This complaint is the only serious drawback Angola possesses.

It is in every other respect an agreeable land, and admirably adapted for yielding a rich abundance of tropical produce for the rest of the world.

Indeed, I have no hesitation in asserting that, had it been in the possession of England, it would now have been yielding as much or more of the raw material for her manufactures as an equal extent of territory in the cotton-growing states of America.

A railway from Loanda to this valley would secure the trade of most of the interior of South Central Africa.* * The following statistics may be of interest to mercantile men.

They show that since the repression of the slave-trade in Angola the value of the exports in lawful commerce has steadily augmented.