68 A JOURNEY UP THE RIVER CONGO. 
yet he could express much sedate merriment whee his 
eyes twinkled and his white teeth gleamed in concert. 
The next one was Faraji, a young man_ in all the pleni- 
tude of physical development, a cood-natured giant, with 
a power in his muscular form that his lazy intellect hardly 
wotted of. Then came one of those worthy characters, 
Imbono, who illustrated the proverb, “handsome is as 
handsome does,’ for his uncouthness was forgotten when 
yeu found what an untiring and never-grumbling worker 
he was. Mafta was a very religious Mahomedan, who 
never touched any fermented liquor and looked pained 
when his laxer companions did so. Both Faraji and 
Imbono, although nominally Moslem in faith, became sad 
backsliders on the Congo. They drank fermented palm- 
wine when they could get it, and became very forgetful 
of the hours of prayer. Laziness was Faraji’s besetting 
sin, and he was a great framer. of plausible excuses. 
Imbono had no fault as a servant, save that he was ugly. 
Having assembled my sixteen porters, and sent them on 
in advance to the first camping-place, I bade my last 
eood-byes, and turning my back on white houses and 
white faces, ‘rapidly descended the red hill, crossed the 
little brook, mounted another hill, passed quickly through 
a native village, where the dogs and the people rushed 
out to salute us, and then, gasping with heat and exaspe- 
rated by the stony ascent, I arrived on the top of a small 
mountain and paused inevitably to regain my breath. 
Thence we trudged along through high grass that very 
much circumscribed the view. It is terribly annoying 
that all-obscuring grass; one of the first and foremost of 
Africa’s petty disagreeables. Some of this monstrous 
herbage scattered on us barbed seeds that were armed at 
one end by a sharp needle-point and surrounded with 
short reversed hairs, so that, once the seed entered the 
clothing it could only work inward and not backward. 
Soon our bodies were pricked and scratched and irritated — 
by the sharp-pointed awns that had peneies through 
the innermost clothing to the skin. 
Nguvi Mpanda, the next village on the road, is sur- 
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