They picked up a little astronomy from their elders. Venus was called “wife of the moon”; a shooting star was “fetish fire”; a cluster of stars (Pleiades) was a “crowd of young women”; the “Milky Way” was “the road of floods and drought.” Both on the Lower and Upper River the natives connect the “Milky Way” with the abundance and scarcity of rains; they say that when the “Milky Way” is bright, clear, and well seen there will be plenty of rain. Three bright stars in Orion’s belt were named the “three paddlers”; and the five stars near each other in Orion were regarded as the “bundle of thunder or lightning.” In the constellation Lepus there is a set of five stars thus :*:, and these were said to resemble a man—the top star being the head, the two lower stars the hands, and the two bottom stars the feet. When this set of stars, called _kole_, reached the meridian the natives did more planting than at any other season. This _kole_ was so well recognized by the natives that we used the word as an equivalent for our word year. There is a legend that the moon was once a python and made a road for itself on the earth. Some adventurous trappers, however, snared it, but on noticing there was no more moonlight they let it go, whereupon it sprang into the sky and never again returned to earth. When there is no moon, some say that the python has gone on a long journey, and others that it dies every month. There is much shouting and gesticulating on the appearance of a new moon; and those who have enjoyed good health ask that it may be continued, and those who have been sick ascribe their complaint to the coming of the new moon, and ask it to take away bad health and give them good health in its place. Here, as on the Lower Congo, many believe that the sun returns from the west to the east during the night to be ready to rise in the morning. They were taught that the stars were a species of large fire-flies that formerly existed on the earth, but have now gone into space, and that the comets are signs that a great chief has recently died.