to pay his respects to Omar, as the son of a ruling monarch, and
presented us with food according to the usual custom.

Soon, amid the shouts of the excited villagers who had all come down to
see us start, our canoes were pushed off, and the carriers, glad to be
relieved of their packs, took the paddles, and away we went gaily up the
centre of the winding river. Emerging as suddenly as we had from the
gloomy forest depths where no warmth penetrated, into the blazing
tropical sun was a sudden change that almost overcame me, for as we rowed
along without shelter the rays beat down upon us mercilessly.

The banks were for the most part low, although it was impossible to say
what height they were because of the lofty hedges of creeping plants
which covered every inch of ground from the water's edge to as high as
fifty feet above in some places, while behind them towered the
black-green forest with here and there bunches of brilliant flowers or
glimpses of countless grey trunks. Sometimes these trees, pressing right
up to the edge of the warm sluggish water, grew horizontally to the
length of fifty feet over the river. Creepers, vines, whip-like calamus,
twisting lianes and great serpent-like convolvuli grew in profusion over
everything, while the eye caught glimpses everywhere of gorgeous clouds
of insects, gaily-plumaged birds, paraquets, and monkeys swinging in
their shaded bowers.

Basking on the banks were crocodiles and hippopotami, while the river
itself swarmed with fish and water-snakes. And over all rose the mist
caused by heat and moisture, the death-dealing miasma of that tropic
world.

But all were in good spirits, for rowing was more pleasurable than
tramping in that dismal monotonous primeval forest that rose on either
side, therefore against the broad, slowly-flowing waters our carriers
bent to their paddles, grinning and joking the while.

Throughout that day Kouaga sat near us, smoking and thinking. Perhaps the
responsibilities of State weighed heavily upon him; perhaps he was
contemplating with trepidation the passage that would be necessary
through a country held by the enemies of Mo; at all events he was morose
and taciturn, his dark face bearing a strange, stern look such as I had
never before noticed.

During the weeks I had been travelling up country I had embraced every
opportunity of improving my knowledge of the curious language spoken by
Omar and his mother's subjects, until I found I coul