178 A JOURNEY UP THE RIVER CONGO. 
a village called Itimba, a little below Chumbiri’s town, 
near the point where the Congo begins to narrow down 
from a breadth of nine or ten miles to a few hundred 
yards. Here, at Itimba, we found the people just about 
to proceed to the obsequies of a dead fellow-townsman, an 
old man, apparently of some standing. The chief and his 
subjects were in great perplexity. Of late years it has 
become “de rigueur,” since guns were introduced into the 
Upper Congo regions, to fire a salute over the body of a 
defunct person, especially if he be of any distinction ; and 
the inhabitants of this village, possessing only one pitiful 
old flintlock amongst them, and that terribly out of repair, | 
were hesitating, when we arrived, as to what course they 
should pursue—-whether they should charge and fire this 
one dilapidated gun and risk its bursting, or whether the © 
deceased should be allowed to wend his way to the land — 
of spirits unhonoured and unsaluted. Seeing their per- 
plexity, Lieutenant Orban volunteered to fire a round of 
twenty cartridges from his “ Winchester.” The chief and 
people were delighted. Could there be greater honour for 
the deceased than to receive his farewell salute at the 
hands of a white man, with his wonderful gun from 
Mpito—the mysterious region beyond the sea—the un- 
known—perhaps heaven itself? (“for are not these white 
men sons of heaven?”) So thought the old chief, as he 
led us te see the corpse, with an earnest, pleading tone, he 
took our hands in his, and said, “Oh you, who are going 
home !”—and he pointed to the pale and peaceful evening 
sky—* you will send him back to us, will you not? you 
will tell him his hut is waiting for him, his wives will 
prepare his manioc white as cotton-cloth, and there shall 
be malafu in plenty, and a goat killed. You will send 
him back will you not?” This expression of feeling 
quite took us by surprise. Ordinarily the African chief 
is so stolid, so thoroughly material, that one never expects 
from him anything like sentiment or poetical ideas. We 
tried as gently as possible—for he appealed to both of us 
in his distress—to explain at once our utter inability to 
reanimate this hideous corpse with the breath of life, and — 
