My new house is finished; a great comfort, for the other was foul and full of vermin: bugs (Tapazi, or ticks), that follow wherever Arabs go, made me miserable, but the Arabs are insensible to them; Abed alone had a mosquito-curtain, and he never could praise it enough.

One of his remarks is, "If slaves think you fear them, they will climb over you." I clothed mine for nothing, and ever after they have tried to ride roughshod over me, and mutiny on every occasion! _14th April, 1871._--Kahembe came over, and promises to bring a canoe; but he is not to be trusted; he presented Abed with two slaves, and is full of fair promises about the canoe, which he sees I am anxious to get.

They all think that my buying a canoe means carrying war to the left bank; and now my Banian slaves encourage the idea: "He does not wish slaves nor ivory," say they, "but a canoe, in order to kill Manyuema." Need it be wondered at that people, who had never heard of strangers or white men before I popped down among them, believed the slander?
The slaves were aided in propagating the false accusation by the half-caste Ujijian slaves at the camp.

Hassani fed them every day; and, seeing that he was a bigoted Moslem, they equalled him in prayers in his sitting-place seven or eight times a day! They were adepts at lying, and the first Manyuema words they learned were used to propagate falsehood.
I have been writing part of a despatch, in case of meeting people from the French settlement on the Gaboon at Loeki, but the canoe affair is slow and tedious: the people think only of war: they are a bloody-minded race.
_15th April, 1871._--The Manyuema tribe, called Bagenya, occupy the left bank, opposite Nyangwe.

A spring of brine rises in the bed of a river, named Lofubu, and this the Bayenga inspissate by boiling, and sell the salt at market.