What lightens Gidi Mavunga’s steps is the immediate prospect of the Munlola or preliminary showers, which, beginning in mid-September, last, with a certain persistence of fall, till October.  During the Munlola, the sea-breeze is silent, and the sky is clad with a very thin mist, which, however, supplies abundant downfalls.  The year in the Lower Congo corresponds with that of the Gaboon in practice, if not in theory, and the storms are furious as those of Yoruba, where the seasons are, of course, inverted, the great rains extending from May to August.  The climate is capricious, as everywhere about the equator, and the nearer the river the heavier are the showers.  The people double their lives by reckoning the rains as one year, and the dries as another:  when the old missionaries wished to explain that the Saviour offered Himself for the sins of man at the age of thirty-three, they said that he was sixty-six seasons old.

After the light rains of the autumnal equinox, come the Mvula za Chintomba, the “Chuvas grandes” of the Portuguese, lasting to the end of November.  They are heavy, accompanied by violent tornadoes and storms, greatly feared by the people.  The moisture of the atmosphere, not being gradually condensed by forests, must be precipitated in violent downfalls, and this is perhaps the principal evil of clearing the country.  December begins the “little dries,” which extend to February and March; then set in the rains of the vernal equinox, with furious discharges of electricity; June is the wettest month on the highlands, but not on the lower river.  In mid-July commence the “middle-dries,” here called Ngondi Asivu (Tuckey’s “Gondy Assivoo"); upon the upper river this Cacimbo lasts between April and September; when it passes over the bush is burned, and the women hoe the ground to receive its seed.  Carli well describes this season when he says:- -"The winter of the kingdom of Congo is the mild spring or autumn of Italy; it is not subject to rains, but every morning there falls a dew which fertilizes the earth.”  This meteor was not observed on the highlands of Banza Nokki and Nkulu; it is probably confined to the low country, where I found it falling heavily.

Chapter XIII.

The March to Banza Nkulu.

But revelry at night brings morning headache, and we did not set out, as agreed, at dawn.  By slow degrees the grumbling, loitering party was mustered.  The chiefs were Gidi Mavunga, head guide, and his son Papagayo, a dull quiet body; Chico Mpamba, “French landlord” of Banza Nokki, and my interpreter Nchama Chamvu.  Fourteen armed moleques carried our hammocks and our little viaticum in the shape of four bottles of present-gin, two costa-finas, (= twenty-four yards of fancy cotton), and fourteen fathoms of satin-stripe, the latter a reserved fund.  The boy “Lendo,” whose appropriate name means “The Go,” bore a burden of his own size all day, and acted as little foot-page at the