230 
To the Mbika. 
exertion, and, when called, always turned her 
back. 
After dropping three miles down the Mbokwe 
River, we entered the Londo influent: some three 
miles further on it fines down from a width of 
eighty feet to a mere ditch, barred with trees, which 
stop navigation. We landed on the left bank and 
walked into the palaver-house of Fakanjok or 
Pakanjok, the village of a Fan head man, called 
by Mr. Tippet “John Matoko.” It was old, dirty 
and tattered, showing signs of approaching re¬ 
moval. Out of the crowd of men and women 
who nearly sat upon us, I had no difficulty in 
hiring eight porters, thereby increasing our party 
to twenty-five souls. These people carry on the 
shoulder, not as Africans always should do, on the 
head : they even cross the fallen trunks which act 
as rickety bridges, with one side of the body thus 
heavier than the other. 
The bush-path began by wheeling westward, as 
though we were returning to Anenge-nenge; 
thence it struck south-eastwards, a rhumb from 
which it rarely deviated. Though we were ap¬ 
proaching the sub-ranges of the Sierra del Crystal, 
the country was very like that about Mbata; 
streamlets flowing to the Mbokwe, wet yellow 
soil forming slippery muds, unhealthy as un¬ 
pleasant in the morning sunshine ; old and new 
clearings and plantations, mostly of bananas, mere 
