136 A JOURNEY UP THE RIVER CONGO. 
coming from afar and had prepared a welcome breakfast. 
Underneath a roughly-made awning, in the middle of a 
grove of Hyphcene palms, with a circle of natives eagerly 
watching our strange doings, we sat down to a meal which 
proudly exhibited the resources of the Kimpoko com- 
missariat. First of all, as a pick-me-up, a good glass of 
malafu, made from the sugar-cane ; then fried fish not 
unlike grey mullet, a splendid eel with creamy flesh and 
a very delicious flavour; then various meats skilfully 
cooked with native aes) followed by a banana pudding 
and pine-apples. This was 
not a meal to be grumbled at 
anywhere, and many a similar 
one may be enjoyed in Africa 
if the traveller cares to forage 
| for its component parts. How 
ies many people residing on the 
Congo take the trouble to 
| fish for themselves? And 
4 yet what sport they might 
have! No, they laneuidly 
dawdle about their verandahs 
and leave it to native enter- 
prise to occasionally provide 
them with a fish course to 
their dinner. And if no 
a natives come, then they are 
AN INHABITANT oF KImpoxo, Content to live perpetually 
on tinned provisions, a most 
costly form of nourishment and one that is only ex- 
cusable in barren places like Kinsembo, where hardly 
any native food is to be got, and where there is no 
interior transport to be paid for. The people of Kim- 
poko that surrounded us during our meal were good- 
humoured and well-behaved. They had a great variety 
of modes in dressing their hair, which is certainly much 
longer and more abundant than in the coast races. The 
chief of Kimpoko paid us a visit after breakfast. He 
seemed avery gloomy, sulky person, and, I believe, was 
ee ses Ee aan B 
