I received Makuba into the church and baptized him. He was an honest man and a faithful Christian. He had a mind of his own too, and was quite original in some of his opinions. He detested every form of affectation and was fond of saying that the black man must adhere to his own habits, customs, and fashions, in so far as they were not sinful, instead of imitating the white man. Nor had he any respect for the white man, whether missionary or trader, who would fall into the ways of the black man, in speech, or dress, or manners. I quite agree with him as to the principle, but I sometimes was at variance with him in the practice. For instance, when Makuba used the boys’ bread-knife to trim his toe-nails, and they objected, he invoked this favourite principle of loyalty to his race and their customs, and wanted to know why they affected white man’s ways so long as they could not change their skins. Without violating the delicate sentiment attaching to this custom I tried to convince Makuba that there were many black people in the world who would not think of trimming their toe-nails with the bread-knife. If I might judge by his polite but incredulous smile, he probably thought that I was mistaken on this point. But if Makuba were preparing my dinner he would do it with scrupulous cleanliness, not forgetting that I am a white man. One day we went in the _Evangeline_ to a town some thirty miles distant, where there was a Christian, Mba Obam (usually contracted to Mb’Obam) who was the uncle of one of my boat-boys, Ndong Koni. Shortly after our arrival Ndong Koni advised that we should hold our service before night, as the town was preparing for a great celebration (that is to say, a great dance) that night, to which they had invited the people of an adjacent town. The occasion of all the revelry was the end of the term of mourning for a prominent man of the town, who having been dead a whole month had been sufficiently lamented. It remained only to give him a good “send-off,” and to release his friends from any further obligations. During the month of mourning the women wail every night, and there is no dancing.