CABBAGES AND CONCERTS 235 



had about half an acre of potatoes, which he used to 

 visit at every spare moment of the day. I am sure 

 he knew every single plant by sight, and at each 

 visit he made a note of those that were to be dug in 

 the evening or the next morning. We used to have 

 bets in tobacco as to the probable number of potatoes 

 which each plant would bear, and on the rare occa- 

 sions when I won, he would hurl abuse at the head 

 of his grinning gardener for having under-fed or 

 over-fed the plant, as the case might be. He also 

 grew cabbages of colossal dimensions, and admirable 

 lettuces. His salad-making occupied a long interval 

 between the cabbage-soup and the cJiou farci, which 

 was the invariable dinner, and was an art that 

 would have been worth a fortune to him in an 

 European restaurant. His other recreation was 

 singing, and his repertoire was extensive and 

 peculiar. For an hour or two every evening we 

 used to sit out in the square and sing songs of all 

 nations to the listening earth and the wondering 

 natives. He nearly wept for joy when he found that 

 I knew the round ' Frere Jacques,' and thenceforward 

 it became a regular number in the evening concert. 



From Kabambare to the Congo is a march of 

 twelve or fourteen days, which we hoped to make 

 in peace, but there was trouble still in store for us. 

 Near a place called Plana Lusanghi, a large village, 

 or, rather, a collection of large villages, with a very 

 dense population, nine of our porters ran away. It 

 was their own country, and presumably they could 



