The Village Of Cassange (Pronounced Kassanje) Is Composed Of
Thirty Or Forty Traders' Houses, Scattered About Without Any Regularity,
On An Elevated Flat Spot In The Great Quango Or Cassange Valley.
They Are Built Of Wattle And Daub, And Surrounded By Plantations Of Manioc,
Maize, Etc.
Behind them there are usually kitchen gardens,
in which the common European vegetables, as potatoes, peas, cabbages,
onions, tomatoes, etc., etc., grow.
Guavas and bananas appear,
from the size and abundance of the trees, to have been introduced
many years ago, while the land was still in the possession of the natives;
but pine-apples, orange, fig, and cashew trees have but lately been tried.
There are about forty Portuguese traders in this district,
all of whom are officers in the militia, and many of them have become rich
from adopting the plan of sending out Pombeiros, or native traders, with large
quantities of goods, to trade in the more remote parts of the country.
Some of the governors of Loanda, the capital of this, the kingdom of Angola,
have insisted on the observance of a law which, from motives of humanity,
forbids the Portuguese themselves from passing beyond the boundary.
They seem to have taken it for granted that, in cases where
the white trader was killed, the aggression had been made by him,
and they wished to avoid the necessity of punishing those who had been
provoked to shed Portuguese blood. This indicates a much greater impartiality
than has obtained in our own dealings with the Caffres,
for we have engaged in most expensive wars with them without once inquiring
whether any of the fault lay with our frontier colonists.
The Cassange traders seem inclined to spread along the Quango,
in spite of the desire of their government to keep them on one spot,
for mutual protection in case of war. If I might judge
from the week of feasting I passed among them, they are generally prosperous.
As I always preferred to appear in my own proper character,
I was an object of curiosity to these hospitable Portuguese.
They evidently looked upon me as an agent of the English government,
engaged in some new movement for the suppression of slavery. They could
not divine what a "missionario" had to do with the latitudes and longitudes,
which I was intent on observing. When we became a little familiar,
the questions put were rather amusing: "Is it common for missionaries
to be doctors?" "Are you a doctor of medicine and a `doutor mathematico' too?
You must be more than a missionary to know how to calculate the longitude!
Come, tell us at once what rank you hold in the English army."
They may have given credit to my reason for wearing the mustache,
as that explains why men have beards and women have none;
but that which puzzled many besides my Cassange friends
was the anomaly of my being a "sacerdote", with a wife and four children!
I usually got rid of the last question by putting another:
"Is it not better to have children with a wife, than to have children
without a wife?" But all were most kind and hospitable;
and as one of their festivals was near, they invited me
to partake of the feast.
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