must embrace as if he were Jonathan and I David. However, I congratulated myself that I was not in Lapland, where we should have rubbed noses, nor in the Philippines, where etiquette would have compelled me to shampoo my face with his foot.

The first day of our return journey I made Joachim ride in his tipoia, as I saw that the black ox was sufficiently unmanageable to cause delay; but Joachim, who had been drinking a great many matta-bichos with Mendez, having some Dutch courage supplied by Brazilian rum, insisted at our midday halting-place on mounting the black bullock, and riding him for the rest of the day. As he did not seem able to recognize the relative positions in which we stood, and as I thought that nothing would sober him so quickly as the bullock, I gave my assent (which Joachim, I must own, had not requested), and, after a quarter of an hour spent in arranging the girths, Joachim mounted. In a quarter of a minute a loud crash in the high grass announced that Joachim had fallen.

He was not to be beaten by an ox, he said, and he would mount again. But he was so long fiddling about with the saddle that I lost patience, and told him to be quick, or we should not reach. Sainji with daylight.

I pre

"If we do not reach Sainji with daylight, we shall reach Sainji in the dark," said Joachim, thickly. "It is all the same. fer traveling by night."

"Who cares what you in order to draw him out. ter ?"

prefer?" said I, purposely baiting him, "Do you forget that I am your mas

"I do not forget that you are my master. Remember also that I am a Swiss."

"The Swiss are a tribe of valets and couriers."

"The English," retorted Joachim, "are purse-proud idiots." "If you don't get up on that bullock immediately, Joachim, you shall not ride it at all."

"The Swiss," said Joachim, with a hiccough, "is a faithful serv ant: he will not disobey the master whom he despises."

"Get up, then," said I, taking him by the scruff of the neck and shaking him.

"When one drinks Portuguese rum, it is necessary to eat English bread," said Joachim, sententiously. "You like to travel by day; I, on the contrary, prefer to go by night. It is true that by night there is danger: there are bandits; there are wild beasts;

it is necessary to have courage to travel by night. All people have not courage. They are wise, then, to go always with daylight. I am courageous, therefore I prefer the night."

"Very well," said I, "Joachim, you shall travel by night; you shall even ride the ox all night if you please. Now are you contented ?"

Joachim made a polite and flowery speech. I chuckled inwardly. I knew that he was a coward; that he was always in an uneasy state when we were on the road at night: he had even asked me, as a great favor, not to travel after dusk. I knew that he would return to sobriety before we reached the station beyond Izanga, and that he would suffer torments. As part of our road would be very much broken, I thought it not impossible that his ox might fall down and break his neck, which would have subjected me to temporary inconvenience, but which would have been a benefit for society at large.

Instead of stopping at Izanga, therefore, I said that I should go on to the next station, which was about six miles off. Not wishing to punish my men on account of Joachim, I let them carry my hammock empty, and, getting off my ox, which I had no desire to ride in the dark, I walked on in front with sword and pistol at my belt. The road was execrable. On arriving at the station, I woke the people up and had a fire made. It was a long time before they came. At last I heard the tinkling of my hammockbells, and the two oxen, both riderless, loomed in the distance. Joachim entered the house with his handkerchief to his mouth. Though burning to know what had happened, I took no notice of it, and ordered him to have my supper cooked directly. Joachim made some tea and boiled a couple of eggs with his usual industry. When I had finished I asked him whether he had looked after his own. He said that he could not eat any thing. Affecting surprise, I asked him why. Taking away the handkerchief, he showed me his mouth badly cut, and his two front teeth wrapped up in a piece of paper. It seemed that the ox had stumbled, that Joachim had fallen violently forward with his face against the bullock's skull, had smashed his teeth, and had then slid off, fallen under the bullock's nose, and had been nearly transfixed by his horns.

As nothing was to be gained by loitering on our road back, I traveled as fast as I could, and (as I had done in the gorilla country) got over ground, in a general way, faster than any body had

done before me. I found that traveling through the middle hours of the day was bad policy, for the sandy soil then became scorching, and those men wearing no sandals began to have sore and swollen feet. My plan of march, therefore, was to have tea made overnight. This I took the first thing in the morning, before it was light, and, starting off the men with the oxen first, and Joachim in his tipoia to have breakfast ready at an appointed place by the time that I arrived, I made the other men make up their. burdens; I coming behind them all, and whipping-in stragglers. We would be on the road from six till twelve. From twelve to four I let them rest; and from four we traveled till some indefinite hour in the night. Already acquainted with the route, having marked the distances carefully in my note-book, I was no longer at the mercy of guides, and could sketch out my own itinerary. Joachim did not approve of this rapidity. He thought it strange that I should wish to visit a country where there were no railways. One day he asked me:

"When you are in the tipoia, do you ever hear something go 'Cluck-cluck-cluck-cluck?'"

"Yes," said I.

"Then you must take care," said Joachim, "how you travel too fast. That is what we call in medicine borborygmi."

The carregadores themselves, as may be supposed, took a vio lent dislike to this velocity; not that it was too much for their physique, but because they have an African love of dawdling and talking scandal at every village they come to.

When we had first started they were in my debt. They had refused to engage themselves unless they were paid half their wages in advance. During the first part of their journey I was obliged to treat them with great politeness. They were generally drunk, and the shadow of an affront would have been sufficient to have made them leave me. But now the tables were turned. These men, who had been so arrogant as debtors, as creditors became servile. It is true that they mutinied over this forced march of mine, which I made in the hope of catching a cruiser bound for the Congo, that would first bring the mails to Loanda. A solemn deputation approached me, to represent that the Portuguese did not travel like that, and that "it's not the distance, but the pace that kills." I replied by thrashing the deputation with a whip made from the skin of a manatee. Upon this they became cheerful and agile, and profoundly grateful for any matta-bichos I might

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