Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/57

 known, although formerly erected by the Portuguese crown into a "Duchy" in favour of a Negro prince, on whose shoulders were tattooed the arms of Portugal, an indelible badge of which the bearer was not a little proud. This singular method of investiture was conferred on a Duke of Mossul so recently as the close of the eighteenth century. In the Dandé valley, which forms the boundary line between the Ba-Fyot and Bunda populations, reservoirs of petroleum have been discovered, which, however, have hitherto been worked at a loss. For several generations the natives of the district have been so unruly that the European speculators have not yet ventured to establish factories in their midst. The upper Dandé valley is even still held by semi-independent Dembo 'tribes.

São-Paulo da Assumpcão de Loanda, or briefly Loanda, capital of their Angolan possessions, was the first town founded by the Portuguese on this coast. As it was also the most favourably situated for trading purposes, it naturally acquired a rapid development, and is at present the largest city on the West African seaboard for a distance of 3,000 miles, between Lagos and the Cape. Divided into an upper and a lower quarter, it spreads out in amphitheatrical form along the terraced slopes, terminating southwards in a rocky headland, on which stands the fortress of Sao Miguel. The somewhat open bay is partly sheltered from the ocean winds and surf by a strip of sand forming a continuation of a tongue of land which begins some 20 miles farther south, at the most advanced westerly point of the Angolan coast. This outer shore-line, which runs parallel with the inner seaboard, has been formed by the marine current which sets steadily in the