We resolved to venture in to discover the cause. There was a deathly silence around. Numbers of earthenware pots, whole, and apparently but little used, were strewn about the beach and among the reeds flanking the path which led to the village, besides stools, staffs, hand-brooms, gourds, etc., etc. This was ominous. There was probably a trap or a snare of some kind laid for us. We retreated therefore hastily to the boat and canoe, and thirty men were armed. Thus, better prepared against the wiles of savage men, we advanced again cautiously towards the village. As we were surmounting the high ground on which the village was built, we saw a sight which froze the blood—the body of a poor old man, in a decomposed state, with a broad spear-wound in the back, and near it much dried blood. He had probably been dead five or six days. A few yards farther, we saw the decapitated corpse of another man, and 10 feet from it, in a furrow or water channel, the bodies of three men and a woman, one of them dislimbed. We arrived before the village. The defences were broken down and burnt. About fifty huts still stood unharmed by fire, but all the others were consumed. A few scorched banana stalks stood as a witness of the fury of the conflagration. But despite the black ruin and the charred embers which so plentifully strewed the ground, evidences were clear that flight had been hasty and compulsory, for all the articles that constitute the furniture of African families lay scattered in such numbers around us that an African museum might have been completely stocked. Stools, mats, spears, drinking-vessels, cooking-pots of all sizes, walking-staffs, war-clubs, baskets, trenchers, wooden basins, scoops, etc. There were also abundant proofs that this ruin was recent; a few wood-rails still smoked, the hearths were still warm, the dead were not putrefied. A coal-black cat made a dash from one of the houses yet standing, and the sudden motion startled us all in this place of death and vengeance. Ponda, the chief of this village, had no doubt given some provocation to this unknown enemy. Para thought the enemy must have been the robbers of Ndereh, for the condition of the village bore signs of superior energy in the attack. And yet it had been constructed with a view to secure immunity from the fate which generally overtakes weak communities in Africa in the neighbourhood of ferocious and war-loving tribes. A wide ditch—in some parts 10 feet deep—and a strong palisade, with an earthwork, surrounded the settlement. The lake was close by to supply water, the country near it was open, and the sharpshooters’ nest-like towers commanded a wide view. From some thirty bleached skulls arranged before Ponda’s own house we argued that he did not himself fail to proceed to the same extremes which his enemies had now adopted to his utter ruin. It is the same story throughout Africa.