As for her smoking, the time will come when tobacco will be enlisted into the artillery of a lady's charms. I observed that her eyes seemed to flash with double fire through the smoke which issued from her lips (or nostrils). In raising the cigar to her mouth she was compelled to display a white arm to the elbow; and there were all kinds of pretty gestures which she used to assume, and which ladies who travel in the Peninsula would do well to study.

As far as we are concerned, let us remember that smoking is conducive to silence before we set ourselves too sternly against it.

I did not dare address her frequently with my mutilated Portuguese. To speak a language badly is to render one's self ridiculous and to fall. How can a woman return the affection of a man who calls himself her "loafer?" At first we conversed with our eyes. We then invented a new language of love—the language of cigars.

She used to smoke excellent Cubas. I had only some detestable Bahias. But she never refused when I offered one to her. Was it economy? Perish the thought! It was noble self-denial. She would press my hand as she took it, smile, and smoke. Thus she accepted my vows and breathed them from her lips again. These vows were not permanent, but they were warm; they were quickly dissolved, but they were as speedily renewed; and even when they finally melted away, a fragrant memory was left behind.

The cigar affords the finest illustrations of human emotion. Sometimes she would smoke without looking at me, criticise the ash of the cigar with a little sneer, and exhale the smoke with a pah! This expressed coldness and contempt. Sometimes, biting off the end of the cigar with a savage nip, she would smoke in rapid puffs, injecting the smoke into my eyes. This was petulance and anger. But sometimes she would give the cigar a coy kiss as she put it to her lips, and looking at me with her bright and coaxing eyes, she would murmur, O que cigarro benito! words which expressed love and tenderness for me. And when at length we had to part, she brought me a delicious Havana, and offered me a light with a trembling hand. In our little dialect this was to say that thus she gave me her heart, and that soon after we were separated it would be reduced to ashes.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE CONGO EMPIRE.

African Revolutions.-King of Congo.-Benediction of the People.-The Bed-tax. -The royal Harem.-The Pontiff and Priests of Congo.-Religious and Civil Institutions. An African Napoleon.-The Queen of the Jagas.-Her Valor and Cruelty. Her bloodthirsty Laws.-Her cannibal Amours.-Her violent Death.

IN Africa, as in Europe, revolutions take place. The empires of Ashantee and Dahomey have sprung up within the last two hundred years, and within that time the great empire of Congo has been broken up into a thousand petty principalities.

The writings of the Jesuit and Capuchin missionaries have made us well acquainted with the ancient constitution of Congo. Its study is not only curious, as displaying several remarkable customs, but useful as affording us a clew to the inland empires of Matiamvo and other potentates as yet unvisited.

When a new king is elected his first duty is to give his subjects the Benediction. An immense square is filled with people, who come there from all parts of the kingdom. The king comes out of his palace covered with blue aggry stones, gold ornaments, and small looking-glasses, so that it is impossible to look at him fixedly in the full sun-glare. He is followed by a long train of priests and nobles, who range themselves round him. He then addresses the people, exhorts them to be faithful and obedient, and assures them of his love. He rises, and all the people prostrate themselves before him. He stretches his hands over them, and makes gestures with his fingers without uttering a word. This is the Benediction, which is followed by cries of joy, the firing of muskets, and a long jubilee of banquets.

Before the Portuguese traders had imported those Spanish hats, silk jackets, damask coats, and velvet slippers, which afterward were worn by the Congo aristocracy, the king and nobles wore petticoats of fine grass cloth, dyed black, hanging from the waist to the ankle, with aprons of tiger-cat's skins; on the head a cap like a hood, or a small square red and yellow cap like those which the marabouts wear in Senegambia. Next to their skin they wore

a kind of shirt, made also of grass cloth, and worn like the Roman toga, leaving the right arm bare. The poorer people went barefooted, but the king and nobles wore sandals made of the wood of the palm-tree.

The king is a despot, secretly controlled by his ministers. His revenues consist chiefly of tributes paid to him by his vassal lords. Sometimes he finds it necessary to levy taxes; and as the negro never commits an act of oppression or treachery without some excuse, however ridiculous, the king will go out with his cap placed loosely on his head. The wind will blow it off, and the king will pretend to return to his house in a furious rage, and will send two or three hundred tax-gatherers out the next day to seize goats, fowls, slaves, and palm wine.

Our legislators once taxed windows, and many were bricked up in consequence. In Congo they are more ingenious; they tax beds. This is levied specially for the maintenance of the king's concubines; each bed is taxed at a slave the span's breadth. A broad bed is therefore a luxury in Congo, and a sign of great wealth.

When the king takes a fresh concubine her husband is put to death. She is forced to give the names of her lovers (for it seems that all the married women have lovers), and these are also executed. She then enters a seraglio, which resembles the Oriental harem, except that its inmates have more liberty. When the king dies his wives are buried with him.

The king eats and drinks in secrecy. If a dog enters the house while he is at meals it is killed; and an instance is recorded of the king's son having accidentally seen his father drinking palm wine, and of his being executed on the spot.

The king has a large army, composed of different companies, who serve under the banners of their respective lords. They have reviews, like the Dahomans, and fight with bows and arrows, knives, spears, and muskets.

Civil suits are brought before a judge who sits on a piece of carpet under a large tree, with a staff in his hand. These judges are not incorruptible; but those who have lost their suit have no power of appeal, and never complain against the injustice of a decision. Criminal cases are usually brought before the priests, and are tested by various kinds of ordeal. The two commonest are those of the drink, which I have already described, and of the hot iron.

A hot iron is applied to the prisoner's skin, and if it burns he is pronounced guilty. One would imagine from this that he has no more chance of escaping from such an ordeal than a poacher from a bench of sporting magistrates. But it is said that the priests have a preparation which they rub over the part about to be touched, and which completely counteracts the effects of the heated metal. It is curious that this same ordeal was practiced in Europe in the Dark Ages, and that the same story was told of the monks who applied it.

Nowhere can the ancient African religion be studied better than in the kingdom of Congo. In Abyssinia, Christianity, and in Northern Guinea, Mohammedanism, have become so mingled with pagan rites as to render it extremely difficult to distinguish between them.

The inhabitants of Congo, whom I take as a true type of the tribes of Southern Guinea generally, and of Southern Central Africa, believe in a Supreme Creator, and in a host of lesser divinities. These last they represent by images; each has its temple, its priests, and its days of sacrifice, as among the Greeks and Ro

mans.

There is one particular sect in the Congo country who are distinguished from the others by their recognition of one God, whom they call Deus caca, which means "one God," or Desu, which means "God of heaven," but on whom they have bestowed as attributes their own dirty vices.

Father Cavazzi mentions a most remarkable invocation which these people use when sick or in trouble, viz., Desu, Nghesu fumami, which means "God of heaven, Jesus my lord." Those which he heard among people who could not possibly have received instruction from other missionaries, he ascribes to intuition; and observes that this invocation is only used as a last resource, when prayers and sacrifices to the grosser deities have failed. It is probable that this tribe has wandered across the continent from Abyssinia, and that this invocation (if it really exists) is a relic of the Christian ceremonies which their ancestors performed.

The chief of the priests occupies the position of pontiff in the state. Even the king fears him, and seeks his favor. The popu lace look upon him almost as a god. He receives from each family the first-fruits of the harvest, which are brought to him by the pater familias and his head wife, chanting a hymn. He receives them with dignity, and tells them that their next year's crop will

be increased by this act of piety. The Chitomé also lives on a special diet, consisting of delicate fishes and small animals, which form the offering of the hunters and fishermen.

In his house burns a sacred fire, which is never suffered to go out, and embers of which he sells at a high price. No one is allowed to approach his house except upon matters of importance and bringing a handsome present. When a new king is elected, he repairs to the pontiff's house, attended by a crowd of people who utter piercing cries. He kneels before the house and entreats the favor of the high-priest. He enumerates some of the presents which he has brought. A stern voice from within tells. him to go away and not to trouble him with such paltry matters. But, as the king continues his catalogue of gifts, the voice loses its harshness, the door opens, and a venerable man, clothed in white, with feathers on his head, and a mirror on his breast, appears before them. The king prostrates himself. The priest sprinkles him with water, scatters dust over him, and tramples on him. Then making him lie on his back, he extends himself upon him, and makes him swear that he will always obey. After this ceremony the king is established on the throne, and soon extorts from his subjects the value of the presents which he has been compelled to make.

When the Chitomé leaves his house to make his circuit for the settling of disputes among the minor priests, criers proclaim the fact, and a fast of continence is enjoined till he returns. Those who break this law (which is a most severe one for such a people) are instantly condemned to death; for it is believed that by such continence they preserve the life of their common father. In such cases, only the man being punished, wives who are tired of their husbands very often accuse them of an imaginary amour, by which stratagem they obtain their liberty and a reputation for virtue.

They believe that, were the Chitomé to die a natural death, the universe would immediately be demolished. Accordingly, when their pontiff falls dangerously ill, the priest who has been appointed as his successor enters his house and beats his brains out with a club, or strangles him with a bow-string.

The priest second in rank to the Chitomé is the nghombo. When he appears in public he walks on his hands, with his body straight and his feet in the air. He can walk in this manner, through constant practice, with great ease and rapidity. He is the medicine