would be a fête, with military music, fireworks, and mulatto flirtations.

The streets of Loanda are ankle-deep in sand; the public buildings are either decaying or in statu quo; oxen are stalled in the college of the Jesuits. All that remains of poetry and of power is dying away in this colony. It is in its Dark Age-in the interregnum between two civilizations. When will the second begin?

The town is garrisoned by convicts, who wear uniforms, and are called soldiers. They are strange guardians; but a low diet of beans and rice, with meat once a week, and occasional attacks of intermittent fever, would appear to be sanitary from a moral point of view, and to reform them completely. Crimes are certainly very rare, and those who commit them are usually sent to certain malarious localities in the interior. If they return from these (which is not invariably the case), their emaciated appearance is a far better bugbear than a skeleton on a gallows. Disease is more frightful than death.

There are but few ladies in Loanda, and those do not seem to mingle much in society. The Portuguese, speaking generally, have adopted the manners of the aborigines. They have their seraglios, and concubinage is there looked upon as a custom of the country, which one need not conceal in practice nor avoid in conversation. We may regard it as a vice, but it certainly extinguishes a worse one, for there are scarcely any courtesans in Loanda; and to bring a white woman to such a country as this is something more than a vice-it is a crime. It is to kill her beauty, her health, her happiness, and perhaps her life.

But let us excuse those who, even without ignorance for their plea, bring their wives with them to Western Africa. In this detestable land, where one's only society is masculine, and that usually of a low order, one yearns for the company of a woman-of a lady. It is true that there are girls here who have such sweet smiles, such dark, voluptuous eyes, such fond, caressing ways, that one can not help loving them, but only as one loves a child, a dog, or a singing-bird. They can gratify the desire of a libertine, but they can not inspire a passion of the soul, nor feed that hunger of love which must sometimes gnaw the heart of a refined and cultivated man. The negress has beauty-beauty in spite of her black skin-which might create a furore in our demi-monde, and for which fools might fling their fortunes to the dogs. And she

is gentle, and faithful, and loving in her own poor way. But where is the coy glance, the tender sigh, the timid blush? where is the intellect, which is the light within the crystal lamp, the genius No, no, the negress is not a woman; she is a she is a pretty toy, an affectionate brute-that

within the clay? parody of woman; is all.

I loved to steal away from empty-minded man, and listen to the military band which played three nights a week before the governor's palace. The instrumentalists, who were all blacks, did not belie the musical instinct which is attributed to the negro, and which, although it never ascends to genius, becomes a talent when drilled. It seemed strange, though, to hear Ah che la Morte and La ci darem in that barbarous place. What a contrast with the scene in which I heard them last! A sandy street in Africa -Her Majesty's Theatre in the Haymarket!

The sweetest pleasure which one can enjoy in the wilderness is reverie. With a vivid imagination and a poetical taste, what is there which one can not enjoy? But Reverie is a capricious angel; she will not come when she is called: like all her sisters of happiness, she prefers to descend upon us when we least expect her.

One afternoon I had wandered a little way out of the town to look at the grand earthworks which the Dutch had cast up in former days, and I chanced to find the ruins of an old convent of the Jesuits.

I entered a melancholy quadrangle choked with grass and flowIt was encircled by gray and solemn cloisters. It was buried in a tomblike silence.

ers.

Its architecture reminded me of the colleges, those convents of my country. Will those relics of a past age ever perish? thought I. Will future travelers ever wander, as I do now, among the graves of learning and of an obsolete age?

Now the sun, sinking in the sky, reddened the jagged summits of those mouldering walls, and now the chimes from the distant city told me that the hour of vespers was at hand. At this sound, for which I had so often listened in my boyhood, a crowd of sad and gentle recollections poured upon me. I was once more in my little room, poring over my books for the schools; with tasseled cap in hand, I was once more in the holy chapel, which the organ filled with its swelling and melodious tones; and the voices of white-robed choristers rose caroling to the carved oak roof; and

the evening sun, bathing them in its radiance, turned the brown saints of the painted windows into gold.

A young man may satirize the follies of the under-graduate, but he soon learns that there are worse sins than folly in the world. He may jeer at the monkish seclusion and ignorance of his seniors, but ere long he may wish for that peace and simplicity which they enjoy. He may rail against his gentle mother, but when he has left her he may find that he still loves her in his heart; for it is while she holds us to her breast that life smiles most sweetly, and the cheek of pleasure has not lost its bloom. The phantom of Life beckons; we embrace her; she withers and turns hideous in our arms. No longer a fair vision which entices us to manhood, she becomes a spirit with a flaming sword, which drives us onward to old age.

CHAPTER XXV.

BY OX AND HAMMOCK.

Joachim the Swiss.-His best Friend.-En Route for Ambaka.-Bloodthirsty Musquitoes.-The Senhor Mendez.-Routine of Journey.-Mountains à la Suisse.— Arrival at Ambaka.-The War with Cassange.-Governmental Plunder.-The Fashion of secret Poisoning.-The Boeuf-cheval.-The Doorkeeper of Matiamvo. -Joachim is drunk.-Is impertinent.-Loses two front Teeth. - Post-haste.The Story of Franz.

I HAD laid it down as my programme de voyage to visit the Congo on the north, and afterward Benguela on the south, thus making Loanda my head-quarters in the centre; but, being desirous to visit the interior of Angola, in order to gain some idea as to the capabilities of the province as a colony, to study the negro in a semi-civilized state, and the workings of domestic slavery, I resolved to go as far as Ambaka, which is at the distance of a hundred and fifty miles from Loanda.

But here an obstacle arose. I could not speak Portuguese, and I had no interpreter. This was a serious difficulty. There is perhaps no European colony in which so little English is spoken as in Loanda.

That same evening we were sitting together in the drawingroom, when a young man came on the terrace and knocked at the door.

"Come in, Joachim," said Mr. Gabriel.

Joachim came in. I looked at him with some attention. He was neatly dressed, but not in a manner that suggested opulence. His handkerchief was tied by a hand which had once been a sailor's. His face expressed intelligence. This is the man for me, thought I. He probably wants money. He has been a sailor, and can therefore turn his hands to any thing; and he has evidently enough brains to carry out ideas.

Joachim came to request Mr. Gabriel to buy some oxen from him, which he (my terrestrial angel) might sell to the cruisers. Mr. Gabriel regretted that he could not oblige him by doing so, for to sell oxen to the British government would be to interfere

with the rights of the contractor, Senhor Freites, and of course he himself found it more convenient to buy his meat as he wanted it from the butcher.

Joachim turned round despondingly. I resolved to strike. "Perhaps," said I, “Joachim knows somebody who would act as my interpreter to Ambaka?"

Joachim's eyes gleamed. I saw that I had my man.

"Yes," said Mr. Gabriel, innocently. "Joachim, this gentleman is going as far as Ambaka. He wants somebody who can speak Portuguese, and English or French, to go with him as his steward and interpreter. He will pay him liberally, and will let him have a hammock to ride in."

Joachim reflected a little while. "I think," said he, “that my best friend would like to accompany this gentleman. But he would perhaps ask me for more particulars. For instance, he might say, 'What does this gentleman propose to give his steward ?""

"Three pounds a month," said I, "on certain conditions of obedience, adherence, and so on."

"Three pounds a month; yes, that is strong money. And if he asks me when the gentleman will start?"

"You will say that he will start immediately."

"Then my best friend will be very happy to become your interpreter."

"And who is your best friend?" said Mr. Gabriel.

"My best friend, that is myself," replied Joachim, mildly.

"Very good," said I; "come to me to-morrow at ten o'clock; I will give you your agreement, and tell you what I wish you to do."

Joachim made a gentlemanly bow, and left the room.

"That is fortunate," said I.

"Ye-es," said my host, with a little hesitation. And when we were alone he said, "I must not let you decide upon any thing without telling you that Joachim is a very bad character-so bad, indeed, that I shall not feel easy in mind so long as you are with him."

"He is intelligent, I think?"

"Oh, he is a very clever fellow, but-"

"Well," said I, "I have been accustomed to travel with my life in other people's hands, and I can generally manage to make it their interest as well as mine to preserve it."