I reached camp just at dusk, and found that Changera, one of the Mboga chiefs, had come in to see me. His country lies between Tavara’s and Kavalli’s, and stretches from the top of the Congo Semliki watershed to the Semliju. The following morning I went down to see how they were cutting out the tusks, and found that hordes of Balegga had swarmed down from the hills for the meat. A weird sight it was: stark naked savages with long greased hair (in some cases hanging down on their shoulders) were perched on every available inch of the carcase, hacking away with knives and spears, yelling, snarling, whooping, wrestling, cursing, and munching, covered with blood and entrails; the new arrivals tearing off lumps of meat and swallowing them raw, the earlier birds defending their worms in the form of great lumps of fat paunch and other delicacies; while others were crawling in and out of the intestines lake so many prairie marmots. Old men, young men, prehistoric hags, babies, one and all gorging or gorged; pools of blood, strips of hide, vast bones, blocks of meat, individuals who had not dined wisely but too well, lay around in bewildering profusion; and in two short hours all was finished. Nothing remained but the gaunt ribs like the skeleton of a shipwreck, and a few disconsolate-looking vultures perched thereon. The Balegga live in the hills to the north of Mboga proper, though many of them are now under Changera, having fled south from the Belgians. They are good specimens of the real Central African savage, rather short, but well-set-up, innocent of clothing as a babe unborn, and blessed with an inordinate and insatiable craving for meat, which at that time was, if possible, intensified by the failure of their crops, owing to the drought. They wear their hair in long thin plaits, liberally smeared with grease, which gives them a very wild appearance, especially when, as I noticed in some cases, it hangs down over their face. In the intervals of gorging and hacking, they amused themselves by smearing the caked blood over their hair and bodies--a proceeding that gave general satisfaction. I gathered from them that many had lately come south to Mboga (which is at present administered from Fort Gerry) to avoid the persecution of the Belgians, who had killed, as they said, great numbers both of them and their neighbouring tribes to the north. They indignantly denied my soft impeachment of cannibalism, but from extraneous sources I gathered that any lightly grilled portion of my anatomy that might happen to wander round their way would be, so to speak, a "gone coon."