Into the Co 7 igo River. 63 
Despite the five-knot current we were “ courteously 
received into the embraces of the river;” H.M. 
Steamship “ Griffon ” wanted no “ commanding 
sea-breeze,” she found none of the difficulties which 
kept poor Tuckey’s “brute of a transport” drifting 
and driving for nearly a week before he could 
anchor off Fuma or Sherwood’s Creek, the “ Me¬ 
dusa” of modern charts (?) and which made Shark 
Point, with its three-mile current, a “ more re¬ 
doubtable promontory than that of Good Hope 
was to early navigators.” We stood boldly E. N. E. 
towards the high blue clump known as Bulam- 
bemba, and, with the dirty yellow breakers of 
Mwana Mazia Bank far to port, we turned north 
to French Point, and anchored in a safe bottom of 
seven fathoms. 
Here we at once saw the origin of the popular 
opinion that the Congo has no delta. On both 
sides, the old river valley, 32 miles broad, is marked 
out by grassy hills rolling about 200 feet high, 
trending from E.N.E. to W.S.W., and forming on 
the right bank an acute angle with the Ghats. 
But, whilst the northern line approaches within 
five or six miles, the southern bank, which diverges 
about the place where “ King Plonly’s town” ap¬ 
pears in charts, sweeps away some seventeen miles 
down coast, and leaves a wide tract of mangrove 
swamps. These, according to the Portuguese 
traders, who have their own plans of the river, 
