Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo, Volume 2 — John Shaqi
Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo, Volume 2Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
History
Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo, Volume 2
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
Africa, West -- Description and travel; Congo River -- Description and travel; Ethnology -- Africa, West
Beyond the Government gardens appears the old Ermida (chapel), Na
Sa. da Nazareth, which English writers have dubbed, after
Madeiran fashion, the Convent. The frontage is mean as that of
colonial ecclesiastical buildings in general, and even the
epauletted façades of old São Paulo do not deserve a description.
Here, according to local tradition, was buried the head of the
"intrepid and arrogant king of Congo," Dom Antonio, whose 100,000
warriors were defeated at Ambuilla (Jan. ist, 1666) by Captain
Luiz Lopes de Sequeira, the good soldier who lost his life, by a
Portuguese hand, at the battle of Matamba (Sept. 4th, 1681). A
picture in Dutch tiles (azulejos) was placed on the right side of
the altar to commemorate the feat.
After the Ermida are more ruined houses and ragged plantations
upon the narrow shelf between the sea-cliff and the sea: they
lead to the hot and unhealthy low town skirting the harbour, a
single street with small offsets. A sandy strip spotted with
cocoa-nuts, represents the Praia do Bungo (Bungo Beach), perhaps
corrupted from Bunghi, a praça, or square; it debouches upon the
Quitanda Pequena, a succursale market-place, where, on working-
days, cloth and beads, dried peppers, and watered rum are sold.
Then come a single large building containing the Trem, or
arsenal, the cavalry barracks, the "central post-office," and the
alfandega, or custom-house, which has a poor platform, but no
pier. The stables lodge some half-a-dozen horses used by mounted
orderlies--they thrive, and, to judge from their high spirits,
the climate suits them. In Captain Owen's time (A.D. 1826) there
was "a respectable corps of cavalry."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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