Caconda

Caconda, town, west-central Angola. It is located 140 miles (225 km) inland from the Atlantic Ocean, on the Huíla Plateau (a high tableland sloping westward to the Atlantic coast in a series of descending escarpments), at an elevation of about 5,400 feet (1,650 metres). A Portuguese military post was established at Caconda sometime between 1682 and 1684 to tax and control the slave trade. A permanent presidio, which became the first European settlement in the...