Another valuable article of commerce besides the bees-wax and india- rubber found here was the gum copal—not, however, amongst the possessions of the natives. We were first attracted to it at Kalulu Falls by the great quantities discovered between the rocks. One man collected about fifty pounds of it, under the impression that he would be able, on reaching the coast, to sell it for a few pice. Poor fellow! He had but little idea of what was in store for him and all of us, before we should arrive at the sea. The appearance of the substance proved that it had been long immersed in water. My own opinion is that it is fossilized gum carried down by the Livingstone river. On Cheandoah Island, a cake 15 lbs. in weight was discovered, besides many small pieces of two or three pounds’ weight, of the mellow red and pale white variety. The Babwendé are too rich in palm-oil to employ the gum, frankincense, and myrrh, and the other resins of the Burseraceæ, as the Waregga and natives of Karuru do, for lights. Of india-rubber the Mowa possess large quantities, as their wooded ravines and the right slopes of the great river furnish them with inexhaustible supplies. One enterprising fellow carried one load of it to sell to the Ba-Zombo, but he received so little cloth for it that he repented of the speculation. The commercial enterprise of the Babwendé has never recovered from the effects of the melancholy termination to a great caravan which they despatched some years ago. A disease which they say attacked the bowels broke out among them, and but few returned to their native land. The Basundi, who live to the west-north-west of Mowa, seldom venture near the verge of the Livingstone’s chasm, from which the loud waters send up sometimes an appalling volume of sound. Should the wind bear the noise of the falls to their ears while at the _zandu_, or market, they place their hands over their ears and immediately withdraw, or should they by accident wander near the river, and from some point observe it, they instantly veil their eyes and hurry away. One of the first customs obtaining among this tribe which first attracts the traveller’s attention is that of mourning. The heavily loaded muskets are announcing their grief at all hours, and a statistician would find it an easy matter to ascertain the death-rate of any of these districts, as well as the sex and age of the deceased, by reckoning the number of shots fired. Six announce a child’s death, ten that of a woman, and fifteen that of a man, the fire being directed at the bananas and palms, in the belief that the death was either caused by bad bananas or through some fault in the palm-juice.