frowning brows relaxed, and huge fires put to flight ill temper and the sandfly.  I had proposed lashing my hammock to one of the tree-stumps, which are here some ten feet tall, the people, who swing themselves for the purpose of felling, declare the upper wood to be softer than below.  “Public opinion,” however, overruled me, and made it fast to two old trunks.  The night was a succession of violent tornadoes, and during one of the most outrageous the upper half of a “triste lignum,” falling alongside of and grazing my hammock, awoke me with its crash.

Next morning, when the rain had somewhat abated, I set out, by a path whose makers were probably the ape and the squirrel-hunter, in the direction of a rise, which the people called Mbika —­The hill.  After a total of some two miles and a half, we found a clearing upon the summit, but, although I climbed up a tree, the bush was dense enough to conceal most of the surroundings.  According to the Fan, the Nkomo rises on the seaward or western face of this Mbika, whilst the Mbokwe, springing from its eastern counterslope, runs south-west of the Massif and joins the former.  The one-tree hill known as “Tem” appeared a little to the north of west:  to the north-east we could see a river-fork, but none knew its name.

Our return was enlivened by the inspection of an elephant-kraal, where a herd had been trapped, drugged, and shot during the last season.  As the walls were very flimsy, I asked why the animals did not break loose; the answer was that the Ngan (Mganga or Fetishman) ran a line of poison vine along its crest, and that the beasts, however wild, would not attempt to pass through it.  The natives showed me the liana which they described, still lying on the poles of the broken corral.  Mr. Preston, of the Gaboon Mission, who first noticed it, and Mr. Wilson, who gives an illustration of the scene (p. 363), declares that the creeper is drawn around the herd when browsing; that as long as the animals are unmolested they will not dash through the magic circle, and that the fence of uprights is constructed outside it.  The same tale is told of all the wild elephant-hunters in the interior, the Bati the Okana, the Yefa, and the Sensoba.

Arrived at Tippet-town, I gave my “dashes,” chiefly brass and copper rods, bade an affectionate farewell, and then dropped down stream without further ceremony.  I had been disappointed a second time in re gorilla, and nothing now remained but a retreat, which time rendered necessary.  The down-stream voyage was an easy matter, and it need hardly be said far less unpleasant than the painful toil up.  From the Sanjika village on the Gaboon, the “Tem” hill was seen bearing due east (Mag.) and the Mbika 92deg..  Behind them were glimpses of blue highland, rising in lumpy and detached masses to the east; these are evidently sub-ranges of the western Ghats, the Sierra del Crystal, which native travellers described to me as a serrated broken line of rocky and barren