The First Expedition of Paulo Dias de Novaes, 1560.
In 1556 Ngola Ineve,395 being threatened by Kongo, sent an ambassador to Portugal asking for the establishment of friendly relations. This ambassador arriving in the year of the death of King John III (1557), action was deferred until 1559, when three caravels were fitted out and placed under the command of Paulo Dias, a grandson of the discoverer of the Cape of Good Hope. Dias left Lisbon on December 22nd, 1559, and called at S. Thomé (where Bishop Gaspar Cão observed that the Jesuits, who accompanied Dias, would meet with no success as long as commercial intercourse was prohibited).396 Dias arrived at the bar of the Kwanza on May 3rd, and there waited patiently for six months, when Musungu, a native chief, made his appearance at the head of a crew of painted warriors, armed with bows and arrows. In his company Dias, accompanied by the Jesuit fathers and twenty men, travelled up the country for sixty leagues, when he arrived at the royal residence.397 The King, not any longer the Ngola who had asked for missionaries, but his successor,398 received his visitors kindly, but would net allow them to depart until they had helped him against one of his revolted Sobas, called Kiluanji kia kwangu by Garcia Mendes.399 Having rendered this service Dias was dismissed, but the Jesuits remained behind as hostages. Whilst Dias was absent in Europe, Ngola defeated an army sent against him, and thus compelled the recognition of the Dande river as his boundary, the island of Luandu alone, with its productive njimbu fishery, remaining with Kongo. Ngola ndambi died (in 1568?) before Dias returned.