492 
AFRICA AND ITS EXPLORATION. 
yards oil each side, by taking advantage of the rocks, 
the natives have been enabled to fix upright heavy 
poles, six inches in diameter, to each of which they 
attach enormous fish-baskets by means of rattan-cane 
cables. There are probably sixty or seventy baskets, 
laid in the river on each side, every day ; and though 
some may be brought up empty, in general they seem 
to be tolerably successful, for out of half-a-dozen baskets 
that my boatmen brought up next day for examination, 
twenty-eight large fish were collected, one of which — a 
pike — was forty inches long, twenty -four inches round 
the body, and weighed seventeen pounds. 
Higher up the river we had also been accustomed to 
see piles of oysters and mussel-shells along the banks, 
especially while passing the lands of the Upper Wenya, 
between Rukombeh’s landing near Ukusu and the First 
Cataract of Stanley Falls. These, in some instances, 
might be taken as the only remaining traces of departed 
generations of Wenya, settled here when, through inter- 
necine troubles, they had been ejected from some more 
favoured locality. 
The Wenya of the Seventh Cataract struck me as. 
being not oidy more industrious than the aboriginal 
Baswas, but also more inventive than any we had yet 
seen” for in their villages we discovered square wooden 
chests, as large as an ordinary portmanteau, wherein 
their treasures of beads and berries, lame oyster and 
mussel-shells, were preserved. The paddles were beau- 
tiful specimens, made out of wood very much resembling 
mahogany ; a vast quantity of half-inch cord made out 
of Ilyphene palm and banana-fibre was also discovered. 
In almost every house, also, there were one or more ten- 
gallon earthenware jars filled with palm-butter, Avliile 
ivory seemed to be a drug, for we found three large 
tusks entirely rotten and useless, besides numbers of 
ivory war-horns, and ivory pestles for pounding cassava 
into flour. 
After building another camp above the creek-like 
branch near the right bank, we availed ourselves of some 
of the numerous piles of poles which the Wenya had 
