The Shade of the Virgin Forest 243 



with moisture that the forest was filled with a hot-house atmo- 

 sphere and a disagreeable smell of dank decay and mouldiness. 

 Sometimes the rain helped to vary the deadly monotony of the 

 day. At the station on the Epulu, which flows into the Ituru 

 from the north-east, I sat in my tent on the 6th of April, in- 

 different to the rain, with my attention riveted by a perfectly 

 "new" newspaper article written early in February. Suddenly 

 I became aware that I, my table, and my chair were resting upon 

 a solitary island. My tent had been carelessly erected in a small 

 hollow, and all the rain-water in the place was flowing into the 

 depression. Great dams and skilfully constructed sluices 

 eventually diverted the flood water away. On another occasion 

 Schubotz was caught. The heavy rains had made his tent-ropes 

 shrink to such an extent that they tore the tent-pegs out of the 

 ground, and the whole structure fell in, burying the sleeping 

 proprietor beneath it. 



Our route took a curved direction from Irumu, through 

 Kifuku, Cambi ja Wambutti, Mokoto, Mamulambi on the Epulu, 

 Songolo and Agwama, to Mawambi on the Ituri. The river 

 bends to the south, and Stanley's road runs between. At 

 Mawambi we were met by the Chef de paste, M. Athanasoff, a 

 Bulgarian, and by Mildbraed, who was smiling contentedly. He 

 had evidently had the best of it on this march. He had 

 gathered rich booty amongst the exuberant green vegetation, 

 and, with the botanist's trained eye, had found much interest- 

 ing material which would naturally lie hidden from the layman, 

 however great a lover of nature and keen observer he might be. 



Mawambi is only a small post, possessing a Commts d'etat — 

 IM. Athanasoff already mentioned, the only representative of his 

 nation in the somewhat motley assortment of Congo State official- 

 dom — and a non-commissioned officer, a Swede, the commanders 

 of the small troop of Askari. The station yields about a 

 ton of rubber monthly, the natives being pledged to bring in 

 three kilogrammes per head in that time. About eight hundred 

 kilogrammes of ivory are also sent from this place to Boma 

 yearly for the State. 



