us 26,000 hearths or fires; and if to each hearth we reckon four
souls, we have a population of 104,000. The number of carregadores
(carriers) who may be ordered out at the pleasure of government to
convey merchandise to the coast is in this district alone about 6000,
yet there is no good road in existence. This system of compulsory
carriage of merchandise was adopted in consequence of the increase in
numbers and activity of our cruisers, which took place in 1845. Each
trader who went, previous to that year, into the interior, in the
pursuit of his calling, proceeded on the plan of purchasing ivory and
beeswax, and a sufficient number of slaves to carry these commodities.
The whole were intended for exportation as soon as the trader reached
the coast. But when the more stringent measures of 1845 came into
operation, and rendered the exportation of slaves almost impossible,
there being no roads proper for the employment of wheel conveyances,
this new system of compulsory carriage of ivory and beeswax to the coast
was resorted to by the government of Loanda. A trader who requires two
or three hundred carriers to convey his merchandise to the coast now
applies to the general government for aid. An order is sent to the
commandant of a district to furnish the number required. Each head man
of the villages to whom the order is transmitted must furnish from five
to twenty or thirty men, according to the proportion that his people
bear to the entire population of the district. For this accommodation
the trader must pay a tax to the government of 1000 reis, or about three
shillings per load carried. The trader is obliged to pay the carrier
also the sum of 50 reis, or about twopence a day, for his sustenance.
And as a day's journey is never more than from eight to ten miles, the
expense which must be incurred for this compulsory labor is felt to be
heavy by those who were accustomed to employ slave labor alone. Yet no
effort has been made to form a great line of road for wheel carriages.
The first great want of a country has not been attended to, and no
development of its vast resources has taken place. The fact, however,
of a change from one system of carriage to another, taken in connection
with the great depreciation in the price of slaves near this coast,
proves the effectiveness of our efforts at repressing the slave-trade on
the ocean.

The latitude of Golungo Alto, as observed at the residence of the
commandant, was 9d 8'