108 A JOURNEY UP THE RIVER CONGO. 
Vivi to Stanley Pool, to be perhaps followed | bye a 
railway. 
Lutete Station takes its name from a pevartil young 
chief in the neighbourhood, who has built a large village, 
and named it, as is the custom, after himself. ‘His town 
contains finer-built houses than any native settlement for 
miles round, and Lutete himself is a most enterprising 
young fellow, often accompanying his caravans of ivory 
down to Ambrizéte, on the coast, whence he returns with 
all sorts of trophies of civilization, such as coloured plates 
from the ‘ Graphic’ and bottles of soda-water. _ The latter, 
he is half frightened of, and. calls them “ devil-water;” 
but he generally makes a present of them to the chief of 
the station, who, of course, handsomely acknowledges the 
cift with more than its equivalent in cloth. The coloured 
pictures from our wide-spread illustrated papers are 
proudly stuck up in the chief’s own house. Whenever 
Lutete wishes to impress some uncouth savage chief from 
the interior, he takes him into his palisaded hut and shows 
him Cinderella with her broom, or ‘Goody Two Shoes,’ 
telling him, of course, bombastically, that they are special 
presents from ““ Mputo” * (beyond the sea), and the won- 
dlering savage goes away much impressed by the power 
and influence of Lutete. Shortly after my arrival Lutete, 
who was ill, sent his head wife to call upon me instead, 
and she brought me a large jar of palm wine as a present. 
This lady was extremely plain, but she was Lutete’s 
favourite wife because she has borne him many children. 
* “ Mputo” literally means, “‘agitated water,” and is in that sense 
primarily applied to the rapids of the Congo, where they seethe and 
foam. ‘hen further it is used to describe the sea with its troubled 
billows, and in a still wider sense means all that comes from the sea. 
The natives of the Lower Congo believe, or used to believe, that all — 
white men came up out of the sea, and that our clothes were made — 
of the skins of sea animals. Consequently, “ Muene Mputo” means 
“ chief of the sea” viz., chief of all the white men, and not, as the 
Portuguese would have us believe, “ the. King of ‘ Puto’ or Portugal.” 
If the natives wished to say “ Portugal” they would call it “ Poltogale,”’ 
not ** Mputo.” Further up the Congo, teyond the Pool, the al 
knowing little or nothing of the sea, call us “Sons of the Pky, 2 
«Sons of Heaven,” 
