We landed at once, and presented our letters to Sr. Antonio Vicente Pereira, who at once made us at home: he had seen Goa as well as Macáo, so we found several subjects in common. The factory enjoyed every comfort: the poultry yard throve, far better than at Porto da Lenha; we saw fowls and pigeons, "Manilla" ducks and ducklings, and a fine peacock from Portugal, which seemed to enjoy the change. The fish is not so good as that caught further down, and the natives have a habit of narcotizing it: the Silurus electricus is exceptionally plentiful. The farmyard contained tame deer, and a house-dog fierce as a tethered mastiff; goats were brought whenever wanted, and the black-faced, thin-tailed sheep gave excellent mutton. Beef was impossible; the Portuguese, like the natives, care little for milk, and of the herd, which strangers had attempted to domesticate, remained only a bull and a cow in very poor condition--the deaths were attributed to poisonous grass, but I vehemently suspect Tsetse. A daily "quitanda," or market, held under the huge calabashes on a hill behind the house, supplied what was wanted. Upon Market Hill executions also take place, the criminal being shot through the heart. M. Pereira's garden produces all that Porta da Lenha can grow, with less trouble and of a superior kind. Water-melons, tomatoes, onions, and pimento, or large pepper (pimentão, siliquastrum, ndungu ya yenéne), useful to produce "crocodiles' tears;" mint, and parsley flourish remarkably; turnips are eatable after two months; cabbage and lettuce, beet, carrot, and endive after three or four. It is a waste of ground to plant peas; two rows, twelve feet by four, hardly produce a plateful. Manioc ripens between the sixth and ninth month, plantains and bananas once a year, cotton and rice in four months, and maize in forty days--with irrigation it is easy to grow three annual crops. The time for planting is before the rains, which here last six weeks to two months, September and October. The staple of commerce is now the nguba, or ground-nut (plural, jinguba), which Merolla calls incumba, with sometimes a little milho (maize), and Calavance beans. Of fruits we find trellised grapes, pines, and guavas, which, as at Fernando Po, are a weed. The agrumi, limes, oranges and citrons are remarkably fine, and hold, as of old, a high place in the simple medicines of the country. A cup of lime-leaf tea, drunk warm in the morning, is the favourite emetic and cathartic: even in Pliny's day we find "Malus Assyria, quam alii vocant medicam (Mediam?, venenis medetur" (xii. 7). On the Gold Coast and in the Gaboon region, colic and dysentery are cured by a calabash full of lime- juice, "laced" with red pepper. The peculiarity of European vegetables throughout maritime Congo and Angola is the absence of all flavour combined with the finest appearance; it seems as though something in the earth or atmosphere were wanting to their full development.