Another scramble upon a highly inclined hogsback, where weather-worn brown-black granite, protruded bone-like from the clay flesh, placed us at the outlying village of Kinbembu, with its line of palms; here the aneroid showed 1,322 feet.  After a short rest, the hammock men resumed work over a rough plateau:  the rises were scattered with brush-wood, and the falls were choked with the richest vegetation.  Every hill discharged its own rivulet bubbling over the rock, and the waters were mostly chalybeate.

Presently appeared a kind of barracoon, a large square of thick cane-work and thatch about eight feet high, the Fetish house of the “Jinkimba” or circumcised boys, who received us with unearthly yells.  After a march of an hour and three quarters,’covering five indirect and three direct miles in a south-eastern rhumb, we reached Banza Nkaye, the royal village, where the sympiesometer showed 1430 feet.  Our bearers yelled “Abububu!” showing that we had reached our destination, and the villagers answered with a cry of “Abia-a-a!” The entrance was triumphal:  we left the river with a tail of fifty-six which had swelled to 150 ragged followers.

After a short delay we proceeded to the “palace,” which was distinguished from afar by a long projecting gable, forming a cool verandah.  Descending some three hundred feet, we passed a familiar sight in Africa, where “arboribus suus horror inest.”  A tree-trunk bore three pegged skulls somewhat white with age; eight years ago they were taken off certain wizards who had bewitched their enemies.  A labyrinthine entrance of transparent cane-work served to prevent indecent haste, and presently we found ourselves in presence of the Mfumo, who of course takes the title of “Le Rei.”  Nessudikira was a “blanc-bec,” aged twenty or twenty-one, who till lately had been a trading lad at Boma—­now he must not look upon the sea.  He appeared habited in the usual guy style:  a gaudy fancy helmet, a white shirt with limp Byronic collar, a broad-cloth frock coat, a purple velvet gold-fringed loin-wrap:  a theatrical dagger whose handle and sheath bore cut-glass emeralds and rubies, stuck in the waist-belt; brass anklets depended over naked feet, and the usual beadle’s cloak covered the whole.  Truly a change for the worse since Tuckey’s day, when a “savage magnificence” showed itself in the display of lions’ and leopards’ skins; when no women were allowed to be present, and when the boys could only clap hands:  now the verandah is surrounded by a squatting crowd and resounds with endless chatter and scream.

Nessudikira, whose eyes by way of grandeur never wandered from the floor, shook hands with us without rising from his chair, somewhat after the fashion of certain women in civilized society, who would be dignified, and who are not.  His father, Gidi Mavunga, knelt before him on the ground, a mat being forbidden in the presence:  he made the “batta-palmas” before he addressed his “filho de pistola,”