The colored clerks of the merchants sit at the same table with their employers without any embarrassment.

The civil manners of superiors to inferiors is probably the result of the position they occupy--a few whites among thousands of blacks; but nowhere else in Africa is there so much good-will between Europeans and natives as here.
If some border colonists had the absolute certainty of our government declining to bear them out in their arrogance, we should probably hear less of Caffre insolence.

It is insolence which begets insolence.
From the village of Cassange we have a good view of the surrounding country: it is a gently undulating plain, covered with grass and patches of forest.

The western edge of the Quango valley appears, about twenty miles off, as if it were a range of lofty mountains, and passes by the name of Tala Mungongo, "Behold the Range".

In the old Portuguese map, to which I had been trusting in planning my route, it is indicated as Talla Mugongo, or "Castle of Rocks!" and the Coanza is put down as rising therefrom; but here I was assured that the Coanza had its source near Bihe, far to the southwest of this, and we should not see that river till we came near Pungo Andonga.