"Our blood is up now. It is a murderous world, and we feel for the first time that we hate the filthy, vulturous ghouls who inhabit it. We therefore lift our anchors, and pursue them up-stream along the right bank, until, rounding a point, we see their villages. We make straight for the banks, and continue the fight in the village streets with those who have landed, hunt them out into the woods, and there only sound the retreat, having returned the daring cannibals the compliment of a visit.
"While mustering my people for re-embarkation, one of the men came forward and said that in the principal village there was a 'Meskiti,' a 'pembé'--a church, or temple--of ivory, and that ivory was 'as abundant as fuel.' In a few moments I stood before the ivory temple, which was merely a large circular roof supported by thirty-three tusks of ivory, erected over an idol four feet high, painted with camwood dye a bright vermilion, with black eyes and beard and hair. The figure was very rude, still it was an unmistakable likeness of a man. The tusks being wanted by the Wangwana, they received permission to convey them into the canoes. One hundred other pieces of ivory were collected, in the shape of log wedges, long ivory war-horns, ivory pestles to pound cassava into meal, and herbs for spinach, ivory armlets and balls, and ivory mallets to beat the fig-bark into cloth.
"The stores of beautifully carved paddles, ten feet in length, some of which were iron-pointed, the enormous six-feet-long spears, which were designed more for ornament than use, the splendid long knives, like Persian kummars, and bright iron-mounted sheaths with broad belts of red buffalo and antelope hide, barbed spears, from the light assegai to the heavy double-handed sword-spear, the tweezers, hammers, prickers, hole-burners, hairpins, fish-hooks, hammers, arm and leg-rings of iron and copper, iron beads and wrist-bands, iron bells, axes, war-hatchets, adzes, hoes, dibbers, etc., proved the people on the banks of this river to be clever, intelligent, and more advanced in the arts than any hitherto observed since we commenced our descent of the Livingstone. The architecture of their huts, however, was the same, except the conical structure they had erected over their idol. Their canoes were much larger than those of the Mwana Ntaba, above the Stanley Falls, which had crocodiles and lizards carved on them. Their skull-caps of basket-work, leopard, civet, and monkey skins, were similar to those that we had observed in Uregga. Their shields were like those of the Wariwa. There were various specimens of African wood-carving in great and small idols, stools of ingenious pattern, double benches, walk-staffs, spear-staffs, paddles, flutes, grain-mortars, mallets, drums, clubs, troughs, scoops and canoe-balers, paddles, porridge-spoons, etc. Gourds also exhibited taste in ornamentation. Their earthenware was very superior, their pipes of an unusual pattern--in short, everything that is of use to a well-found African village exhibited remarkable intelligence and prosperity.