I foresaw trouble in passing these settlements. Presently a snake-like war canoe with hawser-holes like eyes, crept out from the southern shore; a second fully manned lay in reserve, lurking along the land, and armed men crowned the rocks jutting into the stream. We were accosted by the first craft, in which upon the central place of honour sat Mpeso Birimbá, a petty chief of Suko Nkongo; a pert rascal of the French factory, habited in a red cap, a green velvet waistcoat, and a hammock-shaped tippet of pine-apple fibre; his sword was a short Sollingen blade. The visit had the sole object of mulcting me in rum and cloth, and my only wish was naturally to expend as little as possible in mere preliminaries. The name of Manbuku Prata was duly thrown at him with but little effect: these demands are never resisted by the slave-dealers. After much noise and cries of "Mwendi" (miser, skin-flint) on the part of the myrmidons, I was allowed to proceed, having given up a cloth twenty-four yards long, and I felt really grateful to the "trade" which had improved off all the other riverine settlements. Beyond this point we saw nothing but their distant smokes. Before the second north-eastern reach, the interpreters exclaimed "Yellala falla"--"the cataract is speaking," and we could distinctly hear the cheering roar. The stream now assumed the aspect of Niagara below the Falls, and the circular eddies boiling up from below, and showing distinct convexity, suggested the dangerous "wells" of the northern seas. Passing the "Three Weird Sisters," unimportant rocks off, the right bank, we entered upon the remarkably long stretch, extending upwards of five miles, and, from its predominating growth, we proposed to call it "Palmyra Reach." The immediate river banks were clad with sedge, and the broad leaves of the nymphæa, a plant like the calamus of Asia, but here used only as a toothpick, began to oust the rushy and flaggy growth of the lower bed. The pink balls of the spinous mimosa, and bright flowers, especially the convolvulus and ipomaea, illuminated the dull green. The grassy land at the foot of the mountains was a mere edging, faced by outlying rocks, and we were shown the site of a village long ago destroyed. The Nteba, or palmyra nobilis, mixed here and there with a glorious tamarind, bombax or calabash, forms a thin forest along the reach, and rarely appears upon the upper hills, where we should expect it. The people use both fruit and wine, preferring, however, the liquor of the Ebah (oil palm-tree), and the autumnal fires can hardly affect so sturdy a growth. The other trees are the mfuma, cotton-tree or bombax (Pentandria truncospinoso, Smith), much valued as a canoe: Merolla uses Mafuma, a plural form, and speaks of its "wonderful fine wool." The wild figs show glorious stature, a truly noble growth, whose parents were sun and water.