d. We now felt the loss of our pontoon,
for the people to whom the canoe belonged made us pay once when we began
to cross, then a second time when half of us were over, and a third time
when all were over but my principal man Pitsane and myself. Loyanke took
off his cloth and paid my passage with it. The Makololo always ferried
their visitors over rivers without pay, and now began to remark that
they must in future fleece the Mambari as these Chiboque had done to us;
they had all been loud in condemnation of the meanness, and when I asked
if they could descend to be equally mean, I was answered that they
would only do it in revenge. They like to have a plausible excuse for
meanness.

Next morning our guides went only about a mile, and then told us they
would return home. I expected this when paying them beforehand, in
accordance with the entreaties of the Makololo, who are rather ignorant
of the world. Very energetic remonstrances were addressed to the guides,
but they slipped off one by one in the thick forest through which
we were passing, and I was glad to hear my companions coming to the
conclusion that, as we were now in parts visited by traders, we did not
require the guides, whose chief use had been to prevent misapprehension
of our objects in the minds of the villagers. The country was somewhat
more undulating now than it had been, and several fine small streams
flowed in deep woody dells. The trees are very tall and straight, and
the forests gloomy and damp; the ground in these solitudes is quite
covered with yellow and brown mosses, and light-colored lichens clothe
all the trees. The soil is extremely fertile, being generally a black
loam covered with a thick crop of tall grasses. We passed several
villages too. The head man of a large one scolded us well for passing,
when he intended to give us food. Where slave-traders have been in the
habit of coming, they present food, then demand three or four times its
value as a custom. We were now rather glad to get past villages without
intercourse with the inhabitants.

We were traveling W.N.W., and all the rivulets we here crossed had a
northerly course, and were reported to fall into the Kasai or Loke; most
of them had the peculiar boggy banks of the country. As we were now in
the alleged latitude of the Coanza, I was much astonished at the
entire absence of any knowledge of that river among the natives of
this quarter. But I was then ignorant of the fact that the