98 VISIT TO THE SAMBA NAGOSHI FALLS. Chap. V 



about tliirty-five yards broad, and is, at tliis time of 

 tlie year (the rainy season), a deep stream. The 

 banks are clothed with uninterrupted forest, leaving 

 only little entrances here and there at the ports of 

 the villages, which lie backwards from the river. 

 Silence and monotony reign over the landscape, un- 

 enlivened by the flight and song of birds or the 

 movement of animals. 



After a few miles' pull down the Ngouyai, we 

 arrived at a village of the Aviia tribe, called Mandji. 

 As soon as we stepped ashore, the timid villagers — 

 men, M^omen, and children — set off to run for the 

 forest, and all t]ie shouting of my Ashira Kamba 

 companions was for some time of no avail. We took 

 possession of the empty huts, and the people, after the 

 assurance that we had not come to do them harm, 

 dropped in one by one. Confidence had not quite 

 been restored when a gun fired by my man, Rebouka, 

 on the beach, again put to flight the timid savages. 

 This time one of our Ashiras had to follow them into 

 the thicket and coax them to come back. 



It was the dirtiest village I had yet seen in Africa, 

 and the inhabitants appeared to me of a degraded 

 class of negroes. The shape and arrangement of the 

 village were quite different from anything I had seen 

 before. The place was in the form of a quadrangle, 

 with an open space in the middle not more than ten 

 yards square, and the huts, arranged in a continuous 

 row on two sides, w^re not more than eight feet In'gh 

 from the gi'ound to the roof The doors were only 

 four feet high, and of about the same width, with 

 sticks placed across on the inside, one above the other, 



