Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1881 edition. Excerpt: ... effects of climate and pasture. The Bihenos have goats of a very inferior race, and their horned cattle are small and of poor and weakly breed. Poultry abounds, but, similar to all tbe domestic animals of the country, the birds are small of body. Having thus gleaned from my notes what I considered most curious with respect to this interesting country, reserving for a special chapter a fuller account of its climate, capabilities and prospects, I again take up my diary on the 14th of April, 1878. The rains had been gradually decreasing, falling from six to nine at night only, since the beginning of the month, and yielding scarcely one-eighteenth of an inch of water. The weather was splendid, and even the few flecks of white cloud which after the rains floated for a time at an enormous height in the upper air, at length disappeared to leave the sky perfectly blue and limpid, beautiful by day beneath the rays of a brilliant sun, but infinitely more beautiful at night when sparkling with myriads of stars which shed over this African continent that strangely melancholy light which surely is peculiar to the regions of tbe tropics. The weather was admirably fitted for travelling; it was already the 14th of April, and yet I was detained in the Bihe'! The fact was, that I was still waiting for the bulk of tbe goods and effects left behind in Benguella in the month of November of the previous year, only a portion having reached me at the beginning of March! The delay was becoming a very serious matter. Of the seven bales of goods left me by Capello and Ivens four had already melted away in tbe maintenance of my Benguella followers and myself. I had as yet made no present to the reigning chief, who, I feared, would be applying for it, and altogether...