Curls of smoke arose from the mountain-walls of the trough, showing that the bush was being burned; and spired up from a grassy palm-dotted plain, between two rocky promontories on the left bank, the site of the Chacha or Wembo village: in a gap of the herbage stood half-finished canoes, and a man was bobbing with rod, line, and float. After an hour's paddling we halted for breakfast under "Alecto Rock," a sheer bluff of reddish schist, 150 feet high; here a white trident, inverted and placed ten feet above the water, showed signs of H.M. Ship "Alecto," (late) Captain Hunt, whose boat passed up in 1855. The people call it Chimbongolo. The river is now three quarters of a mile wide, and the charming cove shows the brightest of sands and the densest of vegetation waving in the cool land-wind. Resuming our way at 9 P.M., we passed on the left "Scylla Rocks," then a wash, and beyond them four high and tree-clad heads off the right bank. Three are islets, the Zunga chya Gnombe--of the bull--formed by a narrow arm passing round them to the north: other natives called them Zunga chya Umbinda, but all seem to differ. These are the Gombac Islands of the chart, Hall Island being the easternmost, and the northern passage between the three horns and the main is called by us "Gombac Creek." Half an hour beyond was a mass of villages, in a large, grassy low-land of the left bank, girt by mountains higher than those down stream. Some outlying huts were called by the interpreters Suko Nkongo, and formed the "beach town" of large interior settlements, Suko do Wembo and Mbinda. Others said Lasugu or Sugo Nkongo, the Sooka Congo of the charts: others again for "Mbinda" proposed "Mpeso Birimba." This is probably the place where according to the mail of November, ‘73, diamonds were found, and having been submitted to "Dr. Basham (Dr. Bastian before mentioned), Director of the Museum of Berlin," were pronounced to be of very fine water. It is possible that the sandstone may afford precious stones like the itacolumite of the Brazil ("Highlands of the Brazil," i. 380), but the whole affair proved a hoax. In mid-stream rose No. 2, "One-Tree Island," Zunga chya Nlemba or Shika chya Nzondo; in Tuckey it is called Boola Beca or Blemba (the husband) Rock; the old ficus dying at the head, was based upon a pedestal which appeared groin-shaped from the east. Here the mirage was very distinct, and the canoes seemed to fly, not to swim-- "As when far out of sea a fleet descried, Hangs in the clouds." The northern bank shows a stony projection called by Maxwell "Fiddler's Elbow;" it leads to the fourth reach, the second of the north-eastern series; and the breadth of the stream, once more a mountain lake, cannot be less than two miles.