During the next journey it was the river column that suffered. We were near our old camp at the confluence of the Ngula and the Ituri. A man in the advance canoe was shot in the back with a poisoned arrow. The wound was treated instantly with an injection of carbonate of ammonia, and no ill-effects followed. The day following, the river column again suffered, and this time the case was as fatal as that caused by a bullet, and almost instantaneous. Jabu, our cook, somewhat indisposed, was sitting in the stern of a canoe while the crew was on shore about forty feet from him, hauling it past a bit of rapids. A bold and crafty native, with fixed arrow before him, steadily approached the vessel and shot a poisoned wooden dart, which penetrated the arm near the shoulders and pierced the base of the throat. The wound was a mere needle-hole puncture, but Jabu had barely time to say “Mahommed!” when he fell back dead. Our next move was to Panga Falls. On the following day, 20th September, we made a road past the Falls, hauled twenty-seven canoes to the landing-place above, in view of Fort Island and then conveyed all goods and baggage to the camp. [Sidenote: 1888. Sept. 21. Nejambi Rapids.] During our first journey through the neighbourhood we had lost no person through native weapons, but since our first passage the natives had been stimulated into aggressive efforts by the ease with which the reckless improvident black when not controlled by a white man, could be butchered. The deserters from the advance column had furnished the wretches with several meals; the stupid, dense-headed Bakusu under Ugarrowwa had supplied them with victims until the cannibal had discovered that by his woodcraft he could creep upon the unsuspecting men and drive his spear through them as easily as through so many goats. We had lost fourteen men in thirty days. A silly Madi strayed into the bush on the 20th, to collect fuel. A native confronted him and drove his weapon clean through his body. On the 21st a Manyuema woman, fifty paces from our camp, was pierced with a poisoned arrow, and was dead before we could reach her. And, to complete the casualties, a Zanzibari of the rear column succumbed to manioc poison. Nejambi Rapids was our next camp. As soon as we had arrived and stacked goods, about a hundred men, driven by hunger, started in a body to forage for plantains. We, who remained in camp, had our hands full of work. The twenty-seven canoes required to be hauled, on the next day, past the rapids, and a road had to be cleared, and rattan cables were wanted for each vessel for hauling.