Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/500

 a very busy seaport, and although lying some 86 miles north of the mouth of the Congo, it is already one of the entrepôts for the commerce of that basin. Its chief factory is the centre for all the British trade between the Gaboon estuary and Loanda. Povo Grande, the largest village in Portuguese territory, is dispersed among the bananas and gardens stretching along the coast south of Cabinda. One of its hamlets was capital of the former kingdom of Ngoyo. A part of the local trade is in the hands of the Ma-Vumbus, a people of grave and solemn aspect, with intelligent eyes, straight or even aquiline nose, whose pronounced Semitic type has earned for them the Portuguese designation of Judeos pretos, or "Black Jews." They may certainly be regarded as of Jewish origin, if the statement be true that they are strict observers of the sabbath, abstaining even from all conversation on that day. According to the natives, the Ma-Vumbus were expressly created by God to punish other mortals by reducing them to poverty.

According to the provisional administration recently bestowed on them, the Portuguese possessions lying north of the Congo are attached to the province of Angola, constituting a special district with the territories beyond the Congo as far as Ambriz. Cabinda is the capital of this district, which is divided into the two northern circumscriptions of Cabinda and Landana.