Our terminus that day was the usual resting-place of travellers, “Mfumba” behind Nkumungu (Point) Kaziwa, a mass of granitoid slabs, with a single tree for landmark.  Opposite us was Sandi ya Nzondo, which others call Sanga ya Ngondo; in the chart this one-tree island is written “Catlo Zonda,” it is the first of two similar formations.  Oscar Rock, its western (down stream) neighbour, had shared the fate of “Soonga lem Paccula,” (Zunga chya Makula?) a stone placed in the map north-east of the Makula or Annan debouchure; both were invisible, denoted only by swirls in the water.  We had taken seven hours to cover what we easily ran down in two, and we slept comfortably with groan of rock and roar of stream for lullaby.

September 7.—­Our course now lay uninterruptedly along the left bank, where the scenery became yet more Rhine-like, in natural basins, reaches on the chart:  here and there rugged uprocks passably simulated ruined castles.  The dwarf bays of yellow sand were girt by a goodly vegetation, the palm and the calabash only telling us that we were in Africa.

Our men pointed to the work of a Nguvu or hippopotamus, which they say sometimes attacks canoes; they believe with Tuckey that the river-horses cause irregularity of soundings by assembling and trampling deep holes in the bed; but the Ngadi is a proof that they do not, as M. du Chaillu supposes, exclusively affect streams with shoals and shallows.  The jacare (crocodile) is known especially to avoid the points where the current sweeps swiftly past, yet no one will hang his hand over the canoe into the water:  we did not see any of these wretches, but at Boma Coxswain Deane observed one about sixteen feet long.

Curls of smoke arose from the mountain-walls of the trough, showing that the bush was being burned; and spired up from a grassy palm-dotted plain, between two rocky promontories on the left bank, the site of the Chacha or Wembo village:  in a gap of the herbage stood half-finished canoes, and a man was bobbing with rod, line, and float.  After an hour’s paddling we halted for breakfast under “Alecto Rock,” a sheer bluff of reddish schist, 150 feet high; here a white trident, inverted and placed ten feet above the water, showed signs of H.M.  Ship “Alecto,” (late) Captain Hunt, whose boat passed up in 1855.  The people call it Chimbongolo.  The river is now three quarters of a mile wide, and the charming cove shows the brightest of sands and the densest of vegetation waving in the cool land-wind.

Resuming our way at 9 P.M., we passed on the left “Scylla Rocks,” then a wash, and beyond them four high and tree-clad heads off the right bank.  Three are islets, the Zunga chya Gnombe—­of the bull—­formed by a narrow arm passing round them to the north:  other natives called them Zunga chya Umbinda, but all seem to differ.  These are the Gombac Islands of the chart, Hall Island being the easternmost, and the northern passage between the three horns and the main is called by us “Gombac