(114 A JOURNEY UP THE RIVER CONGO. 
beneath whose shade the humid soil is covered with a 
carpet of ferns. On the little sandy shore of one brooklet 
where the restrained water, quitting its barrier of velvety- 
green stones, whose severity is tempered by the tenderest 
covering of moss, spreads itself out with pride to twice 
its previous width, on the crisp white sand were deeply 
imprinted the footmarks of a leopard. Perhaps but a 
few minutes before he had come there to slake his thirst; 
he had stolen from his lair amid the dense brushwood to 
this quiet bay of the brook, where he stood in soft grey- 
ereen shade lapping the stream near where it fell in white 
streaks over the moss-carpeted stones. Long sprays of 
maidenhair tickled his forehead, great knotted lianas 
bumped against him as the slight breeze swayed these 
vegetable ropes backwards and forwards. Little peocephalus 
parrots mocked at him, and yellow-vented fly-catchers 
shrieked out his crimes; still he laps on with greedy 
thirst, soothed by the soft-whispering shade of trees and 
ferns in which he stands, with a background of intensely 
vivid sunlit verdure, where the forest breaks open to the 
sky. But the distant sound of men’s voices has disturbed 
him, and as they push their noisy way along the woodland 
path, crunching the dead twigs under foot and swishing 
back the pendent boughs, he softly slinks away into the 
untracked solitudes of dead sombre green, and leaves but 
the trace of his footsteps on the sandy shore of the little 
brook to attest his recent presence. 
Again the forest lies behind us, and we toil up the hill 
path as the sun is sinking, and enter a fine large village, 
some five hours’ march beyond the Inkisi river. “Here you 
get a good idea of Central African life. There is a general 
aspect of tidy prosperity, and the people are unusually 
sportive and merry amongst themselves. I even witnessed 
amorous toying 
what is rarely seen amongst these races 
and loving caresses between a fine stalwart husband and 
his plump lhttle wife. Children, pretty little children, 
were playing together and making dirt pies, one child 
looking on and carrying a baby as big as itself. One 
infant had the whooping cough, and another was playing 
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