The main town of Loango is three miles from the waterside, and stands on a great plain. The streets are wide and long, and always clean swept. The place is thick with people, more than can be numbered, though you might not know it because the plantain-trees and palms and other vegetation are so profuse that they hide the dwellings that are built among them. On the west side of town are ten great houses that belong to the Maloango, as the king is known, and outside the door of his main house is a broad open space where he sits, when he has any feastings or matters of wars to deal with. I found it not easy to imagine Queen Elizabeth squatting outside her front gate to debate with the Privy Council. But, then, I found it equally hard to imagine the Privy Council pressing their faces into the dust whenever the Queen’s cupbearer came to her beck.
From this open place goes a great wide street that runs the length of several musket-shots, and at the other end of it there is a great market every day, that begins at twelve o’clock. Here they deal in victuals, hens, fish, wine, oil, and grain, and in the excellent cloth they make from palm-leaf threads, fashioning it into velvets, satins, taffetas, damasks, sarsenets, and such like. Here also they deal in copper bracelets and in a wood that makes a very fine scarlet dye. But though Loango has an abundance of elephantos, the teeth of them are never sold in the marketplace, but always by private treaty.
The people of Loango are pagans. They wear fine garments of palm-cloth or woven grass that drape them from waist to feet, like a sort of kilt, of fine workmanship. They go circumcised after the manner of the Hebrews, as is true of all the peoples hereabout except the Christian folk of the kingdom of Kongo, who keep their members intact as Europeans do. The King of Loango is an ally with the King of Kongo, and in earlier days, when the King of Kongo was very powerful, the King of Loango was his vassal.
It was the middle part of the afternoon when we came into the city. Few people were about, under the horrid glare of the sun, but as word passed that the Portugals had come, the numbers of those in the streets increased. And once again the presence of a blond Englishman doubled and redoubled their curiousness: they whispered, they pointed, they crept forward almost unto touching range. With my hair and skin gleaming in the brilliance of the sunlight I felt that I was become Apollo of the Greeks, and I did smile and stretch forth my arms to the multitude and pretend to be giving them solemn blessing, until Pedro Faleiro tapped my ribs and said sourly, “Spare us this comedy, Piloto.”
Through these gathering throngs we made our way to the royal compound so that we might present our compliments and credentials. The Loangans parted before us with that awe and deference that the colored folk of the world show so readily to Europeans, and by which the Spaniards and Portugals have been able to conquer so much territory with such small expenditure of lives. Is it that they take us indeed for gods, I wonder, or do our white skins persuade them that we come from the spirit-world and must be obeyed? Certain it is that if the Mexicans and the Peru folk and all the other conquered nations had risen up, and had been willing to sacrifice fifty of their lives for each of the invaders, they would have hurled King Philip’s troops to perdition and preserved their empires unto their own keeping. But they did not do it.
As we came upon the royal buildings Faleiro showed me one group to the south side, all encircled with a palisado of poles, and said, “This is the harem.”
“I know not that word,” I replied.
“It is Moorish, and means, the place where the king’s wives are kept. No man may enter that zone and live.”
It was so many buildings that it looked to be a village of itself. I felt amazed. “God’s own passion,” I cried, “how many wives does the man have?”
“One hundred fifty and more,” said Faleiro.
“Jesu!”
“That is a trifle. The old king that was here before him had twice that number. And four hundred children by them. Or was it four thousand, eh, Andrade?”
“Four hundred, I think,” said the boatswain.
I shook my head. “Quite enough. One hundred fifty wives! Jesu, if he visit one a night, it would take him half the year to tup them all!”
Faleiro gave me a leering look. “And would such a regimen be to your liking, Piloto?”
“Nay,” said I most truthfully. “Better one wife, and clasp her dear body a hundred fifty times a year, than a hundred fifty and embrace them once apiece.”
And that set me thinking of home, and house, and wife, and awakened the sadness and homesickness that lay always not far beneath the surface of my soul. And also did all this talk of women and tupping arouse in me dark hot thoughts of Dona Teresa, that I did miss most intensely from my life. Ah, then, was it the loss of Anne Katherine I mourned, or my absence from the witching Portugal woman? I did not know. I did not know at all, and that threw me into a new despond. For I would not then admit that Anne Katherine and all our plans had entered into the realm of vapors and mist for me, and that it was the silken thighs and hard-tipped breasts of Dona Teresa that I craved. But yet had I brought Dona Teresa’s little witching-statue with me, and kept it close beside me at all the time, and rubbed it now and again, as if I were rubbing her own flesh; and the touch of it made my ballocks heavy with desire and fiery recollections. This much dismayed me, for it was witchery, and witchery I do dread greatly: but though I had thought often of hurling that little idol into the sea for the sake of Jesus, yet had I not done it, and could not, for Dona Teresa’s sake. And all these thoughts did roar through my head just then, that stirred me into confusion.
The rough Portugals did not have the wit to see that I was brooding, but jostled me and joked with me about what it would be like to be a king, and own such an abundance of wives. But I felt no gaiety and my mind was on other matters that they could not comprehend.
And then they told me that if any man be seen trespassing in the royal harem, if he be taken in a woman’s arms or merely speaking with her, they both are brought into the marketplace and their heads are cut off, and their bodies quartered, and for all that day they lie thus sundered in the street. Faleiro had seen just such an execution, and Andrade also at another time.
A man of our company named Mendes Oliveira, that had the best command among us of the language of this realm, spoke with some grandee who came out to meet us, and arranged for us to attend the king at his court-meeting. This happened every day between one in the afternoon and midnight, and was about to occur now; so we were quickly conducted to the main palace. Which was no true palace, but only a large arching-roofed building of wickerwork and straw and mud, hung with carpets and crimson tapestries to make it look more grand. It was full of noblemen, sitting upon white carpets upon the ground. That they were noblemen was clear certain, for they were most nobly dressed, in the garments of palm-cloth most splendidly worked, of the brightest yellow and scarlet and blue, and they also had hanging in front, apron-style, pretty and delicate skins, such as the skins of panthers, civets, sables, martens, and the like, with their heads left intact. For even greater show they had flung about their bare shoulders a kind of round surplice called in their language nkuto, the which fell below the knee and was woven like a fine net, out of palm fibers: the links were bordered with fringed tufts, making a very graceful effect.