On the next day we began loading for the third and final departure, before dawn, and at 7.30 A. M. were on the dew-dripping way. Beyond the settlement a patch of jungle led to cultivated grounds belonging to the villagers, whose scattered and unfenced abodes were partially concealed by dense clumps of trees. The road then sweeping parallel with the river plain, which runs from N.W. to S.E., crossed several swamps, black muddy bottoms covered with tall thick rushes and pea-green paddy, and the heavily laden asses sunk knee-deep into the soft soil. Red copalliferous sand clothed the higher levels. On the wayside appeared for the first time the Khambi or substantial kraals, which evidence unsafe travelling and the unwillingness of caravans to bivouac in the villages. In this region they assumed the form of round huts and long sheds or boothies of straw or grass supported by a framework of rough sticks firmly planted in the ground and lashed together with bark-strips. The whole was surrounded with a deep circle of thorns which--the entrance or entrances being carefully closed at nightfall, not to reopen until dawn--formed a complete defence against bare feet and naked legs. About half-way a junction of the Mbuamaji road was reached, and the path became somewhat broader and less rough. Passing on the right, a hilly district, called Dunda or “the Hill,” the road fell from the ancient sea-beach into the alluvial valley of the Kinganí River; presently rising again, it entered the settlement of Nzasa, a name interpreted “level ground.”