The Eastern Congo 



animal may yet be undiscovered, as we have seen from Mr. 

 Defries' experience. 



To continue our narrative : two more days brought us 

 to the new poste of Penghe on the Ituri River, and as the 

 Belgian official was absent we were greatly pleased when, 

 two days after our arrival, an Englishman rolled up, by name 

 William Cross, one of the most able prospectors of the Kilo 

 Mines. Neither of us realising each other's nationality, we 

 greeted one another with " Bon jour, je suis un anglais,'' 

 at which we laughed heartily. He was a Lancashire man 

 and a great raconteur, with an astonishing fund of anecdote, 

 and having travelled widely he kept us interested for hours 

 at a time. If I remember rightly it was also his birthday, 

 and Penghe happened to be the point at which, by his having 

 reached it, he had completed a circle round Africa, so we 

 asked Monsieur Ericksson, the agent of the Anglo-Belgian 

 Intertropical Trading Company then at Penghe up to 

 dinner and made a night of it over our solitary bottle 

 of whisky. 



Avakubi, a poste founded by Stanley, is the next Govern- 

 ment station down-river from Penghe, and is reached from 

 the latter place in three days by canoe or five days overland. 

 Having had such a lot of foot-slogging we of course took the 

 canoes, into which we piled our (by now very dilapidated) 

 kit. We occupied a leaf shelter in the centre of one canoe, 

 our boys enthroning themselves on our baggage behind, 

 and thus, after saying good-bye to our friend Cross, we pushed 

 into mid-stream and were soon being borne swiftly along on 

 the strong current helped by our lithe Wabali paddlers. 



With my camera lashed to the canoe I exposed many 

 feet of cinematograph film on the rich river scenery as it 



192 



