36 A JOURNEY UP THE RIVER CONGO. 
a taste of weak tea. On"the opposite side of Vivi Hill 
opens another valley, full of richly-hued green woods, 
rising and falling till they reach the distant rolling downs 
that rise above “Hell’s Cauldron.” Behind Vivi a huge 
mass of rock towers up into the sky, scantily covered with © 
tufts of vegetation, and surmounted by great biocks of 
stone that look like the remains of a cairn or some 
Druidical temple. 
To describe one of Mr. Stanley’s viatiota’ is no very 
satisfactory task, for, by the time your description is 
printed and published, the place may be utterly trans- 
formed, and indeed, so quickly do things march now on 
the Congo that Vivi, the most stable of all the establish- 
ments, is probably no longer as I knew it.* However, in 
the beginning of 1883, the arrangement of the buildings 
was pretty much as follows. On the summit, and near 
the riverward edge of the cliff, was a flat. and level 
platform, nearly artificial, and about eighty feet square. 
Here were placed several important houses. The prin- 
cipal one contained an upper story, with Mr. Stanley’s 
bedroom, and on the ground-floor a large sitting-room, 
surrounded by amply “filled book-shelves, the doctor’ S 
room and laboratory, the bed-room of the second in 
command, a “store,” an office or bureau, and a gun-room. 
This house was going to be removed and rebuilt—or 
rather, an entirely new building was to be put in its 
place, as it was hot and badly adapted for the climate ; 
the double walls did not seem to render it much cooler, 
and moreover, had become the home of a colony of 
abominable little bats, whose squeaking, both at dawn 
and sunset, was most fidgeting; perhaps, however, on 
account of the bats, mosquitoes were almost absent at 
Vivi, a great and appreciable relief to those who suffer 
from their venomous bites. The opposite building to 
“Stanley's House” was a large sort of one-storied barrack, 
containing a number of bedrooms for the white residents, 
and a large dining-room open on three sides to the air. 
* Is no longer in existence, as I have already pointed out.—H. H. J. 
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