28th April, 1871.—­Abed sent over Manyuema to buy slaves for him and got a pretty woman for 300 cowries and a hundred strings of beads; she can be sold again to an Arab for much more in ivory.  Abed himself gave $130 for a woman-cook, and she fled to me when put in chains for some crime:  I interceded, and she was loosed:  I advised her not to offend again, because I could not beg for her twice.

Hassani with ten slaves dug at the malachite mines of Katanga for three months, and gained a hundred frasilahs of copper, or 3500 lbs.  We hear of a half-caste reaching the other side of Lomame, probably from Congo or Ambriz, but the messengers had not seen him.

1st May, 1871.—­Katomba’s people arrived from the Babisa, where they sold all their copper at two rings for a tusk, and then found that abundance of ivory still remained:  door-posts and house-pillars had been made of ivory which now was rotten.  The people of Babisa kill elephants now and bring tusks by the dozen, till the traders get so many that in this case they carried them by three relays.  They dress their hair like the Bashukulompo, plaited into upright basket helmets:  no quarrel occurred, and great kindness was shown to the strangers.  A river having very black water, the Nyengere, flows into Lualaba from the west, and it becomes itself very large:  another river or water, Shamikwa, falls into it from the south-west, and it becomes still larger:  this is probably the Lomame.  A short-horned antelope is common.

3rd May, 1871.—­Abed informs me that a canoe will come in five days.  Word was sent after me by the traders south of us not to aid me, as I was sure to die where I was going:  the wish is father to the thought!  Abed was naturally very anxious to get first into the Babisa ivory market, yet he tried to secure a canoe for me before he went, but he was too eager, and a Manyuema man took advantage of his desire, and came over the river and said that he had one hollowed out, and he wanted goats and beads to hire people to drag it down to the water.  Abed on my account advanced five goats, a thousand cowries, and many beads, and said that he would tell me what he wished in return:  this was debt, but I was so anxious to get away I was content to take the canoe on any terms.  However, it turned out that the matter on the part of the headman whom Abed trusted was all deception:  he had no canoe at all, but knew of one belonging to another man, and wished to get Abed and me to send men to see it—­in fact, to go with their guns, and he would manage to embroil them with the real owner, so that some old feud should be settled to his satisfaction.  On finding that I declined to be led into his trap, he took a female slave to the owner, and on his refusal to sell the canoe for her, it came out that he had adopted a system of fraud to Abed.  He had victimized Abed, who was naturally inclined to believe his false statements, and get off to the ivory market.  His