The assailants were put to flight after a series of charges more determined and prolonged than usual. This time, however, the blood of the strangers was fully up. They were tired of standing everlastingly on the defensive, of finding all their advances repelled with scorn and hatred. They carried the war into the enemy’s camp, and drove them out of their principal village into the forest. In the centre of the village was found a singular structure——a temple of ivory, the circular roof supported by thirty-three large tusks, and surmounting a hideous idol, four feet high, dyed a bright vermillion color, with black eyes, beard and hair. Ivory here was “abundant as fuel,” and was found carved into armlets, balls, mallets, wedges, grain pestles, and other articles of ornament and use; while numerous other weapons and implements of iron, wood, hide, and earthenware attested the ingenuity of the people. Their cannibal propensities were as plainly shown in the rows of skulls that grinned from poles, and the bones and other grisly remains of human feasts scattered about the village streets. [Illustration: ATTACK BY THE BANGALA.] They had now a peaceful river for a time, or rather they were enabled to float in its middle, or dodge from shore to shore, without direct attack. But food became scarce. On February 20, they got a supply from natives whom they propitiated. On the 23, Amima, wife of the faithful Kacheche died. Her last words to Stanley were, “Ah, master, I shall never see the sea again. Your child Amima, is dying. I have wished to see the cocoa-nuts and the mangoes, but, no, Amima is dying, dying in a Pagan land. She will never see Zanzibar again. The master has been very good to his children, and Amima remembers it. It is a bad world master, and you have lost your way in it. Good bye, master, and do not forget poor little Amima.” The simple pathos of this African girl sweetened a death-bed scene as much as a Christian’s prayer could have done. For a distance of 1000 miles from Stanley Falls the river is without cataracts, flowing placidly here, and there widening to ten miles, with numerous channels through reedy islands. Every thing was densely tropical——trees, flowers, plants, birds, animals. Crocodiles were especially plenty in the water, and all the large land animals of the equatorial regions could be seen at intervals. There were few adventures with these, for the party clung rigidly to their boats; but once in a while, a coterie, organized for a hunting bout, would come back with such stirring tales of attack and escape as we are accustomed to read of in connection with the eastern coasts of the continent where hunting the elephant, rhinoceros, lion, hippopotamus, is more of a regular business, and where spicy stories of adventure are accepted without question.