MISSION STATION 217

scrambled down slopes at an angle of forty-five
degrees, cutting all the time; there was no sign of a
path. Then suddenly at the bottom of the steepest
hill we came out into a dell full of the sound of water,
which streamed under feathers of foam over a fall
sixty feet deep. All the slopes became alive with
people, girls with the pretty horn-shaped breasts of
the Manos, men with cutlasses. The whole village
seemed to have come with us, but the forest had been
so thick we had seen only the chief and his com-
panion. They sat on the slopes staring at the
incredible bounty of water. Within the young chiefs
memory there had been human sacrifices at the fall,
the feeding of a slave at the end of each dry season
to a snake, a hundred feet long, who had lain below
the fall. It was the myth of the rainbow snake which
one finds as far afield as Australia: the materialisa-
tion of the rainbow shimmer in the falling water.
The sacrifice had ended when the present chief was
a child. The slave, though his hands were tied
behind him, had grasped the chiefs robe and carried
him over the edge of the fall. That had been the end
of the sacrifice and the snake had gone down the
river to the St. John and lived now in a pool, very
dose to where we crossed, between Ganta and Djiecke.
We said good-bye to Dr. Harley in Zugbei. We
could have slept there, but I couldn't bear the thought
that we had not yet turned south. I wanted at least
the sensation of moving, however short a distance,,
towards the coast. So we went on for half an hour
due south to a dull village of which I couldn't learn
the name. It sounded like Mombei. The chief would
have no chop cooked for the men, but he dashed me