At last I landed on the very shore where Querlaouen lived. Again I shouted, "Querlaouen, where are you?" I called his wife. The silence of death was there. I advanced, but lo! when I reached the village, it was deserted. Not a soul was seen. The jungle was the thickest where his little clearing had been. The houses had tumbled down. Desolation was before me. The grass had grown to a man's height in the little street. What a pang of sorrow shot through my heart! I could not help it. I shouted, "Querlaouen! my friend Querlaouen, what has become of you? You are not dead, are you?" and I looked with profound sadness on the scene around. Days that had passed came to my memory. I retraced my steps, disappointed, and with a foreboding heart. On the river bank, just as I was on the point of stepping into the canoe, a Bakalai came out from the jungle. He had recognized me, and came to meet me. As soon as I saw him, I cried out, "Where is friend Querlaouen?" His answer seemed so long in coming--"Dead!" "Dead!" I exclaimed; "Querlaouen dead!" and, I could not help it, two tears rolled down my cheeks. "Querlaouen dead!" I repeated again. The recollection of that good and noble savage flashed upon me as fast as thought can flash, and once more and in a low voice I said, "Dead! Querlaouen dead!" When I became composed again, I asked, "How did he die?" "One day," said the Bakalai man, "a few _moons_ ago--it was in the dry season--Querlaouen took his gun and a slave along with him, and went out into the woods to hunt after an elephant which had the day before destroyed a whole plantation of plantain-trees, and had trampled down almost a whole patch of sugar-cane. His slave, who accompanied him, but had left him for a few minutes to look at one of the plantations close by, heard the report of Querlaouen's gun. He waited for his return, but Querlaouen did not come back. He waited so long that he began to feel anxious, and at last set out to seek him. He found him in the forest dead, and trampled into a shapeless mass by the beast, which he had wounded mortally, but which had strength enough to rush at and kill its enemy. Not far from Querlaouen lay the elephant, dead." How poor Querlaouen, who was so prudent a hunter, could have been caught by the elephant, I could not learn. The man said it was an aniemba (witchcraft) that had killed Querlaouen; that Querlaouen's brother had bewitched him, and caused, by witchcraft, the elephant to trample upon him. The brother was killed by the mboundou which the people made him drink; for they said his brother made him go hunt that day, when he knew the elephant would kill him. That family, who really loved each other, and lived in peace and unity, was then divided asunder. The brother being killed, the women and children had gone to live with those to whom they belonged by the law of inheritance, and were thus scattered in several villages.