and a handsome burnous was drawn over the king’s shoulders, the hood covering the berretta in most grotesque guise.  After which the commander and M. Pissot set out for the return march, leaving me with my factotum Selim and the youth Nchama Chamvu.  To the question “Quid muliere levius?” the scandalous Latin writer answers “Nihil,” for which I would suggest “Niger.”  At the supreme moment the interpreter, who had been deaf to the charmer’s voice (offering fifty dollars) for the last three days, succumbed to the “truant fever.”  He knew something of Portuguese; and, having been employed by the French factory, he had scoured the land far and wide in search of “emigrants.”  He began well; cooked a fowl, boiled some eggs, and made tea; after which he cleared out a hut that was declared tres logeable, and found a native couch resembling the Egyptian kafas.

We slept in a new climate:  at night the sky was misty, and the mercury fell to 60deg. (F.).  There was a dead silence; neither beast nor bird nor sound of water was heard amongst the hills; only at times high winds in gusts swept over the highlands with a bullying noise, and disappeared, leaving everything still as the grave.  I felt once more “at home in the wilderness”—­such, indeed, it appeared after Boma, where the cockney-taint yet lingered.

Chapter X.

Notes on the Nzadi or Congo River.

And first, touching the name of this noble and mysterious stream.  Diogo Cam, the discoverer in 1485, called it River of Congo, Martin von Behaim Rio de Padrao, and De Barros “Rio Zaire.”  The Portuguese discoveries utilized by Dapper thus corrupted to the sonorous Zaire, the barbarous Nzadi applied by the natives to the lower bed.  The next process was that of finding a meaning.  Philippo Pigafetta of Vicenza,[FN#10] translated Zaire by “so, cioe Sapio in Latino;” hence Sandoval[FN#11] made it signify “Rio de intendimiento,” of understanding.  Merolla duly records the contrary.  “The King of Portugal, Dom John ii., having sent a fleet under D. Diego Cam to make discoveries in this Southern Coast of Africa, that admiral guessed at the nearness of the land by nothing so much as by the complexion of the waters of the Zaire; and, putting into it, he asked of the negroes what river and country that was, who not understanding him answered ‘Zevoco,’ which in the Congolan tongue is as much as to say ’I cannot tell;’ from whence the word being corrupted, it has since been called Zairo.”

D’Anville (1749), with whom critical African geography began, records “Barbela,” a southern influent, perhaps mythical, named by his predecessors, and still retained in our maps:  it is the Verbele of Pigafetta and the Barbele of Linschoten, who make it issue either from the western lake-reservoir of the Nile, or from the “Aquilunda” water, a name variously derived from O-Calunga, the sea (?), or from A-Kilunda, of Kilunda (?) The industrious