The current whirls and winds through its tortuous channels, which are like castings of metal, in many distinct flows; some places are almost stagnant, suggesting passages for canoes.  Here the fishermen have planted their weirs; some are wading in the pools, others are drying their nets upon the stony ledges.  During the floods, however, this cheval-de-frise of boulders must all be under water, and probably impassable.  Tuckey supposes that the inundation must produce a spectacle which justifies the high-flown description of the people.  I should imagine the reverse to be the case; and Dr. Livingstone justly remarked[FN#30that, when the river was full, the Yellala rapids would become comparatively smooth, as he had found those of the Zambeze; and that therefore a voyage pittoresque up the Congo should be made at that season.

Before leaving the Yellala, I wandered along the right bank, and found a cliff, whose overhanging brow formed a fine cavern; it remarkably resembled the Martianez Fountain under the rock near the beautiful Puerto de Orotava.  Here the fishermen were disporting themselves, and cooking their game, which they willingly exchanged for beads.  All were of the Silurus family, varying from a few inches to two feet.  Fish-eagles sat upon the ledges overhanging the stream, and a flight of large cranes wheeled majestically in the upper air:  according to the people, they are always to be seen at the Yellalas.

The extent of a few hundred feet afforded a good bird’s eye view of the scene.  The old river-valley, shown by the scarp of the rocks, must have presented gigantic features, and the height of the trough-walls, at least a thousand feet, gives the Yellala a certain beauty and grandeur.  The site is apparently the highest axis of the dividing ridge separating the maritime lowlands from the inner plateau.  Looking eastward the land smoothens, the dorsa fall more gently towards the counter-slope, and there are none of the “Morros” which we have traversed.

With the members of the Congo Expedition, I was somewhat startled by the contrast between the apparently shrunken volume of waters and the vast breadth of the lower river; hence Professor Smith’s theory of underground caverns and communications, in fact of a subterraneous river, a favourite hobby in those days.  But there is not a trace of limestone formation around, nor is there the hollow echo which inevitably would result from such a tunnel.  Evidently the difference is to be accounted for by the rapidity of the torrent, the effect of abnormal slope deceiving the eye.  At the Mosi-wa-tunya Falls the gigantic Zambeze, from a breadth of a thousand yards suddenly plunges into a trough only forty-five to sixty feet wide:  the same is the case with the Brazilian Sao Francisco, which, a mile wide above the Cachoeira de Paulo Affonso, is choked to a minimum breadth of fifty-one feet.  At the Pongo (narrows) de Manseriche also, the Amazonas, “already a noble river, is contracted at its