[…] a cargo of wine, sugar, salt, and tobacco, bought in exchange “for Africoes, which she carried from the Isle of Maio” (one of the Cape Verde Islands).

The clerk had, I'm afraid, a shrew of a wife, shrill, vehement, and fluent.

Meronym: Couserans

As it happened, I had progressed only some few feet out onto the snow when a clean-cut section stripped off the surface and avalanched.