Sir Francis de Winton told me that in one year when he was at Vivi, near the mouth of the Congo, the river rose over fourteen feet in a single night. On subsequent inquiry he succeeded in getting a report from Stanley Pool to the effect that a great lake had broken out above. There are only two things to be said with regard to this. First, that it is always open to doubt whether the bursting of a dam in the Lukuga would affect the great river sixteen hundred miles lower down to the extent of raising its level fourteen feet in a night; secondly, that what applies in this respect to Tanganyika might also apply to Lake Leopold II., the latter lake being comparatively near to the coast.

When we were in this neighbourhood the spurring geese seemed to be flocking preparatory to migrating. For hours on end I paddled through the