, and retire
with careworn faces; many are beautiful, and many old; all carry very
heavy loads of dried cassava and earthen pots, which they dispose of
very cheaply for palm-oil, fish, salt, pepper, and relishes for their
food. The men appear in gaudy lambas, and carry little save their iron
wares, fowls, grass cloth, and pigs.

Bought the fish with the long snouts: very good eating.

_12th April, 1871._--New moon last night; fourth Arab month: I am at a
loss for the day of the month. My new house is finished; a great
comfort, for the other was foul and full of vermin: bugs (Tapazi, or
ticks), that follow wherever Arabs go, made me miserable, but the Arabs
are insensible to them; Abed alone had a mosquito-curtain, and he never
could praise it enough. One of his remarks is, "If slaves think you
fear them, they will climb over you." I clothed mine for nothing, and
ever after they have tried to ride roughshod over me, and mutiny on
every occasion!

_14th April, 1871._--Kahembe came over, and promises to bring a canoe;
but he is not to be trusted; he presented Abed with two slaves, and is
full of fair promises about the canoe, which he sees I am anxious to
get. They all think that my buying a canoe means carrying war to the
left bank; and now my Banian slaves encourage the idea: "He does not
wish slaves nor ivory," say they, "but a canoe, in order to kill
Manyuema." Need it be wondered at that people, who had never heard of
strangers or white men before I popped down among them, believed the
slander? The slaves were aided in propagating the false accusation by
the half-caste Ujijian slaves at the camp. Hassani fed them every day;
and, seeing that he was a bigoted Moslem, they equalled him in prayers
in his sitting-place seven or eight times a day! They were adepts at
lying, and the first Manyuema words they learned were used to propagate
falsehood.

I have been writing part of a despatch, in case of meeting people from
the French settlement on the Gaboon at Loeki, but the canoe affair is
slow and tedious: the people think only of war: they are a bloody-minded
race.

_15th April, 1871._--The Manyuema tribe, called Bagenya, occupy the left
bank, opposite Nyangwe. A spring of brine rises in the bed of a river,
named Lofubu, and this the Bayenga inspissate by boiling, and sell the
salt at market. The Lomame is about ten days west of Lualaba, and very
large; the confluence of Lomame, or Loeki, is about six days down below