The demands for porterage were so exorbitant next morning, that we set out on foot under the guidance of Tom Peter.  We passed southwards over large tracts of bush and gramineous plants, with patches of small plantations, manioc and thur; and settlements girt by calabash-trees, cocoas, palmyra and oil palms.  The people poured out, threatened impotent vengeance on those who brought the white men to “make their country,” that is, to seize and settle in it.  The only animals were fowls and pigs; small strong cages acting as hogstyes showed that leopards were dangerous; in 1816 Lieutenant Hawkey found signs of these animals, together with elephant, wild boar, and antelope.  Now there is no sport below the cataracts, and possibly very little, except in the water, above them.  Thence we debouched upon rolling land, loose and sandy waves, sometimes divided by swamps; it is the lower end of the high yellow band seen from the south of the river, the true coast of alluvial soil, scattered here and there with quartz and pebbles.  Then the bush opened out, and showed to the north-east stretches of grassy land, where the wild fig-tree drooped its branches, laden with thick fleshy leafage, to the ground; these are the black dots which are seen from afar studding the tawny desert-like surface.  Flowers were abundant despite the lateness of the season, and the sterility of the soil was evidenced by cactus and euphorbia.

After a walk of six miles Tom Peter pompously announced that we had reached the church.  We saw only an oblong furrow and a little worm-eaten wood near three or four of the most miserable “magalia;” but a bell, hung to a dwarf gallows, was dated 1700, and inscribed, “Si Deus cum nobis Qis (sic) contra nos?” The aspect of this article did not fail to excite Mr. Richards’ concupiscence:  I looked into the empty huts, and in the largest found a lot of old church gear, the Virgin (our Lady of Pinda), saints, and crucifixes, a tank-like affair of iron that acted as font, and tattered bundles of old music-scores in black and red ink.  In Captain Tuckey’s day some of the Sonho men could read the Latin Litany; there was a priest ordained by the Capuchins of Loanda, a bare-footed (and bare-faced) black apostle, with a wife and five handmaids; and a multitude of converts loaded with crucifixes and satchels of relics.  Our home march was enlivened by glimpses of the magnificent river seen through the perennial tropical foliage, and it did not suggest trite reflections upon the meanness of man’s highest aspirations in presence of eternal Nature.

We had been treading upon no vulgar spot.  We are now in the earldom of Sonho, bounded north by the Congo River and south by the Ambriz, westward by the Atlantic, and eastward by the “Duchy of Bamba.”  It was one of the great divisions of the Congo kingdom, and “absolute, except only its being tributary to the Lord Paramount.”  The titles of Portugal were adopted by the Congoese, according to Father Cavazzi, after A.D. 1571, when