THE PEOPLE OF THE CONGO. 291 
It is impossible to reckon with any accuracy their 
average duration of life, but, judging from the experience 
of missions long established on the coast, I should think 
the people aged quickly, and that few lived beyond sixty 
or sixty-five years. 
When a slave dies, he is “ chucked” without more ado 
into the river or the bush; but when a person of any 
consequence departs this life, he is generally buried under 
the hut he lived in (which is afterwards abandoned), and 
in his grave are put quantities of cloth, beads, plates, 
knives, cowries and other things to enable him to start 
afresh in a new life. The plates are generally broken, 
and the knives bent, in order to “ kill” them, so that they 
too may “die,” and go to the land of the spirits. When a 
great chief dies four or more slaves are laid transversely 
in his grave, and his body is placed on the top. The 
slaves are not buried alive, but are hung first. After the 
death of a married man, his widow or widows are shut up 
in his house (underneath which he is buried) for a period 
of fifty days, during which time they keep their faces 
blackened with charcoal. 
The food of the Upper Congo people is more mixed in 
character than that of the natives on the Lower river. 
While their diet is largely vegetable, and bananas, ground- 
nuts, manioc, Indian corn, and sweet potatoes are staple 
articles of food, yet other elements vary their repasts. A 
_ river like the Congo naturally abounds in fish, and the 
riverine natives consume quantities of a food at once 
appetizing and easily procured. ~ 
One tribe on the Upper Congo makes quite a traffic in 
smoked fish, which they sell to the resident tribes along 
the banks or a little way in the interior. It is a most 
common sight to see a group of these Ba-yansi people 
established temporarily on a great sandbank in the 
middle of the river, smoking the newly-caught fish over 
immense wood fires. I have often bought and eaten 
these smoked fish (which are generally large specimens 
of the Percidw family), and I can only say, provided you 
get one that is not about a year old and riddled with 
