the table, which was red clay covered with grass. The mutton, having been lightly warmed, was rapidly devoured.

After this they wished to recline among the fragments of the feast and enjoy a sweet digestive repose. But then the white man arose and exercised that power with which the lower animals are quelled. His look and his tone drove them to their work, though they did not understand his words.

In the evening I arrived at the village of Itchongué, and having seen on our way the remains of a raft, which the Fans had used in a migration from the interior, I resolved to collect as much information as I could about the country from which they had come. I accordingly summoned the oldest man of the village, and, giving him a little tobacco, told him that he should have some more if he would answer the questions which I put to him. To these questions he gave me remarkably clear and concise answers, notwithstanding the number of interpreters through which our words were filtered. The negro's faculty for language is of the greatest assistance to the traveler; and it is marvelous with what truth and rapidity a long sentence is passed from a cultured language to a savage dialect.

The result of my conference was as follows: "The people of his town came from a country called Vinja, far away. In that place it was all forest, as upon the Ncomo. The nji (gorilla) was there so common that you might hear its cry from the town. He had never heard of a nji killing a man. The leopard killed men, and the elephant sometimes did so when it was wounded. The animals there and on the Ncomo were the same except one, which, as far as I could judge from his description, seemed to be something like a rabbit with a bushy tail. The people of that country wore a piece of goatskin in front and another piece behind. They were cannibals. Goats and fowls were exceedingly plentiful in that country. It was with them that the young men bought their wives. That was the country where the iron came from, and the ivory too. Some of it was obtained, as in the Ncomo, by killing the elephants in a nghâl, but most of it in this manner: There was a large marsh or lake where, in the rainy season, the elephants came to bathe themselves. They would often sink into the mud, and, being unable to extricate themselves, would die there. In the dry season the natives would collect the teeth, and send them down to the white men of the sea.

"The manner in which they had migrated was on foot through I

the forest. They prepared large quantities of dried plantains, cassada, and various kinds of fruits. While they were traveling the moon became dark eleven times. Their custom was to walk three days, to remain encamped about two days, and so on.

"In Vinja there was a river about as broad as the Ncomo at Itchongué―i. e., about fifteen yards across. It was called the Wola." When I left Itchongué the next morning, I was informed that I might possibly arrive at the rapids in two days, and that I should see no more towns. Accordingly, I laid in a stock of torches and provisions, but found that the river-sides became more thickly populated as we went on, which proved that the Fans were still streaming toward the west, and that the natives of Itchongué were consummate liars. When we passed one of these villages the natives rushed to the brink of the bank above our heads and made creditable efforts to render earth Pandemonium. All entreated my two Fans to stop; but the voice of the sea-monster sounded behind them, and they still went resolutely on. At last some "spir ited proprietors," who did not mind paying for a novelty, offered a fowl if they would land and let them see the white man. As fowls are not to be got every day, I gave orders to land accordingly. After I had been exhibited as usual, Oshupu claimed the fowl. An altercation arose. The natives appeared to be demanding something against which Oshupu and the Bakělě expostu lated, sometimes bursting into roars of laughter. Containing my wrath, I humbly requested an explanation. Oshupu said that it was only "them dam niggers' nonsense." I reiterated my request, and he told me, with a little diffidence, that the inhabitants of the village, especially the ladies, would be "only too happy” to give me a fowl if I would divest myself of the skin of the sea-animal I wore, and appear before them in those simple garments which Njambi had bestowed upon me with his own hand. The ladies wished it to be clearly understood that they did not object to a fragment of goat's skin, a couple of plantain leaves, or any thing in reason, but they thought it very foolish of me to hide my skin. Was I ashamed of it because I was not black?

As I had still a little modesty left, and as it looked as if it was going to rain, I thought it best to decline their offer, and, without entering into any argument, returned to my canoe. Soon after passing the village of Fotúm the stream became so strong that, had not my canoe been well manned, we could have made no headway against it. Presently we came to a little island where a

tributary called the Juba joined the Ncomo. Upon this islet, which is called Ncomo-Juba, I discovered the traces of hippopot ami, of whose existence in the Gaboon the Mpongwe were ignorant. I was surprised to find them in a torrent only ten yards wide. Close to their huge footmarks were the broken shells of alligators' eggs, which proves the fallacy of an assertion frequently made that these animals will not live together. In the Fan and Vaz, however, the river-horses frequent only the lower, and the alligators the upper river.

Now the scenery began to repay me for the monotonous hours of my little voyage. We glided into the bosom of the mountains, which rose beside us abrupt and vertical like green walls. Through the mass of leaves I could see here and there pale slender branches, or some giant trunk looking down upon us from above. And from the depths of these precipice-forests came all manner of strange bird-cries, like the sawing of wood, the gurgling of water, the scream of a child.

And now the stream came round a bend of the river with such fury that we remained struggling several minutes, sometimes gaining, sometimes losing a yard. At length, with the aid of poles, we weathered the point, and there before us were the rocks rearing their dark heads among the foam. The roaring of the waters, the excited cries of the boatmen, the sight of a higher mountain than I had yet seen, gave me a glimmering of what it is an explorer feels when he achieves a triumph. I could look round and say, "Here have men striven to come, and none have succeeded but myself. For the first time the breath of a white man mingles with this atmosphere; for the first time a leathern sole imprints its pressure on this soil; for the first time a being who has heard Grisi, and who faintly remembers the day when he wore kid gloves, invades this kingdom of the cannibal and the ape."

As for my Lopez men, they had been so firmly imbued with a geographical theory of their own that rivers have no end, that these rapids, though not the end of the river, were sufficient to make them believe that I was a magician. They were, moreover, very proud of having contributed their efforts to this discovery, clapped each other's hands and breasts with boisterous laughter, and sang a song in honor of Reedee and the Ncomo.

Oshupu whispered to me his conviction that he was the greatest Mpongwe that had ever breathed, and claimed a dollar which I had promised to give him in case we arrived at the rapids.