“Great events from trivial causes spring”—and while I was trying to calculate how many Kubaba (measure of 2 lbs.) of millet-seed would be requisite to fill all these Dutch-oven mouths, and how many cowries would be required to pay for such a large quantity of millet, and wondering at the antics of the juveniles of the population, whose uncontainable, irrepressible wonder seemed to find its natural expression in hopping on one leg, thrusting their right thumbs into their mouths to repress the rising scream, and slapping the hinder side of the thighs to express or give emphasis to what was speechless—while thus engaged, and just thinking it was time to depart, it happened that one of the youthful innocents already described, more restless than his brothers, stumbled across a long heavy pole which was leaning insecurely against one of the trees. The pole fell, striking one of my men severely on the head. And all at once there went up from the women a genuine and unaffected cry of pity, and their faces expressed so lively a sense of tender sympathy with the wounded man, that my heart, keener than my eyes, saw through the disguise of filth, nakedness, and ochre, the human heart beating for another’s suffering, and I then recognised and hailed them as indeed my own poor and degraded sisters. Under the new light which had dawned on me, I reflected that I had done some wrong to my dusky relatives, and that they might have been described less harshly, and introduced to the world with less disdain. Before I quitted the village, they made me still more regret my former haughty feelings, for the chief and his subjects loaded my men with bounties of bananas, chickens, Indian corn, and malafu (palm-wine), and escorted me respectfully far beyond the precincts of the village and their fields, parting from me at last with the assurance that, should I ever happen to return by their country, they would endeavour to make my second visit to Uhombo much more agreeable than my first had been. _Oct. 5._—On the 5th of October our march from Uhombo brought us to the frontier village of Manyema, which is called Riba-Riba. It is noteworthy as the starting-point of another order of African architecture. The conical style of hut is exchanged for the square hut with more gradually sloping roof, wattled, and sometimes neatly plastered with mud, especially those in Manyema. Here, too, the thin-bodied and long-limbed goat, to which we had been accustomed, gave place to the short-legged, large-bodied, and capacious-uddered variety of Manyema. The grey parrots with crimson tails here also first began to abound, and the hoarse growl of the fierce and shy “soko” (gorilla?) was first heard.