d in the
accomplishment of this duty I was pleased to find that the studies I had
been diligently pursuing under Mr Smellie's auspices enabled me to
render him substantial assistance. Saint Croix, who kept about a
quarter of a mile in our wake, was making a perfectly independent
survey, which he compared with ours at the conclusion of each day's
work. The first incident of note, though we attached no importance
whatever to it at the moment, occurred about four o'clock in the
afternoon on the day following our departure from Banana Creek, and it
consisted merely in the fact that a large native canoe passed us upward
bound, without its occupants bestowing upon us any notice whatever. We
had previously encountered several canoes--small craft carrying from two
to half-a-dozen natives--and the occupants of these, who seemed to be
engaged for the most part in fishing, had invariably greeted us with
vociferous ejaculations, which, from the hearty laughter immediately
following them, were doubtless choice examples of Congoese wit. But the
particular canoe now in question swept past us without a sound. She was
a large, well-shaped craft, propelled by twenty-four paddles, and she
dashed ahead of us as if we had been at anchor, her occupants--and
especially four individuals who sat in the stern-sheets, or at all
events where the stern-sheets ought to be, and who, from their display
of feathers, bead necklaces, and leopard-skin robes, must have been very
bigwigs indeed--looking straight ahead of them and vouchsafing not the
faintest indication that they were conscious of our presence. This
absurd assumption of dignity greatly tickled us at the moment, we
attributing it entirely to the existence in the native mind of a
profound conviction of their own immeasurable superiority; but
subsequent events tended to give another and a more sinister aspect to
the incident. We pressed diligently on with our work until six o'clock,
at which time we found ourselves abreast a small native village. Here
Mildmay proposed to effect a landing, both for the purpose of procuring
some fruit and also to satisfy his very natural curiosity to see what a
native village was like. But on pulling in toward the bank the natives
assembled, making such unmistakable warlike demonstrations that we
deemed it advisable to abandon our purpose. We could, of course, have
easily dispersed the hostile blacks had we been so disposed; and Saint
Croix, who was a pa