_1st November, 1869._--Being now well rested, I resolved to go west to Lualaba and buy a canoe for its exploration. Our course was west and south-west, through a country surpassingly beautiful, mountainous, and villages perched on the talus of each great mass for the sake of quick drainage. The streets often run east and west, in order that the bright blazing sun may lick up the moisture quickly from off them. The dwelling houses are generally in line, with public meeting houses at each end, opposite the middle of the street, the roofs are low, but well thatched with a leaf resembling the banana leaf, but more tough; it seems from its fruit to be a species of Euphorbia. The leaf-stack has a notch made in it of two or three inches lengthways, and this hooks on to the rafters, which are often of the leaf-stalks of palms, split up so as to be thin; the water runs quickly off this roof, and the walls, which are of well-beaten clay, are screened from the weather. Inside, the dwellings are clean and comfortable, and before the Arabs came bugs were unknown--as I have before observed, one may know where these people have come by the presence or absence of these nasty vermin: the human tick, which infests all Arab and Suaheli houses, is to the Manyuema unknown. In some cases, where the south-east rains are abundant, the Manyuema place the back side of the houses to this quarter, and prolong the low roof down, so that the rain does not reach the walls. These clay walls stand for ages, and men often return to the villages they left in infancy and build again the portions that many rains have washed away. The country generally is of clayey soil, and suitable for building. Each housewife has from twenty-five to thirty earthen pots slung to the ceiling by very neat cord-swinging tressels; and often as many neatly made baskets hung up in the same fashion, and much firewood. _5th November, 1869._--In going we crossed the River Luela, of twenty yards in width, five times, in a dense dripping forest. The men of one village always refused to accompany us to the next set of hamlets, "They were at war, and afraid of being killed and eaten." They often came five or six miles through the forests that separate the districts, but when we drew near to the cleared spaces cultivated by their enemies they parted civilly, and invited us to come the same way back, and they would sell us all the food we required.