884 GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 
quite stout and healthy; she had curly hair and negro 
features. 
The only medicines used by them, and those but spar- 
ingly, are infusions and decoctions of native plants; and 
among others the root of a species of dioscorea, of a very 
strong bitter taste, is very much chewed by them as a pre- 
ventive of fluxes; but the Gangam Kissey and various 
fetiches are mostly resorted to for the cure of diseases ; and 
when the Gangam, who acts in the threefold capacity of 
priest, public accuser, and physician, sees the case to be 
desperate, he gives the patient over to Zamba M’Poonga. 
It is not easy to conceive for what purpose the shoals of 
missionaries were sent among the Congo negroes, nor in 
what manner they passed their time in the country. Their 
accounts are filled with the multitudes they baptized, and 
they baptized all who offered themselves ; but it is a very 
extraordinary fact that they should not have instructed 
some of them to read and write. No trace of any such in- 
struction appeared along the banks of the Zaire, except in 
the instance before mentioned ; nor did it appear that they 
had any mode of registering time or events, except by 
the moon, and in this way only for a very few years. 
Lancuace.—The language of the Congo and the neigh- 
bouring states, differs very materially from all the known 
languages of the negroes of northern Africa; but from the 
copious vocabularies obtained by Captain 'Tuckey, there 
would seem to be a radical affinity between all the lan- 
guages on the western coast of Southern Africa, and that 
