In our boat I employed the halt for examining the islands near Bandangi. We discovered lengthy heaps of oyster-shells on one island, one of which was sixty feet long, ten feet wide, and four feet high; we can imagine the feasts of the bivalves that the aborigines enjoyed during their picnics, and the length of time that had elapsed since the first bivalve had been eaten. On my return I noticed through a bank-slip in the centre of the curve a stratum of oyster-shell buried three feet under alluvium. Our native boy Bakula, informed us that inland north lived the Baburu, who were very different from the river tribes, that up river, a month's journey, would be found dwarfs about two feet high, with long beards; that he had once journeyed as far as Panga where the river tumbled from a height as high as the tallest tree, that the Aruwimi was now called Lui by the people of the left bank, but that to the Baburu on the right bank it was known as the Luhali. Bakula was an exceptionally crafty lad, a pure cannibal, to whom a mess of human meat would have been delectable. He was a perfect mimic, and had by native cunning protected himself by conforming readily to what he divined would be pleasing to the strangers by whom he was surrounded. Had all the native tribes adopted this boy's policy our passage through these novel lands would have been as pleasant as could be desired. I have no doubt that they possessed all the arts of craft which we admired in Bakula, they had simply not the courage to do what an accident had enabled him to carry out. From Chief Bambi's town of the Banalya we moved to Bungangeta villages by river and land on the 15th. It was a stern and sombre morning, gloomy with lowering and heavy clouds. It struck me on this dull dreary morning, while regarding the silent flowing waters of the dark river and the long unbroken forest frontage, that nature in this region seems to be waiting the long expected trumpet-call of civilization--that appointed time when she shall awake to her duties, as in other portions of the earth. I compared this waiting attitude to the stillness preceding the dawn, before the insect and animal life is astir to fret the air with its murmur, before the day has awakened the million minute passions of the wilds; at that hour when even Time seems to be drowsy and nodding, our inmost thoughts appear to be loud, and the heart throbs to be clamorous. But when the young day peeps forth white and gray in the East the eyelids of the world lift up. There is a movement and a hum of invisible life, and all the earth seems wakened from its brooding. But withal, the forest world remains restful, and Nature bides her day, and the river shows no life; unlike Rip Van Winkle, Nature, despite her immeasurably long ages of sleep, indicates no agedness, so old, incredibly old, she is still a virgin locked in innocent repose.