146 A JOURNEY UP THE RIVER. CONGO. 
able addition to our African cuisine. These little plump 
bananas are intensely sweet, so much so that no sugar is 
ever needed in cooking them. They, indeed, make up to 
me for the present want of saccharine matter which I am 
enduring. I have to drink my coffee without sugar, but 
the fried banana cakes quite atone for this want. 
During my repast, I enjoyed the ssthetic delights of 
bright moonlight shining in softened radiance through the 
overarching forest, ae numberless fireflies, like little 
points of electric lght, whiz round the thick bushes. 
There are no mosquitoes here, and with the tranquil peace - 
that pervades our little encampment, the perfect health 
that I enjoy, I feel that there are moments in Congo 
travel when a life of civilization is little to be envied. 
February 25th.—This morning a number of people, men, 
women and children, flocked down to see us and to sell 
fowls and other articles of food. The chief, a decidedly 
eood-looking man of about thirty, came also, and one .of 
his attendant wives spread a leopard-skin for him to sit 
on.. He had two little bells hung round his neck, with a 
multitude of teeth and beads ; the teeth, which were of 
monkeys and leopards, being strung into fantastic neck- 
laces. He was pleasant and. affable, and both he and his 
wives roared with laughter when, in order to ascertain the 
name of leopard in their dialect I leapt and snarled to 
imitate that animal. They call him here Neui, a word 
which under slightly changing forms is common to many 
Bantu tongues. In Kiswahili it is Chui. A curious 
point about the Bantu languages is that the name for lion 
varies greatly, while that for leopard, and, above all, dog, 
is comparatively unchanging. The people at this village 
had ground-nuts (Arachis hypogea) for sale, a thing IL 
have not seen for some time on the Congo. In the river 
here, hippopotami are as abundant and impudent as usual. 
Shortly after we had set off this morning, I was startled 
considerably, and my breakfast went flying out of my lap — 
at the sudden and unexpected bump which a big hippo- 
potamus gave to the bottom of the boat. If we had been — 
in a» canoe he would, of course, have wrecked us; as it 
SEM iiggleres a vgs 
