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 arranging for a pyrotechnic display to take place without human aid, with a quantity of fireworks he had with him.

Two or three days' journey from Franceville going east, the nature of the country changes. To the clayey soil of the Ogowé basin and its richly wooded moist valleys succeeds a sandy, arid, hilly country, with here and there in the neighbourhood of a village a group of palm trees.



This is the aspect of the country which forms the watershed between the Ogowé and the tributaries of the Upper Congo. On the northern bank of the Congo, and on the southern bank of the Congo, I found this same make of country, more seaward, in the Pallaballa mountains above Matadi.

De Brazza remarks it is a singular fact that narrow sandy tracts of country are everywhere inhabited by one and the same tribe, the Bateke, reputed, probably erroneously he says, to be cannibals.