Part II. 
THE CATARACTS OF THE CONGO. 
CHAPTER I. 
FROM FERNANDO PO TO LOANGO BAY.-THE 
GERMAN EXPEDITION. 
URING the hot season of 1863, 
‘‘Nanny Po,” as the civilized African 
calls this “ lofty and beautiful is¬ 
land,” had become a charnel-house, 
a “ dark and dismal tomb of Europeans.” The 
yellow fever of the last year, which wiped out in two 
months one-third of the white colony—more exactly, 
78 out of 250—had not reappeared, but the condi¬ 
tions for its re-appearance were highly favourable. 
The earth was all water, the vegetation all slime, the 
air half steam, and the difference between wet and 
dry bulbs almost nil. Thoroughly dispirited for the 
first time, I was meditating how to escape, when 
11. 
B 
