Creek.”  Half an hour beyond was a mass of villages, in a large, grassy low-land of the left bank, girt by mountains higher than those down stream.  Some outlying huts were called by the interpreters Suko Nkongo, and formed the “beach town” of large interior settlements, Suko do Wembo and Mbinda.  Others said Lasugu or Sugo Nkongo, the Sooka Congo of the charts:  others again for “Mbinda” proposed “Mpeso Birimba.”  This is probably the place where according to the mail of November, ’73, diamonds were found, and having been submitted to “Dr. Basham (Dr. Bastian before mentioned), Director of the Museum of Berlin,” were pronounced to be of very fine water.  It is possible that the sandstone may afford precious stones like the itacolumite of the Brazil ("Highlands of the Brazil,” i. 380), but the whole affair proved a hoax.  In mid-stream rose No. 2, “One-Tree Island,” Zunga chya Nlemba or Shika chya Nzondo; in Tuckey it is called Boola Beca or Blemba (the husband) Rock; the old ficus dying at the head, was based upon a pedestal which appeared groin-shaped from the east.  Here the mirage was very distinct, and the canoes seemed to fly, not to swim—­

     “As when far out of sea a fleet descried,
      Hangs in the clouds.”

The northern bank shows a stony projection called by Maxwell “Fiddler’s Elbow;” it leads to the fourth reach, the second of the north-eastern series; and the breadth of the stream, once more a mountain lake, cannot be less than two miles.

I foresaw trouble in passing these settlements.  Presently a snake-like war canoe with hawser-holes like eyes, crept out from the southern shore; a second fully manned lay in reserve, lurking along the land, and armed men crowned the rocks jutting into the stream.  We were accosted by the first craft, in which upon the central place of honour sat Mpeso Birimba, a petty chief of Suko Nkongo; a pert rascal of the French factory, habited in a red cap, a green velvet waistcoat, and a hammock-shaped tippet of pine-apple fibre; his sword was a short Sollingen blade.  The visit had the sole object of mulcting me in rum and cloth, and my only wish was naturally to expend as little as possible in mere preliminaries.  The name of Manbuku Prata was duly thrown at him with but little effect:  these demands are never resisted by the slave-dealers.  After much noise and cries of “Mwendi” (miser, skin-flint) on the part of the myrmidons, I was allowed to proceed, having given up a cloth twenty-four yards long, and I felt really grateful to the “trade” which had improved off all the other riverine settlements.  Beyond this point we saw nothing but their distant smokes.