Gidi Mavunga, finding me in his power, began, like a thoroughbred African, to raise obstacles. We must pass through the lands of two kings, the Mfumo ma Vivi (Bibbie of Tuckey) and the Mfumu Nkulu or Nkuru (Cooloo). The distance was short, but it would occupy five days, meaning a week. Before positively promising an escort he said it would be necessary to inspect my outfit; I at once placed it in the old man's hands, the better to say, "This is not mine, ask Gidi Mavunga for it."
My patience had been severely tried on first arrival at Banza Nokki. From ruler to slave every one begged for cloth and rum, till I learned to hate the names of these necessaries. Besides the five recognized kings of the district, who wore black cloth coats, all the petty chiefs of the neighbourhood flocked in, importunate to share the spoils. A tariff, about one-third higher than at Boma, was set upon every article and, if the most outrageous price was refused, the seller, assuming an insipid expression of countenance, declared that great white men travelled with barrels, not with bottles of aguardente, and that without liberality it would be impossible to leave the village. Nsundi, the settlement above the Falls, was a journey of two moons, and none of the ten "kings" on the way would take less than Nessudikira's "dash." Congo Grande, as the people call São Salvador, was only four marches to the E.S.E.; the road, however, was dangerous, and an escort of at least fifty men would be necessary.
But when I was "upon the head of Gidi Mavunga" matters changed for the better. Shortly after he took charge, one Tetu Mayella, "King" of Neprat, accompanied by some twenty followers, entered the village with a view to the stranger's rum: by referring them to the new owner they perforce contented themselves after three hours' "parliamenting," with a single bottle. The ruler of Nokki wanted, besides gin and cloth, a pair of shoes for his poor feet, which looked clad in alligator's skin; I referred him to his father, and he got little by that motion.
On the evening of September 10, Gidi Mavunga, who had been visiting his "small country," returned, and declared himself ready to set out. He placed before me ten heaps, each of as many ground-nuts, and made me understand that, for visiting Nsundi and S. Salvador, he would take fifty short "pieces" (of cloth) for himself and the same number for his slaves; one moiety to be advanced before the first trip to the Cataracts and the rest to follow. For half my store of beads he undertook to ration his men; a work which would have given us endless trouble. As I agreed to all his conditions he promised to move on the next day- -without the least intention of carrying out any one of his conditions.
These people are rich, and not easily tempted to hard work. During the French émigration, the district of Banza Nokki drove slaves to the value of 60,000 dollars per annum, and the dollar is to the African the pound sterling of Europe. It is one of the hundred out-stations which supplied the main dépôts, Boma and Porto da Lenha. Small parties went out at certain seasons provided with rum, gunpowder, and a little cloth; and either bought the "chattels" or paid earnest money, promising to settle the whole debt at their villages. Gidi Mavunga, like most of the elders, was perfectly acquainted with the routes to Nsundi, S. Salvador, and other frontier places, where the bush people brought down their criminals and captives for barter. Beyond those points his information was all from hearsay.
Besides the large stores in their "small countries," the middle- men have a multitude of retainers, who may at any moment be converted into capital. Yet "slave" is a term hardly applicable to such "chattels," who, as a rule, are free as their lords. They hold at their disposal all that the master possesses, except his wives; they sleep when they choose, they work when they like; they attend to their private affairs, and, if blamed or punished, they either run away, as at Zanzibar, to their own country, or they take sanctuary with some neighbouring Mfumo, who, despite the inevitable feud, is bound by custom to protect them. Cold and hunger, the torments of the poor in Europe, are absolutely unknown to them, and their condition contrasts most favourably with the "vassus" and the "servus" of our feudal times. Their wives and children are their own: the master cannot claim the tyrannous marriage-rights of the baron; no "wedding-dish" is carried up to the castle; nor is the eldest born "accounted the son of the serf's lord, for he perchance it was who begat him." The brutality of slavery, I must repeat, is mainly the effect of civilization. "I shall never forget," says Captain Boteler, "the impatient tosses of the head and angry looks displayed by a— lady—when the subject was canvassed. A negro, a paltry negro, ever understand or conform to the social tie of wedlock! No, never! never!' Yet this lady was an English-woman." And when James Barbot's supercargo begins to examine his negroes like cattle he is begged, for decency's sake, to do it in a private place, "which shows these blacks are very modest." It rather proved the whites to be the reverse.
At 7.20 A.M. on September 11, the "moleques" seized our luggage, and we suddenly found ourselves on the path. Gidi Mavunga, wearing pagne and fetish-bag, and handling a thin stick in which two bulges had been cut, led us out of Banza Nokki, and took a S.S.W. direction. The uneven ground was covered with a bitter tomato (nenga) and with the shrub which, according to Herodotus, bears wool instead of fruit. I sent home specimens of this gossypium arboreum, which everywhere grows wild and which is chiefly used for wicks. There is scant hope of cotton-culture amongst a people whose industry barely suffices for ground-nuts. The stiff clay soil everywhere showed traces of iron, and the guide pointed out a palm-tree which had been split by the electric fluid, and a broad, deep furrow, several feet long, ending in a hole. The Nzazhi (lightning) is as dangerous and as much dreaded on these hills as in Uganda: the south-west trade meets the land wind from the north-east; strata of clouds in different states of electricity combine, says the popular theory, to produce the thunder and lightning which accompany rain like the storms upon the mountains of Yemen. After 30' (- 1.50 miles) we reached our destination, Banza Chinguvu, the head-quarters of Gidi Mavunga. As we entered it he pointed to a pot full of greasy stuff under a dwarf shed, saying, "Isso è meu Deus:" it was in fact his Baka chya Mazinga. Beyond it stood the temple of Nbambi; two suspended pieces of wood, cut in the shape of horns, bore monkey skins on both sides of a dead armadillo, an animal supposed to attract lightning when alive, and to repel it after death.
The Banza was beautifully situated on a dwarf platform, catching the full force of the sea-breeze, and commanding to the north- west a picturesque glimpse of the
a mountain tarn representing the mighty stream. On the right lay fields, dotted with papaw-trees, and plantations of maize and manioc, thur (Cajanus), and sweet potatoes, a vegetable now common, but not noticed by Tuckey; on the left, a deep ravine, densely forested with noble growth, and supplying the best of water, divides it from Tadi ja Mfimo, a pile of rock on the opposite hill-side; here lay the Itombo village, belonging to Gidi Mavunga's eldest son. Beyond it, the tree-clad heights, rolling away into the distance, faded from blue-brown to the faintest azure, hardly to be distinguished from the empyrean above. The climate of these breezy uplands is superior even to that of Banza Nokki, which lies some 170 feet lower; and the nights are sensibly cooler.
A few fathoms of altitude here make a surprising difference. The little valleys with their chalet-like huts reminded me of the Maroro and Kisanga basins, in the sister formation, the East African Ghats, but now we have a hill-climate without ague and fever. Our parallel is that of Yorukan Abokuta, where the people are anti-oeci, both being about 6° distant from the Line,— those north, these south. There the bush is fetid, and the clammy air gives a sense of deadly depression; here the atmosphere is pure, the land is open, and there is enjoyment in the mere sense of life. The effete matter in the blood and the fatty degeneration of the muscles, the results of inactivity, imperfect respiration, and F. Po, were soon consumed by the pure oxygen of the highland air. I can attribute this superiority of the Congo region only to the labours of an old civilization now obsolete; none but a thick and energetic population could have cleared off the forest, which at one time must have covered their mountains.
The Banza consists of about fifty cottages, which are being new- thatched before the rains, and the population may number 300. Our host assigned to us one of his own huts; it fronted west, and was a facsimile of that which we had just left. The old fox, determined not to be "taken alive," has provided his earth with three holes, opening to the north, to the east, and to the west. We often detected him in the "ben," the matrimonial sanctum, listening to private conversations which he could not understand. Gidi Mavunga is decidedly a "serious person." The three walls round the standing bedstead are hung with charms and amulets, like the sacred pictures in country parts of Europe; and at the head is his "Mavunga," of which Tuckey says (p. 180), "Each village has a grand kissey (nkisi), or presiding divinity, named Mevonga:" it is an anthropoid log, about three feet high, red, white, and black, the former colour predominating. Two bits of looking-glass represent the eyes, the nose is patulous, as though offended by evil savour; the upper lip is drawn up in disdain, the under overlaps the chin; and a little mirror is inserted into the umbilical region. Mavunga's dress is represented by an English billy-cock hat; while all kinds of "medicines," calabashes, and a coarse knife depend from his neck to his shoulders. The figures at the door are generally called "Ngolowándá."
It is said, I believe, of the Englishwoman-
I may safely predicate the same of the negro, who owns, like the goose, a "singularly inflexible organization." Whenever he can, he will, and he must, have his head. Gidi Mavunga would not even break his fast before touching the cloth and beads, which are to pay for guidance and carriage. The hut-door was closed, and in half an hour all was settled to every one's satisfaction. Yet the veteran did not disdain a little rascality. Awaiting his opportunity, he tossed into a dark corner a little bundle of two fancy cloths which I had given the "linguistero" and, when detected, he shamelessly declared that such people have no right to trade.
Finally, our departure was settled for the next morning, and the women at once began their preparations. Although they have sperm- candles, torches are preferred for the road; odoriferous gums are made up, as in the Gaboon, with rags or splints of bark; hence the old writers say, "instead of putting wicks into the torches, they put torches into the wicks." The travelling foods are mostly boiled batatas (sweet potatoes), Kwanga, a hard and innutritious pudding-like preparation of cassava which the "Expedition" (p. 197) calls "Coongo, a bitter root, that requires four days' boiling to deprive it of its pernicious quality;" this is probably the black or poisonous manioc. The national dish, "chindungwa," would test the mouth of any curry-eater in the world: it is composed of boiled ground-nuts and red peppers in equal proportions, pounded separately in wooden mortars, mixed and squeezed to drain off the oil; the hard mass, flavoured with salt or honey, will keep for weeks. The bees are not hived in Congo-land, but smoked out of hollow trees: as in F. Po and Camarones Peaks, they rarely sting, like the harmless Angelito of the Caraccas, "silla," or saddleback; which Humboldt ("Personal Narrative," chap. xiii.) describes as a "little hairy bee, a little smaller than the honey-bee of the north of Europe." Captain Hall found the same near Tampico; and a hive-full was sent to the blind but ingenious Francis Huber of Geneva, who died in 1831. This seems to be the case with the busy hymenopter generally in the highlands of Africa; the lowland swarms have been the terror of travellers from Mungo Park's day to that of the first East African Expedition.
About noon we were visited by the confidential slaves of a neighbouring chief, who prospectively welcomed us to his territory. These men were gaudily attired in cast-off clothes, and in the crimson night-caps formerly affected by the English labourer: on the mountains, where the helmet is confined to royalty, it is the head-dress used for state occasions. They sat in the hut, chatting, laughing, and discussing palm wine by the gallon, till they had their wicked will in the shape of a bottle of gin; after this, they departed with many low congés.
It was a study to see Gidi Mavunga amidst the vassals and serfs of his own village. He had no moated castle, no "Quinquengrogne;" but his habitation was grander far,—that glorious hill-side, with all its prospects of mountain and river, field and forest, valley and village. As he sat upon the mat under his little piazza, all the dependants gathered in an outer semicircle, the children, dogs, and cats forming an inner chord. A crowd of "moleques" placed before him three black pots, one containing a savoury stew, the others beans and vegetables, which he transferred to a deep platter, and proved himself no mean trencherman. The earthenware is of native make, by no means ornamental, but useful because it retains the heat; it resembles the produce of the Gold Coast, and the "pepper-pot" platter of the West Indies. His cup was filled as fast as he drained the palm wine, and, at times, he passed a huge mouthful to a small son or daughter, smiling at the serious and awkward attempts at deglutition. The washing of hands and mouth before and after feeding shows progress after Tuckey's day (p. 360). We were not asked to join him: an African, when upon a journey, will beg for everything he sees you eat or drink, but there is no return in kind. I have read of negro hospitality, but it has never been my fate to witness an approach to that virtue. The chief will, it is true, quarrel with you if his house be passed without a visit; but his object in taking you in is to make all he can of you. If a purse be pulled out, he waxes wroth, because he wishes to secure at once the reputation of generosity and the profits of a present doubling the worth of a regular "addition." When Gidi Mavunga rose from his meal, the elder dependants took his place; the junior bipeds followed, and the remnants were thrown to the quadrupeds. It was a fair copy in black of a baronial and mediæval life.
The dogs were not neglected during the meal; but over-eagerness was repressed by a stout truncheon lying handily near the old negro Jarl. The animals are small and stunted, long-nosed and crooked-limbed, with curly tails often cut, sharp ears which show that they have not lost the use of the erecting muscles, and so far wild that they cannot bark. The colour is either black and white or yellow and white, as in Stambul and India. Overrun with ticks and foul with mange, they are too broken-spirited to rob, except by secretly sneaking into the huts, and, however often beaten off, they return to the charge like sitting hens. The people prize these wretched tikes, because they are ever ready to worry a stranger, and are useful in driving game from the bush. Yet they barbarously ill-treat them. The hungry cats are as poor a breed as the pure English, and, though no one feeds them, these domesticated tigerkins swarm. The only happy pets are the parrots. Every village swarms with hogs, the filthy wealth of the old Saxon proprietor, and their habits are disgusting as their forms are obscene. Every Anglo-Indian will understand what I mean.
My memory of "Congo chop" is all in its favour: I can recommend it even to "Fin Bee." The people of S'a Leone declare that your life is safe when you can enjoy native food. Perhaps this means that, during the time required to train the palate, strangers will have escaped their "seasoning" fevers and chills. But foreigners will certainly fare better and, cæteris paribus, outlive their brother whites, when they can substitute African stews for the roast and boiled goat and cow, likest to donkey- meat, for the waxy and insipid potato and for heavy pudding and tart, with which their jaded stomach is laden, as if it had the digestion of north latitude 50°. It is popularly believed that the Germans, who come from the land of greatest extremes, live longer at the White Man's Grave than the English, whereas the Spaniards are the most short-lived, one consul per annum being the normal rate. Perhaps the greater "adaptability" of the Teuton explains the cause.
The evening began with a game of ball in the large open space amongst the houses forming the village square. The implement was a roll of palm-coir tightly bound with the central fibre of the plantain-leaf. The players, two parties of some twenty slaves, of all ages and sizes, mingled, each side striving to catch the ball, and with many feints and antics to pass it on to a friend. When it fell out of bounds, the juniors ran to pick it up with frantic screams. It was interesting, as showing the difference between the highlander and the lowlander; one might pass years on the Congo plains without seeing so much voluntary exertion: yet a similar game of ball is described by the Rev. Mr. Waddell ("Twenty-nine years in the West Indies and Central Africa," chap. xvii. London, Nelsons, 1863). The evening ended, as it often does before a march, when rest is required, with extra hard work, a drinking bout deep as the Rhineland baron's in the good old time, and a dance in which both sexes joined. As there were neither torches nor moon, I did not attend; the singing, the shouting, and the drumming, which lasted till midnight, spoke well for the agility and endurance of the fair montagnardes.
What lightens Gidi Mavunga's steps is the immediate prospect of the Munlola or preliminary showers, which, beginning in mid- September, last, with a certain persistence of fall, till October. During the Munlola, the sea-breeze is silent, and the sky is clad with a very thin mist, which, however, supplies abundant downfalls. The year in the Lower Congo corresponds with that of the Gaboon in practice, if not in theory, and the storms are furious as those of Yoruba, where the seasons are, of course, inverted, the great rains extending from May to August. The climate is capricious, as everywhere about the equator, and the nearer the river the heavier are the showers. The people double their lives by reckoning the rains as one year, and the dries as another: when the old missionaries wished to explain that the Saviour offered Himself for the sins of man at the age of thirty- three, they said that he was sixty-six seasons old.
After the light rains of the autumnal equinox, come the Mvula za Chintomba, the "Chuvas grandes" of the Portuguese, lasting to the end of November. They are heavy, accompanied by violent tornadoes and storms, greatly feared by the people. The moisture of the atmosphere, not being gradually condensed by forests, must be precipitated in violent downfalls, and this is perhaps the principal evil of clearing the country. December begins the "little dries," which extend to February and March; then set in the rains of the vernal equinox, with furious discharges of electricity; June is the wettest month on the highlands, but not on the lower river. In mid-July commence the "middle-dries," here called Ngondi Asivu (Tuckey's "Gondy Assivoo"); upon the upper river this Cacimbo lasts between April and September; when it passes over the bush is burned, and the women hoe the ground to receive its seed. Carli well describes this season when he says:- -"The winter of the kingdom of Congo is the mild spring or autumn of Italy; it is not subject to rains, but every morning there falls a dew which fertilizes the earth." This meteor was not observed on the highlands of Banza Nokki and Nkulu; it is probably confined to the low country, where I found it falling heavily.
But revelry at night brings morning headache, and we did not set out, as agreed, at dawn. By slow degrees the grumbling, loitering party was mustered. The chiefs were Gidi Mavunga, head guide, and his son Papagayo, a dull quiet body; Chico Mpamba, "French landlord" of Banza Nokki, and my interpreter Nchama Chamvu. Fourteen armed moleques carried our hammocks and our little viaticum in the shape of four bottles of present-gin, two costa- finas, (= twenty-four yards of fancy cotton), and fourteen fathoms of satin-stripe, the latter a reserved fund. The boy "Lendo," whose appropriate name means "The Go," bore a burden of his own size all day, and acted as little foot-page at the halt. The "gentlemen" were in full travelling costume. Slung by a thong to the chief guide's left shoulder were a tiger-cat skin, cardamom-sheaths and birds' beaks and claws clustering round a something in shape like the largest German sausage, the whole ruddled with ochre: this charm must not be touched by the herd; a slave-lad, having unwittingly offended, knelt down whilst the wearer applied a dusty big toe between his eyebrows. Papagayo had a bag of grass-cloth and bits of cane, from which protruded strips of leather and scarlet broadcloth.
At 6.45 A.M. on Saturday, September 12, we exchanged the fields surrounding Banza Chinguvu for a ridge or narrow plateau trending to the north-east and bending to the magnetic north. A few minutes led to a rock-slope, fit only for goat-hoofs or nude- footed natives. Winding along the hill-sides, we passed out of the Nokki territory into that of Ntombo, the property of Mfumo Nelongo: here we descended into a little vale or gorge bright as verdure could make it—
of a bubbling brook, a true naiad of the hills, which ran to the embrace of the mighty stream; it characteristically stained its bed with iron. On our right was a conspicuous landmark, Zululu ke Sombe, a tall rock bearing the semblance of an elephant from the north-east, visible from the Congo's right bank and commanding a view of all the hills. Banza Vivi, our first destination, perching high on the farther side of the blue depression, bore due north. We then struck the roughest of descents, down broken outcrops and chines of granite—no wonder that the women have such grand legs. This led us into a dark green depression where lay Banza Chinsavu, the abode of King Nelongo. Our course had been three miles to the north-north-east.
Nothing can be more charming than the site, a small horseshoe valley, formed by a Wady or Fiumara, upon whose raised left bank stands the settlement, sheltered by palms, plantations, and wild figs. Eastward is a slope of bare rock polished by the rain- torrents; westward rise the grassy hills variegated with bush and boulder. We next crossed a rocky divide to the north and found a second basin also fertilized by its own stream; here the cactus and aloes, the vegetation of the desert, contrasted with half-a- dozen shades of green, the banana, the sycamore, the egg-plant, the sweet potato, the wild pepper, and the grass, whose colours were paling, but not so rapidly as in the lower lands.
We dismounted in state from our tipoias at the verandah of an empty house, where a chair had been placed; and we prepared for the usual delay and display. The guides will not leave these villages unvisited lest a "war" result; all the chiefs are cousins and one must not monopolize the plunder. A great man takes an hour to dress, and Nelongo was evidently soothing the toils of the toilette with a musical bellows called an accordeon. He sent us some poor, well-watered Msámbá (palm toddy), and presently he appeared, a fat, good-natured man, as usual, ridiculously habited. He took the first opportunity of curtly saying in better Portuguese than usual, "There is no more march to-day!" This was rather too much for a somewhat testy traveller, when he changed his tone, begged me not to embroil him with a powerful neighbour, and promised that we should set out that evening. He at once sent for provisions, fowls, and a small river-fish, sugar-cane, and a fine bunch of S. Thomé bananas.
About noon appeared Chico Furano, son of the late Chico de Ouro, in his quality of "English linguister;" a low position to which want of "savvy" has reduced him. His studies of our tongue are represented by an eternal "Yes!" his wits by the negative; he boasts of knowing how to "tratar com o branco" and, declining to bargain, he robs double. He is a short, small, dark man with mountaineer legs, a frightful psora, and an inveterate habit of drink. He saluted his superior, Nelongo, with immense ceremony, dating probably from the palmy times of the Mwani-Congo. Equals squat before one another, and shaking hands crosswise clap palms. Chico Furano kneels, places both "ferients" upon the earth and touches his nose-tip; he then traces three ground-crosses with the Jovian finger; again touches his nose; beats his "volæ" on the dust, and draws them along the cheeks; then he bends down, applying firstly the right, secondly the left face side, and lastly the palms and dorsa of the hands to mother earth. Both superior and inferior end with the Sakila or batta-palmas,26 three bouts of three claps in the best of time separated by the shortest of pauses, and lastly a "tiger" of four claps. The ceremony is more elaborate than the "wallowings" and dust- shovellings described by Ibn Batuta at the Asiatic courts, by Jobson at Tenda,by Chapperton at Oyo,by Denham amongst the Mesgows, and by travellers to Dahome and to the Cazembe. Yet the system is virtually the same in these distant kingdoms, which do not know one another's names.
Chico Furano brought a Mundongo slave, a fine specimen of humanity, some six feet high, weighing perhaps thirteen stone, all bone and muscle, willing and hard-working, looking upon the Congo men as if they were women or children. He spoke a few words of Portuguese, and with the master's assistance I was able to catechize him. He did not deny that his people were "papagentes," but he declared that they confined the practice to slain enemies. He told a number of classical tales about double men, attached, not like the Siamese twins, but dos-à-dos; of tribes whose feet acted as parasols, the Plinian Sciapodæ and the Persian Tasmeh- pa, and of mermen who live and sleep in the inner waters—I also heard this from M. Parrot, a palpable believer. He described his journey down the great river, and declared that beyond his country's frontier the Nzadi issues from a lake which he described as having a sea-horizon, where canoes lose sight of land, and where they are in danger from violent storms; he described the latter with great animation, and his descriptions much reminded me of Dibbie, the "Dark Lake." Probably this was genuine geography, although he could not tell the name of the inner sea, the Achelunda of old cosmographers. Tuckey's map also lays down in N. lat. 2° to 3° and in E. long. (G.) 17° to 18° a great swamp draining to the south; and his "Narrative" (p. 178) tells us that some thirty days above Banza Mavunda, which is 20 to 24 miles above the Yellala, "the river issues by many small streams from a great marsh or lake of mud." This would suggest a reservoir alternately flooded and shrinking; possibly lacustrine bays and the bulges formed by the middle course of the Lualaba.
Despite the promise, we were delayed by King Nekorado, whose town, Palabala, lies at some distance, and who, negro-like, will consult only his own convenience. In the afternoon we were visited by a royal son, who announced that his royal father feared the heat, but would appear with the moon, which was equivalent to saying that we might expect him on the morrow. He is known to be a gueux, and Gidi Mavunga boasts of having harried and burned sundry of his villages, so he must make up by appearance for deficient reality. His appearance was announced by the Mpungi, the Egyptian Zagharit, the Persian Kil; this "lullilooing" in the bush country becomes an odd moaning howl like the hyaena's laugh. Runners and criers preceded the hammock, which he had probably mounted at the first field; a pet slave carried his chair, covered with crimson cloth, and Frédérique his "linguister" paced proudly by its side.
After robing himself in Nelongo's house, King Nekorado held a levee under the shadiest fig, which acted bentang-tree; all the moleques squatting in a demi-lune before the presence. A short black man, with the round eyes, the button-like nose, the fat circular face, and the weakly vanishing chin which denote the lower type of Congoese, he coldly extended a chimpanzee's paw without rising or raising his eyes, in token that nothing around him deserved a glance. I made him au-fait as to my intentions, produced, as "mata-bicho," a bottle of gin, and sent a dash of costa-fina, to which a few yards of satin-stripe were thrown in.
The gin was drunk with the usual greed, and the presents were received with the normal objections.
"Why should not I, a king like Nessudikira, receive a dash' equal to his?"
"He is my host, I pay him for bed and board!"
"We are all cousins; why shall one be treated better than the other?"
"As you please! you have received your due, and to-day we march."
After this I rose and returned to my hut ready for the inevitable "row."
It was not long coming; the new arrivals set up the war-song, and Gidi Mavunga thought it time to make a demonstration. Drawing an old cutlass and bending almost double, he began to rush about, slashing and cutting down imaginary foes, whilst his men looked to their guns. The greenhorn would have expected a regular stand- up fight, ending in half-a-dozen deaths, but the Papagayo snatched away his father's rusty blade, and Chico Furano, seizing the warrior's head, despite the mildest of resistance, bent it almost to the ground. Thus valour succumbed to numbers. "He is a great man," whispered my interpreter, "and if they chaunt their battle-song, he must show them his bravery." The truly characteristic scene ended in our being supplied with some fourteen black pots full of flesh, fowl, beans, and manioc, together with an abundance of plantains and sugar-cane; a select dish was "put in fetish" (set aside) for Gidi Mavunga, and the friendly foes all sat down to feast. The querelle d'Allemand ended with a general but vain petition for "t'other bottle."
Fahrenheit showed 90° in the shade, as we bade adieu to the little land-bay, and made for the high rugged wall to the north- north-east separating the river valley from the inner country. On the summit we halted to enjoy the delicious sea-breeze with its ascending curve, and the delightful prospect far below. Some 1,300 feet beneath us appeared the Nzadi, narrowed to a torrent, and rushing violently down its highly inclined bed, a straight reach running east and west, in length from four and a half to five miles. As we fronted north, the Morro (cliff) Kala fell bluff towards its blue bight, the Mayumba Bay of the chart, on our left; to the right a black gate formed by twin cliffs shut out the upper stream from view. The panorama of hill-fold and projection, each bounded by deep green lines, which argued torrents during the rains; the graceful slopes sinking towards the river and indenting the bed and the little tree-clad isle, Zun gáchyá Idí (Tuckey's "Zunga Tooly Calavangoo") hugging the northern side, where the Lufu torrent adds its tribute to the waters, convinced me that the charms of Congo scenery had not been exaggerated. Yet the prospect had its element of sadness; the old ruffian, Gidi Mavunga, recounted how he had burned this place and broken that, where palm-clumps, grass-clearings, and plantations lying waste denoted the curse of Ham upon the land.
Our course now wound north-eastwards along hill-shoulders, rich in flowery plants and scented mimosa. After two hours' walking, we came suddenly upon the Morro or cliff of the river-trough, now about 1,000 feet deep. Here the prospect again shifted; the black gate opened, showing the lowest of the long line of rapids called Borongwa ya Vivi, with the natives and their canoes, like flies upon bits of straw.
On the southern bank was a small perennial influent, lined with bright green above, and with chocolate brown below, within some twenty yards of its mouth. It arises, they say, near S. Salvador, and is not navigable, although in places it bears canoes. The people call it Npozo, possibly it represents the S. Salvador River of old travellers. The distance was three direct or five indirect miles north of the stony cone, Zululu ke Sombe.
The descent was a malevoie, over slabs and boulders, loose stones and clayey ground, slippery as ice after rain. The moleques descended like chamois within twenty minutes: Selim and I, with booted feet, took double the time, but on return we ascended it in forty-five minutes. Viewed from below, the base rests upon cliffs of gneiss, with debris and quartz in masses, bands and pebbles, pure and impure, white and rusty. Upon it rises a stratum of ferruginous clay, with large hard-heads of granite, gneiss, and schist, blocks of conglomerate, and nodules of ironstone. Higher still is the bank of yellow clay, capped with shallow humus. The waving profile is backed by steep hills, with rocky sides and long ridges of ground, the site of the palm- hidden Banzas.
Reaching the base, a heap of tumbled boulders, we crossed in a canoe the mouth of the Npozo to a sandy cove in the southern bank, the terminus of river navigation. The people called it Unyenge Assiku: I cannot but suspect that this is the place where Tuckey left his boats, and which he terms "Nomaza Cove." The name is quite unknown, and suggests that the interpreters tried to explain by "No majia" (water) that here the voyage must end.
Off this baylet are three rocky islets, disposed in a triangle, slabs collected by a broken reef, and collectively known as Zunga Nuapozo; the clear-way is between them and the southern bank, which is partly provided with a backwater; the northern three quarters of the bed show something like a scour and a rapid. Zunga chya Ingololo, the northernmost and smallest, bears a single tree, and projects a bar far into the stream: the central and westernmost is a rock with a canoe passage between it and the southern and largest, Zunga chya Tuvi. The latter has three tree- clumps; and a patch of clean white sand on its western side measures the daily rise of the water, eight inches to a foot, and shows the highest level of the flood, here twelve to thirteen feet. The fishermen use it as a drying-ground for their game. They also crowd every day to two sandy covelets on the southern bank, separated by a tongue of rough boulders. Here naked urchins look on whilst their fathers work, or aid in drying the nets, or lie prone upon the sand, exposing their backs to the broiling sun. The other denizens of the place are fish-eagles, who sit en faction upon the topmost branches of withered trees. I saw only two kinds of fish, one small as a minnow, and the other approaching the size of a herring. Up stream they are said to be much larger. They are not salted, but smoked or sun-dried when the weather serves: stuffed with chillies and fried with oil, they are good eating as the Kinnam of the Gold Coast.
We prepared to bivouac under a fine shady Saffu, or wild fig, a low, thick trunk whose dark foliage, fleshy as the lime-leaf, so often hangs its tresses over the river, and whose red berries may feed man as well as monkey. The yellow flowers of hypericum, blooming around us, made me gratefully savour our escape from mangrove and pandamus. About sunset a gentle shower, the first of the season, caused the fisher-boys to dance with joy; it lasted two good hours, and then it was dispersed by a strong westerly breeze. Canoes and lights flashed before our eyes during half the night; and wild beasts, answering one another from rock to rock, hundreds of feet above us, added a savage, African feature to the goodly mise-en-scène.
Arising early next morning, I was assured that it is necessary to cross the stream in order to reach the Cataracts. Tuckey did so, but further inquiry convinced me that it is a mistake to march along the northern bank. Of course, in skirting the southern side, we should not have approached so near the stream, where bluffs and débris rendered travelling hopeless. The amiable ichthyophagi agreed for two fathoms of fancy cloth to ferry us across the river, which is here half a mile broad. The six-knot current compels canoes to run up the left shore by means of its backwater, and, when crossing, to make allowance for the drift downwards. The aneroid now showed 860 feet of absolute altitude, and about sixty-five feet above the landing-place of Banza Nokki; the distance along the stream is fourteen miles, and thus the fall will be about five feet per mile below the Borongwa ya Vivi. We could see from a level the "smaller rapids of Vivi" bursting through their black gate with angry foam, flashing white from side to side. No canoe could shoot this "Cachoeira," but I do not think that a Nile Dahabiyah or a Brazilian Ajôjô would find great difficulty. Between us and the rapids, the concavity of the southern bank forms a bight or bay. The vortices, in which Tuckey's sloop was whirled round despite oars and sails, and in whose hollow the punt entirely disappeared, "so that the depression must have been three or four feet deep," were nowhere seen at this fuller season. The aspect of the surface is that of every large deep stream with broken bottom; the water boils up in ever widening domes, as though a system of fountains sprang from below. Each centre is apparently higher than its circle; it spreads as if a rock had been thrown into it, and the outer rim throws off little eddies and whirls no larger than a thimble. The mirrory surface of the lower river thus becomes mottled with light and shade, and the reflected image of the trough-cliff is broken into the most fantastic shapes.
Fifteen minutes of hard paddling landed us at Selele, a stony point between two sandy baylets: amongst the mass of angular boulders a tree again showed the highest flood-mark to be 13 feet. Here for the first time I remarked the black glaze concerning which so much has been written.28 The colour is a sunburnt black, tinted ferruginous red like meteoric stones, and it is generally friable, crumbling under the nails. It tastes strongly of iron, which flavours almost every spring in the country, yet the most likely places do not show this incrustation. Sometimes it looks like a matrix in which pudding- stone has been imbedded; it may be two or three lines in thickness and it does not colour the inside. At other times it hardly measures the thickness of paper, coating the gneiss slabs like plumbago. Humboldt tells us ("Personal Narrative," ii. 243, Bohn), that the "Indians" of the Atures declare the rocks to be burnt (carbonized) by the sun's rays, and I have often found the same black glaze upon the marly sandstones that alternate with calcareous formations where no stream ever reached them—for instance, on the highlands of Judea, between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea; in inner Istria, and in most countries upon the borders of the Mediterranean.
Leaving Selele, we ascended a steep hill with many glissadès, the effect of last night's rain. These hammock-journeys are mostly equivalent to walking and paying for carriage; it would be cruelty to animals were one to ride except when entering the villages. After threading for half an hour lanes of grass, we were received in a little village of the Banza Vivi district by Nessala, linguistère to King Luvungungwete. The guest room was furnished with every luxury; hides of a fine antelope described as the Kudu; cruets, basins, bottles, and other vases; "lustre mugs," John Andersons and Toby Philpots. A good calabash, full of
was produced, although the drought and scarcity of June rain had dried the palms. Before I outstretched myself, the fairer half of the population sent a message to say that they had never seen a white man: what less could be done than to distribute a few beads and pat the children, who screamed like sucking pigs and "squirmed" like young monkeys?
The Chrononhotonthologus of a king came in the afternoon with a tail of a hundred vertebræ: he was a milder specimen than usual; he had neither Mambrino's helmet nor beadle's cloak, and perhaps his bashfulness in the presence of strangers arose from a consciousness that his head-gear and robes were not in keeping with his station. But he did not fail to grumble at his "dash;" indeed, he must be more than African who shall say, "Hold! enough." He vouchsafed a small return in fowls and "beneficent manioc," and sent with us three slaves, to serve, not as guides, but as a basis for a separate charge.
After sunset all was made ready for the Batuque. The ball-room was the village square; the decorations were the dense trees; the orchestra consisted of two drums, a grande caisse eight feet and a half long, placed horizontally, and a smaller specimen standing on a foot like that of an old-fashioned champagne-glass; the broader ends were covered with deer skins, upon which both hands perform; and the illuminations were flaming heaps of straw, which, when exhausted, were replaced by ground-nuts spitted upon a bamboo splint. This contrivance is far simpler than a dip- candle, the arachis is broken off as it chars, and, when the lamp dims, turning it upside down causes a fresh flow of oil. The ruder sex occupied one half of the ring, and the rest was appropriated to dame and damsel. The Batuque is said to be the original Cachucha; Barbot calls it a danse des filoux, and it has the merit of perfectly expressing, as Captain Cook's companions remarked of the performances in the South Sea Islands, what it means.
The hero of the night was Chico Mpamba; he must have caused a jealous pang to shoot through many a masculine bosom. With bending waist, arms gracefully extended forwards, and fingers snapping louder than castanets; with the upper half of the body fixed as to a stake, and with the lower convulsive as a scotched snake, he advanced and retired by a complicated shuffle, keeping time with the tom-tom and jingling his brass anklets, which weighed at least three pounds, and which, by the by, lamed him for several days. But he was heroic as the singer who broke his collar-bone by the ut di petto. A peculiar accompaniment was a dulcet whistle with lips protruded; hence probably the fable of Pliny's Astomoi, and the Africans of Eudoxus, whose joined lips compelled them to eat a single grain at a time, and to drink through a cane before sherry-cobblers were known. Others joined him, dancing either vis-à-vis or by his side; and more than one girl, who could no longer endure being a wall-flower, glided into the ring and was received with a roar of applause. In the feminine performance the eyes are timidly bent upon the ground; the steps are shorter and daintier, and the ritrosa appears at once to shun and to entice her cavalier, who, thus repulsed and attracted, redoubles the exciting measure till the delight of the spectators knows no bounds. Old Gidi Mavunga flings off his upper garment, and with the fire of a youth of twenty enters the circle, where his performance is looked upon with respect, if not with admiration. Wilder and wilder waxeth the "Devil's delight," till even the bystanders, especially the women, though they keep their places in the outer circle, cannot restrain that wonderful movement of haunch and flank. I laughed till midnight, and left the dancers dancing still.
At 5 A.M. the strayed revellers found to their disgust a thick fog, or rather a thin drizzle, damping grass and path, and suggesting anything but a pleasant trudge. They declared that starvation awaited us, as the "fancy cloths" were at an end, but I stopped that objection by a reference to the reserved fund. After an hour of sulky talk we set out towards the upper part of Banza Vivi, passing a small but pretty hill plain, with manioc- fields, gum-trees, and the bombax very symmetrical. We saw no animals: here and there appeared the trail of a hyaena, the only larger carnivor that now haunts the mountains. The song of Mkuka Mpela, the wild pigeon, and Fungú, the cuckoo, were loud in the brake: the Abbé Proyart makes the male cuculus chant his coo, coo, coo; mounting one note above another with as much precision as a musician would sound his ut, re, mi: when he reached the third note, his mate takes it up and ascends to the octave. After this both recommence the same song.
The stiff ascent gave us lovely views of the lake-like river and both its banks: after three quarters of an hour we reached Vivi of Banza Simbo. The people vainly called to us, "Wiza!"— "Come thou!" and "Luiza! luiza kwenu!"— "Come, come here!" Our moleques, disliking the dangerous proximity, advanced at a walk which might be called a canter.
Presently we reached the dividing ridge, 1,394 feet high, between Banza Vivi and Nkulu, whose palm-trees, thrown out against the sky, bore 82° (M.) Looking to the north with easting, we had a view of no less than six distinct distances. The actual foreground, a hollow between two land-waves, could not conceal the "Crocodile's Head:" the latter, five miles off and bearing 65° (M.), forms the southern staple of the Yellala Gate, whose rapids were not visible, and it fronts the Quoin, which hems in the stream on the other side. The key-stone of the inverted arch between them was a yellow-flanked, tree-topped hill, rising immediately above the great rapids: beyond if waved, in far succession, three several swells of ground, each flatter and bluer than its nearer neighbour, and capping the whole stood Kongo de Lemba, a tall solitary sugarloaf, bearing 75° (M.), with its outlying conelets concealing like a mass of smoke the world that lay beyond.
The ridges appeared to trend north and south, and to approach the river's bending bed at different angles; their sides were steep, and in places scarped where they fell into the intervening hollows. The valleys conducted many a water to the main drain, and during the wet season they must be well-nigh impassable. At the end of the dries the only green is in the hill-folds and the basin-sinks, where the trees muster strong enough to defend themselves from the destructive annual fires. These bush-burnings have effectually disforested the land, and in some places building timber and even fuel have become scarce. In the Abrus, barely two feet high, I could hardly recognize the tall tree of Eastern Africa, except by its scarlet "carats," which here the people disdain to use as beads. The scorching of the leaves stunts the shrubs, thickens the bark, and makes the growth scrubby, so that the labourer has nothing to do but to clear away the grass: I afterwards remarked the same effects on the Brazilian Campos.
We descended the dividing ridge, which is also painfully steep, especially near the foot, and crossed the rolling hollow with its three chalybeate brooks, beyond which lay our destination. Tuckey describes the hills between Boma and Nkulu as stony and barren, which is perhaps a little too strong. The dark red clay soil, dried almost to the consistency of laterite, cannot be loosened by rain or sun, and in places it is hardened like that of Brazilian Porto Seguro, where the people complain that they cannot bury their dead. All the uplands, however, grow grass which is sometimes ten to twelve feet tall, and in places there are shrubs and trees. About Nkulu the highlands are rightly described as "steep hills of quartz, ferruginous earth, and syenite with fertile tops:" rocks and stones are rare upon the plateaux: they are rich enough to produce everything from wheat to coffee, and hardly a hundredth part is cultivated. Thin and almost transparent lines of palms denote the several Banzas on the ridges, and in the valley are rock circles like magnified and prostrated Stonehenges.
The "termes arborum" is universal, and anthills form a prominent feature. It has been remarked that these buildings are the most conspicuous architectural efforts of the country, and the Abbé Proyart observes that here more effectually than in any other land man ought to be sent to the ant school. The material is of dark and sometimes black earth as in the Gaboon, and the shape is the umbrella, rarely double or pagoda-roofed. The column may be twelve to eighteen inches high, and the diameter of the capital attains two feet: I never saw, however, a "gigantic toadstool as high as a one-storied house." Nor are the mushroom tops now used as chafing-dishes.
The grateful tamarind grows everywhere, but nowhere so gloriously as on the lower elevations. The only true sycomores which I saw were stunted specimens near the Yellala. They contrasted poorly with the growth of the Ugogi Dhun, a noble patriarch, whose circle of shade under a vertical sun was 500 feet, and which I thought worthy of a portrait in "Lake Regions of Central Africa" (p. 195, vol. i.). I need hardly warn the reader that, properly speaking, it is the "Sycamine which produces the fruit called Syconwrus or fig-mulberry;" but we apply the term "Sycomore" to the tree as well as to its fruit.
After three hours of actual marching (= seven miles) in an east- north-easterly direction, we ascended a path greasy with drizzle, parquetted by negro feet and infested with "drivers," which now became troublesome. It led to Banza Nkulu, a shabby settlement of unclean plantations and ragged huts of far inferior construction: stacks of grass were piled upon the ground, and this new thatch was greatly wanted. Here the lands of the "bush-men" begin: instead of marching directly to the chief's house, we sat in our wet clothes under a friendly wild fig. The women flocked out at the cry of the hammock-bearers and, nursing their babies, sat down to the enjoyment of a stare; they had lost, however, the merriment of their more civilized sisters, and they hardly ever vouchsafed a laugh or a smile. The curiosity of the "Zinkomba" knew no bounds; all were unusually agitated by the aspect of a man coloured like themselves; they jerked out their leafy crinolines by forward movements of the lower body, swayed violently from side to side, and cried "Ha-rr-rr-rr-rr!" and "Jojolo! jojolo!" till they were hoarse. As usual, the adults would not allow me to approach them, and I was obliged to rest contented with sketching their absurdities. To punish this daring, the Jinkomba brought a man masked like a white, with beard and whiskers, who is supposed to strike the stranger with awe: it was all in vain, I had learned to trill the R as roundly as themselves, and they presently left me as a "perdido," an incorrigible.
In the days of the Expedition, Nkulu had but one ruler, of whom Tuckey says (p. 148), that he found less pomp and noise, but much more civility and hospitality than from the richer kings he had visited. Now there are three who require their "dashes," and each has his linguister, who must not be passed by without notice. Moreover, as population and luxury have increased on the line of route, bark-cloth has disappeared and even the slaves are dressed in cottons. We waited, patiently hungry, till 4 P.M. because the interpreters had gone on some "fish palaver" to the river. At that hour a procession of some two hundred and fifty men headed by a drum and Chingufu (cymbal-bells) defiled before us, crowding round three umbrellas, trade-articles in the last stage of "seediness." These comforts protected from the sun, which was deep hid behind a purple nimbus, an equal number of great men in absurd red nightcaps or old felt wideawakes, shirts of coloured cotton, and second-hand waistcoats of silk or satin. The only signs of luxury were here and there a well-carved ebony stick, and a gunstock resplendent with brass tacks. All sat down in a semi-circle before us, six or seven deep in front and four or five at the sides: the women and children took their places in the rear, and one of them fondled a prick-eared cur with an attempt at a ribbon round its neck.
The head linguister, who, like "Persian interpreters" to commanders in chief of India during my clay, could not speak a word of any language but his own, after clapping hands, congratulated us in the name of the great king Nekulu; he lives, it appears, in a Banza at some distance to the north or north- east, out of sight of the river, and he cannot be visited without great outlay of gunpowder and strong waters. We returned compliments, and after the usual complications we came to the main point, the "dash." I had privily kept a piece of satin- stripe, and this was produced as the very last of our viaticum. The interpreter, having been assured that we had nothing else to give, retired with his posse to debate; whilst we derided the wild manners of these "bush-folk," who feared to shake hands with us. After an hour or so the council returned, clapped palms, sat clown, grumbled at the gift and gave formal leave to see the Yellala—how the word now jarred in my ears after its abominable repetition! Had these men been told a month before that a white would have paid for permission to visit what they considered common property, they would have refused belief: with characteristic readiness, however, the moment they saw an opportunity of "making money," they treated the novelty as a matter of course.
This palaver settled, the chiefs danced within a ring formed by their retainers; the speeches were all sung, not spoken; and obeisances and dustings of elaborate complexity concluded the eventful meeting, which broke up as it began with drum and Chingufu. There was not a symptom of hospitality; we had preserved some provaunt from our last station, or we should have been famished. My escort forgot their disappointments in a "ball," which lasted through the cool, clear and dewy night till nearly dawn. It is evidently a happy temperament which can dance off hunger and fatigue.