Though I had never before been in Nkol Amvam I had had five of their boys in my school the preceding year. The chief had brought them out to the river. I was therefore not entirely a stranger, and as usual the exceedingly kind reception which I received from all the people was in striking contrast to that of those towns from which I had never had boys in the school; and the boys themselves fairly shouted for joy. This time they wanted me to take all the boys in the town. I held a service and then started back to the river taking nine boys from Nkol Amvam. I reached Fula at noon, just in time to prevent a quarrel between my crew and the two soldiers who were in charge of the government post. These natives of Senegal, although they know French, and many of them have some education, are still savages; and it is a pity that they should ever be armed and left among a people who are foreign to them without the supervening authority of a white man. They are cruel and bestial. These two men were a terror to all the husbands in the surrounding towns. This day they had come into the town, and seeing two of my men, Ndong Koni and Toko, who were chatting freely with the people and naturally attracting a good deal of attention, they thought they would let the townspeople see that they were the superiors of these coastmen. To their insolence my men responded with contempt, and the quarrel had gone about as far as mere words could go when I arrived. I soon settled that palaver and we hurried on board, and started down the river. We had great difficulty in turning the launch. The current was exceedingly swift, a roaring torrent, and the channel narrow and dangerous. As we began to turn, the bow necessarily came close to the bank into slack water, while the stern was in the strong middle-current. And before we could get sufficient way on her the stern would be carried down leaving her bow still up-stream and headed for the bank. Twice we had to drop the anchor. Then we threw out a line from the stern and passed it around a tree, and weighing the anchor let the bow turn with the current. We were soon rushing down the river through rapids and whirlpools, and swirling currents. We called at one or two towns on the way, and reached Angom about three o’clock, where I had work for the rest of the day. It was a great relief to get back into the well-known channel of the broad deep river that “flows unvexed to the sea.”