ARRIVAL ON THE WELLE. 441 my returning to their relations all the women who had been captured. With one blow, therefore, peace was restored and the road reopened, at least here, whilst the district in the west will have to wait a little.

Monbuttu now lay before me, from whence I was receiving letters every day requesting my personal presence to put matters in order. J determined to go there at once, as I was able to spare a few days.

After crossing the Dongu near the small military station of the same name (the river was a hundred and twenty-five feet broad and eight feet deep, and had many rapids), we marched through the narrow strip of Zande country which lay between it and the banks of the Kibali, which we reached at . midday on the 15th of June. All the Zandé call the Kibali Makua. ‘The Zande word Welle means, as far as | can make out, “the river par excellence,” in contradistinction to small streams. At the place where we crossed the river it was two hundred and forty feet broad, twelve feet deep, and flowed at the rate of fifty-seven feet per minute. You may believe me when I tell you that at this point I thought very much of you, especially when one of my soldiers, who was born in Kuka, made the remark that the river we were crossing was probably his river [1.¢., the Shari].

We were now in Monbuttu proper, although the whole of this part of the country is inhabited by a tribe which the real Monbuttu call Bamba, and the Zande, Abangba, and which is actually identical with your Abanga. It is a very interesting fact, and one which illustrates well the movements and wanderings of this tribe, that the Mundu, or Mondu, of the Makraka country are really identical with these Bamba, who, it may be supposed, were driven by the Zande to the east, and thus separated from their relations many long years ago, ‘The language of the Mundt, which differs entirely from that spoken by the other tribes living in Makraka, is identical with that of the Bamba, and many of my people from Mundu met with ‘their relations here. The Nyapt and the A-Barambo, both aboriginal inhabitants of the country, known to-day as Monbuttu, are also related by identity of language to both the Mundt and Bamba. Another branch of the Monbuttu family,