Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/596

 of the Pendés, Ba-Kongos, and other Bantu peoples, of whom little is known beyond their tribal names. Beyond the Sankuru dwell the Ba-Songo Mino, or "Songas of the Teeth," so named because they file to a point all the incisors. Although much dreaded as cannibals they deny the charge, which was certainly unconfirmed by anything seen by Wolf when he visited them in 1886. Lower down, about the Sankuru-Kassai confluence, live the unfriendly Ba-Kutu people, and still farther north, between the Kassai and the Lu-Kenye (Ikatta), follow the Ba-Senge, occupying straggling villages miles in extent and often containing several thousand inhabitants. The Ba-Senge, who are not to be confounded with the Ba-Songe and Ba-Sange nations, are noted for their relatively long legs

and short trunk, while many have perfectly European features of the intellectual type. Ga-koko, their capital, so named from the local chief, is a very large place built, like all the other towns, in a clearing of the primeval forest.

Although belonging to the Kassai system, the Kwango traverses a region which has had a very different historic evolution from that of Lunda Land. It is the true Zaire, which was known to the Portuguese since the sixteenth century, and whose name is still attributed to the Lower Congo. Many parts of its valley have