iS et 
154 A JOURNEY UP THE RIVER CONGO. 
favourite maroon dye. Did they know it, these home- 
made stuffs are far more tasteful than the staring Man- 
chester cottons which they are just beginning to covet. 
The women are always more clothed than the men, from 
the time that they are nubile, but as children, and in ado- 
lescence they are generally without even a scrap of cloth- - 
ing, whereas the little boys never seem unprovided. with 
a tiny apron. The women do not attempt, as in some 
tribes, to hide their breasts; perhaps for the reason that 
their busts are modelled and developed to a much more 
artistic degree than is usual among African races. 
Some of the young girls are charming little creatures, 
with their tidily dressed hair, their small hands and feet, 
and their budding forms of womanhood. Until they 
reach a marriageable age, they run about gaily in all the 
beauty and innocence of perfect nudity, the sole attempt 
at—what shall I say ?—clothing, or personal adornment, — 
being a large brass collar round the neck, and copper 
anklets. There was one such child that I shall always 
remember with affection in this village at the mouth of 
the Kwa:. We took a mutual fancy to one another, and 
she constituted herself my lttle guide, taking my hand 
with the greatest confidence and leading me through the 
village to show me the sights. Seeing 1 me gather flowers 
to preserve, she afterwards presented me with an armful 
which she had laboriously plucked, and later on she 
pressed into my hand three new- laid eggs, warm from the 
nest, from which she had probably robbed them. 
One word for the babies: they squall terribly, and are 
endowed with plentiful crops of hair, which is finer in 
quality and less curly than that of their grown-up 
parents. 
The people here have a Mee craving for salt, and the 
chief was enraptured with the bestowal of a handful ; one 
gentleman brought his wife, or one of his wives, and 
wished to exchange her for a moderate quantity of the 
precious condiment. , 
There was a fine Races tree in the centre of a broad 
square here, covered with large yellow blossoms of graceful 
