DOWN THE CONGO TO THE ATLANTIC. 
411 
Here we were camped in a low jungle. How could tlie 
most captious, or the most cruel, of men find any cause 
or heart to blame us for resting on this utterly unin- 
habitable spot? Yet the savages of Vina-Kya did. 
Our interpreters were urged to be eloquent. And indeed 
they were, if I may judge by the gestures, which was 
the only language that was comprehensible to me. I 
was affected with a strange, envious admiration for those 
two young fellows, cannibals, it is true, but endowed, 
none the less, with a talent for making even senseless 
limbs speak— and they appeared to have affected the 
savages of Yina-Kya also. At any rate, the wild 
natures relented for that day ; but they promised to 
decapitate us early in the 
morning, for the sake of a 
horrid barbecue thev in- 
*/ 
tended to hold. We re- 
solved not to wait for the 
entertainment. 
At dawn we embarked, 
and descended about two 
miles, close to the right 
bank, when, lo ! the broad 
mouth of the magnificent 
Lowwa, or Rowwa river 
burst upon the view. It 
was over a thousand yards 
wide, and its course by compass was from the south- 
east, or east-south-east true. A sudden rain-storm com- 
pelled us to camp on the north bank, and here we found 
ourselves under the shadows of the primeval forest. 
Judging from the height and size of these trees, I 
doubt whether the right bank of the Livingstone at the 
mouth of the Lowwa river was ever at any time in- 
habited. An impenetrable undergrowth consisting of a 
heterogeneous variety of ferns, young palms, date, 
doum, Raphia vinifera, and the Mucuna pruriens — the 
dread of the naked native for the tenacity with which 
its stinging sharp-pointed bristles attach themselves 
to the skin — masses of the capsicum plant, a hundred 
A QUEEN OF CHUB1BIRI. 
