26 o 
The March to Banza Nkulu. 
assistance I was able to catechize him. He did not 
deny that his people were “ papagentes,” but he 
declared that they confined the practice to slain 
enemies. He told a number of classical tales 
about double men, attached, not like the Siamese 
twins, but dos-a-dos ; of tribes whose feet acted as 
parasols, the Plinian Sciapodae and the Persian 
Tasmeh-pa, and of mermen who live and sleep in 
the inner waters—I also heard this from M. 
Parrot, a palpable believer. He described his 
journey down the great river, and declared that 
beyond his country’s frontier the Nzadi issues 
from a lake which he described as having a sea- 
horizon, where canoes lose sight of land, and 
where they are in danger from violent storms ; he 
described the latter with great animation, and his de¬ 
scriptions much reminded me of Dibbie, the “ Dark 
Lake.” Probably this was genuine geography, al¬ 
though he could not tell the name of the inner sea, 
the Achelunda of old cosmographers. Tuckey’s map 
also lays down in N.lat. 2° to 3 0 and in E. long. (G.) 
17 0 to 18° a great swamp draining to the south ; and 
his “Narrative” (p. 178) tells us that some thirty 
days above Banza Mavunda, which is 20 to 24 
miles above the Yellala, “ the river issues by many 
small streams from a great marsh or lake of mud.” 
This would suggest a reservoir alternately flooded 
and shrinking; possibly lacustrine bays and the 
bulges formed by the middle course of the Lualaba. 
