grey gleam of huts and the green sheen of bananas,
it would have been difficult to tell that a settlement
so large as Lukolela existed here. The islands also
showed glorious growths of timber. We began steaming
slowly the while to initiate acquaintance at the
very lowest village. There was no answer rendered,
hut the groups of hronze-hodied people grew larger
and more numerous. We unrolled crimson save list,
bright red royal handkerchiefs, striped florentines,
lengths of blue baft, held out fistfuls of brass rods,
and suspended long necklaces of brightest beads.
Msenne of Mswata stood up on the cabin-deck of the
En Avant, the observed of all observers, admired for
his pose and his action, and delivered his oration with
a voice which might be envied by an auctioneer.
“ Ho, Wy-yanzi, tribesmen of Lukolela, sons of Iuka
and Mungawa, whose names are beloved by my lord
and chief Gobila! Ho, you men! Know you not
Gobila—Gobila of Mswata, the friend of Wy-yanzi?”
said Gobila to me. “ Here, take Bula Matari, the
only Bula Matari, the good Bula Matari!
“ Hush, Msenne ; that is not the way to speak. You
are laughing at me,” I urged, for my modesty was
shocked.
“ Never mind; Msenne knows the way, into the
heart of the Wy-yanzi. H a ! it takes me to conquer
their obduracy.”
“ Wy-yanzi of Lukolela, here sits Bula Matari! He
has come here to make friends with you. He wants
food. He is prepared to pay well. Now is the time
for Iuka and Mungawa to show themselves kind friends
to Bula Matari.”
Then up and spoke Ibaka’s slaver.
“ See here, men of Lukolela, we are the servants of
Ibaka Ibaka of Bolobo ! Ibaka has made brotherhood
with Bula Matari. Ibaka commanded us to take him
to you. Let your chiefs, Iuka and Mungawa, come out
and give the good word.”
The steamers held on their way. The stentorian
accents of Msenne were heard far above the escape of
waste steam. The cloths were unrolled before every
village. At the .third village, however, a reply came
that all the chiefs were dead, and that small-pox had
decimated the inhabitants, and that famine was killing
the people that were le ft!
Frightful, we exclaimed. “ But those men on the
banks look too fat to be suffering from famine.”
We came to the upper extremity of the community,
; which occupied about five miles of the left bank, and
half an hour later we came to where the Gongo contracted
and issued out a stately united flood 11 miles
wide from the right bank to the left bank. Hoping
| that if we camped in the neighbourhood we should be
¡followed, we prepared to put up for the night in the
[forest.
I As we anticipated, the natives soon' came up, and
¡fowls, goats, ripe and green plantains and bananas,
[.cassava rolls, cassava flour, sweet' potatoes, yams, eggs,
land palm oil were bartered so speedily that by sunset
|We had sufficient to last two or three days. Still, as we