Bought the fish with the long snouts:  very good eating.

12th April, 1871.—­New moon last night; fourth Arab month:  I am at a loss for the day of the month.  My new house is finished; a great comfort, for the other was foul and full of vermin:  bugs (Tapazi, or ticks), that follow wherever Arabs go, made me miserable, but the Arabs are insensible to them; Abed alone had a mosquito-curtain, and he never could praise it enough.  One of his remarks is, “If slaves think you fear them, they will climb over you.”  I clothed mine for nothing, and ever after they have tried to ride roughshod over me, and mutiny on every occasion!

14th April, 1871.—­Kahembe came over, and promises to bring a canoe; but he is not to be trusted; he presented Abed with two slaves, and is full of fair promises about the canoe, which he sees I am anxious to get.  They all think that my buying a canoe means carrying war to the left bank; and now my Banian slaves encourage the idea:  “He does not wish slaves nor ivory,” say they, “but a canoe, in order to kill Manyuema.”  Need it be wondered at that people, who had never heard of strangers or white men before I popped down among them, believed the slander?  The slaves were aided in propagating the false accusation by the half-caste Ujijian slaves at the camp.  Hassani fed them every day; and, seeing that he was a bigoted Moslem, they equalled him in prayers in his sitting-place seven or eight times a day!  They were adepts at lying, and the first Manyuema words they learned were used to propagate falsehood.

I have been writing part of a despatch, in case of meeting people from the French settlement on the Gaboon at Loeki, but the canoe affair is slow and tedious:  the people think only of war:  they are a bloody-minded race.

15th April, 1871.—­The Manyuema tribe, called Bagenya, occupy the left bank, opposite Nyangwe.  A spring of brine rises in the bed of a river, named Lofubu, and this the Bayenga inspissate by boiling, and sell the salt at market.  The Lomame is about ten days west of Lualaba, and very large; the confluence of Lomame, or Loeki, is about six days down below Nyangwe by canoe; the river Nyanze is still less distant.

16th April, 1871.—­On the Nyanze stands the principal town and market of the chief, Zurampela.  Rashid visited him, and got two slaves on promising to bring a war-party from Abed against Chipange, who by similar means obtained the help of Salem Mokadam to secure eighty-two captives:  Rashid will leave this as soon as possible, sell the slaves, and leave Zurampela to find out the fraud!  This deceit, which is an average specimen of the beginning of half-caste dealings, vitiates his evidence of a specimen of cannibalism which he witnessed; but it was after a fight that the victims were cut up, and this agrees with the fact that the Manyuema eat only those who are killed in war.  Some have averred that captives, too, are eaten, and a slave is bought with a goat to be eaten; but this I very strongly doubt.