At 5 A.M. the strayed revellers found to their disgust a thick fog, or rather a thin drizzle, damping grass and path, and suggesting anything but a pleasant trudge.  They declared that starvation awaited us, as the “fancy cloths” were at an end, but I stopped that objection by a reference to the reserved fund.  After an hour of sulky talk we set out towards the upper part of Banza Vivi, passing a small but pretty hill plain, with manioc-fields, gum-trees, and the bombax very symmetrical.  We saw no animals:  here and there appeared the trail of a hyaena, the only larger carnivor that now haunts the mountains.  The song of Mkuka Mpela, the wild pigeon, and Fungu, the cuckoo, were loud in the brake:  the Abbe Proyart makes the male cuculus chant his coo, coo, coo; mounting one note above another with as much precision as a musician would sound his ut, re, mi:  when he reached the third note, his mate takes it up and ascends to the octave.  After this both recommence the same song.

The stiff ascent gave us lovely views of the lake-like river and both its banks:  after three quarters of an hour we reached Vivi of Banza Simbo.  The people vainly called to us, “Wiza!”—­ “Come thou!” and “Luiza! luiza kwenu!”—­ “Come, come here!” Our moleques, disliking the dangerous proximity, advanced at a walk which might be called a canter.

Presently we reached the dividing ridge, 1,394 feet high, between Banza Vivi and Nkulu, whose palm-trees, thrown out against the sky, bore 82deg. (M.) Looking to the north with easting, we had a view of no less than six distinct distances.  The actual foreground, a hollow between two land-waves, could not conceal the “Crocodile’s Head:”  the latter, five miles off and bearing 65deg. (M.), forms the southern staple of the Yellala Gate, whose rapids were not visible, and it fronts the Quoin, which hems in the stream on the other side.  The key-stone of the inverted arch between them was a yellow-flanked, tree-topped hill, rising immediately above the great rapids:  beyond if waved, in far succession, three several swells of ground, each flatter and bluer than its nearer neighbour, and capping the whole stood Kongo de Lemba, a tall solitary sugarloaf, bearing 75deg. (M.), with its outlying conelets concealing like a mass of smoke the world that lay beyond.

The ridges appeared to trend north and south, and to approach the river’s bending bed at different angles; their sides were steep, and in places scarped where they fell into the intervening hollows.  The valleys conducted many a water to the main drain, and during the wet season they must be well-nigh impassable.  At the end of the dries the only green is in the hill-folds and the basin-sinks, where the trees muster strong enough to defend themselves from the destructive annual fires.  These bush-burnings have effectually disforested the land, and in some places building timber and even fuel have become scarce.  In the Abrus, barely two feet high, I could hardly recognize the tall tree of Eastern Africa, except by its scarlet “carats,” which here the people disdain to use as beads.  The scorching of the leaves stunts the shrubs, thickens the bark, and makes the growth scrubby, so that the labourer has nothing to do but to clear away the grass:  I afterwards remarked the same effects on the Brazilian Campos.