The Granite Pillar of Kinsembo . 51 
were dwarf fields of Manioc and Thur (Cajanus 
indicus ), and the large wild cotton shrubs showed 
balls of shortish fibre. As we passed a euphorbia- 
hedged settlement, Kizulf ya Mu, “ Seabeach 
Village,” a troop of women and girls, noisy as 
those of Ugogo, charged us at full gallop : a few 
silver bits caused prodigious excitement in the 
liberal display of charms agitated by hard exercise. 
The men were far less intrusive, they are said not 
to be jealous of European rivals, but madly so 
amongst themselves : even on suspicion of injury, 
the husband may kill his wife and her lover. 
At Kilwanika, the next hamlet, there was a 
“ king ; ” and it would not have been decent to 
pass the palace unvisited. Outside the huts stood 
a bamboo-girt “ compound,” which we visited 
whilst H.M. was making his toilette, and where, 
contrary to Congo usage, the women entered with 
us. Twenty-two boys aged nine or ten showed, 
by faces whitened with ashes, that they had under¬ 
gone circumcision, a ceremony which lasts three 
months : we shall find these Jinkimba in a far 
wilder state up the Congo. The rival house is 
the Casa das Tinta, where nubile girls are deco¬ 
rated by the Nganga, or medicine-man, with a 
greasy crimson-purple pigment and, preparatory 
to entering the holy state of matrimony, receive 
an exhaustive lecture upon its physical phases. 
Father Merolla tells us that the Congoese girls 
