Chap. XV. THE ASHANGUI TRIBE. 309 



wanted to be paid partly in powder, and many of tlie 

 villagers were provided with a little measure made 

 of a hollowed gourd expressly for the purpose of 

 measuring the powder that they received from me 

 in payment of food and so forth. I wondered at 

 first why they were so anxious to obtain gunpowder, 

 as they had no guns and were even afraid of handling 

 one ; so I asked them what they wanted to do with 

 the powder they got from me, as they had no guns. 

 They replied that a tribe called Ashangui, living 

 beyond the Njavi and Abombo, bought it and ga.ve 

 them iron for it ; that all the iron they had came 

 from there, that there was a good deal of iron " in 

 the land ; " that all the anvils came from there, and 

 that their swords, spears, and arrow-heads, in fact, 

 all their edged implements, were made of iron bought 

 from that country. The iron from the West Coast 

 sold by the trades does not reach so far inland as 

 this place. 



We must conclude, from their buying the powder, 

 that the Ashangui are in possession of guns, which 

 they obtain from traders on the Congo. From 

 Niembouai eastward I found beads were not un- 

 common, and these must have been obtained by 

 way of the Congo and through the Ashangui ; in 

 fact, all the natives told me they came up the large 

 river : they get also copper from Europe. I inquired 

 about the Sapadi, or people with cloven feet — a 

 mythical race, believed in by all negroes, and, accord- 

 ing to the reports of Ashango slaves on the coast, 

 living in this country — but, as I had expected, their 



