It was dark when we climbed up the stiff Jacob's ladder along the landward side of the white Kinsembo bluff. There are three ramps: the outermost is fit only for unshod feet; the central is better for those who can squeeze through the rocky crevices, and the furthest is tolerably easy; but it can be reached only by canoeing across the stream. Mr. Hunter of Messrs. Tobin's house received us in the usual factory of the South Coast, a ground- floor of wicker-work, windowless, and thatched after native fashion. The chief agent, who shall be nameless, was drunk arid disorderly: it is astonishing that men of business can trust their money to such irresponsible beings; he had come out to Blackland a teetotaller, and presently his condition became a living lecture upon geographical morality.

The night gave us a fine study of the Kinsembo mosquito, a large brown dipter, celebrated even upon this coast. A barrel of water will act as nursery; at times the plagues are said to extinguish a lantern, and to lie an inch deep at the bottom. I would back them against a man's life after two nights of full exposure: the Brazilian "Marimbondo" is not worse. At 7 A.M. on the next day we descended the easiest of the ramps, which are common upon this coast, and were paddled over the Kinsembo River. Eleven miles off, it issues from ma.s.ses of high ground, and at this season it spreads out like the Ambriz in broad stagnant sheets, bordered with reeds and gra.s.s supplying fish and crabs, wild ducks and mosquitoes. Presently, when the Cacimbo ends in stormy rains and horrid rollers, its increased volume and impetus will burst the sand-strip which confines it, and the washed-away material will recruit the terrible bar.

Leaving the ferry, wre mounted the "tipoias," which Englishmen call "hammocks" after the Caribs of Jamaica, and I found a strange contrast between the men of Kinsembo and of So Paulo.

The former are admirable bearers, like their brethren of Ambrizette, famed as the cream of the coast: four of them carried us at the rate of at least six miles an hour; apparently they cannot go slowly, and they are untireable as black ants. Like the Bahian cadeira-men, they use shoulder-pads, and forked sticks to act as levers when shifting; the bamboo-pole has ivory pegs, to prevent the hammock-clews slipping, and the sensation is somewhat that of being tossed in a blanket.

Quitting the creeper-bound sand, we crossed a black and fetid mire, and struck inland to a higher and drier level. The vegetation was that of the Calumbo road, but not so utterly sunburnt: there were dwarf fields of Manioc and Thur (Caja.n.u.s indicus), and the large wild cotton shrubs showed b.a.l.l.s of shortish fibre. As we pa.s.sed a euphorbia-hedged settlement, Kizuli ya Mu, "Seabeach Village," a troop of women and girls, noisy as those of Ugogo, charged us at full gallop: a few silver bits caused prodigious excitement in the liberal display of charms agitated by hard exercise. The men were far less intrusive, they are said not to be jealous of European rivals, but madly so amongst themselves: even on suspicion of injury, the husband may kill his wife and her lover.

At Kilwanika, the next hamlet, there was a "king;" and it would not have been decent to pa.s.s the palace unvisited. Outside the huts stood a bamboo-girt "compound," which we visited whilst H.M.

was making his toilette, and where, contrary to Congo usage, the women entered with us. Twenty-two boys aged nine or ten showed, by faces whitened with ashes, that they had undergone circ.u.mcision, a ceremony which lasts three months: we shall find these Jinkimba in a far wilder state up the Congo. The rival house is the Casa das Tinta, where nubile girls are decorated by the Nganga, or medicine-man, with a greasy crimson-purple pigment and, preparatory to entering the holy state of matrimony, receive an exhaustive lecture upon its physical phases. Father Merolla tells us that the Congoese girls are locked up in pairs for two or three months out of the sight of man, bathing several times a day, and applying "taculla," the moistened dust of a red wood; without this "casket of water" or "of fire," as they call it, barrenness would be their lot. After betrothal the bride was painted red by the "man-witch" for one month, to declare her engagement, and the mask was washed off before nuptials. Hence the "Paint House" was a very abomination to the good Fathers.

Amongst the Timni tribe, near Sierra Leone, the Semo, or initiation for girls, begins with a great dance, called Colungee (Kolangi), and the bride is "instructed formally in such circ.u.mstances as most immediately concern women."

After halting for half an hour, ringed by a fence of blacks, we were summoned to the presence, where we found a small boy backed by a semi-circle of elders, and adorned with an old livery coat, made for a full-grown "Jeames." With immense dignity, and without deigning to look at us, he extended a small black paw like a Chimpanzee's, and received in return a promise of rum--the sole cause of our detention. And, as we departed through the euphorbia avenue, we were followed by the fastest trotters, the Flora Temples and the Ethan Allens, of the village.

Beyond Kilwanika the land became rougher and drier, whilst the swamps between the ground-waves were deeper and stickier, the higher ridges bearing natural Stonehenges, of African, not English, proportions At last we dismounted, ascended a rise, the most northerly of these "Aravat Hills," and stood at the base of the "Lumba" The Pillar of Kmsembo is composed of two huge blocks, not basaltic, but of coa.r.s.e-grained reddish granite the base measures twenty and the shaft forty feet high. With a little tr.i.m.m.i.n.g it might be converted into a superior Pompey's Pillar: we shall see many of these monoliths in different parts of the Congo country.

The heat of the day was pa.s.sed in the shade of the Lumba, enjoying the sea-breeze and the novel view. It was debated whether we should return via Masera, a well-known slaving village, whose barrac.o.o.ns were still standing. But the bearers dissuaded us, declaring that they might be seized as "dash,"

unless the white men paid heavy "comey" like those who shipped black cargoes: they cannot shake off this old practice of claiming transit money. So we returned without a halt, covering some twelve of the roughest miles in two hours and a quarter.

The morning of the 26th showed an ugly sight from the tall Kinsembo cliff. As far as the eye could reach long green-black lines, fronted and feathered with frosted foam, hurried up to the war with loud merciless roars, and dashed themselves in white destruction against the reefs and rock-walls. We did not escape till the next day.

Kinsembo does not appear upon the old maps, and our earliest hydrographic charts place it six miles wrong.[FN#5] The station was created in 1857-61 by the mistaken policy of Loanda, which determined to increase the customs three per cent, and talked of exacting duties at Ambriz, not according to invoice prices, but upon the value which imported goods represented amongst the natives. It was at once spread abroad that the object was to drive the wax and ivory trade to So Paulo, and to leave Ambriz open to slavers. The irrepressible Briton transferred himself to Kinsembo, and agreed to pay the king 9 in kind, after "country fashion," for every ship. In 1857 the building of the new factories was opposed by the Portuguese, and was supported by English naval officers, till the two governments came to an arrangement. In February, 1860, the Kinsembo people seized an English factory, and foully murdered a Congo prince and Portuguese subject, D. Nicolao de Agua Rosada, employed in the Treasury Department, Ambriz. Thereupon the Governor-General sent up two vessels, with thirty guns and troops; crossed the Loge River, now a casus belli; and, on March 3rd, burned down the inland town of Kinsembo. On the return march the column debouched upon the foreign factories. About one mile in front of the point, Captain Brerit, U.S. Navy, and Commander A. G. Fitzroy, R.N., had drawn up 120 of their men by way of guard. Leave was asked by the Portuguese to refresh their troops, and to house six or seven wounded men. The foreign agents, headed by a disreputable M--M--, now dead, protested, and, after receiving this unsoldierlike refusal, the Portuguese, hara.s.sed by the enemy, continued their return march to Ambriz. The natives of this country have an insane hate for their former conquerors, and can hardly explain why: probably the cruelties of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, not peculiar to the Lusitanians, have rankled in the national memory. A stray Portuguese would infallibly be put to death, and it will, I fear, be long before M. Valdez sees "spontaneous declarations of va.s.salage on the part of the King of Molembo (Malemba) and others."

In 1860 the trade of Kinsembo amounted to some 50,000, divided amongst four houses, two English, one American, and one Rotterdam (Pencoff and Kerdyk). The Ca.s.sange war greatly benefited the new station by diverting coffee and other produce of the interior from Loanda. There are apochryphal tales of giant tusks brought from a five months' journey, say 500 miles, inland. I was shown two species of copal (gum anime) of which the best is said to come from the Mosul country up the Ambriz River: one bore the goose-skin of Zanzibar, and I was a.s.sured that it does not viscidize in the potash-wash. The other was smooth as if it had freshly fallen from the tree. It was impossible to obtain any information; no one had been up country to see the diggings, and yet all declared that the interior was open; that it would be easy to strike the Coango (Quango) before it joins the Congo River, and that 150 miles, which we may perhaps reduce by a third, would lodge the traveller in the unknown lands of "Hnga."

Bidding kindly adieu to Mr. Hunter and wishing him speedy deliverance from his dreadful companion, we resumed our travel over the now tranquil main. Always to starboard remained the narrow sea-wall, a length without breadth which we had seen after the lowlands of Cape Lopez, coloured rosy, rusty-red, or white, and sometimes backed by a second sierra of low blue rises, which suggests the sanatorium. Forty miles showed us the tall trees of Point Palmas on the northern side of the Conza River; on the south of the gap-like mouth lies the Ambrizette settlement, with large factories, Portuguese and American, gleaming against the dark verdure, and with Conza Hill for a background. The Cabeca de Cobra, or "Margate Head," led to Makula, alias Mangal, or Mangue Grande, lately a clump of trees and a point; now the site of English, American, and Dutch factories. Here the hydrographic charts of 1827 and 1863 greatly vary, and one has countermarched the coast-line some 75 miles: Beginning with the Congo River, it lays down Mangue Pegueno (where Grande should be), Cobra, and Mangue Grande (for Pequeno) close to Ambrizette. Then hard ahead rose Cape Engano, whose "deceit" is a rufous tint, which causes many to mistake it for Cape or Point Padro. To-morrow, as the dark-green waters tell us, we shall be in the Congo River.

Chapter V.

Into the Congo River.--the Factories.--trip to Shark's Point.-- the Padro and Pinda.

The best preparation for a first glance at the Congo River is to do as all do, to study the quaint description which old Purchas borrowed from the "Chronica da Companhia de Jesus em Portugal."

"The Zaire is of such force that no ship can get in against the current but near to the sh.o.r.e; yea, it prevails against the ocean's saltness three-score, and as some say, four-score miles within the sea, before his proud waves yield their full homage, and receive that salt temper in token of subjection. Such is the haughty spirit of that stream, overrunning the low countries as it pa.s.seth, and swollen with conceit of daily conquests and daily supplies, which, in armies of showers, are, by the clouds, sent to his succour, runnes now in a furious rage, thinking even to swallow the ocean, which before he never saw, with his mouth wide gaping eight-and-twenty miles, as Lopez[FN#6] affirmeth, in the opening; but meeting with a more giant-like enemie which lies lurking under the cliffes to receive his a.s.sault, is presently swallowed in that wider womb, yet so as, always being conquered, he never gives over, but in an eternall quarrel, with deeper and indented frownes in his angry face, foaming with disclaine, and filling the aire with noise (with fresh helpe), supplies those forces which the salt sea hath consumed."

I was disappointed after the Gambia and Gaboon rivers in the approach to the Congo. About eight miles south of the mouth the green sea changed to a clear brown which will be red during the flood. Some three degrees (F. 79 to 82) cooler than the salt tide, the lighter water, which was fresh as rain, feathered out like a fan; a rippling noise was faintly audible, and the clear lines of white foam had not time to melt into the coloured efflux. The flow was diverted into a regular curve northwards by the South Atlantic current; voyagers from Ascension Island to the north-west therefore feel the full throb of the great riverine pulse, and it has been recognized, they say, at a distance of 300 miles. Lopez, Merolla, and Dapper[FN#7] agree that the Congo freshens the water at thirty miles from the mouth, and that it can be distinguished thirty leagues off. The Amazonas tinges the sea along the Guiana coast 200 miles, and the effect of the Ganges extends to about twenty leagues. At this season, of course, we saw none of the floating islands which during the rains sail out sixty to seventy leagues from land. "Tuckey's Expedition" informs us, that the Hon. Captain Irby, H.M.S.

"Amelia," when anch.o.r.ed twelve miles from the South Point, in fifteen fathoms, "observed on the ocean large floating islands covered with trees and bushes, which had been torn from the banks by the violent current." The Journal of Captain Scobell, H.M.S.

"Thais," remarks: "In crossing this stream I met several floating islands or broken ma.s.ses from the banks of that n.o.ble river." We shall find them higher up the bed, only forming as the inundation begins; I doubt, however, that at any time they equal the meadows which stud the mouth of the Rio Formoso (Benin River).

Historic Point Padrao, the "Mouta Seca," or Dry Bush, of the modern Portuguese, showed no signs of hospitality. The fierce rollers of the spumous sea broke and recoiled, foaming upon the sandy beach, which they veiled with a haze of water-dust, almost concealing the smoke that curled from the mangrove-hedged "King Antonio's Town." Then, steaming to the north-east, we ran five miles to Turtle Cove, formerly Turtle Corner, a shallow bay, whose nearest point is "Twitty Twa Bush," the baptismal effort of some English trader. And now appeared the full gape of the Congo mouth, yawning seven sea-miles wide; the further sh.o.r.e trending to the north-west in a low blue line, where Moanda and Vista, small "shipping-ports" for slaves, were hardly visible in the hazy air. As we pa.s.sed the projecting tooth of Shark Point, a sandspit garnished with mangroves and dotted with palmyras, the land-squali flocked from their dirty-brown thatches to the beach, where flew the symbolic red flag. Unlike most other settlements, which are so buried in almost impenetrable bush that the traveller may pa.s.s by within a few yards without other sign but the human voice, this den of thieves and wreckers, justly named in more ways than one, flaunts itself in the face of day.

The Congo disclaims a bore, but it has a very distinct bar, the angle pointing up stream, and the legs beginning about Bana.n.a.l Bank (N.) and Alligator River (S.). Here the great depth above and below (145 and 112 fathoms) shallows to 6-9. Despite the five-knot current we were "courteously received into the embraces of the river;" H.M. Steamship "Griffon" wanted no "commanding sea-breeze," she found none of the difficulties which kept poor Tuckey's "brute of a transport" drifting and driving for nearly a week before he could anchor off Fuma or Sherwood's Creek, the "Medusa" of modern charts (?) and which made Shark Point, with its three-mile current, a "more redoubtable promontory than that of Good Hope was to early navigators." We stood boldly E.N.E.

towards the high blue clump known as Bulambemba, and, with the dirty yellow breakers of Mwana Mazia Bank far to port, we turned north to French Point, and anch.o.r.ed in a safe bottom of seven fathoms.

Here we at once saw the origin of the popular opinion that the Congo has no delta. On both sides, the old river valley, 32 miles broad, is marked out by gra.s.sy hills rolling about 200 feet high, trending from E.N.E. to W.S.W., and forming on the right bank an acute angle with the Ghats. But, whilst the northern line approaches within five or six miles, the southern bank, which diverges about the place where "King Plonly's town" appears in charts, sweeps away some seventeen miles down coast, and leaves a wide tract of mangrove swamps. These, according to the Portuguese traders, who have their own plans of the river, extend some seventy miles south to Ambrizette: slavers keep all such details very close, and doubtless for good reasons--"short-cuts" greatly facilitate shipping negroes. The lesser Congo delta is bounded north by the Banana or Malela stream, whose lower fork is "Pirates' Creek;" and south by the mangrove-clad drains, which subtend the main line: the base measures 12-15 miles. At the highest station, Boma, I shall have something to say about the greater delta. The left bank of the embouchure projects further seaward, making it look "under hung," representing in charts a lower jaw, and the projection of Shark Point the teeth, en profile.

My first care was to collect news at the factories. French Point is a long low spit, which supports two establishments where the chart (September 1859) gives "Emigration Depot." It is the old Banana Point, and probably the older Palmeirinha Point of James Barbot, who places it in the territory of Goy (Ngoy), now Cabinda. This part has greatly changed since 1859; either the Banana River requires removing two miles to the north, or French Point must be placed an equal distance south. The princ.i.p.al establishment, M. Regis' of Ma.r.s.eilles, is built in his best style; a two-storied and brilliantly "chunam'd" house, containing a shop and store on the ground-floor, defended by a three- pounder. Behind it a square "compound," with high walls, guards the offices and the other requisites of a bar rac.o.o.n. It is fronted by a little village where "Laptots," Senegal Moslems, and men-at-arms live with their families and slaves. In the rear stands the far more modest and conscientious establishment of Messrs. Pencoff and Kerdyk: their plank bungalow is full of work, whilst the other lies idle; so virtue here is not, as in books, its own reward.

M. Victor Parrot, the young Swiss agent of M. Regis, hospitably asked us to take up our quarters with him, and promised to start us up stream without delay; his employer fixes the tariff of every article, and no discretion is left to the subordinates. We called upon M. Elkman of the Dutch factory. His is a well-known name on the river, and, though familiar with the people, he has more than once run some personal risk by a.s.sisting our cruizers to make captures. He advised us to lose no time in setting out before the impending rains: I wanted, however, a slight preparation for travel, and determined to see something of the adjoining villages, especially the site of the historic Padro.

Whilst crossing the stream, we easily understood how the river was supposed to be in a perpetual state of inundation. The great breadth and the shallows near either jaw prevent the rain-floods being perceptible unless instruments are used, and "hydrometry,"

still in an imperfect state, was little to be depended upon in the days when European ideas concerning the Congo River were formed. Twenty miles up stream the high-water mark becomes strongly marked, and further on, as will be seen, it shows even better.

If Barbot's map have any claim to correctness, the southern sh.o.r.e has changed greatly since A.D. 1700. A straight line from Cape Padro to Chapel Point, now Shark Point, was more than double the breadth of the embouchure. It is vain to seek for the "Island of Calabes" mentioned by Andrew Battel, who was "sent to a place called Zaire on the River Congo, to trade for elephants' teeth, wheat, and palm oil." It may be a mistake for Cavallos, noticed in the next chapter; but the "town on it" must have been small, and has left, they say, no traces. After a scramble through the surf, we were received at Shark Point, where, at this season, the current is nearer five than three knots, by Mr. Tom Peter, Maf.u.ka, or chief trader, amongst these "Musurungus." He bore his highly respectable name upon the frontal band of his "berretta"

alias "coroa," an open-worked affair, very like the old-fashioned jelly-bag night cap. This head-gear of office made of pine-apple fibre-- Tuckey says gra.s.s--costs ten shillings; it is worn by the kinglets, who now distribute it to all the lieges whose fortunes exceed some fifty dollars.

Most of the Squaline villagers appeared to be women, the men being engaged in making money elsewhere. Besides illicit trade, which has now become very dangerous, a little is done in the licit line: grotesquely carved sticks, calabashes rudely ornamented with ships and human figures, the neat bead-work gra.s.s-strings used by the women to depress the bosom, and cashimbos or pipes mostly made about Boma. All were re-baptized in 1853, but they show no sign of Christianity save crosses, and they are the only prost.i.tutes on the river.

Following Tom Peter, and followed by a noisy tail, we walked to the west end of Shark Point, to see if aught remained of the Padro, the first memorial column, planted in 1485 by the explorer Diogo Cam, knight of the king's household, Dom Joo II.

"O principe perfeito," who, says De Barros ("Asia," Decad. I.

lib. iii. chap. 3), "to immortalize the memory of his captains,"

directed them to plant these pillars in all remarkable places.

The Padres, which before the reign of D. Joo were only wooden crosses, a.s.sumed the shape of "columns, twice the height of a man (estado), with the scutcheon bearing the royal arms. At the sides they were to be inscribed in Latin and Portuguese (to which James Barbot adds Arabic), with the name of the monarch who sent the expedition, the date of discovery, and the captain who made it; on the summit was to be raised a stone cross cramped in with lead." According to others, the inscription mentioned only the date, the king, and the captain. The Padro of the Congo was especially called from the "Lord of Guinea's favourite saint, de So Jorge"--sit faustum! As Carli shows, the patron of Congo and Angola was Santiago, who was seen bodily a.s.sisting at a battle in which Dom Affonso, son of Giovi (Emmanuel), first Christian king of Congo, prevailed against a mighty host of idolaters headed by his pagan brother "Panso Aquitimo." In 1786 Sir Home Popham found a marble cross on a rock near Angra dos Ilheos or Pequena (south lat.i.tude 26 37'), with the arms of Portugal almost effaced. Till lately the jasper pillar at Cabo Negro bore the national arms.

Doubtless much lat.i.tude was allowed in the make and material of these padres; that which I saw near Cananea in the Brazil is of saccharine marble, four palms high by two broad; it bears a scutcheon charged with a cross and surmounted by another.

There is some doubt concerning the date of this mission. De Barros (I. iii. 3) says A.D. 1484. Lopes de Limn (IV. i. 5) gives the reason why A.D. 1485 is generally adopted, and he believes that the cruise of the previous year did not lead to the Congo River. The explorer, proceeding to inspect the coast south of Cape St. Catherine (south lat.i.tude 2 30'), which he had discovered in 1473, set out from So Jorge da Mina, now Elmina.

He was accompanied by Martin von Behaim of Nurnberg (nat. circ.

A.D. 1436, ob. A.D. 1506), a pupil of the mathematician John Muller (Regiomonta.n.u.s); and for whom the discovery of the New World has been claimed.

After doubling his last year's terminus, Diogo Cam chanced upon a vast embouchure, and, surprised by the beauty of the scenery and the volume of the stream, he erected his stone Padro, the first of its kind. Finding the people unintelligible to the interpreters, he sent four of his men with a present of hawk's bells (cascaveis) and blue gla.s.s beads to the nearest king, and, as they did not soon return, he sailed back to Portugal with an equal number of natives as hostages, promising to return after fifteen moons. One of them, Cacuta (Zacuten of Barbot), proved to be a "fidalgo" of Sonho, and, though the procedure was contrary to orders, it found favour with the "Perfect Prince." From these men the Portuguese learned that the land belonged to a great monarch named the Mwani-Congo or Lord of Congo, and thus they gave the river a name unknown to the riverine peoples.

Diogo Cam, on his second visit, sent presents to the ruler with the hostages, who had learned as much Portuguese and Christianity as the time allowed; recovered his own men, and pa.s.sed on to Angola, Benguela and Cabo Negro, adding to his discoveries 200 leagues of coast. When homeward bound, he met the Mwani-Sonho, and visited the Mwani-Congo, who lived at Amba.s.se Congo (So Salvador), distant 50 leagues (?). The ruler of the "great and wonderful River Zaire," touched by his words, sent with him sundry youths, and the fidalgo Cacuta, who was baptized into Dom Joao, to receive instruction, and to offer a present of ivory and of palm cloth which was remarkably strong and bright. A request for a supply of mechanics and missionaries brought out the first mission of Dominicans. They sailed in December, 1490, under Goncalo de Sousa; they were followed by others, and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the country was fairly over- run by the Propaganda. A future page will enter into more details, and show the results of their labours.

The original Padro was destroyed by the Dutch in 1645, an act of barbarism which is justly called "Vandalica facanha." Father Merolla says (1682), "The Hollanders, out of envy, broke the fine marble cross to pieces; nevertheless, so much remained of it, when I was there, as to discover plainly the Portuguese arms on the ruins of the basis, with an inscription under them in Gothic characters, though not easy to be read." In 1859 a new one was placed in Turtle Cove, a few yards south-west of Shark Point; but the record was swept away by an unusually high tide, and no further attempt has been made.

We were then led down a sandy narrow line in the bush, striking south-east, and, after a few yards, we stood before two pieces of marble in a sandy hollow. The tropical climate, more adverse than that of London, had bleached and marked them till they looked like pitted chalk: the larger stump, about two feet high, was bandaged, as if after amputation, with cloths of many colours, and the other fragment lay at its feet. Tom Peter, in a fearful lingua-Franca, Negro-Anglo-Portuguese, told us that his people still venerated the place as part of a religious building; it is probably the remnant thus alluded to by Lopes de Lima (iii. 1-6): "Behind this point (Padro) is another monument of the piety of our monarchs, and of the holy objects which guided them to the conquest of Guinea, a Capuchin convent intended to convert the negroes of Sonho; it has long been deserted, and is still so.

Even in A.D. 1814, D. Garcia V., the king of Congo, complained in a letter to our sovereign of the want of missionaries." Possibly the ruined convent is the church which we shall presently visit.

Striking eastward, we soon came to a pool in the bush sufficiently curious and out of place to make the natives hold it "Fetish;" they declare that it is full of fish, but it kills all men who enter it--"all men" would not include white men. Possibly it is an old piscina; according to the Abbe Proyart, the missionaries taught the art of pisciculture near the village of Kilonga, where they formed their first establishment. The place is marked "Salt-pond" in Barbot, who tells us that the condiment was made there and carried inland.

A short walk to a tall tree backing the village showed us, amongst twenty-five European graves, five tombs or cenotaphs of English naval officers, amongst whom two fell victims to mangrove-oysters, and the rest to the deadly "calenture" of the lower Congo. We entered the foul ma.s.s of huts,

"Domus non ullo robore fulta Sed sterili junco cannaque intecta pal.u.s.tri."

It was too early for the daily debauch of palm wine, and the interiors reeked with the odours of nocturnal palm oil. The older travellers were certainly not blases; they seemed to find pleasure and beauty wherever they looked: Ca da Mosto (1455), visiting the Senegal, detected in this graveolent substance, fit only for wheel-axles, a threefold property, that of smelling like violets, of tasting like oil of olives, and tinging victuals like saffron, with a colour still finer. Even Mungo Park preferred the rancid tallow-like shea b.u.t.ter to the best product of the cow. We chatted with the Shark Point wreckers, and found that they thought like Arthegal,

"For equal right in equal things doth stand."

Moreover, here, as in the Shetlands of the early nineteenth century, when the keel touches bottom the seaman loses his rights, and she belongs to the sh.o.r.e.

Tom Peter offered to show us other relics of the past if we would give him two days. A little party was soon made up, Mr. J. C.

Bigley, the master, and Mr. Richards, the excellent gunner of the "Griffon," were my companions. We set out in a south-by-easterly direction to the bottom of Sonho, or Diogo's Bay, which Barbot calls "Bay of Pampus Rock." Thence we entered Alligator River, a broad lagoon, the Raphael Creek of Maxwell's map, not named in the hydrographic chart of 1859. Leading south with many a bend, it is black water and thick, fetid mud, garnished with scrubby mangrove, where Kru-boys come to cut fuel and catch fever; here the dew seemed to fall in cold drops. After nine miles we reached a shallow fork, one tine of which, according to our informants, comes from the Congo Grande, or So Salvador, distant a week's march. Leaving the whaler in charge of a Kru-man, we landed, and walked about half a mile over loose sand bound by pine-apple root, to the Banza Sonho, or, as we call it, King Antonio's Town- -not to be mistaken for that placed in the charts behind Point Padron. Our object being unknown, there was fearful excitement in the thatched huts scattered under the palm grove, till Tom Peter introduced us, and cleared for us a decent hut. The buildings, if they can be so called, are poor and ragged, copies of those which we shall see upon the uplands. Presently we were visited by the king named after that saint "of whom the Evil One was parlous afraid." This descendant of the "Counts of Sonho," in his dirty night-cap and long coat of stained red cloth, was a curious contrast to the former splendour of the "count's habit," with cap of st.i.tched silk which could be worn only by him and his n.o.bles, fine linen shirt, flowered silk cloak, and yellow stockings of the same material. When King Affonso III. gave audience to the missioners (A.D. 1646), the negro grandee "had on a vest of cloth set with precious stones, and in his hat a crown of diamonds, besides other stones of great value. He sat on a chair under a canopy of rich crimson velvet, with gilt nails, after the manner of Europe; and under his feet was a great carpet, with two stools of the same colour, and silk laced with gold." After the usual palaver we gave the black earl a cloth and bottle of rum for leave to pa.s.s on, but no one would accompany us that evening, all pretending that they wanted time to fit up the hammocks. At night a body of armed bushmen marched down to inspect us.