ice they might
render us. They seemed to understand our signs, and beckoned to us to
step into the canoe, carefully turning her round, so that they might
instantly paddle off again up the stream. We stepping in, they shoved
off, exerting themselves to the utmost to stem the current. We made,
however, but little way. As their backs were turned towards us, I could
only judge of their disposition by watching the countenance of their
chief. It was not particularly prepossessing, and the exertions he was
making added not a little to its natural ugliness. He seemed to be
regarding us with looks of intense curiosity, as if he had never before
seen white people. After paddling along for a considerable time with
the greatest exertion, they suddenly turned the canoe round and paddled
across the current towards the shore. At length we got into a counter
eddy, and now without difficulty they made way; the people who had been
surrounding the hippopotamus running down along the bank to look at us.
We soon reached a place where we could land, but for some minutes we
were kept in the boat, while the tribe collected on the high banks above
us, grinning down and gazing at us much as we should at a wild beast in
its den in the Zoological Gardens. They were, I think, the ugliest
savages we had yet met with.

"Well, I do declare I think poor Chico was a beauty to them," exclaimed
Natty, as he looked up at them squatting in all sorts of attitudes on
the bank. The women, (I must not call them the fair sex), were even
less attractive than their lords and masters. Two or three of them had
huge necklaces hanging down over their breasts and rings round their
arms, which in no way added to their beauty. Some of them carried
children slung to their backs by straps of buffalo hides, and the little
creatures, as they looked down upon us, grinned from ear to ear, though,
when their mothers approached nearer than they liked, they set up the
most terrific cries, such as I should have thought no human beings could
have uttered. At last the canoe-men allowed us to land, when the female
portion of the spectators hurriedly retreated, as if we were some wild
creatures likely to do them harm. My first object was to inquire
whether they could give us any information about Leo and Mango; but they
only shook their heads, and we could not tell what that intended to
signify. I explained to them, as well as I could, that we had come in a
canoe, which