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patient to go. They were ashamed to hear their women asking for beads to put round their necks, and English cloth to wear round their loins, when they had none to give them. 'When we old men were young, we used to lead the young men to the river and to the sea to take care of them, and bring them back safely to their mothers and their wives; but we are too old now; we must sit by the fire like the women, and the young men now grow up headstrong and foolish, and won't listen to us old men. They laugh at us and tell us to shut our mouths, for our day is done. But now our English boy has come to take care of the people. All the rivers know the English boy, that he is young like our own youths, but his heart is wiser than the hearts of our oldest men. His heart is full of books, and he knows all things.'

He then said that the old men were quite willing to let the young men go with me, but there was a great sookia (medicine man) at the Wanx River, who had sent round to tell the people that there would shortly be a teemia tarra (great night, probably meaning an eclipse of the sun), and he warned all people against being away from home at that time, as it might last a long while, and they would not be able to find food in the darkness. Now,' said he, 'you English know all things from your books; tell us, then, if this is true.'

Accordingly I looked into my book for some time, and then said: 'The sun himself only knows this thing, but he will tell it to the book.' So I laid the open book on a slab in the sun, and poured a little gunpowder beside it. 'Now,' I said, 'if the sun sets the powder on fire, there will be no great night; but if the sun cannot burn the powder there will.'

I waited until the rumour of this magic had drawn the whole village round me. Then I gazed at the sun, and said in English: 'Oh, sun, answer these people'; then, on holding my sun-glass to focus over the powder, it exploded. The women and children yelled with surprise; the men looked at

each other and grunted their astonishment. This experiment decided the question; the old men said it was a false sookia who had tried to deceive them, and the young men might go with me. To confirm in their minds the idea of my powers over the supernatural, I showed them my pocket-compass, and told them it was my 'road-spirit,' and would guide me in the bush or on the sea, and would lead me to my country wherever I might be. I said it would follow me like a dog, to prove which I made it whirl round when I passed my knife over it. Nothing more was needed to establish my reputation among them. When doing these miracles I had asked my brother-in-law to go away with the Mosquito men who had come with me, as the coast Indians are much more sceptical of pretensions founded on such evidence.

We were delayed some days to allow the men to take leave of their wives and children, some going hunting for meat to leave with the women, and some bringing in a great store of barbecued fish with the same object. Having engaged twelve men, the women on their part loaded them with parting gifts. Our canoes were stuffed with great oosnoos (baskets woven from warree withes) of bishbaya, which is maize steeped in lye of wood ashes to remove the outside skin from the grain, then soaked in running water till it partially ferments, and finally dried in the sun; with cakes of chocolate wrapped in waha leaves, bunches of soopa palm nuts, of plantains and bananas, and with loads of sugar-cane.

CHAPTER VIII.

Birds of the morning-Shooting the rapids-Tapir yarns-Poultry of the spirits-Clamorous land-rails-Night on the river-Night talkOvercome with sleep-Attacked by wasps-Fight with mosquitoes -Insect pests-Goods arrive-Toongla River—Alligator yarns

AT eight in the morning we started down the river in four pitpans. As usual in these rivers, the morning mists hung over everything, so that the walls of forest on each side looked like shadows, glowing with the sunlight which struggled through. The air was alive with the songs and cries of birds and beasts, among which the song of the banana bird was distinguished by the variety of its sweet notes, sweeter and more varied than that of the nightingale or any European bird. The banana bird should be called the bird of the morning, which it loves more than any bird. It thinks the morning was made for it alone. From earliest dawn all along the riverside you see its yellow plumage flashing in the sunlight as it flies from bush to bush, or perches on the drooping bamboos, pouring out its soul in a song which almost drowns the hundred voices of the other birds. the sun rises it ceases to sing, and retires to feed silently or to rest in the thickets. It loves the beauties of the interior, refusing to live near the lowlands of the rivers, and it is said of it that it will not stay where the tide makes the river brackish.

As

Although we were wrapped in white mist, the tops of the

high trees were bathed in sunshine, and here many birds had perched to enjoy the sun, and make themselves heard far and near in answering each other's calls. There are many birds in this country which call and answer each other with rhythmical regularity for half an hour at a time; and on this occasion one delightful bird called out in a high musical note, heard half a mile off, 'What am I to do?' while it was answered from some distant tree in clear, ringing notes, Poor man, Jacko.' This rendering of a bird's song may seem foolish and overfanciful, but that it has a foundation in fact is shown by the Creoles of Blewfields, who always notice the loud musical notes of this bird the first thing in the morning. They also render its song in words. as above.

We could hear droves of white-faced monkeys quarrelling among the bamboos, and the small querulous barking of the male squirrels. Macaws flew past overhead with deafening screams, and, together with flocks of parrots and paroquets, made such a noise as one hears in the crowded streets of London. Amid this deafening but cheerful uproar from thousands of living creatures, man is silent. He is not heard in this concert of joy. The birds look down and see him silently passing in his canoe, or elsewhere creeping like a thief through the bush. We go to London, and what a reversal of the picture! A plague of men crawling and swarming below like our 'marching army' ants when they are out for the rains. The hideous uproar has no notes of joy and exhilaration; it is stunning if not brutal, and Nature retires ashamed at the sight.

At noon we arrived at the falls, and Von Tempsky and I walked through the bush while the men went down the rapid in the pitpans. As we trudged along, we could hear their shouts as they swept past us down to the bottom. We embarked and drifted down the river, the lazy Indians doing the smallest possible amount of paddle work. They passed

the time drinking copious draughts of bruised corn and water, and chewing sugar-cane, with which the boats were half filled. They also plied the rod and the arrow, and secured a great quantity of fine fish.

As night was falling we passed the scene of an adventure I had with a tapir the previous year, and after recognising the scene, our conversation turned on this subject, the Indians having lots of tapir yarns to tell. One told how, while he was quietly fishing and his wife steering, he saw a tapir rush out of a clump of bamboos and bound over a steep bank into the river, with a puma hanging on its neck. The tapir made for the shore, and they rolled over and over and struggled terribly for a long time; but at last the tapir was killed, and the puma walked round it panting for breath. The Indian then moved up in his canoe, the tiger retired, and he loaded his canoe with the tapir and went home.

A few years ago two Indians, friends of mine, were paddling up the Prinzapalka River, when they heard the noise of a tapir browsing on the bank above them. One of them landed with bow and arrow; the other, armed with a lance, landed a little farther down. The tapir, hearing the first man coming, fled in the direction of the second man, followed by its calf. This man was imitating the cry of the calf to attract the mother, and seeing her coming full at him, he let fly his lance and missed her. She knocked him down with a blow from her nose, and tried to trample on him, which would have finished him. He got up, however, but was again knocked down by her nose, and she again tried to stamp him under foot, when the other man came up and put an arrow through her.

One bright moonlight night ten or twelve of my men had to camp on a sandbank in a small creek overhung by trees. About midnight one of the men happened to wake, when he was alarmed at seeing a big black object standing right in the middle of the sleepers. He seized a lance and buried it