144 Up the Congo to Banza Nokki. 
charges during rains into the river : and, through¬ 
out the dry season, it keeps its little valley green 
with trees and shrubs. I observed what appeared 
to be the Esere or Calabar bean (Physostigma 
venenosum ), whose hairy pod is very distasteful to 
the travelling- skin : it was a “ Mucuna urens.” 
Another scramble upon a highly inclined hogs- 
back, where weather-worn brown-black granite, 
protruded bone-like from the clay flesh, placed us 
at the outlying village of Kinbembu, with its line 
of palms ; here the aneroid showed 1,322 feet. 
After a short rest, the hammock men resumed 
work over a rough plateau : the rises were scat¬ 
tered with brush-wood, and the falls were choked 
with the richest vegetation. Every hill discharged 
its own rivulet bubbling over the rock, and the 
waters were mostly chalybeate. 
Presently appeared a kind of barracoon, a large 
square of thick cane-work and thatch about eight 
feet high, the Fetish house of the “ Jinkimba” or 
circumcised boys, who received us with unearthly 
yells. After a march of an hour and three 
quarters, covering five indirect and three direct 
miles in a south-eastern rhumb, we reached Banza 
Nkaye, the royal village, where the sympiesometer 
showed 1430 feet. Our bearers yelled “ Abubu- 
bu !” showing that we had reached our destination, 
and the villagers answered with a cry of “Abfa-a-a!” 
The entrance was triumphal : we left the river 
