We returned via the gateway between the two islets.  On the south-eastern flank of Chisalla is a dwarf precipice called Mbondo la Zumba and, according to the interpreters, it is the Lovers’ Leap of Tuckey.  But its office must not be confounded with that attributed to the sinister-looking scaur of Leucadia; here the erring wives of the Kings of Boma and their paramours found a Bosphorus.  The Commander of the First Congo Expedition applies the name to a hanging rock on the northern shore, about eighteen miles higher up stream.  A portentous current soon swept us past Pere la Chaise, and shortly after noon we were comfortably at breakfast with Sr.  Pereira.

During the last night we had been kept awake by the drumming and fifing, singing and shouting, weeping and howling, pulling at accordions and striking the monotonous Shingungo.  Merolla names this cymbal Longa, and describes it justly as two iron bells joined by an arched bar:  I found it upon the Tanganyika Lake, and suffered severely from its monotonous horrors.  Monteiro and Gamitto (p. 232) give an illustration of what is known in the Cazembe’s country as “Gomati:”  The Mchua or gong-gong of Ashanti has a wooden handle connecting the cones.  Our palhabote had brought up the chief Mashel’s bier, and to-day we have the satisfaction of seeing it landed.  A kind of palanquin, covered with crimson cloth and tinsel gold like a Bombay “Tabut,” it had three horns or prominences, two capped with empty black bottles, and the central bearing the deceased’s helmet; it was a fancy article, which might have fitted him of Gath, with a terrific plume and the spoils of three horses in the sanguine hues of war.  Although eight feet long by five broad, the coffin was said to be quite full.  The immense respect which the Congoese bear to their rulers, dead as well as alive, prevented my verifying the accounts of the slave dealers.  I knew that the chief who had died at Kinsembo, had been dried on a bamboo scaffolding over a slow fire, and lay in state for some weeks in flannel stockings and a bale of baize, but these regions abound in local variations of custom.  Some declared, as we find in Proyart, that the corpse had been mummified by the rude process of smoking; others that it had been exposed for some days to the open air, the relatives sitting round to keep off the flies till preliminarily bandaged.  According to Barbot (iii. 23), the people of Fetu on the Gold Coast and the men of Benin used to toast the corpse on a wooden gridiron; and the Vei tribe, like the Congoese, still fumigate their dead bodies till they become like dried hams.  This rude form of the Egyptian rite is known to East as well as to West Africa:  Kimera, late King of Uganda, was placed upon a board covering the mouth of a huge earthern pot heated from below.