484 
AFRICA AND ITS EXPLORATION. 
jungle camp, for wliile we were still engaged in con- 
structing a stockade, war-cries, horns, and drums 
announced the approach of the ever-fierce aborigines ; 
and in a short time we were hotly engaged. In an 
hour we had driven them away. Following them up 
rapidly a little distance we came to a large village, 
where we discovered three or four women well advanced 
in years, and, in order to obtain information of the 
country and its inhabitants, conveyed them to camp, 
where we began to practise such arts of conciliation and 
kindness as calm and soothe the fears of excited 
captives, and which had been so successful up river. 
We had hardly returned to camp before a larger 
force- — the inhabitants of the islands — appeared in head- 
dresses of parrot-feathers, and skull-caps of civet, 
squirrel, goat, and “ soko,” and with a bold confidence 
born of ignorance made a rush upon the stockade. The 
attack was promptly repelled, and in turn we attacked, 
driving the savages back step by step, and following 
them to a creek about fifty yards wide, into which they 
sprang to swim to their island. Two of the wounded 
warriors we caught and conveyed to our camp, where 
their wounds were dressed, and other attentions paid to 
them, which were much appreciated by them. 
The pioneers were during the afternoon engaged in 
cutting a broad road to the creek past the first fall, and 
by sunset our canoes and boat were dragged out of the 
river into the stockade, ready for transport overland. 
The morning of the 20th was occupied in hauling 
our vessels into the creek, which the flying Waregga 
islanders had first shown to us, and, by desperate labour, 
the whole Expedition was able to move from the right 
bank across the creek to the island. 
During the night the Wana-Kukura had abandoned 
the large island at its northern end, and thus we were 
left happily undisturbed in our occupation of it to 
obtain a few hours’ deserved rest. 
The Sixth Cataract is caused by a broad dyke of 
greenish shale, projecting from the base of the tall bluffs 
on the left bank of the river. Being of many thin 
