iance of the vegetation. Nearly all
the Portuguese inhabitants suffer from enlargement of the spleen,
the effects of frequent intermittents, and have generally a sickly
appearance. Thinking that this affection of the hand was simply an
effort of nature to get rid of malarious matter from the system, I
recommended the use of quinine. He himself applied the leaf of a plant
called cathory, famed among the natives as an excellent remedy for
ulcers. The cathory leaves, when boiled, exude a gummy juice, which
effectually shuts out the external air. Each remedy, of course, claimed
the merit of the cure.

Many of the children are cut off by fever. A fine boy of Captain Neves'
had, since my passage westward, shared a similar fate. Another child
died during the period of my visit. During his sickness, his mother, a
woman of color, sent for a diviner in order to ascertain what ought to
be done. The diviner, after throwing his dice, worked himself into the
state of ecstasy in which they pretend to be in communication with the
Barimo. He then gave the oracular response that the child was being
killed by the spirit of a Portuguese trader who once lived at Cassange.
The case was this: on the death of the trader, the other Portuguese
merchants in the village came together, and sold the goods of the
departed to each other, each man accounting for the portion received to
the creditors of the deceased at Loanda. The natives, looking on,
and not understanding the nature of written mercantile transactions,
concluded that the merchants of Cassange had simply stolen the dead
man's goods, and that now the spirit was killing the child of Captain
Neves for the part he had taken in the affair. The diviner, in his
response, revealed the impression made on his own mind by the sale, and
likewise the native ideas of departed souls. As they give the whites
credit for greater stupidity than themselves in all these matters, the
mother of the child came, and told the father that he ought to give a
slave to the diviner as a fee to make a sacrifice to appease the spirit
and save the life of the child. The father quietly sent for a neighbor,
and, though the diviner pretended to remain in his state of ecstasy, the
brisk application of two sticks to his back suddenly reduced him to his
senses and a most undignified flight.

The mother of this child seemed to have no confidence in European
wisdom, and, though I desired her to keep the child out of currents of