nov8i'o so ttay are submerged and fastened by strong
itimbiri. rattan hawsers to poles deeply buried in the clayey
bank.
By clinging to the right bank, despite the unpromising
narrowness of some of the channels, we
came in the afternoon, two hours after passing Upper
Yambinga, into a broad channel 350 yards wide, which
by following up we found led us from a course E.S.E.
to 2sT.E., and kept northing very fast until we were
running N.N.E. It was then on waking up that we
discovered ourselves to be in the river named to us'as
the Itimbiri. At Yankau, on its left bank, seated on
a bluff with a clear open country about it, where the
river still showed signs of further inclination to the
north, we retraced our course.
This then was the river which the people of Yambinga
said ran behind them, and along which, in its
upper course, traders came from the north distributing
the Italian cannetone beads, and on whose banks lived
the Watumba. The water they said spread out broad
in some places, and a man could not be seen on its
opposite shore. Could it be a lake, or a mere broad
expansion of the river ?
The mouth of the river is in 1ST. Lat. 1° 5T7, and is
about 180 geographical miles in a direct line to In-
guima, on the Welle-Makua River. Its water is
certainly clear, and might well come from a lake at
no great distance inland. Yamu-ningiri is the name
of a large village about eight miles above the confluence,
up the Itimbiri. The river forms a delta, and
many forested islets dot the entrance. Opposite Yankau 1883. J _ Nov. 10.
it is a deep, navigable river, fully 350 yards wide, of Mutembo.
a slightly darker colour than the Congo.
On the great river, situate above the confluence
about four miles, we discovered Mutembo, consisting
of three palisaded villages. Its inhabitants crouched
behind their huts, spear in hand, to resist an expected
attack, and as we passed by they dashed out into the
open and slapped their rearward parts—a method of
expressing contempt pretty generally known to vulgar
Europeans.
On, the 12th, in the early morning, we passed by an
unusually large clearing, that we at first, from its
spacious breadth, took to be a natural plain. A city
might have stood on the magnificent site, which was
now dreary and desolate. The large population supported
upon this wide expanse must have had powerful
reasons for its abandonment, of which we must
remain yet awhile ignorant.
For the first time we saw the left bank of the Congo,
clear across from the right hank. The abandoned
plain was once occupied by the Yalulima tribe, whom
we shall meet on the left bank as we descend. This
tribe is cunning for its iron manufactures, including
the spears, the swords, the long bells, single and
double, and the tiny dancing bells, which the professors
of fetishism — Mgangaism, Inkissism', Ikiraism,
or by whatever name you choose to designate the
sorceries known to these natives—love to attach to
their snake and iguana-skin-girdles.
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