The Banza was beautifully situated on a dwarf platform, catching the full force of the sea-breeze, and commanding to the north-west a picturesque glimpse of the

“waters rippling, flowing,
Flashing along the valley to the sea;”

a mountain tarn representing the mighty stream.  On the right lay fields, dotted with papaw-trees, and plantations of maize and manioc, thur (Cajanus), and sweet potatoes, a vegetable now common, but not noticed by Tuckey; on the left, a deep ravine, densely forested with noble growth, and supplying the best of water, divides it from Tadi ja Mfimo, a pile of rock on the opposite hill-side; here lay the Itombo village, belonging to Gidi Mavunga’s eldest son.  Beyond it, the tree-clad heights, rolling away into the distance, faded from blue-brown to the faintest azure, hardly to be distinguished from the empyrean above.  The climate of these breezy uplands is superior even to that of Banza Nokki, which lies some 170 feet lower; and the nights are sensibly cooler.

A few fathoms of altitude here make a surprising difference.  The little valleys with their chalet-like huts reminded me of the Maroro and Kisanga basins, in the sister formation, the East African Ghats, but now we have a hill-climate without ague and fever.  Our parallel is that of Yorukan Abokuta, where the people are anti-oeci, both being about 6deg. distant from the Line,—­ those north, these south.  There the bush is fetid, and the clammy air gives a sense of deadly depression; here the atmosphere is pure, the land is open, and there is enjoyment in the mere sense of life.  The effete matter in the blood and the fatty degeneration of the muscles, the results of inactivity, imperfect respiration, and F. Po, were soon consumed by the pure oxygen of the highland air.  I can attribute this superiority of the Congo region only to the labours of an old civilization now obsolete; none but a thick and energetic population could have cleared off the forest, which at one time must have covered their mountains.

The Banza consists of about fifty cottages, which are being new-thatched before the rains, and the population may number 300.  Our host assigned to us one of his own huts; it fronted west, and was a facsimile of that which we had just left.  The old fox, determined not to be “taken alive,” has provided his earth with three holes, opening to the north, to the east, and to the west.  We often detected him in the “ben,” the matrimonial sanctum, listening to private conversations which he could not understand.  Gidi Mavunga is decidedly a “serious person.”  The three walls round the standing bedstead are hung with charms and amulets, like the sacred pictures in country parts of Europe; and at the head is his “Mavunga,” of which Tuckey says (p. 180), “Each village has a grand kissey (nkisi), or presiding divinity, named Mevonga:”  it is an anthropoid log, about three feet high, red, white, and black, the former colour predominating.  Two bits of looking-glass