After a five hours' ride we reached Cavúa, the half-way house, where breakfast had been sent on; the habitations are wretched thatches, crowded with pigs and mosquitoes. Clearings had all ended, and the red land formed broken waves of poor soil, almost nude of vegetation at this mid-winter of the tropics, except thickets of "milk plant" and forests of quadrangular cactus; the latter are quaint as the dragon-tree, some twenty feet tall and mostly sun-scorched to touchwood. The baobab (adansonia) is apparently of two kinds, the "Imbundeiro," hung with long- stringed calabashes, which forms swarming-places for bees; and the "Aliconda" (Nkondo), whose gourd is almost sessile, and whose bark supplies fibre for cloth and ropes. The haskúl or big-aloe of Somali-land was not absent, and, amongst other wild fruits, I saw scattered over the ground the husks of a strychnine, like the east African species. Deer, hares, and partridges are spoken of in these solitudes, but they must be uncommonly hard to find at such a season. About three hours after leaving Cavúa were spent upon this high, dry, and healthy desert, when suddenly we sighted the long reaches of the Cuanza River, sharply contrasting, like the Nile, with the tawny yellow grounds about its valley. A steep descent over water-rolled pebbles showed the old bank; the other side, far and blue, gave a goodly breadth of five miles; then we plunged into the green selvage of the modern stream, following muddy paths where the inundation had extended last June. Here tobacco, orchilla, and indigo in the higher, and sugar-cane, rice, and ricinus on the lower lands flourish to perfection. The Angolan orchilla was first sent to Lisbon by Sr. F. R. Batalha: it is a moss, like the tillandsia of the Southern United States, and I afterwards recognized it in the island of Annobom. Passing Pembe and other outlying hamlets, after nine hours of burning sun, we entered Calumbo Town, and were hospitably lodged by the Portuguese Commandant. We had followed the highway, as a line for the intended railway had not yet been marked out, and the distance measured 33,393 metres (= 20.75 English miles).