150 A JOURNEY UP THE RIVER CONGO. = 
Gruyere cheese. This is Luku, and it faintly resembles 
muffins when hot and eaten with butter.) 
M. Janssen is one of the most practical and sensible 
members of the Expedition.* His talent for making the 
best of limited resources is wonderful, and Msuata, purely 
through his energetic and enterprising labours, has become > 
one of the most comfortable stations on the route. He 
has constructed a swimming-bath by damming up a little 
river, he has made a large and a small gridiron out of the 
barrels of damaged guns, a table and benches from the 
planks of old canoes, and an oven of sun-dried bricks. 
He has planted a kitchen-garden which produces all 
manner of vegetables; has organised a_ well-stocked 
poultry-yard, containing over eighty fowls, with a house 
for their numerous eggs to be laid in; four or five of his 
goats are always in milk, and amongst other discoveries 
he has learnt to make native salads and sauces, and to- 
extract an excellent oil from the ground-nuts, which at 
once serves for cooking purposes and for lighting up 
the lamps he has manufactured to use when his candles 
elve out. . | 
Around the station of Msuata, the commonest birds are 
little “bishop” finches, or more properly, weaver-birds, 
with scarlet and black plumage; huge plantain-eaters,f 
blue-green in colour, with a violet crest; large bee-eaters, 
kites, egrets, and cuckoos. On the northern bank of the 
river the lion is said to be known, and the chief Makoko 
received De Brazza seated on the skin of one of these 
animals. If Felis leo is really found in this part of the 
Congo regions it is curious, as he is not a forest-loving 
animal, and moreover would not find in these countries 
the herds of big game which are and have been the raisin 
déire of this great cat. 
The natives on the northern bank opposite Msuata pro- 
fess to know the gorilla, and certainly describe it accurately, 
but say it is found far inland, and does not reach to the 
* He is sinc: unhappily deid; drowned by the upsetting of a canoe 
on the Congo, July, 1883. 
| Schizorhis gigantea. 
