brandishing spears and howling at the expected feast, came running down from a neighbouring hill. I was still uncertain as to the exact state of affairs. The refugees and the numerous corpses made it obvious that there was something in the wind, but I imagined that it was merely an ordinary case of native fractiousness, some intertribal squabble, such as occurs every day in these remote corners of the Dark Continent, and that the Baleka and their doings were merely a characteristic effort of the African imagination. But the diabolical noise made by the onrushing natives decided me that the matter was serious. I questioned my guide as to their intentions, and was scarcely reassured by his naïve remark: "They are coming to eat us." Accordingly I kept quiet behind a clump of grass till they were quite close and there was no further doubt of their intentions, and opened fire with my light rifle. They disappeared like rabbits into the standing crops. We then hurried on to the huts from which we had seen these people come; but they were too quick for us, and fled. A cloud of vultures hovering over the spot gave me an inkling of what I was about to see, but the realization defies description; it haunts me in my dreams, at dinner it sits on my leg-of-mutton, it bubbles in my soup--in fine, Watonga would not eat the potatoes that grew in the same country, and went without food for forty-eight hours rather than do so: ask your African friends what that means; negroes have not delicate stomachs. Loathsome, revolting, a hideous nightmare of horrors; and yet I must tell briefly what I saw, for the edification of any disciple of the poor-dear-black-man, down-with-the-Maxim, Africa-for-the-African Creed, who may chance to peruse these pages. _Item_.--A bunch of human entrails drying on a stick. _Item_.--A howling baby. _Item_.--A pot of soup with bright yellow fat. _Item_.--A skeleton with the skin on lying in the middle of the huts; apparently been dead about three months. _Item_.--A gnawed thigh-bone with shreds of half-cooked meat attached. _Item_.--A gnawed forearm, raw. _Item_.--Three packets of small joints, evidently prepared for flight, but forgotten at the last moment. _Item_.--A head, with a spoon left sticking in the brains. _Item_.--A head, one cheek eaten, the other charred; hair burnt, and scalp cut off at top of forehead like the peel of an orange; one eye removed, presumably eaten, the other glaring at you. _Item_.--Offal, sewage. _Item_.--A stench that passeth all understanding, and, as a fitting accompaniment, a hovering cloud of crows and loathly, scraggy-necked vultures.