Close by stood piled up mat-sacks of charcoal, with a couple of boys ready to supply the fuel, and about two yards off was a smaller smithy, where the iron was shaped into hammers, axes, war-hatchets, spears, knives, swords, wire, iron balls with spikes, leglets, armlets, and iron beads, &c. The art of the blacksmith is of a high standard in these forests, considering the loneliness of the inhabitants. The people have much traditional lore, and it appears from the immunity which they have enjoyed in these dismal retreats that, from one generation to another, something has been communicated and learned, showing that even the jungle man is a progressive and an improvable animal. _Nov. 17._—On the 17th of November we crossed several lofty hilly ridges, separated by appallingly gloomy ravines, through which several clear streams flowed westward, and after a march of eleven miles north- westerly through the dank, dripping forests, arrived at Kampunzu, in the district of Uvinza, where dwell the true aborigines of the forest country. Kampunzu village is about five hundred yards in length, formed of one street thirty feet wide, flanked on each side by a straight, symmetrical, and low block of houses, gable-roofed. Several small villages in the neighbourhood are of the same pattern. The most singular feature of Kampunzu village were two rows of skulls, ten feet apart, running along the entire length of the village, imbedded about two inches deep in the ground, the “cerebral hemispheres” uppermost, bleached, and glistening white from weather. The skulls were 186 in number in this one village. To me they appeared to be human, though many had an extraordinary projection of the posterior lobes, others of the parietal bones, and the frontal bones were unusually low and retreating; yet the sutures and the general aspect of the greatest number of them were so similar to what I believed to be human, that it was with almost an indifferent air that I asked my chiefs and Arabs what these skulls were. They replied, “sokos”—chimpanzees (?). “Sokos from the forest?” “Certainly,” they all replied. “Bring the chief of Kampunzu to me immediately,” I said, much interested now because of the wonderful reports of them that Livingstone had given me, as also the natives of Manyema. The chief of Kampunzu—a tall, strongly-built man of about thirty-five years of age—appeared, and I asked, “My friend, what are those things with which you adorn the street of your village?” He replied, “Nyama” (meat). “Nyama! Nyama of what?” “Nyama of the forest.” “Of the forest! What kind of thing is this Nyama of the forest?” “It is about the size of this boy,” pointing to Mabruki, my gun-bearer, who was 4 feet 10 inches in height. “He walks like a man, and goes about with a stick, with which he beats the trees in the forest, and makes hideous noises. The Nyama eat our bananas, and we hunt them, kill them, and eat them.” “Are they good eating?” I asked.