Amid the strong rich grass that covers the plateau exist ruins of some twenty-six buildings, which are said to have been churches, while straight lines of _mingomena_ bushes mark the sites of suburban villas and hamlets. The story runs that the old kings kept up the population of the Mbanza (chief town) by raids into the country. The natives of a town forty miles away would wake up in the morning to find themselves surrounded. As they came out of their houses they would be killed, until there was no further show of resistance; then those who remained would be deported to the capital and be compelled to build there, while many would be sold to the slave-traders on the coast. These days are for ever past. Men-of-war have so closely watched the coast that the slave trade has languished and died, except in Angola, where it exists under a finer name, the slave being considered a ‘Colonial,’ while Portuguese ingenuity and corruption arrange for ‘emigration’ to the islands San Thomé, Principe, and even to the Bissagos. While these slave raids in Congo are things of the past, a mild domestic slavery exists among the natives. In most cases the slaves are more like feudal retainers or serfs. A man of means invests his money in slaves, and thereby becomes more independent, for his slave retainers can support him in difficulties with his neighbours. It frequently happens that he builds a stockade at a little distance from the town in which he has been brought up, and this becomes the nucleus of a new town. In the latter end of the rainy season and the beginning of the ‘dries,’ they will cut _nianga_ grass, the long six-foot blades of which spring up out of the ground, and have no stem or nodes. This grass is dried and used for the covering of the huts. Stems of palm fronds are also trimmed and split. Papyrus is brought from the marshes, and strips of its green skin twisted into string, with which they tie together securely the posts and rafters, so that they may stand the strain of the fierce tornadoes which sweep the country. [Illustration: MANNER OF DRESSING THE HAIR.] CHAPTER IV. Home Life on the Congo. Perhaps the home life of the Congo folk may be best depicted if some familiar scenes are described. While engaged in the transport service of the mission, I was sitting quietly in my tent in Sadi Kiandunga’s town, when without the least warning a volley was fired at less than a hundred yards from my little camp. The men shouted, the women screamed, the wildest commotion ensued. Was it an attack upon the town? What had happened? As a man ran past the tent, I inquired the cause. ‘Oh, nothing,’ he said; ‘it is only a baby born, and everyone is glad and shouting out their joy at the safe birth; they have fired a feu-de-joie: don’t you do so in your country?’