A person having died in this village, we could transact no business with the chief until the funeral obsequies were finished.  These occupy about four days, during which there is a constant succession of dancing, wailing, and feasting.  Guns are fired by day, and drums beaten by night, and all the relatives, dressed in fantastic caps, keep up the ceremonies with spirit proportionate to the amount of beer and beef expended.  When there is a large expenditure, the remark is often made afterward, “What a fine funeral that was!” A figure, consisting chiefly of feathers and beads, is paraded on these occasions, and seems to be regarded as an idol.

Having met with an accident to one of my eyes by a blow from a branch in passing through a forest, I remained some days here, endeavoring, though with much pain, to draw a sketch of the country thus far, to be sent back to Mr. Gabriel at Loanda.  I was always anxious to transmit an account of my discoveries on every possible occasion, lest, any thing happening in the country to which I was going, they should be entirely lost.  I also fondly expected a packet of letters and papers which my good angel at Loanda would be sure to send if they came to hand, but I afterward found that, though he had offered a large sum to any one who would return with an assurance of having delivered the last packet he sent, no one followed me with it to Cabango.  The unwearied attentions of this good Englishman, from his first welcome to me when, a weary, dejected, and worn-down stranger, I arrived at his residence, and his whole subsequent conduct, will be held in lively remembrance by me to my dying day.

Several of the native traders here having visited the country of Luba, lying far to the north of this, and there being some visitors also from the town of Mai, which is situated far down the Kasai, I picked up some information respecting those distant parts.  In going to the town of Mai the traders crossed only two large rivers, the Loajima and Chihombo.  The Kasai flows a little to the east of the town of Mai, and near it there is a large waterfall.  They describe the Kasai as being there of very great size, and that it thence bends round to the west.  On asking an old man, who was about to return to his chief Mai, to imagine himself standing at his home, and point to the confluence of the Quango and Kasai, he immediately turned, and, pointing to the westward, said, “When we travel five days (thirty-five or forty miles) in that direction, we come to it.”  He stated also that the Kasai received another river, named the Lubilash.  There is but one opinion among the Balonda respecting the Kasai and Quango.  They invariably describe the Kasai as receiving the Quango, and, beyond the confluence, assuming the name of Zaire or Zerezere.  And the Kasai, even previous to the junction, is much larger than the Quango, from the numerous branches it receives.  Besides those we have already crossed, there is the Chihombo at Cabango; and forty-two miles beyond this, eastward, runs the Kasai itself; fourteen miles beyond that, the Kaunguesi; then, forty-two miles farther east, flows the Lolua; besides numbers of little streams, all of which contribute to swell the Kasai.