STANLEY POOL TO THE KWA RIVER. 149 
never look back to it with sorrow, as marking the advent 
of a new and troublous change in their hitherto peaceful 
annals! The chief of Mbila presented me ere leaving 
with a fleeting souvenir of the village in the shape of the 
biggest plantains I have ever seen. They measured twenty 
inches in leneth and were very eatable. 
Now the sky began to threaten. Fearful peals of 
thunder resounded over the distant hills, and flashes of 
lightning played against the sombre grey clouds. Yet we 
escaped for a long time the threatened downpour, whilst 
the storm rolled half round the horizon, but at last we 
could hope no longer for immunity, and I strained my 
eyes anxiously to see the station of Msuata, which the 
Zanzibaris were already able to descry with their practised 
vision. (Great drops began to fall, and when we at leneth 
landed on the clayey shore a tremendous sheet of rain 
was hissing through the air, hurrying the still lingering 
twilight into darkness.- 
The chief of the station was absent at the time I 
arrived, but his men showed me the most prompt atten- 
tion, and I was soon installed in a comfortable bedroom, 
able to wash, change my clothes, and ascertain the damage 
my luggage had sustained—an almost daily occupation. 
February 2'7th—When I had risen this morning I 
found that Lieuteuant Janssen (the chief of Msuata 
Station) had arrived late the night before from a visit to a 
oreat chief across the water, Mpumo Ntaba (the “ goat ” 
chief) }, Makoko’s successor. He was, however, already up, 
aud gave me a very kind welcome when I went to meet 
him in the salle a manger, Where an appetising breakfast 
had been prepared. It consisted, if you are not tired of 
continually perusing African menws—of mugs of goat’s 
milk flavoured with a little tea, roast chickens, and 
“kikwanga” fried in ground-nut oil. (*« Kikwanga” is, 
as I have already mentioned, the root of the manioc or 
cassava, pounded, soaked and fermented, somewhat sour 
and “gluey” in taste. There is the ordinary article, 
called here by the natives Bingolo, and a superior kind 
more carefully prepared, with little air-holes in it lke a 
