Up the Congo to Banza Nokki. 143 
were bound to wear a furskin over their clothes, 
viz., of an otter, a tame cat, or a cat-o’-mountain; 
a “ great wood or wild cat, or an angali (civet-cat). 
Besides which, they had very fine speckled spelts, 
called ‘ enkeny,’ which might be worn only by the 
king and his peculiar favourites.” 
On the great man’s mat was placed a large 
silver-handled dagger, shaped somewhat like a 
fish-slicer; and the handsome hammocks of bright- 
dyed cottons brought down for our use shamed 
our humble ship’s canvas. The visitors showed 
all that African calinerie , which, as fatal experi¬ 
ence told me, would vanish for ever, changing 
velvet paw to armed claws, at the first question of 
cloth or rum. Meanwhile, we had only to visit 
their village “ upon the head of Gidi Mavunga.” 
About 9 a.m. we attacked a true Via Dolorosa, 
the normal road of the Lower Congo. The steep 
ascent of dry, clayey soil was strewed with schist 
and resplendent silvery gneiss ; quartz appeared in 
every variety, crystallized and amorphous, transpa¬ 
rent white, opaque, dusky, and rusty. Tuckey’s 
mica slate appears to be mostly schist or gneiss : 
I saw only one piece of true slate which had been 
brought from the upper bed. Merolla’s talc is 
mostly mica. 
Followed an equally rough descent to a water 
set in fetid mud, its iridescence declaring the pre¬ 
sence of iron; oozing out of the ground, it dis- 
