228 FROM THE NIGER TO THE NILE 



ments 9 ft. in diameter. It is a weird sight to see a small 

 canoe drifting down the river to some new fishing-ground 

 and carrying one of these huge baskets silhouetted against the 

 evening light, with the squatting figure of a man in the stern 

 stroking the water ever so lightly with his paddle for fear of 

 capsizing the tiny, heavy-laden craft. 



Another means for catching fish that the Banziri employ 

 are barricades of cane, which they set across the mouths of 

 the streams and backwaters. 



During our journey up the Ubangui we devoted ourselves 

 to making natural history collections ; I came off rather 

 better than Gosling, for birds and small mammals did not 

 take up much room, but the heads and skins of large game 

 always presented a difiicult problem in the transport arrange- 

 ments, for there was now no means of sending the specimens 

 back to the coast. Gosling, however, did not relax his 

 efforts, so leaving me at a small Banziri village thirty-five 

 miles above the junction of the River Kwango, where I 

 wished to make collections, he continued the journey a day 

 farther up the river to the big island of Luma, where he 

 hoped to find the rare Bongo antelope. 



The village I stayed at is on the right bank, and lies not 

 far from a chain of down-like hills 150 ft. in height, the 

 ravines and hollows of which are filled with trees and thickets 

 — a nature of country that was new to me, so I spent several 

 days in its exploration, setting out morning and evening on 

 long rambles with Mama Bornu, one of our Arab boatmen 

 who had become my gun-boy since we left Eort Archambault. 



Now and then in the long grass, through which I had to 

 push my way to reach the hills, I came upon clearings, not 



