82 
Up the Congo River. 
who are clean, intelligent, and brave ; whilst we are 
reduced to the unprogressive Kru-man, who is, 
moreover, a model coward, a poltroon on principle. 
At 5 p.m. our huge canvas drove us rapidly over 
the shoals and shallows of this imperfectly known 
sea: the Ethiopic Directory justly grumbles, “ It is 
a subject of regret that navigators who have had 
occasion to enter the Congo, and to remain there 
some time, have not furnished us with more infor¬ 
mation about the tides.” This will be a work of 
labour and endurance; detached observations are 
of very little use. We at once remarked the com¬ 
plication caused by the upper, surface, or fresh¬ 
water current of 3 to 4 knots an hour, meeting 
the under, or oceanic inflow. There is a short 
cut up Pirate’s Creek, but we avoided it for the 
usual reason, fear of finding it very long. Passing 
a low point to port, subtended north and south 
by the Bananal River and Pirate’s Creek, after 
some six knots we were abreast of Bulambemba 
(the Boulem beembo of Tuckey’s Vocabulary). 
It is interpreted “ Answer,” hence our “ Echo 
Point”(?); but others render it, “Hold your 
tongue.” The former is correct, and the thick 
high screen of trees explains the native and Eng¬ 
lish names. Old writers call it Fathomless Point, 
which it is not now ; a bank, the south-eastern 
projection of the great Mwana Mazia shoal, has 
formed a few feet below the surface ; but the term 
