At 5.30 appeared the advance guard of the column, and presently a furious tempest visited us, with such violent accompaniments of thunder and lightning as might have been expected to be necessary to clear the atmosphere charged with the collected vapours of this humid region--through which the sun appeared daily as through a thick veil. Therefore the explosive force of the electric fluid was terrific. All about us, and at all points, it lightened and shattered with deafening explosions, and blinding forks of flame the thick, sluggish, vaporous clouds. Nothing less than excessive energy of concentrated electricity could have cleared the heavy atmosphere, and allowed the inhabitants of the land to see the colour of the sky, and to feel the cheering influence of the sun. For four hours we had to endure the dreadful bursts; while a steady stream of rain relieved the surcharged masses that had hung incumbent above us for days. While the river party and advance guard were housed in the upper village, the rear guard and No. 4 Company occupied Bandangi, at the town end of the _crescent_, and we heard them shooting minute guns to warn us of their presence; while we vainly, for economical reasons, replied with the tooting of long ivory horns. Such a large population naturally owned exclusive fields of manioc, plantations of bananas, and plantains, sugar-cane, gardens of herbs, and Indian corn, and as the heavy rain had saturated the ground, a halt was ordered. By nine o'clock the rear guard was known to have arrived by Nelson's voice crying out for "chop and coffee"--our chop consisted of cassava cakes, a plantain or so roasted, and a mess of garden greens, with tea or coffee. Flesh of goat or fowl was simply unprocurable. Neither bird nor beast of any kind was to be obtained. Hitherto only two crocodiles and but one hippo had been discovered, but no elephant, buffalo, or antelope or wild hog, though tracks were numerous. How could it be otherwise with the pioneers' shouts, cries, noise of cutting and crushing, and pounding of trees, the murmur of a large caravan? With the continuous gossip, storytelling, wrangling, laughing or wailing that were maintained during the march, it was simply impossible. Progress through the undergrowth was denied without a heavy knife, machette, or bill-hook to sever entangling creepers and while an animal may have been only a few feet off on the other side of a bush, vain was the attempt to obtain view of it through impervious masses of vegetation.