felt to hear more may be imagined by every true patriot;
but I was forced to brood on in silent thought, and utter my poor prayers
for friends who perchance were now no more, until I reached
the other side of the continent.
A considerable trade is carried on by the Cassange merchants with all the
surrounding territory by means of native traders, whom they term "Pombeiros".
Two of these, called in the history of Angola "the trading blacks"
(os feirantes pretos), Pedro Joao Baptista and Antonio Jose,
having been sent by the first Portuguese trader that lived at Cassange,
actually returned from some of the Portuguese possessions in the East
with letters from the governor of Mozambique in the year 1815,
proving, as is remarked, "the possibility of so important a communication
between Mozambique and Loanda." This is the only instance
of native Portuguese subjects crossing the continent. No European
ever accomplished it, though this fact has lately been quoted
as if the men had been "PORTUGUESE".
Captain Neves was now actively engaged in preparing a present,
worth about fifty pounds, to be sent by Pombeiros to Matiamvo.
It consisted of great quantities of cotton cloth, a large carpet,
an arm-chair with a canopy and curtains of crimson calico, an iron bedstead,
mosquito curtains, beads, etc., and a number of pictures rudely painted in oil
by an embryo black painter at Cassange.
