Second Account ( Purchas , pp. 1233-7).
Angola is a kingdom of itself in Ethiopia, where first the Portugals did begin to inhabit: The country of Angola cometh along the coast; as Portugal doth upon Spain, so doth Angola run upon the Kingdom of Longa [Luangu] and Manicongo.
In Angola the Portugals have a City called the Holy Ghost,268 where they have great store of Merchandise, and the Moors do come thither with all kind of such things as the country yieldeth; some bring elephant’s teeth, some bring negro slaves to sell, that they take from other kingdoms which join hard by them; thus do they use once a week, as we keep markets, so do all the Blackamoors bring hens and hogs, which they call gula,269 and hens they call Sange,270 and a kind of beast that they take in the wilderness, like a dog, which they call ambroa:271 then they have that beast which before I have told you of, called gumbe, which is bigger than a horse.272
The Blackamoors do keep good laws, and fear their King very much; the King is always attended with the nobles of his realm, and whensoever he goeth abroad, he has always at the least two hundred archers in his guard, and ten or twelve more going before him, singing and playing with pipes made of great canes, and four or five young Moors coming after him as his pages. After them follow all his noblemen.
When there falleth out any controversy among them, they crave battle of the King, and then they fight it out before him. They come before the King and fall flat on their breasts; then they rise up and kneel upon their knees, stretching out their arms crying, Mahobeque benge, benge;273 then the King striketh them on the shoulders with a horse-tail; then they go to the camp, and with their bows they fight it out till they kill one another. After the battle is done, if any liveth, he that liveth falleth down before the King in the same manner as he did when he went to the field; and after a long oration made, he taketh the horse-tail from the King’s shoulder, and waveth it about the King’s head, and then layeth it on his shoulder again, and goeth away with great honour, being accompanied with all the nobles of the Court. The Moors of Angola do know that there is a God, and do call God Caripongoa,274 but they worship the sun and the moon.
The country is champaign plain, and dry black earth, and yieldeth very little corn; the most of anything that it yieldeth is plantons [plantains], which the Portugals call baynonas [bananas], and the Moors call them mahonge275 and their wheat they call tumba,276 and the bread anou; and if you will buy any bread of them, you must say, Tala cuna auen tumbola gimbo; that is, Give me some bread, here is money.277 Their money is called gullginbo,278 a shell of a fish that they find by the shore-side; and from Brazil the Portugals do carry great store of them to Angola.
These Moors do esteem very much of red, blue and yellow cloths. They will give a slave for a span of cloth in breadth, I mean, and the length of it, of the breadth of the piece; those pieces of cloth they wear about their middles, and under it they hang the skin of a great weasel before them, and another behind them, and this is all the garments that they wear. A weasel in their language is called puccu.279 You can do a Blackamoor no greater disgrace than to take away his skin from before him, for he will die with grief if he cannot be revenged.
The Portugals do mark them as we do sheep, with a hot iron, which the Moors call crimbo.280 The poor slaves stand all in a row one by another, and sing Mundele que sumbela he Carey ha belelelle,281 and thus the poor rogues are beguiled, for the Portugals make them believe that they that have not the mark is not accounted a man of any account in Brazil or in Portugal, and thus they bring the poor Moors to be in a most damnable bondage under the cover of love.
The country of Angola yieldeth no stone, and very little wood: the Moors do make their houses all covered with earth. These houses are no bigger than a reasonable chamber, and within are many partitions, like the cabins of a ship, in such sort that a man cannot stand upright in them. Their beds are made of great bulrushes sewed together with the rinds of a tree. They do make cloth like spark of velvet (but it is thinner) of the bark of a tree, and that cloth they do call mollelleo.282
The elephants do feed in the evening and in the morning in low marshes, as there be many. The Moors do watch which way they come, and as soon as the elephants are at meat, they dig great holes in the ground, and cover them with sticks, and then they cover the pits with earth; and when they have made all ready they go to the elephants and shoot at them with their arrows; and as soon as the elephants feel themselves hurt, they run at whatsoever they see before them, following after the Blackamores that chase them. Then they fall into the deep pits where, after they are once in, they cannot get out.
The Moors of Angola are as black as jet; they are men of good stature; they never take but one wife, whom they call mocasha.283 These Moors do cut long streaks in their faces, that reach from the top of their ears to their chins. The women do wear shells of fishes284 on their arms, and on the small of their legs. The law amongst them is, that if any Moor do lie with another’s wife, he shall lose his ears for his offence. These Moors do circumcise their children, and give them their names, as we do when we baptize.
Angola may very easily be taken, for the Portugals have no forts to defend it of any strength.
The King285 of Congo is the greatest King in all Ethiopia; and doth keep in the field continually sixty thousand soldiers, that do war against the King of Vangala,286 and the King of Angola; this King is a Christian, and his brother-in-law of arms with the King of Spain. His servants of his house are most of them all Portugals, and he doth favour them very much.
The King is of a very liberal condition, and very favourable to all travellers, and doth delight very much to hear of foreign countries. He was in a manner amazed to hear how it was possible Her Majesty [Queen Elizabeth] had lived a maiden Queen so long, and always reigned in peace with her subjects. When I was brought before the King, and told him of my country, what plenty of things we had, if the Portugals had not liked of it, they would interrupt my speech, and the King would show himself very angry, and tell them that every man was best able to speak of his country, and that I had no reason but to tell him that which was true.
The King of Congo, when he goeth to the camp to see his army, rideth upon an elephant in great pomp and majesty; on either side of the elephant he hath six slaves. Two of them were kings, that he himself had taken in the field; all the rest were of noble birth; some of them were brothers to the King of Ancica, and some of them were of the chiefest blood of the great King of Bengala. These noble slaves, at every command of the King of Congo, do fall flat on the ground on their breasts. When the King doth ride, as you have heard, they carry a canopy, as it were a cloth of state, over his head. His two secretaries, the one a nobleman of Spain, the other a Moor, do ride next after him. Before him goeth at the least five hundred archers which are his guard; then there followeth a Moor, which doth nothing but talk aloud in praise of the King, telling what a great warrior he hath been, and praising his wisdom for all things that he hath accomplished very honourably to his great fame of such as knew him.
When this King of Congo cometh to his host, all the soldiers, as he passeth, fall flat on their faces to the ground. He never cometh into his host after any battle, but he dubbeth at the least twenty Knights Portugals, and as many Moors, giving them very great living according to their callings, and the service that they have done. The brother of this King was in Spain at my coming from thence for ambassador from his brother.287
Here the Portugal Captain would have taken me perforce, to have been a common soldier, but the King commanded that they should let me go whither I would, and my determination at that time was to have gone for the country of Prester John [Abyssinia], for I had a great desire to see the River of Nilo and Jerusalem (for I accounted myself as a lost man, not caring into what country or kingdom I came) But it was not the will of God that I should at that time obtain my desire, for travelling through the kingdom of Congo, to have gone to the kingdom of Angila,288 it was my fortune to meet a company of Portugal soldiers that went to a conquest that the King of Spain had newly taken, called Masangana; which place is on the borders of Anguca. Here they made me serve like a drudge, for both day and night I carried some stone and lime to make a fort.
It lyeth right under the Line, and standeth in a bottom in the middle of four hills, and about are many fogges [bogs] but not one river.289 It is the unfirmest country under the sun. Here the Portugals die like chickens. You shall see men in the morning very lusty, and within two hours dead. Others, that if they but wet their legs, presently they swell bigger than their middles;290 others break in the sides with a draught of water. O, if you did know the intolerable heat of the country, you would think yourself better a thousand times dead, than to live there a week. There you shall see poor soldiers lie in troops, gaping like camelians [camels?] for a puff of wind.
Here lived I three months, not as the Portugals did, taking of physick, and every week letting of blood and keeping close in their houses when they had any rain, observing hours, and times to go abroad morning and evening, and never to eat but at such and such times. I was glad when I had got anything at morning, noon, or night; I thank God I did work all day from morning till night; had it been rain or never so great heat, I had always my health as well as I have in England.
This country is very rich. The king had great store of gold291 sent him from this place: the time that I was there, the King of Angica had a great city at Masangana; which city Paulas Dias, Governor of Angola, took and situated there; and finding hard by it great store of gold, fortified it with four forts, and walled a great circuit of ground round about it, and within that wall; now the Portugals do build a city, and from this city every day they do war against the King of Angica, and have burnt a great part of his kingdom.
The Angicas292 are men of goodly stature; they file their teeth before on their upper jaw, and on their under jaw, making a distance between them like the teeth of a dog; they do eat man’s flesh; they are the stubbornest nation that lives under the sun, and the resolutest in the field that ever man saw; for they will rather kill themselves than yield to the Portugals. They inhabit right under the line, and of all kinds of Moors these are the blackest. They do live in the law of the Turks, and honour Mahomet. They keep many concubines, as the Turks do; they wash themselves every morning upwards, falling flat on their faces towards the east. They wear their hair all made in plaits on their heads, as well men as women; they have good store of wheat, and a kind of grain like vetches, of which they make bread: they have great store of hens like partridges, and turkeys, and all their feathers curl on their backs. Their houses are like the other houses of the kingdoms aforenamed.
And thus I end, showing you as brief as I can, all the nations and kingdoms, that, with great danger of my life, I travelled through in twelve years of my best age, getting no more than my travel for my pain. From this kingdom, Angica, was I brought in irons again to my master, Salvador Corea de Sasa, to the City of San Sebastian in Brazil, as you have heard.