A light breeze early next morning fortunately freshened as we approached “Strong Tide” (No. 2).  We ran north of the second archipelago above the gate; south of us lay the “Low Islands” of the chart, with plantations of beans and tobacco; the peasants stood to stare like Icelanders, leaning on oblong-bladed paddles six feet long, or upon alpen-stocks capped with bayonets; the “scare-crows” were grass figures, with pots for heads and wooden rattles suspended to bent poles.  On the right bank a block of hills narrows the stream, and its selvage of light green grasses will contribute to the “floating islands.”  Higher up, blocks and boulders of all sizes rise from the vegetation, and prolong themselves into the shallower waters.  There are two distinct bluffs, the westernmost marked by a tree-clump at its feet, and between them lies a baylet, where a dozen palms denote the once dreaded village Bemandika.  The second block, 400 to 500 feet high, bears on its rounded summit the Stone of Lightning, called by the people Tadi Nzazhi, vulgo, Taddy Enzazzi.  The Fiote language has the Persian letter Zh (j), sounding like the initial of the French “jour:”  so Lander ("On the Course and Termination of the Niger,” “Journal Royal Geographical Society,” vol. i. p. 131) says of the Island Zegozhe, that “zh is pronounced like z in azure.”  This upright mass, apparently 40 feet high, and seeming, like the “Lumba” of Kinsembo to rest upon a basement, is very conspicuous from the east, where it catches the eye as a watch-tower would.  At the bluff-base, a huge slab, an irregular parallelogram, slopes towards the water and, viewed far up stream, it passably represents a Kaffir’s pavoise.  This Fingal’s Shield, a name due to the piety of Mr. George Maxwell, is called by the French La Pierre Fetiche:  it must not be confounded with our Fetish Rock (Tadi ya Muingu) on the southern bank at the entrance of the Nshibul and Sonho branches.  I can add nothing to Tuckey’s description or Lieutenant Hawkey’s tracing of the rude figures which distinguish a not unusual feature.  Tuckey (p. 97) calls Fingal’s Shield Taddy d’ya M’wangoo, and Professor Smith, Taddi Moenga (p. 303); the only defect in Lieutenant Hawkey’s sketch is that of exaggerating the bluff, a mere mamelon, one of many lumps upon a continued level.  Both rocks are of the oldest granite, much weather-worn and mixed and banded with mica and quartz.  M. Charles Konig found in the finer-grained varieties “minute noble garnets,” which also appeared in the mica-slate of “Gombac” higher up stream, and in the primitive greenstone of “Boka Embomma."[FN#8]

Beyond this point, where Boma is first sighted, lies the large marauding village of Twana.  Here also a man shouted to us from the bank “Muliele! muliele!” for the Portuguese “mulher,” one of the interminable corruptions of the tongue—­a polite offer, as politely declined.  The next feature is the Rio Jo Jacare, a narrow sedgy stream on the right bank, which, winding northward through