Notes on the Congo River. 151 
admiral guessed at the nearness of the land by 
nothing so much as by the complexion of the 
waters of the Zaire; and, putting into it, he asked 
of the negroes what river and country that was, 
who not understanding him answered ‘ Zevoco/ 
which in the Congolan tongue is as much as to 
say ‘ I cannot tell; ’ from whence the word being 
corrupted, it has since been called Zairo.” 
D’Anville (1749), with whom critical African 
geography began, records “ Barbela,” a southern 
influent, perhaps mythical, named by his prede¬ 
cessors, and still retained in our maps : it is the 
Verbele of Pigafetta and the Barbele of Linschoten, 
who make it issue either from the western lake- 
reservoir of the N ile, or from the “ Aquilunda” 
water, a name variously derived from O-Calunga, 
the sea (?), or from A-Kilunda, of Kilunda (?) 
The industrious compiler, James Barbot (1700), 
mentions the “ Umbre,” the modern Wambre, 
rising in the northern mountains or, according to 
P. Labat, in a lake : Dapper (1676), who so greatly 
improved the outline of Africa, had already derived 
with De Barros the “ Rio Zaire ” from a central 
reservoir “ Zaire,” whose island, the Zembre, after¬ 
wards became the Vambere, Wambre, and Zam- 
bere, now identified through the Zambeze with 
the Maravi, Nyassa or Kilwa water. The second 
or northernmost branch is the Bancora of mo¬ 
dern maps, the Brankare of Pigafetta, and the 
