Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/15





ANGOLA.

VER since the Portuguese navigators penetrated beyond the equator into the southern waters, or at least since the year 1485, when Diego Cam set up the stone at the mouth of the Congo indicating the formal possession of the land south of that estuary, the portion of the African seaboard extending southwards from the Congo has b(en regarded as belonging to the crown of Portugal. Since the year 1574, when a small Lusitanian colony was established in the island of Loanda, the relations between Lisbon and Angola have never been interrupted. This first section of the coast was originally occupied by seven hundred men commanded by Paul Diaz, grandson of the pioneer who discovered the Cape of Good Hope; but European households were not properly constituted till the year 1595, when the first Portuguese women arrived in the settlement.

In many newly discovered regions several generations have often passed after the first appearance of the whites before they have succeeded in acquiring any effective supremacy over the natives. But in this part of the African seaboard the Portuguese have never ceased for over three hundred years in exercising sovereign rights, or at least in maintaining alliances with the surrounding populations. Even in 1641, when the Dutch captured the strongholds on the coast, some Portuguese officials and others remained in the country, upholding the traditional sovereignty of the ancient Muata Poiu, "King of Portugal," or rather of the Muené Mpotu, "King of the sea." Nor were they long neglected by the mother country, a squadron despatched from Brazil Laving soon reconquered the colony.