“Up the mountain!” they repeated, turning their eyes towards the towering height, which was shagged with trees and bristling with crags and hill fragments, with an unspeakable look of horror. They appeared to fancy the world was coming to an end, or some unnatural commotion would take place, for they stared at me with lengthened faces. Then, without a word, they climbed the stiff ascent of 1200 feet, and securing their black pigs, fowls, or goats in their houses, spread the report far and wide that the white man intended to fly his canoes over the mountains. On the other hand, the amiable Basessé, on the left table-land across the river, had gathered in hundreds on the cliffs overlooking the Inkisi Falls, in expectation of seeing a catastrophe, which certainly would have been worth seeing had we been so suicidally inclined as to venture over the falls in our canoes—for that undoubtedly was their idea. It was strange with what poor wits the aborigines of these new and exhumed regions credited us. These people believed we should be guilty of this last freak of madness just as the Wana Mpungu believed we should blindly stumble into their game-nets, and the Wy-yanzi of Chumbiri believed that, having been cheated out of 300 dollars’ worth of goods, we should, upon the mere asking, be cheated again. Indeed, I observe that, wherever I go, savage and civilized man alike are too apt to despise each other at first, and that, when finally awakened to some sense of consideration for each other, they proceed to the other extreme, and invest one another with more attributes than they really possess. Having decided upon the project, it only remained to make a road and to begin, but in order to obtain the assistance of the aborigines, which I was anxious for in order to relieve my people from much of the fatigue, the first day all hands were mustered for road making. Our numerous axes, which we had purchased in Manyema and in Uregga, came into very efficient use now, for, by night, a bush-strewn path 1500 yards in length had been constructed.