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 th