My colleague, Mr. Stapleton, and I arranged that one should take charge of the house, buy the food brought for sale, and prepare the meals; while the other should look after the workmen, clear the grass away, mark out the ground, collect materials for building, and start the erection of a larger and more comfortable house than our poor hut. We were to alternate these duties—one was to be housekeeper one week, and head of the works department the next week. As I had been in the country nine years the heavier end of the stick fell naturally to my lot. I had brought two men and a lad with me from the Lower Congo, one Cameroons man capable of doing rough carpentry had joined us at Bolobo, and we had hired two men at Lukolele, so we had some help; but more was necessary, and we were able to engage a few natives—as many as we required—at twenty rods per month as pay, five rods per week rations, and one fathom of cloth per month to wear, which came in all to about two shillings, invoice price. This seems very small, but we were in the heart of Africa where brass rods and cloth were worth, at that period, many times their invoice value, for their buying power was very great, and food was so plentiful and cheap that 12 lbs. of native bread could be bought for a single brass rod, and a large-size fish for another rod. The men often requested that we would reduce their ration rods and proportionately increase their monthly pay, which we did. While we were digging the holes for the posts of our larger house, the natives who were curiously watching us, said: “Oh, to do that sort of thing,” imitating a scooping action with the words, “is _tima_.” So we wrote down _tima_ = to dig; when we had finished the hole, they said it was, “_lifoko_,” hence we put down _lifoko_ = hole; when we procured a post, they told us its name was _mwete_, and that we recorded as _mwete_ = a post; on standing the post in the hole they informed us that that was _suma mwete_, and we wrote that down as _suma mwete_ = to stand a post in a hole. When we placed the wall-plate on they gave us a word for that; when we brought hammer and nails out of our tool-house they acquainted us with the names for those things; when we hammered a nail to hold the wall-plate in position they gave us an expression for nailing; and if by any accident we hit our finger instead of the nail, they found a suitable expletive for that action also. Night by night my colleague and I added the words together we had procured during the day and counted them as eagerly as any miser might his gold, for we recognized in them a means by which we should eventually be able to deliver our message.